Alfred Schuler

Alfred Schuler (1902)

Alfred Schuler (born November 22, 1865 in Mainz , † April 8, 1923 in Munich ) is characterized as a seer , founder of religion , gnostic , mystagogue and visionary . Schuler saw himself as a reborn Roman of the late imperial era . Schuler, who represented a gnostic neo-paganism , was the spiritual focus of the cosmists and idea generator for Stefan George and Ludwig Klages . Without having published a book during his lifetime, he achieved a wide impact.

Life

Alfred Schuler was born in Mainz in 1865. Schuler blamed a malevolent demon for his rebirth in the uncomfortable time. Schuler began studying law and archeology in Munich. But he broke it off again after a short time and saw in the archaeologists from then on "grave robbers who tore from the ground what was 'holy' buried and had a more powerful radiant effect on life out of the darkness than in the museum air". After his studies, Schuler lived as a private scholar in Munich, which he only left for shorter trips.

From 1899 onwards, Schuler had correspondence with Henri Papus for several years, whom he addressed as “master and master”. Schuler's estate material contained a Gnostic treatise on an omniscient master in the form of a serpent, which was linked to the biblical exegesis of the serpent- worshiping ophites . Baal Müller states that Schuler's Gnosis knowledge came mainly from Papus' Green Notebooks , which contained material from high-level freemasonry and Blavatsky's theosophy, and which he sometimes quoted verbatim. However, Schuler was rather hostile to Freemasonry.

"Blood Light" and "Cosmic Circle"

The Cosmiker v. l. To the right: Karl Wolfskehl, Alfred Schuler, Ludwig Klages, Stefan George, Albert Verwey

At the turn of the century, the Schwabing district of Munich formed a kind of center of various anti-bourgeois and sometimes occult currents (Schwabinger Bohème ), which also included the mysterious mystery cult of the blood light . This group of people around Karl Wolfskehl , Alfred Schuler and Ludwig Klages developed a doctrine that viewed the West from the very beginning as an epoch marked by decline and decline. Christianity and the rationalization and demythologization associated with it were seen as the driving force behind this betrayal of the primal forces of life . A way out of this desolate age could only be found through a return to the pagan origins. However, their definition in this group was not as uniform as it appeared to the outside world.

Alfred Schuler and his friend Ludwig Klages, whom Schuler met in 1893, can be seen as the leading figures in this group. Schuler founded the “blood light” together with Klages and a few other so-called initiates, such as B. Ludwig Derleth and the poet Karl Wolfskehl, through whom the first contact with the George Circle came about.

As the name “blood light” indicates, the terms “blood” and “light” played a central role. With the steady sinking of the blood, understood as the sacred elixir of life and metaphysical soul substance, the "real" life sank more and more. This blood had to be brought back to the former radiant luminosity, as it was seen in the pagan, prehistoric millennia and in part also in antiquity. In the sign of the blood lamp and the swastika symbolizing it, salvation should be regained.

They hoped for the desired conversion from a few in whom the unspoiled blood was still effective (to which they also counted themselves). These few people, the "reincarnation of inextinguished sparks of distant pasts" (Ludwig Klages), should represent the basic energies of the "cosmic turning point". The practices of the "blood light" cult were a kind of symbiosis of paganism and lordship for the rebirth of lost humanity.

Urged by Ludwig Klages, Schuler gave three lectures in 1915 " On the biological prerequisites of the Roman Empire ". Among the audience was Rainer Maria Rilke , who was deeply impressed by Schuler's hitherto unknown personality. This created personal contact between Schuler and Rilke. Rilke's wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, created a bust of Schuler. In August 1915, Ludwig Klages fled to Switzerland. Maria Gundrum traveled after him in December 1916 instead of Schuler in order to establish the necessary "connection" between him and Klages for Schuler.

effect

The influence of the "Cosmic Circle" in the George Circle on George himself is a. a. apparently by the fact that George began to use the swastika for publications that emerged from the circle, such as the "Blätter für die Kunst". The “cosmic” influence can also be felt in his writing “The Seventh Ring” and later works. In spite of the later ascertainable effects, it came to a break after some time, so that the "Cosmic Circle" in the George Circle only remained a temporary phenomenon.

Schuler had been in contact with occultists such as Henri Papus since the turn of the century, and later he took part in spiritualistic séances with Albert von Schrenck-Notzing .

Schuler held extensive lectures on ancient pagan mysteries. Between 1915 and 1923 he gave his repeatedly repeated speeches “On the essence of the Eternal City” in Elsa Bruckmann's salon , to which Rilke was one of the listeners.

research

Research on Schuler focused on the question of Schuler's role model effect for National Socialism . In addition to Schuler's anti-Judaism and his use of the swastika, the debate was sparked primarily by Robert Boehringer 's thesis of a meeting between Schuler and the young Hitler in the Bruckmann Salon.

Recently, the influence of literary history has also attracted increasing attention. Today Schuler is seen as an independent poet and pioneer of experimental literary modernism.

Schuler about himself

“My earliest consciousness encompassed me like walls and firelight. A floating scarlet cell in floating darkness. I felt this redness as one of all feelings. A pain delighted / unspeakable sweetness. And every single one of the things / that came into the orbit of this light / changed in its own transfiguration. The innermost times and extremes seemed to congeal here __ a drop of essential being __ to give birth to something most distant / most foreign / for which world and star are blurred words. Nourished by my father's rich soul / in the protection of his dignity and position, it rose like columns of smoke in the middle of outer basins and I slipped through school and lessons almost unscathed. Miraculously, from the soil of my homeland / the Rhineland / like golden oils, the juices around me / that I needed. In the dampness of fragrant urns strengthened / between colored remains of mortar and broken mosaics my roots penetrated volcanoes / which nobody knows / and everything past and future / the whole catacomb world of the present shot me into this one sun __ Roma. "

Contemporary remarks about Schuler

Stefan George

AS

So was she really that round? Because the torches

The pale faces brightened, the fumes rose

From bowls around the boy of gods and with your words

Raised us brightly red in mad worlds?

That we can barely control our senses, as if poisoned

After a bad feast, we couldn't get hold of us for days,

Always felt burning roses around the forehead, suffering

For glimpses of curiosity into the splendor of the curtained sky.

Rainer M. Rilke

“Imagine that a person, based on an intuitive insight into ancient imperial Rome, undertook to explain the world, which the dead as the real beings, the realm of the dead as a single unheard of existence, but our small period of life as one A kind of exception to this was: all this supported by an immeasurable reading of such a gradient of inner conviction and experience that the meaning of immemorial myths, resolved, seemed to plunge into this bed of speech, bearing the meaning and obstinacy of the strange eccentric on his great current. "

Ludwig Klages

"... by far the most knowledgeable about the secrets of antiquity ..."

Karl Wolfskehl

"Schuler's figure persists in all its mythical reality, in its fullness, its greatness."

Fonts

• Seals . Munich 1930.
• Fragments and lectures from the estate. With the introduction by Ludwig Klages . Leipzig 1940.
• Collected Works. Edited, commented on and introduced by Baal Müller . Telesma, Munich 2007. ISBN 3-9810057-4-0

Individual evidence

1. ^ Franz Wegener: Alfred Schuler, the last German Cathar. Gnosis, National Socialism and the mystical blood light. Gladbeck 2003. ISBN 3-931300-11-0 . Pp. 31-32.
2. ^ Dorothea Roth: Schuler, Klages, Gundrum. In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, Vol. 96, 1966, pp. 182-184. Retrieved November 12, 2019 . 
3. ^ Franz Wegener: Alfred Schuler, the last German Cathar. Gnosis, National Socialism and the mystical blood light. Gladbeck 2003. ISBN 3-931300-11-0 . P. 31.
4. ^ Letter to the Empress Elisabeth (1898). In: Alfred Schuler: Cosmogonic eyes. Edited, commented on and introduced by Baal Müller. Igel, Paderborn 1997. ISBN 3-89621-052-1
5. ↑ Stefan George: Dedication poem in the 'Year of the Soul' (EA 1897). In: Complete edition of the works. Final version. Vol. 7. Berlin 1927ff., P. 86.
6. ^ Rainer Maria Rilke: Letter to Marie von Thurn and Taxis (March 18, 1915). In: Correspondence with Marie von Thurn und Taxis. 2 vols. Acquired by Ernst Zinn . Vol. 1. Zurich / Frankfurt 1951, pp. 409f.
7. ↑ Ludwig Klages: From the Cosmogonic Eros. 4th edition Jena 1941, p. 207 (EA 1922).
8. ^ Letter to Herbert Steiner (March 19, 1946). In: Karl Wolfskehl. Ten years of exile. Letters from New Zealand 1938–1948. Edited by Margot Ruben. Heidelberg / Darmstadt 1959, p. 254.

literature

• Wolfgang Frommel , Marita Keilson-Lauritz , Karl Heinz Schuler: Alfred Schuler. Three approaches. Castrum Peregrini, Amsterdam 1985, 1996. ISBN 90-6034-057-4
• Konrad Fuchs :  Schuler, Alfred. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 9, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-058-1 , Sp. 1107-1110.
• Thomas Gräfe: Kosmiker , in: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Anti-Semitism in Past and Present , Vol. 7: Literature, Film, Theater and Art, Berlin: De Gruyter 2014, pp. 261–266.
• Reiner Marx: Alfred Schuler, from Zweibrücker high school student to cult figure of the Munich bohemian. In: Saarpfalz 2014/1, ISSN  0930-1011 , pp. 35-42
• Baal Müller (Ed.): Alfred Schuler. The last Roman. New In: Contributions to Munich Cosmics. Reventlow, Schuler, Wolfskehl et al. a. Castrum Peregrini Presse, Bonn / Amsterdam 2000. ISBN 90-6034-107-4
• Michael Pauen: Unity and Exclusion. Anti-Semitic Neopaganism in Ludwig Klages and Alfred Schuler. In: Renate Heuer, Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow: Confrontation and Coexistence. On the history of German Jewry. Campus, Frankfurt / New York 1996, pp. 242–269. ISBN 3-593-35503-5
• Michael Pauen : Alfred Schuler. Paganism and Salvation History. In: Castrum Peregrini Amsterdam 42.1993, pp. 21-54. ISSN  0008-7556
• Gerhard Plumpe : Alfred Schuler. Chaos and a new beginning. On the function of myth in modern times. Berlin 1978.
• Franz Wegener: Alfred Schuler, the last German Cathar. Gnosis, National Socialism and the mystical blood light. Gladbeck 2003. ISBN 3-931300-11-0

Excerpt from the book by Franz Wegener ( PDF file; 1.48 MB)

• Baal Müller: Cosmics. Process ontology and temporal poetics with Ludwig Klages and Alfred Schuler. On the philosophy and poetry of the Schwabinger Cosmic Round. Telesma, Munich 2007. ISBN 3-9810057-3-2

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Schuler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Alfred Schuler in the Bavarian literature portal (project of the Bavarian State Library )