Erich Gutkind

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Erich Gutkind ( Eric ; pseudonym: Volker ) (born February 9, 1877 in Berlin , † August 1965 in New York City) was an esoteric mystic .

Live and act

His parents were Hermann Gutkind and Elise (1852–1942), b. Vineyard. In addition to his villa in Berlin's Tiergarten district, the father owned a trimmings factory in Annaberg (Ore Mountains) with branches in Hamburg and Breslau with connections to Calais. According to letters, there was a generation conflict between father and son and Erich was excluded from the father's legendary wealth.

Gutkind's studies at home with a private tutor and at the University of Berlin included art history, religion, philosophy, psychology and natural sciences. He was familiar with the modern thinking of his time and had a broad background in many fields of learning.

After Erich Gutkind had written his sidereal birth under a pseudonym in 1910 , he came into contact with Frederik van Eeden and Wassily Kandinsky , who had similar thoughts. As a result, the Potsdam Forte Circle developed , to which well-known personalities belonged. He was friends with Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem .

In Germany he was largely rejected as a philosopher. At least it met with a response from Ernst Barlach , who wrote to Arthur Moeller van den Bruck on March 15, 1913 :

“I would like to send you a book that I recently worked on intensively, Volker, 'Sideric Birth'. The author is 36 years old and lives in Nikolassee , to me the work seems extraordinary in more than one respect, yes, sometimes prophetically magnificent. If you gave me a hint that you would give him as much time and attention as I think he deserves, I would still dare. You have to be in a special mood! "

Gutkind was introduced to Dimitrije Mitrinović by Kandinsky before the First World War . With this he wrote a series of articles in the magazine The New Age in 1920/21 , whose editor at the time was Alfred Richard Orage under the pseudonym "MM Cosmoi". These were called "world affairs," and in the articles that appeared on June 23 and July 21, 1921, Orage drew particular attention to Erich Gutkind's first book, Sideric Birth , published in Berlin in 1910. He called it "a great and transfigured act" and "a book of world importance and radically symptomatic of the movement of our aeon".

After Gutkind escaped to the USA with his wife Lucie Gutkind (1879–1973) in 1933, he remained largely unknown there, too.

He received a letter of reply from Albert Einstein (after "suggestion" by LEJ Brouwer ) dated January 3, 1954, which deals with Einstein's attitude to religion, to a copy of his Choose Life sent to him . Gutkind put this letter up for sale a year later. In 2008 the letter was auctioned at Bloomsbury for £ 207,600. On October 8, 2012, it was offered for $ 3 million on ebay and sold after another bid for $ 3,000,100 on October 18, 2012.

Publications

  • Sidereal birth: Seraphic migration from the death of the world to the baptism of action ; 1910, 1914
  • Conquering the world through heroic love ; 1911
  • The Absolute Collective: A Philosophical Attempt to overcome our Broken State ; Translated from the original German by Marjorie Gabain, London 1937
  • Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt ; 1952
  • posthumous: The Body of God. First Steps Toward to Anti-Theology. The Collected Papers of Eric Gutkind , ed. By Lucie B. Gutkind / Henry LeRoy Finch, New York 1969

literature

  • Richard Faber and Christine Holste (eds.): The Potsdamer Forte circle. A utopian intellectual association for European peacekeeping , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-8260-2041-3 .
  • Sharon Gordon: The project to save modernity: Erich Gutkind and Emmanuel Levinas on youth, old age and death , in: Yotam Hotam (ed.): German-Jewish young people in the "Age of Youth" , Göttingen: V&R unipress 2009, p. 35-59.
  • Friedrich Niewöhner : The great song. Sidereal birth of Volker , in: Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Ed.): Christliche Kabbala , Ostfildern 2003, pp. 247-256.
  • Henry Christian Rutherford : Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age , New Atlantis Foundation 1975, ISBN 978-0900991172

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 18, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , New York Social Security number, 054-28-6222  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ssdmf.info
  2. ↑ http://access.cjh.org/home.php?type=extid&term=863892#1
  3. ^ The Gutkind family chronicle; 1938
  4. ^ Christine Holste, Richard Faber: Der Potsdamer Forte-Kreis ; P. 26, footnote 14
  5. ↑ HC Rutherford: Erich Gutkind as Prophet of the New Age , 1975, p. 1
  6. ↑ Yotam Helem: German-Jewish youth in the "age of youth" ; P. 37
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-potsdam.de
  8. ^ Ernst Barlach : The letters I. 1888-1924. Published by Friedrich Dross , Munich: R. Piper & Co. 1968, p. 411; see. also: Horst Wagner: Barlach - "The Sündflut", in: Benno von Wiese (Ed.): The German Drama. From the baroque to the present. Interpretations , Volume II, Düsseldorf: August Bagel 1958, pp. 338–356, esp. P. 345: “The idea of ​​a deity changing and realizing in the world process, which is derived from German mysticism and has been newly adopted by romantic philosophy , reappears many times after the turn of the 20th century. Barlach encountered it in Volker's work 'Siderische Geburt', in which old Gnostic- Theosophical ideas on the prophetic proclamation of a 'new supra-personal religion' were taken up. Here the idea of ​​a limitless process of world realization is pronounced, which is moved to ever new heights by God's falling away from himself. "
  9. ↑ http://afrodita.rcub.bg.ac.rs/~dpajin/dm/predavanja/1975.html
  10. ↑ http://hpd.de/node/4584
  11. ↑ Documentation: The word God. In: welt.de . May 20, 2008. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated February 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bloomsburyauctions.com
  13. ↑ Internet auction: Three million dollar bid for Einstein's letter of God on SPON from October 9, 2012, accessed on October 9, 2012
  14. ↑ http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/04/einstein-god-letter-on-ebay-with-bidding-starting-at-3m/
  15. ↑ Ebay Aktion, Item number: 190736802914

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Good child, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Good kid, Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION esoteric mystic
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 1965
Place of death New York City