Moses Dobruška was the first cousin once removed of Jacob Frank

Jacob Frank

Jacob Frank was an 18th century Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob...

, the founder of the Frankist sect who claimed to be the Jewish messiah

Jewish Messiah

Messiah, ; mashiah, moshiah, mashiach, or moshiach, is a term used in the Hebrew Bible to describe priests and kings, who were traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil as described in Exodus 30:22-25...

. Dobruška was an alchemist

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

, freemason, writer, and poet. On 17 December 1775 he converted from Judaism

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 to the Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld.

25 July 1778 he was elevated to nobility in Vienna, becoming Franz Thomas Edler

Edler

Edler was until 1919 the lowest title of nobility in Austria-Hungary and Germany, just beneath a Ritter, but above nobles without title who used only the preposition von before their surname. It was mostly given to civil servants and military officers, as well as those upon whom the second rank of...

 von Schönfeld. Together with Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, who did not convert, he became one of the main conspirators of the “Knights of St. John the Evangelists for Asia in Europe,” a secret society of freemasons, which was much talked about in Germany and Austria between 1783 and 1790, not least because it was the first German-speaking fraternal order to accept Jews.

In 1792, in the wake of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, he traveled via Strasbourg to Paris and became a Jacobin

Jacobin (politics)

A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...

, changing his name, once again, to Junius Frey. The new name derived from Junius from the Roman Junii

Junius

Junius was the pseudonym of a writer who contributed a series of letters to the Public Advertiser, from 21 January 1769 to 21 January 1772. The signature had been already used, apparently by him, in a letter of 21 November 1768...

-family that fostered the famous tyrant slayers the Brutus

Brutus

Brutus is the cognomen of the Roman gens Junia, a prominent family of the Roman Republic. The plural of Brutus is Bruti, and the vocative form is Brute, as immortalized in the quotation "Et tu, Brute?", from Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar....

', and Frey being the German tranliteration for "liberty".

He was arrested for treason

Treason

In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

 and espionage and executed by guillotine on 5 April 1794 in connection with the case against his brother-in-law François Chabot

François Chabot

François Chabot was a French politician.-Early career:Born in Saint-Geniez-d'Olt , Chabot became a Capuchin friar in Rodez before the French Revolution, while continuing to be attracted to the works of philosophes - the reason for which he was banned from preaching in the respective diocese.After...

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