Eugene Heinrich Schmitt

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Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (born November 5, 1851 in Znaim , Austrian Empire , † September 14, 1916 in Berlin ) was a pacifist and anti-clerical philosopher and publicist.

Life

Eugen Heinrich Schmitt was born in Znojmo as the son of a captain of the Austro-Hungarian army. His father was stationed in Klosterneuburg . After the death of their father, the family moved to Sombor , the hometown of Schmitt's mother, where they lived in poor conditions. In 1870 Schmitt graduated from high school in Szabadka . He then joined the army and served as an officer for a short time. Later he worked as a clerk for the Bács-Bodrog county in Sombor. He autodidactically acquired knowledge in philosophy and then studied the subject in Budapest . In 1888 he received his doctorate. He published his first essays under the pseudonym Eugen Bulla around 1880 in the journal Die Neue Gesellschaft . From 1890 to 1896 he was a librarian in the Ministry of Justice in Budapest. He turned to gnosis and founded the journal Die Religion des Geistes in Leipzig in 1894 , which appeared until 1896 and of which Leo Tolstoy was one of the authors . In 1896, for reasons of conscience, he renounced the job and the pension. From 1897 he was editor of the bilingual German-Hungarian anarchist magazine Ohne Staat in Budapest . Organ of the idealistic anarchists , a weekly newspaper that appeared until around 1899. He also campaigned for the Hungarian agrarian socialist movement. Because he had thereby inspired a peasant uprising, he had to flee Austria in 1908. He found a new home in the Berlin circle of the New Community around the anarchist Gustav Landauer . He spent the rest of his life as a private scholar and a fighter for his ideas, which in addition to anarchism included the ideal of non-violence. Because he defended his anarchist views aggressively, he was repeatedly tried. As a defendant, he appeared provocative and caused a stir. The trials ended in acquittal.

Think

Schmitt originally started from the ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach . He later developed his own religious philosophy ("Neugnosis"), following on from ancient Gnosis, which he presented in numerous works. He called for the “purification and internalization of the concept of God”, which he saw as a main task of his time. He hoped that this would create the "religious foundations of a nobler morality of the future". With radical consistency he advocated his concept of non-violence and called for disobedience to state and church claims to power. He was encouraged by the general approval of Tolstoy, with whom he was exchanging ideas by letter. In addition to the ideal of non-violence and Christian ideas, he also had a special appreciation for peasantry with Tolstoy.

reception

Rudolf Steiner expressed his appreciation for Schmitt's Nietzsche monograph; In a review under the title A Real Disciple of Zarathustra , he counted the book "among the brightest morning stars in the sky of the modern world of thought". Christian Morgenstern saw his own religious view confirmed in Schmitt's Gnosis . In a letter dated July 14, 1908, he wrote to Friedrich Kayssler that the work was "the latest (but certainly not the best) representation of Gnostic ideas"; It offers “a wealth of stimulating and unexpected messages and quotations” - “Only it is not a scholar who speaks , but an apostle.” Schmitt had a significant influence on anarchists like Pierre Ramus and Robert Bodanzky and through his colleague, the doctor and Tolstoian Albert Škarvan , also to the poet and co-founder of Monte Verità Gusto Gräser . The conductor Hermann Scherchen was also very impressed by Schmitt's ideas , as his letters show. He praised Schmitt's "tremendous intellectual act", which leads to the fact that people gain "awareness of their infinity" and then "can never function bluntly".

Fonts

  • The secret of the Hegelian dialectic, illuminated from the concrete-sensual standpoint. Peffer, Halle 1888.
  • Michelet and the secret of the Hegelian dialectic. Koenitzer, Frankfurt am Main 1888.
  • The religion of the mind. Leipzig 1892.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche at the dividing line between two world ages. Leipzig 1898.
  • Leo Tolstoy and its importance for our culture. Diederichs, Leipzig 1901.
  • The cultural conditions of Christian dogmas and our time. Diederichs, Leipzig 1901.
  • The Gnosis. Foundations of the worldview of a nobler culture. 2 volumes, Scientia, Aalen 1968, OCLC 256780938 (reprint of the Diederichs edition, Leipzig 1903/1907)
  • The ideal state (= cultural problems of the present , volume 8). Räde, Berlin 1904.
  • Critique of philosophy from the standpoint of intuitive knowledge. Eckardt, Leipzig 1908.
  • Ibsen as a prophet. Basic ideas for a new aesthetic. Eckardt, Leipzig 1908.
  • The positive-scientific worldview of the future in view of the upheaval in modern physics (= pamphlets , booklet 1). Community of Gnostics, Berlin 1909.
  • What is gnosis (= Pamphlets , booklet 2). Community of Gnostics, Berlin 1912.
  • Idea of ​​Peace and Spiritual Progress. From the estate (= publications of the Schmitt archive , issue 1). Renaissance, Berlin 1919.
  • Worship or Satanic Service? A word to the conscience of the time. Elischer, Leipzig 1920.
  • Dante. Divine comedy in the light of intuitive knowledge. Twardy, Berlin 1921 (lecture from 1912)

literature

  • Andreas Gautsch: Eugen Heinrich Schmitt / Henrik Jänö Schmid: Knowledge and anarchy. In: Ne znam. Journal for Research on Anarchism. Number 6, autumn 2017, ISBN 978-3-86841-201-7 , pp. 30-55.
  • György Mikonya: Education and life reform efforts with Eugen Heinrich Schmitt and Erwin Szabó. In: Johanna Hopfner, András Németh (Hrsg.): Pedagogical and cultural currents in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Life reform, Herbartianism and reform pedagogical movements . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-56719-7 , pp. 41-58.
  • Hermann Müller: New Age on Lake Maggiore. On the intellectual history of Monte Verità . German Monte Verità Archive, Freudenstein 1999 (online)
  • Angela Stöckelle:  Eugen Heinrich Schmitt. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 10, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7001-2186-5 , p. 253 f. (Direct links on p. 253 , p. 254 ).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ György Mikonya provides a summary of Schmitt's biography: Education and life reform efforts with Eugen Heinrich Schmitt and Erwin Szabó. In: Johanna Hopfner, András Németh (Hrsg.): Pedagogical and cultural currents in the kuk monarchy , Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 41–58, here: 45.
  2. ↑ György Mikonya: Education and life reform efforts with Eugen Heinrich Schmitt and Erwin Szabó. In: Johanna Hopfner, András Németh (Hrsg.): Pedagogical and cultural currents in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy , Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 41–58, here: 47–50.
  3. ↑ Rudolf Steiner: Collected essays on culture and contemporary history , Dornach 1966, p. 476.
  4. ↑ Hermann Scherchen: ... make everything audible. Letters from a conductor 1920 to 1939 , Berlin 1976, p. 121; see. Pp. 118, 130, 160.
personal data
SURNAME Schmitt, Eugen Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bulla, Eugen (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION anarchist, pacifist and anti-clerical philosopher and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Znojmo , Moravia
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1916
Place of death Berlin