Krafft, Karl Ernst
Krafft, Karl Ernst
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Karl Ernst Krafft, a Swiss astrologer, was born in Basel on May 10, 1900. He studied at the Universities of Basel and Geneva. He began to investigate astrology with statistical methods, constructing birth charts from data available from public records. He replicated Choisnard’s studies and conducted others of his own.
From 1924 to 1937, Krafft pursued various employments and practiced astrology and astrological research in his spare time. He moved to Germany not long after his marriage in 1937, where he devoted his time to writing and lecturing on his favorite subject. His major work, Le premier traité d’astrobiologie, was published in 1939.
Despite work that he performed for the Propaganda Ministry of the German government, Krafft was in and out of jail, eventually dying on January 8, 1945, during a transfer between German detention centers. His importance for astrologers lies in his large-scale statistical work, which began with Choisnard and led to the work of Michel and Françoise Gauquelin.