Johannes Friedrich Guttzeit

Johannes Guttzeit (born August 6, 1853 in Königsberg i. Pr. , † 1935 in Olching near Munich) was a German natural philosopher, author and preacher.

Life

Guttzeit, son of an officer and post office clerk, grew up in Königsberg, but after his father was transferred, he changed his place of residence several times and lived for a time in Breslau , Neuruppin and Höxter . In 1866 he entered the cadet school and in 1871 became an officer in the Prussian army. Here he took part in the Franco-German War and was district adjutant in Stolp for a long time . After the death of his parents, he resigned from military service in 1879 and went to Italy for two years in 1881. Here he began to deal with a vegetarian and natural way of life and wrote his first writings and lecture manuscripts. After his return to Germany, he founded the Pythagorean Association in 1884 , which was later renamed the Brother Association . As editor of the federal magazine Der Bruder. Journal of the Federation for Full Humanity , Guttzeit propagated an alternative way of life, advocated natural rights , equal rights for women and men and the recognition of homosexuals and criticized the glorification of the nobility, the military and war. From 1885 he worked as a preacher in a free church in Stettin , but shortly afterwards he moved to Munich . At times he worked here as the private secretary of the painter Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach and belonged to his commune in Himmelhof in Vienna's 13th district .

After Guttzeit and Diefenbach separated because of differences of opinion, he went on a journey of several years. He earned his living by lecturing in naturopathic associations and vegetarian societies. In 1888 he met Gerhart Hauptmann in Zurich , who referred to him as the “Pentecostal Apostle”. Guttzeit's sermons as a champion of a natural way of life impressed Hauptmann very much and were the inspiration for his novella " The Apostle ".

“I have never seen such a conspicuous, present-day illustration of evangelical events before and so closely. It was a truly sacred scene that cannot be reached through any Oberammergau. "

- Gerhart Hauptmann : about his meeting with Guttzeit

In addition to his lecturing activities, Guttzeit wrote numerous writings in which he was critical of the church and society and advocated life-reforming ideas. In public he usually appeared in reform clothing , which brought him a lawsuit in 1890 for " gross nonsense ". He changed his place of residence several times and settled in Dresden around 1893 , where he owned a city apartment on Viktoriastraße (the parallel street of Prager Straße leading to Ferdinandplatz ) and a second home in the Loschwitz suburb . During this time numerous publications were made. One of his best-known works was the work “Nonsense and Immorality in the Old Testament”, published in 1900. He was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for alleged "insulting the Jewish religion", after which he left Germany and lived in Gorizia and St. Peter near Trieste . Here he published the magazine Der neue Mensch until 1902 , the authors of which included the naturopath Anna Fischer-Dückelmann and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Berta von Suttner . In 1903 Guttzeit moved to Upper Silesia and married for the second time in 1905. From 1908 Guttzeit lived in Olching near Munich, where he worked as a book author until his death in 1935.

Through his pupil, the former social democratic agitator Anton Losert , and other supporters of his brother association, he worked on the young poet Gusto Gräser in the Himmelhof community of Diefenbach. His influence led to the departure of a larger group around grasses and thus to the collapse of Diefenbach's company.

See also : natural philosophy

Fonts

• Youth flowers. A bouquet of lyric poems (1889)
• The Full Man or Free Progress to the Ideal (1891)
• The beating at school. A danger to education and morality (1892)
• On the abuse of soldiers and the right to complain (1892)
• The Book of Love (1893)
• Also a Holy Skirt: Reason, Taste and Conscience in the Fight Against Fashion (1893)
• The book of love. A piece of the heart's story in poetry (1893)
• Purely human child-rearing. Basic features of health care for the child's soul (1895)
• Natural law or crime? About love for the same sex (1900)
• The Tyranny of Fashion: Story of a Successful Personal Struggle Against It (1914)
• The Power of Faith and Will (1917)
• One Dark Point: The Crime Against Sprouting Life or Fruit Abortion (1922)
• Shame, decency and morality traditionally and naturally with special consideration of nudity (1922)

literature

• Uwe Wolfram: Johannes Guttzeit - Naturprediger am Elbhang , in: Elbhang-Kurier , Heft 3/2014, p. 12 f.
• Franz Brümmer: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers from the beginning of the 19th century to the present. Volume 3, p. 19, Leipzig (1913) ( online )
• Klemens Dieckhöfer: Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946) and Nietzsche. Nietzsche's influence on Gerhart Hauptmann and his experience of nature. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015, pp. 123–128, here: p. 125.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Johannes Friedrich Guttzeit (1853-1935): nature preacher, nature philosopher, poet. Monte Verità Archive, accessed October 22, 2017 . 

Web links

• Website on Johannes Guttzeit - accessed on February 23, 2015