Alfred Schuler was a religious founder, a gnostic, a mystic

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 and a visionary

Visionary

Defined broadly, a visionary, is one who can envision the future. For some groups this can involve the supernatural or drugs.The visionary state is achieved via meditation, drugs, lucid dreams, daydreams, or art. One example is Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century artist/visionary and Catholic saint...

. Franz Wegener has called Schuler the last of the German Cathars. Schuler saw himself as a reborn Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 of the late imperial era

Crisis of the Third Century

The Crisis of the Third Century was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression...

. Also a neopagan, he was the spiritual focus of the "Munich Cosmic Circle", and made a broad impact without ever publishing a book during his lifetime. Stefan George

Stefan George

Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...

 and Ludwig Klages

Ludwig Klages

Ludwig Klages was a German philosopher, psychologist and a theoretician in the field of handwriting analysis.-Life:...

 were, amongst others, significantly influenced by him.

Schuler studied Archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 (and Law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

) in Munich but came to see archaeologists as "desecrators of graves ripping out of the earth what has been sanctified by the rite of burial, and confining to the unwholesome air of museums the lustrous force rightly working its mighty influence under the cover of darkness". After his studies Schuler made his living as an 'independent scholar

Independent scholar

An independent scholar is anyone who conducts scholarly research outside universities and traditional academia. Independent scholars play an especially important role in areas such as art history and other humanities fields...

' in Munich. He held his own "rebirth into an unpleasant epoch" to be the responsibility of an evil demon

Demon

call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...

. Schuler died during an operation meant to remove a malignant tumour

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

.

"Blood Beacon" and "Cosmic Circle"

At the turn of the nineteenth century the Munich borough

Borough

A borough is an administrative division in various countries. In principle, the term borough designates a self-governing township although, in practice, official use of the term varies widely....

 of Schwabing

Schwabing

Schwabing is a borough in the northern part of Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria. It is divided into the city borough 4 and the city borough 12...

 became the center of certain anti-bourgeois forces tending towards an interest in the 'occult

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

', among which were found the secretive cult of the 'Blutleuchte' ("Blood beacon"). An occult circle

Esotericism

Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...

 (Munich Cosmic Circle) gravitating around Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl was a German Jewish author who wrote poetry, prose and drama in German. He also translated from French, English, Italian, Hebrew, Latin and Middle High German into German....

, Alfred Schuler and Ludwig Klages

Ludwig Klages

Ludwig Klages was a German philosopher, psychologist and a theoretician in the field of handwriting analysis.-Life:...

 developed a doctrine according to which the Occident was plagued by downfall and degeneration, caused by the rationalizing and demythologizing effects of Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, held to be responsible for the betrayal of life's primary forces. A way out of this desolate state could, according to the "Cosmic" view, only be found by a return to the pagan origins. No exact common ground did however exist, as to what this "homecoming" would entail.

Alfred Schuler and Ludwig Klages came to know each other in 1893. They were, above all others, the leading personalities of the "Blutleuchte" and, with a few other 'initiates' such as Ludwig Derleth

Ludwig Derleth

Ludwig Derleth was a German writer.He was born in Gerolzhofen in Bavaria. After studying philosophy and literature Derleth worked as a college level teacher of ancient languages...

 and the poet Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl was a German Jewish author who wrote poetry, prose and drama in German. He also translated from French, English, Italian, Hebrew, Latin and Middle High German into German....

, the founders of this "occult circle". The first contact with Stefan George was established through Wolfskehl.

As clearly signalled by the name - "Blutleuchte" - "Blood" and "Light" were to play an important role. With the historical "degeneration of the blood", held to be a sacred life elixir and a metaphysical substrate of souls, "truthful" life was seen as sinking into an ever more weakened state. And thus it was found to be necessary to lead this conception of the blood up to its former state of light and power, as it was thought to have been in heathen times thousands of years ago, and to some degree in antiquity. In the sign of the "Blood Beacon" and the swastika

Swastika

The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...

, its incarnate emblem

Emblem

An emblem is a pictorial image, abstract or representational, that epitomizes a concept — e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory — or that represents a person, such as a king or saint.-Distinction: emblem and symbol:...

, a healthy state of life were to be regained.

From a chosen few, among which they imagined themselves to be and in which the "untainted blood" was supposed to be still working its healthy influence, a reversal was thought to be possible. By the work of these chosen few, the "incarnation

Incarnation

Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and birth of a sentient creature who is the material manifestation of an entity, god or force whose original nature is immaterial....

 of the undying spark of a distant past" (L. Klages), the founding energies of the "cosmic solstice

Solstice

A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...

" were to be rekindled. The occult practices of the Blutleuchte was supposed to be a symbiosis of heathendom and "lordly leadership" in the service of a wayward humanity in need of a fundamental rebirth

Palingenesis

Palingenesis is a concept of rebirth or re-creation, used in various contexts in philosophy, theology, politics, and biology. Its meaning stems from Greek palin, meaning again, and genesis, meaning birth....

.

Influence

The influence of the "Cosmic Circle" on Stefan George and his entourage is apparent by his use of the swastika in some of his publications, such as the Blätter für die Kunst. The "cosmic" influence can also be traced in the article "The Seventh Circle" and in his later work. As there was, however, in 1904, a rupture between George and the Schuler circle, its overt influence was intermittent.

From about the turn of the century Schuler kept in touch with occultists such as Henri Papus

Gerard Encausse

thumb|Papus in a Martinist Lodge from la [[Belle époque]]Gerard Encausse , whose esoteric pseudonym was Papus, was the Spanish-born French physician, hypnotist, and popularizer of occultism, who founded the modern Martinist Order.- Overview :Gerard Encausse was born at Corunna in Spain on July 13,...

, and later took part in spiritualist séances directed by Albert von Schrenck-Notzing

Albert von Schrenck-Notzing

Albert Freiherr von Schrenck-Notzing was a German physician, psychiatrist and notable psychic researcher, who devoted his time to the study of paranormal events connected with mediumship, hypnotism and telepathy...

. Schuler also held a large number of lectures on "ancient heathen mysteries"; and in the "salon" of Elsa Bruckmann

Elsa Bruckmann

Elsa Bruckmann , born Princess Cantacuzene of Romania, was the wife of Hugo Bruckmann, publisher of the racist writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. She held the "salon Bruckmann" and made it a mission to introduce Adolf Hitler to leading industrialists.-References:...

 a series of speeches (from 1915 to 1923) on the subject of "the eternal city". Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...

 is known to have been present during Schuler's speeches.

The research into Schuler's life has been predominantly concerned with the memetic

Memetics

Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...

 influence he may have exerted upon certain progenitors of German National Socialism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, spurred by his anti-Judaism

Anti-Judaism

Religious antisemitism is a form of antisemitism, which is the prejudice against, or hostility toward, the Jewish people based on hostility to Judaism and to Jews as a religious group...

, his distinct employment of the swastika and, above all, by Robert Boehringer

Robert Boehringer

Robert Boehringer was a German industrialist and poet.Boehringer was the son of a factory owner. He spent his childhood, youth, and his student years in Basel, where he also had his Ph.D. approved at the local university. Until 1920 he was the head of the family firm C.H. Boehringer in Ingelheim...

's thesis that Adolf Hitler may have met Schuler in the "salon Bruckmann". Despite his rabid anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

, Schuler was however neither a National Socialist nor a member of any political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 and it may seem likely that he would have found the active, public agitation of a politician to be a sacrilege against his gnostic beliefs. He is also known to have criticized the "nationalist tumour", and the "Hitler group" as representing the "drunken torchlight of death, leading people into the slaughterhouse".

In later years Schuler has become the subject of some interest as a poet in his own right and as a forerunner of certain experimental practices of modernist literature.

Literature

• Alfred Schuler: Dichtungen. München 1930.
• Alfred Schuler: Fragmente und Vorträge aus dem Nachlass. Mit Einführung von Ludwig Klages. Leipzig 1940.
• Alfred Schuler: Gesammelte Werke. Herausgegeben, kommentiert und eingeleitet von Baal Müller. München, Telesma-Verlag, 2007. ISBN 978-3-9810057-4-5

Secondary literature

• Wolfgang Frommel, Marita Keilson Lauritz, Karl Heinz Schuler: Alfred Schuler. Drei Annäherungen; Amsterdam 1985.
• Baal Müller (ed.): Alfred Schuler. Der letzte Römer. Neue Beiträge zur Münchner Kosmik: Reventlow, Schuler, Wolfskehl u.a. Castrum Peregrini Presse, Bonn 2000. ISSN 00087556
• Michael Pauen: Einheit und Ausgrenzung. Antisemitischer Neopaganismus bei Ludwig Klages und Alfred Schuler. In: Renate Heuer, Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, Konfrontation und Koexistenz. Zur Geschichte des deutschen Judentums. Frankfurt New York 1996 p. 242-269.
• Michael Pauen: Alfred Schuler: Heidentum und Heilsgeschichte. In: Castrum Peregrini 42 (1993) p. 21-54.
• Gerhard Plumpe: Alfred Schuler. Chaos und Neubeginn. Zur Funktion des Mythos in der Moderne. Berlin 1978
• Franz Wegener: Alfred Schuler, der letzte deutsche Katharer. Gnosis, Nationalsozialismus und mystische Blutleuchte (2003) ISBN 3931300110
• Baal Müller: Kosmik. Prozeßontologie und temporale Poetik bei Ludwig Klages und Alfred Schuler: Zur Philosophie und Dichtung der Schwabinger Kosmischen Runde. München: Telesma-Verlag 2007 ISBN 978-3-9810057-3-8

External links

• PDF extract from the book by Franz Wegener