Protestant churches were subject to internal political forces, as the Roman Church had been for independent thinkers.  Because Zimmerman had openly expressed his integrated theological and mystical views in speaches and published books and other writings, he was deposed  by the church ministry for unorthodoxy.  Later he was also fired for the same reason at the University of Heidelberg where he was a professor of philosophy and mathematics.  But this was not before Zimmerman began planning an important Rosicrucian journey to the New World for the year 1694.

At Heidelberg, in the audience of his speaches Zimmerman came across the young Johannes Kelpius, who was then a student in the University at Altdorf.  Kelpius had been, since orphaned at the age of 12,  under the direct care and influence of the Count Valentine Francke, a Rosicrucian who was also a cousin to Auguste Herman Francke, a very well known Rosicrucian master mystic.