David Ammann

David Ammann (1855-1923)

Frieda Ammann, b. Brugger (1862–1955)

David Ammann (born October 12, 1855 in Honore (today: Honnavar) in the southern Indian state of Karnataka , Uttara Kannada district ; † February 20, 1923 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Swiss-American author, translator and publisher. He was the founder of the Mazdaznan movement in Europe.

Life

Origin and education

David Ammann came from a long-established Schaffhausen family. His father, Johann Jakob Ammann (* July 6, 1816 in Schaffhausen; † January 2, 1864 in Udupi ), was a missionary and travel preacher for the Basel Mission . Since 1841 he was stationed in Kadike and Mangaluru , where he dedicated himself in particular to the mission of the Tulu people. He translated the New Testament and the Book of Psalms into their language . In 1845 he married Elisabeth Susanna Schalch (born October 11, 1823 in Schaffhausen; † January 29, 1904 in Los Angeles ). From 1852 to 1856 the couple stayed in Honore, where David was born as the youngest son of six children.

Due to the father's health problems, the family left India in 1861 and stayed in Europe for two years. Leaving their children behind, the couple traveled again from Basel to India on August 14, 1863. A few months later, the father died of dysentery .

David Ammann was educated at the Basler Missionsinstitut from 1861, attended grammar schools in Schaffhausen and Bern and passed his Matura in the spring of 1875 in Basel . He refused his mother's wish to study theology, instead moved to his older brother in Berlin and began studying philosophy and literature at the university there. By his own admission, he moved to the Sorbonne and the Collège de France in Paris in 1876 . After a short time he had to break off his studies for financial reasons and settle in Cannes and Málaga a . a. earn a living as a teacher of German and Latin.

Religious search for meaning

He returned to Schaffhausen around 1880. There he took up the offer to enter his brother's flourishing straw hat factory . During this time he met the pastor's daughter Frieda Brugger (* May 5, 1862, † July 26, 1955 in Los Angeles) know, whom he married in 1882. He lived with her for a short time in Paris, where he ran a branch of his brother's company. After the branch had to be closed, he founded his own straw hat factory in Wohlen .

Due to severe health problems, he became a staunch supporter of vegetarianism . His wish to join a vegetarian colony with his family failed because of the instability of these reform-oriented communities. Ammann therefore set himself the goal of giving this movement a stronger social bond by means of a religious superstructure. Hoping to be able to better realize this reform idea in America, he sold his company and moved with his family to California in 1896 . In Cahuenga Township he settled as a fruit farmer. He has published various articles about his agricultural experience.

In 1904 he first came into contact with the Mazdaznan doctrine, which Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish had been spreading from Chicago since 1890 . He was able to fully identify with this system of thought, which refers to Zarathustra :

“At last I had found what I had been looking for all my life in vain: The union of vegetarianism and religion, as well as all branches of life and all systems, a harmonious whole, an unsurpassed educational system in the material and spiritual field both for the individual and for humanity . How could I otherwise than to devote my remaining life force entirely to this noble and sublime cause and to sacrifice time, money and all amenities. "

- David Ammann: How I became a Mazdaznan

Activity for Mazdaznan

The beginnings in Leipzig

Former box house Minerva zu den Drei Palmen Leipzig, seat of Mazdaznan's headquarters from 1910 to 1916

Walter Robert Ammann as a young cellist for the Eva Bartlett Macey Company , 1909

After David Ammann had sold his farm in order to spread Hanish's Mazdaznan in Europe as an authorized ambassador, he moved to Leipzig in the summer of 1907 . His wife had been there since September 1905 with their four children

• Walter Robert (1883-1958)
• Lucie Dora Elisabeth (1884–1926)
• Hedwig Charlotte (1885–1986)
• Fritz Emil (* December 23, 1886 in Zurich)

to enable musical training at the city's conservatory . During this time, Frieda Ammann made the Mazdaznan teaching known in private and artistic circles.

Ammann immediately began to disseminate Mazdaznan publicly by means of lectures, healing, breathing and diet courses. The new movement was able to establish itself surprisingly quickly. In December 1907 Ammann founded the Zarathustra Society in Leipzig . This was dissolved by him in 1908 and transferred to the Mazdaznan Temple Association . From May 1908 he published the German monthly Mazdaznan , which appeared with changing subtitles until it was banned by the National Socialists in 1935. On July 1, 1909 the Mazdaznan publishing house was founded, which was converted into a GmbH in April 1913 .

From April 1909 the movement had its own meeting rooms in Leipzig.

In 1909 Ammann published the German translation of the Mazdaznan basic work Health and Breath Culture published by Hanish in Chicago in 1902 under the title Breathing and Health Teaching .

By the beginning of 1910, Mazdaznan had already gained a foothold in numerous large cities.

A highlight of these early years was Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish's visit to Europe, the movement's founder, in 1911. He gave public lectures in 12 large cities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as in London. The most important spiritual gathering was the consecration of the peace flag in Leipzig on July 3, 1911.

On December 29, 1912, at the Mazdaznan winter solstice celebration, it was decided to dissolve the Mazdaznan temple association and found a Mazdaznan federation as a public-law association with a five-member federal board. In January 1913, the Mazdaznan Bund was entered in the register of associations at the Royal District Court in Leipzig. David Ammann was elected honorary chairman.

Expulsion from Saxony

The meteoric rise of the movement did not go unnoticed and was critically observed from various sides. Again and again there were allegations and legal actions against the movement, especially against its most prominent representative in Germany, David Ammann. The movement had been under police surveillance since 1909.

In November 1911, the Swiss citizen, who had American citizenship, had applied for naturalization for himself and his family, but this was rejected.

Another work by Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, which was translated into German by Ammann and published in Leipzig in 1913, called the doctrine of rebirth , which the authorities indicated as “an indecent writing wrapped in the guise of ethics and health theory”, aroused particular criticism .

In spring 1914 David Ammann was finally informed by the Saxon authorities that he and his family should be expelled from the country as undesirable persons. On April 14, 1914, the ordinance of the Ministry of the Interior to the Police Office of the City of Leipzig was issued. The family then immediately received the deportation order, in which they were informed:

"Since you are the real leader of the 'Mazdaznan-Bund' (seat in Leipzig) that represents this doctrine, even if not in name, and as such and as a disseminator of the Mazdaznan doctrine, you become annoying You are an American citizen, i.e. a foreigner, and as such have no right to stay in the Kingdom of Saxony, as is hereby revealed to you, with your family expelled from the Kingdom of Saxony as annoying foreigners. You have to leave Leipzig and the Kingdom of Saxony by May 15, 1914 (...) Your family has left Leipzig a. to leave the Kingdom of Saxony by July 1st, 1914. "

- Quoted from Johannes Graul

Otto Rauth , a Leipzig lawyer close to the family and the movement, used all legal means at his disposal to obtain the withdrawal of the deportation notice. All lawsuits and requests against the deportation were unsuccessful.

After Ammann's public farewell lecture planned for May 6, 1914 on the subject of the race of the future and racial hygiene had been prohibited by the Leipzig Health Department, it took place on May 12, 1914 in front of 400 invited guests in the Feurich Concert Hall, which was inaugurated in 1910 . On the evening of May 14, 1914, David Ammann left Saxony by train for Zurich ; his wife followed him on June 30, 1914.

New beginning in Switzerland

After Hanish learned of the deportation order, he telegraphed Ammann: “The die has been cast; the war is declared. Draw the peace banner and go to Switzerland. "

On May 21, 1914, the reception ceremony for Ammann took place in the Mazdaznan Lodge in Zurich. In August 1914, the Aryana-Bund was founded in Zurich , an association for the purpose of building a new Mazdaznan house in order to “set up and run a life and work school according to the principles of the Mazdaznan doctrine, in order to teach Mazdaznan establish, promote and disseminate and instruct students in the Mazdaznan way of life and philosophy ”.

Almost a year later, on May 16, 1915, Ammann was able to open the new Aryana home in Herrliberg . The house included larger areas of meadow land on which members gradually settled, built houses and laid out gardens for self-sufficiency, which they cultivated according to the principles of Mazdaznan soil culture.

The International Mazdaznan Women's Peace Association was founded in Herrliberg in 1915, and Frieda Ammann took over as head. In 1917 Ammann published his work Die Ur-Religion , in which he sought to prove that all Aryan religions have their source in the religion of light of Zarathustra . In 1919 he published a book of ceremonies under the title Ritual , which contained instructions on how to conduct Mazdaznan devotions. In 1922 the first edition of the Mazdaznan self-recognition method appeared under the title self-diagnosis .

During the First World War , the Aryana settlement in neutral Switzerland developed into the actual center of the movement. After the end of the First World War, a large number of German Mazdaznan members came to Herrliberg for the first time in 1920.

In 1921, David Ammann's expulsion from Germany was officially revoked. In the same year David Ammann traveled to Stuttgart and Leipzig for life school courses. While Ammann in Herrliberg had cultivated Mazdaznan's philosophical-religious and communal character and expanded it in terms of content and organization, the federal headquarters in Leipzig, which was reorganized after the end of the war, under the leadership of Otto and Hedwig Rauth, emphasized Mazdaznan's individualistic, practical orientation.

Sudden death

On the occasion of the 1922/23 Christmas Gahanbar, David Ammann held a course on the theory of the soul in Herrliberg , which he was unable to complete in Berlin at the beginning of February 1923 because of a trip to a life school course for the International Mazdaznan Women's Peace Association. According to Rümelin, on his farewell evening he spoke of the upcoming visit by Otoman Tsar-Adusht Hanish, who might do a lot differently than one is used to .

During this trip David Ammann died on February 20, 1923 in Frankfurt am Main. The details of his sudden death were not disclosed, which has given rise to speculation to this day.

On February 26, the coffin with his body arrived in Herrliberg. He was laid out in the Aryana room for parting. The funeral took place on February 27th in the cemetery in Herrliberg.

After Ammann's death

After Ammann's death, during his stay in Herrliberg in 1923, Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish appointed his widow Frieda Ammann as her husband's successor with the title Mother Superior and Ambassador for Europe . The dispute between Herrliberg and Leipzig over leadership and internal alignment intensified in the following years despite regular visits from Hanish and ended in a comparison between the Herrliberg Aryana Society and the heirs of David Ammann on July 3, 1926.

At the invitation of Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish, Frieda Ammann, Otto and Hedwig Rauth traveled on June 9, 1933 with the ship Europa from Bremerhaven to New York to accompany Hanish on his travels through the USA. On the recommendation of Hanish, Frieda Ammann did not return to Germany. She died, supported and cared for by her daughter Hedwig Rauth since 1949, in 1955 in the Mazdaznan settlement in Norco . The urn with its ashes was buried in David Ammann's grave in Herrliberg.

literature

• The Evangelical Gentile Messenger. Monthly newspaper of the Evangelical Mission Society in Basel [1864], No. 3, p. 29 f.
• Johannes Graul: Nonconforming religions in the sights of the police. An investigation using the example of the Mazdaznan religion in the German Empire. Ergon-Verlag, Würzburg 2013 (= Religion in Society. 37), ISBN 978-3-89913-988-4 .
• Mazdaznan. Magazine of the German Mazdaznan headquarters in Leipzig. Leipzig 1.1908 / 09-28.1935.
• Mazdaznan. Monthly magazine of the Mazdaznan Temple Community, Headquarters Herrliberg. Zurich 1.1924 / 25 (1925) -5.1928 / 29 (1929).
• Mazdaznan. Call to the world. 7.1951-8.1952.2; [NF] 1.1952.3-37.1988.2.
• Otto Rauth (Ed.): Masdasnan White Book. Masdasnan publishing house, Leipzig 1916.
• Ernst Rüdi: History of the Ammann family from Schaffhausen. Thayngen 1950.
• Gotthilf Rümelin: The big morning. A life story. G. Rümelin, Rio de Janeiro 1953.
• C. Stolz: The Basel Mission in India. At the same time as a commemorative publication for the 50th anniversary of the Kanara mission. Basel 1884.

Web links

• Literature by and about David Ammann in the catalog of the German National Library
• German website of the Mazdaznan movement
• Swiss website of the Mazdaznan movement
• The Mazdaznan Diet
• Traces of the Aryana settlement in Herrliberg
• Contemporary witnesses of the Aryana movement look back
• Article in the Zürichsee-Zeitung

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Letter from the mother to the children with a description of his last hours. Printed in: Heidenbote. 3/1864, p. 29 f.
2. ↑ Ammann was matriculated for the summer semester of 1875. (See Graul, p. 64, note 77.)
3. ↑ David Ammann: How I became a Mazdaznan . In: Mazdaznan. Vol. 3, 1910/1911, No. 11, pp. 219-224.
4. ↑ Two years later his mother, Susanna Ammann, immigrated to her son in the USA. See: Information from the official census from 1900  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
5. ↑ See: Information from the official census from 1900  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
6. ↑ For example, in the articles "About Irrigation in California" . In: Vegetarian waiting , vol. 35, 1902, No. 3, pp. 57-60; "Coconut Bread" . In: Vegetarian waiting , vol. 35, 1902, no. 34, pp. 573-575.
7. ^ Mazdaznan magazine, No. 11, 1911, p. 223 f.
8. ^ Walter Robert Ammann (born August 17, 1883 in Feuerthalen ; † July 2, 1958, Los Angeles) studied cello with Julius Klengel at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig. On February 11, 1908, he made his debut at the public exam concert in Leipzig. In 1909 Walter Ammann was a member of the Eva Bartlett Macey Company . (Compare: digital version of the Iowa Digital Library ) In 1910 the siblings Walter, Hedwig and Lucie Ammann performed as The Ammann Concert Trio in Chicago. (See Lyceumite & Talent , Vol. 4, Lyceum Magazin, Chicago 1910, p. 75). In 1920 he lived in Pasadena and was married to Else G. Ammann (* 1889), who came from Germany and immigrated to the USA in 1910. The marriage was divorced in 1940 (cf. information from the official 1940 census for Elsie Ammann  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) . The couple's daughter Margaret F. Ammann was born in 1919 (cf. information from the official census of 1920  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove it this notice and details of the official census 1940  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ). The fourth US move-in registration for the Second World War , carried out on April 27, 1942, recorded him as a resident of Chicago (cf.: Walter R. Ammann registration card ).      
9. ↑ Lucia Ammann (born September 6, 1884 in Paris; † May 26, 1926 ibid.) Studied piano at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig. She was married to Carl Georg (Carlos) Bunge (born June 15, 1889, † 1944 in Buenos Aires ); Kalantar of the Mazdaznan movement for France. Wrote about the reasons for their early death her brother Otto Rauth: "The wound that the death of her beloved and revered father had torn her, did not want to heal." ; Source: Otto Rauth: Obituary. In: Mazdaznan. Volume 6, 1926, p. 78.
10. ↑ Hedwig Charlotte Ammann (born November 5, 1885 in Zurich; † May 10, 1986 in Norco) was stricken with paralysis at the age of 16, from which she is said to have been cured by Otoman Zar-Adusht Hanish. This was the reason for the parents to devote themselves entirely to the expansion of the movement. She studied violin with Hans Sitt at the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig. From 1923 Hedwig and her husband headed the Mazdaznan headquarters in Leipzig. After the National Socialists banned her movement, she was arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1944 she was released. Her health affected by her imprisonment, she moved to California in 1949 to take care of her mother. After her death in 1955, she lived in seclusion in the Mazdaznan settlement in Norco. There she died at the age of 101. Her ashes were buried on July 2, 1986 in her father's grave in the Herrliberg cemetery.
11. ↑ Next in Leplaystraße 10a / II. Etg. On September 25, 1910, the inauguration of the Mazdaznan House at Schulstrasse 1, the former seat of the Freemason Lodge Minerva to the three palms , built by Max Bösenberg , took place. See Mazdaznan magazine no. 7, p. 130 f. From 1916 to 1919 the addresses of Mazdaznan's headquarters were Sophienplatz 4 and later Weststraße 6 (Graul, p. 72). From 1919, the Leipzig federal headquarters were located at Hospitalstrasse (today Prager Strasse) 12.
12. ↑ According to a Mazdaznan advertising brochure, lectures and courses were offered in the cities of Berlin, Bremen, Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Gera, Görlitz, Halle, Hamburg, Hanover, Magdeburg, Weimar, Weißenfels and Zwickau during this time. Circles of sympathetic groups are documented in 1910 for Arnstadt, Berlin, Bremen, Bruchsal, Chemnitz, Dresden, Erfurt, Görlitz, Halle, Hamburg, Hanover, Magdeburg, Pirmasens, Spandau and Stuttgart. In 1911, Breslau, Düsseldorf, Elberfeld, Frankfurt am Main, Graz, Munich, Plauen, Vienna and Zurich were added. See Graul, p. 66, note 93.
13. ↑ Cf. Graul, Mazdaznankritik , pp. 88 ff.
14. ↑ Graul, p. 68.
15. ↑ This was awarded in Los Angeles in 1902. See Graul, p. 67.
16. ↑ Graul, p. 68.
17. ↑ Otto Rauth (Ed.): Masdasnan White Book . Leipzig 1916, p. 12.
18. ↑ Graul, p. 240 f.
19. ↑ These included a. At the beginning of May the appeal to the Royal District Headquarters, which was rejected on May 13, 1914; an immediate petition to annul the deportation order from the Saxon King of May 8, 1914, as well as an action for annulment to the Royal Higher Administrative Court in Dresden on May 25, 1914 with a simultaneous complaint to the Royal Ministry of the Interior in Dresden. See the expulsion from the legal point of view. A report by the lawyer Dr. Rauth. In: Mazdaznan. 7th year, 1914, No. 7, pp. 145 ff.
20. ↑ Rümelin, p. 248.
21. ↑ Mazdaznan . Volume 16, 1923, No. 9/10, pp. 139 ff.
22. ↑ According to Rümelin, the meals were prepared with great care according to Mazdaznan rules and eaten together in the large dining room on the ground floor. There was also a large, practical and modern kitchen with an electric oven for baking bread and biscuits as well as a shop where the baked goods and various personal care and other aids were sold or shipped. Attached was a printing company owned and managed by Ammann's son-in-law, Carlos Bunge (1889–1944). The Sunday evenings were spent together with games, dancing, musical or declamatory performances. The days of the week began early with short morning prayer or morning exercises, led by different people on a weekly basis. After breakfast, people went to work, courses were held in the evening and, for guests, in the mornings. Blessings of marriages according to the Zoroastrian Mazdaznan ritual were celebrated by Ammann on the first Sunday in October of each year. See Rümelin, p. 248 ff.
23. ↑ The Gahanbar : The word comes from the Avestian language and means "to gather around the (altar) table" . This is the name of the Mazdaznan movement for its large biannual gatherings at the regional level. See Graul, p. 69.
24. ↑ See Rümelin, p. 309.
25. ↑ More recently, mushroom poisoning has been mentioned as a possible cause of death.
26. ↑ Mazdaznan. Issue 10, 1926, p. 279. The following are listed as heirs of David Ammann: Frieda Ammann, Carlos Bunge, Hedwig Rauth, Charlotte Bunge and Otto Rauth.
27. ↑ See Bremen passenger lists .