Emil L. Scharf

Emil Ludwig Scharf (August 3, 1854 - March 7, 1928) was a German-born Catholic journalist and publisher who reported in 1904 that he had discovered an electric force that produces negative gravity (anti-gravity).

Background
So far as has been ascertained, Scharf was born in the Duchy of Baden in 1854 to a Catholic family, the son of Theodor Scharf and Tesafina (Berta) Binz, his father described as a botanist and professor at the Université de Metz. In 1872, then seventeen years old, he is recorded as having emigrated from Europe to the United States, at which time he listed his profession as farmer; in his obituary, Scharf is credited with assisting his father in introducing German education to Elsaß-Lothringen, and studying music under Henri Herbst in Paris, while his tombstone accredits him as having received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Paris. Whatever his academic background, by the 1880s, he was working as a piano tuner and tutor to students of violin, piano, and languages. In 1891, Scharf married Mary Louisa White at Hamilton, Virginia, and sometime thereafter taught languages to students of the Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

Just past the turn of the century, in 1904, Professor Scharf claimed he had discovered a method of producing negative gravity, which he detailed in an illustrated two-page story for the Washington Times, seeking to secure funding for further experiments. This curious story was, it seems, never publicly mentioned again, even as Scharf became more active in Washington politics, launching a Catholic News Agency and taking up journalism, particularly through his Catholic News Bulletin, in support of sundry causes, including the National Anti-Food Trust League (dedicated to combating rising food costs), the Common Sense Anti-Saloon Alliance (dedicated to making American drinking establishments more European), and the Roman Catholic Mission Society schools.

In 1911, Scharf was accused of attempting to solicit payments in exchange for delivering Catholic votes and denounced by Ben Johnson, a Democrat congressman from Kentucky, subsequently finding himself repudiated by the Catholic University and expelled from the Knights of Columbus. Despite of all the negative publicity, which continued to follow him for the remainder of his career, Scharf continued contributing to various newspapers and publishing the Catholic News Bulletin into the 1920s.

E. L. Scharf passed suddenly in March 1928, presumably carrying his secret anti-gravity research with him to the grave.

Selected Bibliography

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