Lebensreform

Mouvements de jeunesse allemands (Jugendbewegung) et pédagogie réformatrice (Pädogogische Bewegung, Reformpädagogik) sont des mouvements jumeaux, apparus tous deux à la fin du XIXe siècle, dans des mouvances comparables, et en réaction aux mêmes dysfonctionnements de la société industrielle. L’article revient sur leurs similarités, retrace les échanges et les influences réciproques mais également la situation objective de concurrence qui les oppose. Cette dialectique entre influences et divergences se montre particulièrement clairement à deux charnières paradigmatiques : en 1913, autour de la figure de Gustav Wyneken ; 1919, autour du Wende-Kreis de Hambourg.
→ Mots-clefs : mouvements de jeunesse, Allemagne, pédagogie, Lebensreform

Youth movements and Reformpädagogik: similarities, influences, differences
Abstract : German youth movements (Jugendbewegung) and reform pedagogy (Pädogische Bewegung, Reformpädagogik) are twin movements, both of which appeared at the end of the 19th century, in comparable environments and in reaction to the same dysfunctions of industrial society. The article looks at their similarities, traces the exchanges and reciprocal influences, but also the objective situation of competition between them. This dialectic between influences and divergences is particularly clear at two paradigmatic turning points: in 1913, around the figure of Gustav Wyneken; and in 1919, around the Wende-Kreis in Hamburg.
→ Keywords: youth movements, pedagogy, Germany, Lebensreform

Jugendbewegung und Reformpädagogik: Gemeinsamkeiten, Einflüsse, Divergenzen
Zusammenfassung: Jugendbewegung und Reformpädagogik sind Zwillingsbewegungen, die beide am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts in vergleichbaren Umgebungen und als Reaktion auf die gleichen Dysfunktionen der Industriegesellschaft entstanden. Der Aufsatz blickt auf ihre Gemeinsamkeiten zurück, zeichnet den Austausch und die gegenseitigen Einflüsse, aber auch die objektive Konkurrenzsituation zwischen ihnen nach. Diese Dialektik zwischen Einflüssen und Divergenzen wird an zwei paradigmatischen Wendepunkten besonders deutlich: 1913 um die Figur Gustav Wynekens und 1919 um den Wende-Kreis in Hamburg.
→ Schlagworte: Jugendbewegung, Pädagogik, Lebensreform

Les Artamans sont un mouvement de jeunesse fondée en Allemagne en 1923. Cette organisation völkisch et opposée à l’urbanité prône le retour à la terre et le « réenracinement » du peuple allemand, et leur objectif n’est rien d’autre que de sauver et de régénérer l’Allemagne. Pour atteindre ce but, les Artamans s’engagent volontairement comme travailleurs agricoles sur des fermes de l’Est de l’Allemagne ; ils souhaitent par la suite pouvoir fonder des communautés agricoles autonomes sur la frontière, qu’ils appellent des « colonies » (en allemand : Siedlungen). Les Artamans se posent donc comme une réponse au double danger qui guette le peuple allemand : celui provenant des ennemis qui l’encerclent et sont une menace pour sa substance raciale, mais aussi le danger de la perte de ses racines primordiales, qui le rattache à sa nature fondamentale de paysan, vivant en harmonie avec la na-ture qui l’entoure et la terre qu’il habite. Ce mémoire cherche à comprendre les origines multiples de ce mouvement, héritier des courants völkisch de la Lebensreform et de la Jugendbewegung, et à expliquer comment des jeunes hommes et des jeunes femmes se sont engagées dans un mouvement s'opposant radicalement à la modernité. Il interrogera également la construction idéologique propre du mouvement et son positionnement particulier vis-à-vis du parti nazi. Enfin, en mettant à profit des sources primaires, il cherchera à présenter une étude inédite des colonies qui furent mises en place par les Artamans dans l'Est de l'Allemagne, au Mecklembourg et en Prusse-Orientale, entre 1932 et 1939.

Paul Geheebs pädagogische Erkenntnisse über das Lernen und über die Unmöglichkeit, einem anderen Menschen etwas beizubringen,  („Kein Mensch wird kultiviert, jeder hat sich selbst zu kultivieren ...“) entspricht an vielen Stellen nicht nur den Theorien früherer und heutiger (Reform)Pädagogen wie John Dewey oder Carl Rogers, sondern auch den Ergebnissen der  modernen Hirnforschung. Auch Geheebs Idee der Verwandlung der Schule in eine Arbeits- und Lebensgemeinschaft ist etwas, was lange nach seinem Tod als „Entschulung der Schule“ (Hartmut von Hentig) gefordert und in vielen heutigen Reform- oder Alternativschulen umgesetzt wird.
Neben dieser pädagogischen und didaktischen Aktualität lohnt sich die Beschäftigung mit Geheebs Gedankengerüst aber noch aus einem anderen Grund: Mit seiner Aufforderung, die Rolle und die Rechte von Kindern zu stärken und zu erweitern, tritt er als ein früher Aktivist der Kinderrechtsbewegung in Erscheinung, dessen Ideen nun in die Diskussion um die Einrichtung von Kinderparlamenten und ähnlichen Gremien, durch die Forderung nach wahrhaft demokratischen Schulen, das Familienwahlrecht und ähnliche aktuelle Debatten einfließen. Es lohnt sich also, über den Missbrauchsskandal an der Odenwaldschule hinaus einen Blick auf die Kernideen dieser Institution und den Mann zu werfen, den man ohne Zweifel als einen der fortschrittlichsten Köpfe der reformpädagogischen Bewegung des 20. Jahrhunderts bezeichnen muss.

Die Jugendliteratur Gudrun Pausewangs (1928-2020) trug in den 1980er Jahren entschieden zur Friedens- und Anti-atomkraftbewegung in der BRD bei. In das Gedächtnis ganzer Schülergenerationen ging die Autorin als ,die Furchterregende' ein. Der Beitrag liest Pausewangs Roman Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn (1983) mit Jean Laplanches Theorie rätselhafter Botschaften. Was der kindlichen Leserschaft mit Pausewangs Roman widerfuhr, kann als historisch bedingtes Extrembeispiel dafür verstanden werden, dass eine Botschaft zwischen Erwachsenem und Kind traumatisierend wirkt, weil sie immer einen Sinn mittransportiert, der dem Sprecher unbewusst ist (Laplanche). Pausewangs Roman erzählt von Kindern, die nach einem Atomkrieg qualvoll sterben. Gerahmt durch die Erklärung der Autorin, politisch engagieren zu wollen, pflegt der Text zugleich eine negative Beziehung zur Leserschaft: Die Brutalität der Schilderungen wütet gegen die Welt der durch die ,Gnade der späten Geburt' Verschonten. Der Beitrag diskutiert Formen transgenerationaler Übertragung von Schuld, Scham und Trauma und rückt das Verhältnis der Ökologiebewegung zur Lebensreformbewegung in den Fokus. Pausewangs Schaffen steht im Zeichen der Abgrenzung gegenüber der NS-Generation und ihrer Schuld. Es zeigt sich, dass Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn zugleich ein melancholisches Verhältnis zum Gegenstand dieser Abgrenzung pflegt.


1. Widmung, Appell, Erschütterung.
Zur Didaktik der Friedensbewegung

2. Enigmatische Signifikanten:
Die Wohlgesinnte und die Zombies von Schewenborn

3. Theoretischer Ausblick:
Endzeitstimmung, Schuld und Scham

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

If Johannes Itten, the early Bauhaus teacher, had not been a staunch adherent of Mazdaznan, a very small religious group, perhaps only emic historiographies of it would exist in Germany today. Within research on the cultural history of the so-called life reform movements (Lebensreform) and the growing body-culture movement around 1900, it became a fringe topic, treated both as an exotic subject and as an ideologically suspect case.

La « triarticulation de l’organisme social » est au cœur de la pensée sociale de Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), notamment de son cycle de conférences paru en 1919 sous le titre Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft. De son vivant, cette idée n’a pas trouvé de véritable écho au niveau national et international, ce qui ne semble plus devoir être le cas presqu’un siècle plus tard. Depuis la fin des années 1960 et surtout depuis le tournant des années 2000, cette idée essentielle de la théorie sociale du fondateur de l’anthroposophie est de plus en plus largement partagée dans les cercles alternatifs et intellectuels, sans que ceux-ci sachent d’ailleurs nécessairement d’où elle provient. Cet article cherche à mettre au jour les filiations de pensée – ou au moins les résonances – entre une pensée sociale élaborée au début du XXe siècle dans le contexte de la Lebensreform, et des projets alternatifs beaucoup plus récents, s’étalant des années 1960 à aujourd’hui, et concernant à la fois le monde économique et le domaine culturel, notamment l’éducation.


Die "soziale Dreigliederung" von der Anthroposophie bis zur Antiglobalisierungsbewegung: soziales Denken in Resonanz

Die Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus liegt dem sozialen Denken Rudolf Steiners zugrunde, unter anderem seiner 1919 unter dem Titel Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft erschienenen Vortragsreihe Bis zu seinem Tode 1925 fand diese Idee auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene keine große Resonanz. Fast ein Jahrhundert später scheint dies nicht mehr der Fall zu sein. Seit Ende der 60er Jahre und vor allem seit der letzten Jahrtausendwende ist diese zentrale Idee des Begründers der Anthroposophie in alternativen und intellektuellen Kreisen auf der ganzen Welt immer mehr verbreitet, wobei ihre Verfechter nicht immer wissen, woher sie kommt. Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab, die Ideenverwandtschaften – oder zumindest die Resonanz –zwischen einem Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts im Kontext der Lebensreform konzipierten sozialen Denken und alternativen Projekten, die ab Ende der 60er Jahre sowohl die wirtschaftliche Sphäre als auch den Kulturbereich, unter anderem die Erziehung, betreffen, aufzuzeigen.



"Social threefolding" from Anthroposophy to Alter-Globalization: hints and echoes

The ‘threefolding of the social order’ is a key tenet in the social theory developed by founder of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), discussed extensively in his conferences published in 1919 in book form under the title Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft. While his idea failed to resonate at national and international level during his lifetime, things have changed nearly a century later. Since the late 1960s and particularly since the turn of the 2000s, the concept of social threefolding has gained increasing exposure in alternative and intellectual circles – by individuals not always aware of its roots. This paper aims at evidencing kinships and resonances between a social thought elaborated in the early twentieth century in the context of Lebensform, and much more recent alternative projects in the economic and cultural realms, including education.

This paper aims to emphasize the crucial link between the untimely dimension and the role of art in Nietzsche's thought. This connection will be highlighted by the analysis of some cultural and existential paradigms – namely Lebensformen – which Nietzsche outlines from the Second Untimely Meditation On the Use and Abuse of History for Life. The aim is therefore to display a reconstruction of Nietzsche's critique to the society of his time through the understanding of some exemplary characters and some 'conceptual personifications' (Lebensformen) like the historian, the journalist, the scientist, the teacher and overall the 'cultural philistine'. Furthermore, the speech will sketch some 'human types', representing, for Nietzsche, the chance of a new cultural renaissance (the poet, the musician and overall the artistic genius).Through this inspection, it is intended to show both the undeniable actuality of the Untimely Meditations, as well as their utopian and problematic aspects. In particular, the Second Untimely Meditation will be compared with The Birth of Tragedy, in order to show that, this work, although published in 1874, represents a sort of Erkenntniskritische Vorrede à la Benjamin and it concerns the idea of art proposed by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, since, in this work, Nietzsche offers a picture of Greek civilization which is on antipodes of a scholarly monumental-antiquarian historiography.

Il contributo intende porre in rilievo il decisivo legame tra inattualità e arte nel pensiero di Nietzsche attraverso alcune considerazioni sui paradigmi culturali ed esistenziali, ovvero sulle Lebensformen, descritte da Nietzsche a partire dall'Inattuale Sull'utilità e il danno della storia per la vita. In questo senso si proporrà una ricostruzione della critica di Nietzsche alla società del suo tempo attraverso l'interpretazione delle figure esemplari e delle personificazioni concettuali dei 'tipi' dello storico, del giornalista, dello scienziato, dell'insegnate-educatore-religioso in quanto filistei culturali da contrapporre ai 'tipi' del poeta, del musicista e in generale del genio artistico in quanto sperimentatori e profeti di una nuova renaissance culturale. Di tale ricognizione si intenderanno mostrare da un lato l'incontrovertibile attualità e il potenziale profetico, dall'altro gli elementi utopici o caduchi. Il particolare si mostrerà come l'analisi della seconda Inattuale riveli il rapporto di continuità sussistente tra il ruolo ascritto da Nietzsche all'arte nella Nascita della tragedia (ossia vivificare lo spirito della Grecità tragica), e il ruolo attribuito alla storia. L'obiettivo è quello di mostrare come, sebbene pubblicata in seguito (1874), la seconda Inattuale costituisca la 'premessa gnoseologica' all'idea di arte veicolata nella Nascita della tragedia, dal momento che essa propone un'immagine della Grecità agli antipodi della dotta storiografia monumentale-antiquaria.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

Les courants ésotériques modernes forment un aspect de l’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle des sociétés occidentales souvent mal connu. Cette thèse se propose de corriger cette lacune en étudiant l’influence de ces courants dans le champ médical en France durant l'entre-deux-guerres.
Ce travail est d’abord une contribution à l’histoire de la médecine. Il défend la légitimité d’employer une étiquette commune, le holisme médical, pour étudier la médecine naturiste, l’homéopathie, les réflexothérapies et les travaux de certaines sommités du monde médical. Tous accordent une grande importance au terrain psychique et physiologique ainsi qu’à l’environnement du patient. Une attention particulière est donnée aux diverses conceptions de la maladie et aux systèmes thérapeutiques adoptant cette attitude médicale, mais notre étude se distingue aussi par l’intérêt qu’elle porte à la présence des courants ésotériques parmi ce milieu médical. Les modalités de leurs influences sont multiples et concernent aussi bien les conceptions du monde et du corps humain qui orientent ces doctrines médicales, que l’adoption de pratiques « occultes » de diagnostic comme la physiognomonie et l’astrologie. La consultation des nombreuses publications médicales et ésotériques de cette période éclaire également des transferts d’idée relatifs à la légitimité de ces connaissances, au regard de leur supposée valeur scientifique et traditionnelle. Médecins et occultistes partagent un fort sentiment de crise du monde moderne, qu’ils jugent trop matérialiste. Face à ce constat, leurs regards se tournent en partie vers le passé, qu’il s’agisse d’Hippocrate ou d’Hermès, et l’imbrication des rapports entre science, médecine, religion et philosophie se révèle sous un autre jour.

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Modern esoteric currents represent a neglected aspect of the intellectual and cultural history of Western societies. This thesis seeks to address this lacuna by studying their influence in the medical field in France during the interwar period.
This work is envisaged first as a contribution to the history of medicine. It defends the legitimacy of employing the single label, medical holism, to group the study of naturist medicine, homeopathy, reflex therapies together with the research activities of leading mainstream figures in the medical world. All, in effect, attached great importance to the psychological and physiological terrain as well as to the patient's environment. Special attention is given to the diverse but related conceptions of illness and therapeutic systems failing under this label, but our study distinguishes itself by its interest for esoteric currents within this medical milieu. The influences of these currents spread over multiple domains, embracing their visions of the world and the human body which oriented these medical practices, alongside the use of “occult” diagnostic tools such as physiognomy and astrology. A study of the numerous medical and esoteric publications of this period sharply highlights the shared character of the narratives of legitimation employed by both esoteric currents and medical holism. Physicians and occultists shared a strong feeling of the crisis of the overly materialistic modern world, in response to which they advocated in similar terms a return to figures from the past, whether Hippocrates or Hermes. As such, they help reveal the intertwined relationships which existed between science, medicine, religion and philosophy.

The historiography of the “short twentieth century” is very rich, but a careful study reveals that the picture we have about inter-war period is deeply related to the canons, to the power, to the “legitimate history”, and in too many cases it forgets many aspects of everyday life, also that of artists. This text offers a contribution to meditate on this through the artistic activities that had been developed for longlife education among the Hungarian workers at the time.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

The hippies of the 1960s are often hailed as the pioneers of today’s increasingly mainstream environmentalist, organic food and alternative medicine movements but there’s a much longer history of attempts on the part of individuals and groups with utopian aspirations to counter the negative effects of industrial capitalism, agribusiness and urbanization. This article looks at one of those attempts- the Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement that flourished across northern Europe but most prominently in Germany and Switzerland in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. At its height between 1880 and 1933, Lebensreformers were lobbying for the reform of everything from religious, educational and dietary norms (health food/raw food/vegetarianism) to agriculture (organic farming), clothing (‘rational apparel’ e.g. orthopedic footwear, nudism), sexual mores (free love) and alternative medicine/naturopathy. At the core of the movement a small group of authentic visionaries/ eccentric lifestyle innovators, popularly called the ‘Cabbage Saints’ or ‘Saints of Inflation’ (Inflationsheiliger) led the way by example and by promoting alternative therapies and a range of products designed to radically reform the way human beings relate to Nature and live in the world.

Cabbage Saints and Nature Prophets is an excerpt from Ruchama Noorda's dissertation (2015) written as part of her doctoral ℞eForm research which she undertook at the University of Leiden's PhDArts program.

Dutch Magazine de 8 en Opbouw, heir of i10 was from its beginnings in 1932, to its disappearance in 1943 for political reasons, one of the last refuge for the Neues Bauen. It was formed by two previous groups from Amsterdam and Rotterdam, de 8 and OPBOUW. The magazine was always vigilant of every experience coming from France, Germany, the URSS or the USA. They took on enthusiastically new theories about Lebensreform, and the necessity for redesigning the Nineteenth Century city. This work seeks for articles focused or related in some way to green areas or “Outdoor life” encouragement. We’ll discover how dramatic was their claim for public policies in hygienic improvements and new green areas necessity. We’ll also discover, specially from 1938, high urban and landscaping value projects, inspired from the german 20’s and the New Objectivity experiences, as the Amsterdam Bosch, Rotterdam Green Plan or several sports, bath and swimming complex or new schools.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

Das mit diesem Titel umrissene Problemfeld verhandelt Debatten um die Herkunft und das Verständnis von Familie. Es geht um das Verhältnis der Geschlechter und nicht zuletzt sind mit dem Matriarchatsdiskurs auch religiöse Aspekte verbunden.
Mein Beitrag wird in einem ersten Teil auf Johann Jakob Bachofen und seinen Beitrag zur Entwicklung des Matriarchatsdiskurses eingehen. Der zweite Teil wird sich der Matriarchats- und Bachofenrezeption innerhalb der Lebensreform und Jugendbewegung zuwenden.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.

Die Jugendliteratur Gudrun Pausewangs (1928–2020) trug in den 1980er Jahren entschieden zur Friedens- und Anti-atomkraftbewegung in der BRD bei. In das Gedächtnis ganzer Schülergenerationen ging die Autorin als ‚die Furchterregende‘ ein. Der Beitrag liest Pausewangs Roman Die letzten Kinder von Schewenborn (1983) mit Jean Laplanches Theorie rätselhafter Botschaften. Was den kindlichen Lesern mit Pausewangs Roman widerfuhr, kann als historisch bedingtes Extrembeispiel dafür verstanden werden, dass eine Botschaft zwischen Erwachsenem und Kind traumatisierend wirkt, weil sie immer einen Sinn mittransportiert, der dem Sprecher unbewusst ist (Laplanche). Pausewangs Roman erzählt von Kindern, die nach einem Atomkrieg qualvoll sterben. Gerahmt durch die Erklärung der Autorin, politisch engagieren zu wollen, pflegt der Text zugleich eine negative Beziehung zur Leserschaft: Die Brutalität der Schilderungen wütet gegen die Welt der durch die ‚Gnade der späten Geburt‘ Verschonten. Der Beitrag ...

This dissertation together with the artworks documented in it is the result of an investigation across multiple media over a seven-year period of the cultural, artistic and spiritual legacy of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. In the course of this research I situate this movement with its origins in Europe and its promotion of a back-to-nature lifestyle (health foods, sexual emancipation, rational dress/nudism, pantheism/syncretic New Age religions) in a long line of radical reform projects, that lead back to the Reformation and the Anabaptist rebellions in sixteenth-century Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. At the same time, I link the passage to America of Lebensreform beliefs and practices to the rise of the hippy counter-culture in California and the global spread in the decades since the nineteen-sixties of today’s ecological, organic food and naturopathy/Wellness movements.

In both the dissertation and the series of artworks discussed within it I set out to unravel and confront the complicated legacy of Theosophy and Anthroposophy, the holistic systems of belief that formed the spiritual backbone of the Lebensreform phenomenon. In the process I probe the question of how it came to be, that an occult world view based on a synthesis of world religions could appeal equally to purist avant-garde proponents of abstraction such as Kandinsky and Mondriaan and to figurative painters and illustrators such as Fidus (Hugo Höppener) and Fritz Mackensen, whose work promoted an idealized ‘Aryan’ aesthetic in line with German National Socialist ideology. As such the present work forms part of the larger reappraisal currently under way among artists and scholars of the history of utopian counter-cultural thinking and alternative life-style experimentation in the West. Following in the footsteps of historians such as Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, and Susan A. Manning, I argue that this reappraisal forces us to acknowledge the anti-rational esoteric roots of Modernism along with the progressive strands in Modernist thinking and practice, that tend to be foregrounded in most historical accounts.

However my interest in this project as an artist is not conventionally historical or academic but rather personal and performative. And the way the arguments are made, for the most part through installations, drawings, sculptural objects, video works, artist statements and performances, bears little relation to the orderly modes of presentation and detached forms of analysis that mark traditional academic discourse. Instead, the project unfolded over time as a prolonged archaeological dig into two intersecting strata, the muddy history of the Lebensreform movement and my own formation as someone born into an anthroposophical/Reform Church household in Leiden. The tension between Progress (social engineering/the collaborative ideal) and ℞egression (back to nature/childhood/basics) dictates the rhythm of the dig. The excavation metaphor gets literalized as I move closer to home, and in many of the artworks (Dutch) mud and compacted soil become the primary material: both the medium in which the inquiries are conducted and the consumable message/medicine dispensed at the door in pill-form to the departing exhibition visitor.