John Hargrave

This article is about the author and politician John Hargrave. For other people, see John Hargreaves .

John Gordon Hargrave (pseudonym: White Fox ; born June 6, 1894 in Midhurst , West Sussex , England , † December 21, 1982 in London ) was a British illustrator , author and politician . During his life he exercised various professions, among other things he was also active as an inventor and spiritual healer .

The movements founded by Hargrave had the strongest after-effects: in 1920 he left the English scout movement with the Kindred of Kibbo Kift . In the early 1930s, Kibbo Kift first developed into the Green Shirts , which a little later changed their name to the Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland .

Life

John Hargrave was born on June 6, 1894 in Midhurst, Sussex. He showed great artistic talent from an early age. At the age of twelve he worked as a draftsman and illustrated books by John Buchan , among others . In 1911, when he was seventeen, he got a contract as chief cartoonist for the London Evening Times.

As early as 1908, Hargrave had joined the scout movement that was just emerging . He has published numerous articles on rangers in their magazines, building on his childhood experiences in the Lake District and reading books by the North American Woodcraft founder and author Ernest Thompson Seton . He drew his articles with the pseudonym White Fox (White Fox). He rose quickly within the Scouts hierarchy and was after he invalided out of the First World War came back in 1916 by Robert Baden-Powell to the Commissioner for Woodcraft and Camping (Commissioner for Waldläufertum and camp named). At times he was traded as a possible successor to Baden-Powell at the head of the British Boy Scouts.

The atrocities experienced during the First World War, Hargrave was a participant in the Battle of Gallipoli , had intensified Hargrave's pacifism , who came from a Quaker family . In response to the increasing militarism and nationalism of industrialized society such as the British Boy Scouts, he published the book The Great War Brings It Home in 1919 , which was received very ambiguously. In 1920 it came to a break: Hargrave was excluded from the scout movement and founded the Kindred of Kibbo Kift . At the same time, his books were translated into German and Czech and widely received by young people. The Wigwam Papers , for example, was published in English in 1916, eight years later in Czech ( Listy z wigwamu , translated into Czech by Milos Seifert , Prague 1924).

In contrast to the scout movement, Kibbo Kift was not a youth association , but had members from all age groups. Hargrave was the movement's charismatic and autocratic leader. He saw the organization as a suitable tool to create a "new civilization" and to achieve world peace . Community life in nature, sporting and creative activities, natural history and learning manual skills should all contribute to this. One focus for Hargrave was the reintroduction of symbols and rituals into everyday life. In an imaginative way, Hargrave relived prehistory and early history in tent camps and hikes, also using Seton's Indian pedagogy.

After Hargrave married in 1920, he published several novels to help ensure his family's livelihood. In contrast to his previous books, which mainly dealt with rangers, these books were very successful and became bestsellers .

In 1923 Hargrave met Clifford Hugh Douglas . He was quickly enthusiastic about the idea of social credit and integrated it into the Kibbo Kift program. He published his final worldview and program in 1927 in The Confession of the Kibbo Kift .

Eventually, Hargrave Kibbo transformed Kift into a uniformed paramilitary organization: the Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit . The Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland emerged from these in 1935 . Despite some regional successes, the party was unable to gain significant influence. Hargrave himself ran for the House of Commons in 1950 , but received only 551 votes.

In the late 1930s, Hargrave turned to technology at times. Inspired by a dream, he developed an automatic navigation system for aircraft , the design of which convinced the experts, but was not implemented because of the restrictions associated with the Second World War . It wasn't until 1967 that Hargrave remembered his patent when he read a newspaper report about the Concorde's navigation system . A nine-year legal battle over authorship began, at the end of which in 1976 Hargrave was recognized as an inventor, but he received no financial compensation for its use.

In 1940, Hargrave created Words Win Wars, a commission for the Ministry of Information . After the end of World War II, Hargrave tried to revive the Social Credit Party , but had little success. Hargrave still active as a writer and introduced in 1952 the lexicon The Paragon Dictionary together. He became a recognized authority on the life and work of the scientist and mystic Paracelsus . Hargrave practiced as a spiritual healer for several years .

Hargrave died on December 21, 1982 in London, still weakened by the aftermath of the long trial.

Works

• Lonecraft (1913)
• At Sulva Bay (1916)
• The Wigwam Papers (1916)
• The Totem Talks (1918)
• Tribal Training (1919)
• The Great War Brings It Home (1919)
• The Boys' Book of Signs and Symbols (1920)
• The Adventures of Raven Trail (1920)
• Harbottle (1924)
• Young Winkle (1925)
• And Then Came Spring (1926)
• The Pfenniger Failing (1927)
• The Confession of the Kibbo Kift (1927)
• The Imitation Man (1931)
• Summer Time Ends (1935)
• The Alberta Report (1937)
• Professor Skinner alias Montague Norman (1939)
• Words Win Wars (1940)
• Social Credit Clearly Explained (1945)
• The Life And Soul Of Paracelsus (1951)
• The Inkreadible Adventures of Inky Fido (1951)
• The Paragon Dictionary (1952)
• The Sulva Bay Landing (1964)
• The Facts of the Case Concerning the Hargrave Automatic Navigator for Aircraft (1969)

Published in German:

• The totem speaks . The White Knight Publishing House, Berlin 1922
• Tribal education . The White Knight Publishing House, Berlin 1923
• The art of solitude: rangerism . The White Knight Publishing House, Berlin 1924
• Kibbo Kift: the forest affinity . Reprint. Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1993. ISBN 3-88778-185-6
• The wigwam book . Reprint. Deutscher Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 1993. ISBN 3-88778-186-4

Web links

• Literature by and about John Hargrave in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography of John Hargrave
• Bibliography by John Hargrave