{"id":47587,"date":"2023-05-19T13:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-05-19T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=47587"},"modified":"2023-05-19T14:50:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T12:50:01","slug":"energetic-and-strong-willed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/energetic-and-strong-willed\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEnergetic and Strong-Willed\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Marginalia on Rudolf Steiner\u2019s Life and Work<\/strong> 26<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In his Autobiography,<\/em> Rudolf Steiner wrote in detail about a personality who would later turn both against him and Anthroposophy: the \u201cliberal politician\u201d Dr. Heinrich Fr\u00e4nkel (1859\u20131939), \u201can adherent of Eugen Richter and politically active in the same spirit.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Richter represented the Deutsche Freisinnige Partei<\/em> (German Liberal Party) which was critical of the government and economically liberal. In 1893, he founded the even more leftist Freisinnige Volkspartei<\/em> (Liberal People\u2019s Party).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr\u00e4nkel, who came from a Leipzig merchant family, gained his doctorate with a thesis on Daily Working Hours in Industry and Agriculture with Particular Reference to the German Situation (Leipzig 1882). For a while, he was employed as a secretary in the Chamber of Commerce, probably in Berlin. In Weimar, where he relocated with his wife Anna Ende in the 1880s, he launched, in 1889, the more bourgeois Verein f\u00fcr Massenverbreitung guter Schriften<\/em> (Society for the Mass Distribution of Good Literature, 1889\u20131894) as a means of fighting against the \u201ctrashy novel\u201d culture. It was then that he first met Rudolf Steiner. \u201cA brief acquaintance [that] ended because of a \u2018misunderstanding,\u2019 but it was one I happily recall often. Fr\u00e4nkel was extraordinarily likeable in his own way. As a politician, he was energetic and strong-willed, and he was convinced that, with goodwill and rational insight, human beings can be aroused to enthusiasm for the proper, progressive way in social affairs. But his life was a long string of disappointments. It\u2019s unfortunate that I, too, ended up disappointing him. During our acquaintance, he worked on a brochure that he hoped to distribute on a large scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this brochure, which was published under the pseudonym Ghibellinus with the title \u201cEmperor, be firm\u201d (Weimar 1891), Fr\u00e4nkel intended to convince \u201cthose around the Kaiser of the dangers he saw coming,\u201d that is, the \u201cfuture consequences of an alliance between big industry and agriculture, which was then in an embryonic stage in Germany. In his opinion, it was guaranteed to result in disaster.\u201d But he \u201caccomplished nothing at all; he came to realize that the party to which he belonged and for which he worked was not strong enough to support his intended actions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 1892, Heinrich Fr\u00e4nkel went to Vienna to promote his idea of launching a German national paper, and possibly breathe new life into the Deutsche Wochenschrift<\/em> (German Weekly), which Rudolf Steiner had edited for a few weeks in 1888.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u201cThrough that paper, he hoped to create a political stream that would lead his political activity out of the current liberalism into a more national, free-thinking direction. He thought that he and I could work together on this. But that was impossible. I could not do anything, even to revive the German Weekly<\/em>. And the way I explained this to him caused misunderstandings that soon ruined our friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr\u00e4nkel\u2019s introduction of Rudolf Steiner to his family, \u201ca wife and a sister-in-law who were very charming\u201d as well as two daughters, would, importantly, impact on Rudolf Steiner\u2019s life because it was due to this acquaintance that he \u201cmet yet another family\u201d \u2013 the Eunike family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 1892, shortly after Rudolf Steiner had moved in with the Eunike family in Prellerstrasse, a misunderstanding between the two families regarding a private arrangement ended their friendship. From what can be discerned from a letter written by Heinrich Fr\u00e4nkel, Rudolf Steiner had taken an invitation, extended in earnest, for a joke, and made other plans for that evening. He apologized later in a letter, which has not been preserved, to Anna Fr\u00e4nkel. Her husband responded to that letter.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing more is known of any further intercourse between the families, other than a strange letter Anna Fr\u00e4nkel wrote on November 19, 1914 \u201cto the leaders of the Theosophical Federation,\u201d asking \u201cTo what kind of thinking is your activity consecrated?\u201d She then goes on to express her hope that as an international federation, it would work above all toward \u201cmaking the fate of our imprisoned, brave troops more humane.\u201d She was referring to the destiny of the German prisoners of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Fr\u00e4nkel family then lived for many years in Nikolassee near Berlin. In 1918, they changed their name to \u201cFrenzel\u201d. Heinrich Frenzel-Fr\u00e4nkel continued to write prolifically, producing many more brochures. Politically, he moved increasingly toward the right. For a while, he worked for the National Liberal Party and after World War I for the Deutsche Volkspartei<\/em> (German People\u2019s Party). Shortly before the German politician Matthias Erzberger was murdered, Fr\u00e4nkel had attacked him in a pamphlet.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Soon after, he agitated against the liberal politician Walther Rathenau. The Association for the Prevention of Antisemitism (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus)<\/em> wrote in its newsletter<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> that Erich Ludendorff had provided the \u201cbaptized Jew\u201d Frenzel, who \u201cnow conducts himself like a particularly fervent antisemite,\u201d with the material for this \u201csleazy paper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1925 to 1933, Fr\u00e4nkel\/Frenzel was editor of the newspaper\u00a0Fr\u00e4nkische Wacht. F\u00fcr Christentum und Deutschtum im protestantischen Geist<\/em> (Franconian Watch. For Christianity and Germanity in the Protestant spirit). He lived near Nuremberg at the time. How harmful his activities were at the time is apparent from a letter Ernst Lippold, whose family were neighbors of Heinrich Frenzel for a long time there, written to Emil Bock on January 4, 1959. \u00a0Lippold pointed out that Frenzel had \u201cused Rudolf Steiner\u2019s seeming inconsistencies to work against him.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0In parentheses he added, \u201cHe also had a disastrous effect on the insane Krieger before he shot Dr. Carl Unger in Nuremberg in 1929.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0\u2013 A remarkable circle closes here from the breakdown of a friendship in Weimar to the devastating effect on a mentally instable person who shot a leading anthroposophist!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Jewish-born, protestant Christian, and fervent antisemite Heinrich Fr\u00e4nkel died as Heinrich Israel Frenzel in 1939, in a protestant hospital (Elisabethenstift) in Darmstadt, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Translation<\/strong> Margot M. Saar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image <\/strong>Ringstrasse in Vienna with Parliament building, ca. 1890. Photo by Victor Angerer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marginalia on Rudolf Steiner\u2019s Life and Work 26 In his Autobiography, Rudolf Steiner wrote in detail about a personality who would later turn both against him and Anthroposophy: the \u201cliberal politician\u201d Dr. Heinrich Fr\u00e4nkel (1859\u20131939), \u201can adherent of Eugen Richter and politically active in the same spirit.\u201d Richter represented the Deutsche Freisinnige Partei (German Liberal Party) which was critical of the government and economically liberal. In 1893, he founded the even more leftist Freisinnige Volkspartei (Liberal People\u2019s Party). Fr\u00e4nkel, who came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9190,"featured_media":47206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8846,9201],"tags":[11329,8814],"class_list":["post-47587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-religion-en","tag-2023-18-en","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}