{"id":59293,"date":"2024-08-15T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=59293"},"modified":"2024-11-08T10:52:37","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T09:52:37","slug":"this-life-had-profound-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/this-life-had-profound-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"“This Life Had Profound Tragedy\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The life of Helene von Schewitsch was so incredibly dramatic, so full of twists and turns, and populated with so many of her famous contemporaries that if this extraordinary woman\u2019s biography were a novel, much of it would be considered a complete exaggeration.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alfred Meebold described \u201cher indomitable temperament, her perpetually lively intellect, . . . her empathy, which was instantly implemented as either sympathy or antipathy, her lively imagination . . . . All this contained, as I understand it, an enormously strong urge for freedom. It was at work in a female body and in one of unusual beauty . . . .\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helene von Schewitsch n\u00e9e Helene von D\u00f6nniges, was born in Berlin on March 21, 1843. She was the eldest of diplomat Wilhelm von D\u00f6nniges and his wife Franziska Wolff\u2019s seven children. Her younger sister Margarethe was to become the mother of Karl von Keyserlingk, on whose Koberwitz estate the agricultural course was held in 1924.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The Bavarian king had taken her father into his service, so Helene spent her early childhood in Munich. Her parents ran a large salon there, whose relaxed atmosphere characterised her upbringing. For a time, Ludwig II of Bavaria, two years her junior, was her playmate\u2014that is, until her father ended the children\u2019s play together, following an argument between them, with the words: \u201cOne does not thrash one\u2019s future king!\u201d<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helene\u2019s relationship with her mother became difficult when her mother engaged the twelve-year-old to an Italian colonel thirty years her senior. A few years later (while living with her family in Nice from 1859 to 1861), Helene broke off the engagement. She then enjoyed the easy life on the French Riviera as a celebrated beauty and queen of the balls, until the time when she was sent to live with her beloved grandmother in Berlin. There, she met the Romanian prince and law student Janco von Racowitza (1843\u20131865), whom she had known before and who was entirely devoted to her. She, however, harboured more sibling-like feelings for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferdinand Lassalle<\/h3>\n\n\n
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Ferdinand von Lassalle 1860 (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J0827-500-002, public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

After being told by two different parties that she was the right woman for the famous writer, socialist politician, and notorious playboy Ferdinand Lassalle (1825\u20131864), she was eager to get to know him. When the two finally met in a societal gathering, Lassalle told her, when saying in his farewell, \u201cTomorrow I\u2019ll pay your grandmother a visit and fetch the word of consent.\u201d But Helene anxiously warded him off. Their subsequent encounters in Berlin were intense but remained noncommittal, probably because Lassalle was extraordinarily busy with all the other pursuits of his heart. It was only when the two met again by chance on Mount Rigi in Switzerland in July 1864 (Lassalle was recuperating there, and Helene was on an excursion with friends) that their love inflamed in full force. Lassalle followed her to Bern, where they spent a few happy days together. She rejected his proposal to get married on the spot in France, as she wanted her parents\u2019 consent. So, she travelled to Geneva to meet them; Lassalle was to follow shortly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happened next\u2014an incredible chain of unfortunate circumstances that fill entire books\u2014we can only hint at here. Her parents were absolutely opposed to her union with the \u201crevolutionary.\u201d Her father placed Helene under confinement. At times, she was accompanied at night by Eugen von Keyserling, her sister\u2019s fianc\u00e9, and taken across Lake Geneva to another location. Ultimately, her father forced his daughter, who was actually of age but (as Lassalle had recognised early on) was weak-willed, to write a farewell letter to him. As Lassalle\u2019s letters show, this resistance initially made his love even more ardent. He went as far as to approach Richard Wagner and the Bavarian king, and even (as a Jew) wanted to be baptised by Bishop Ketteler. At the same time, however, it can be learned from his letters that Lassalle (deeply affronted by Helene\u2019s father), at a certain point, believed that he owed it to his own self-esteem not to yield. This ultimately led to a demand for a duel with Helene\u2019s father. In the meantime, however, Wilhelm von D\u00f6nniges had sent for Janko von Racowitza, who was inexperienced in matters of arms (and, at the time, was still considered Helene\u2019s fianc\u00e9) and bid him to take on the good pistol shooter Lassalle in his place. And yet, the unexpected happened: Racowitza injured Lassalle so badly (accidentally, as Helene von Schewitsch describes it) that he died three days later, on August 31, 1864.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1898, Rudolf Steiner wrote about the death of Lassalle, who was a controversial but highly respected interlocutor for Bismarck, and what it meant for the development of Germany: \u201cI believe there would have been a possibility for Bismarck to actualize his social kingdom.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> This possibility would have come to pass if Lassalle had not lost his life in 1864 as a result of Racowitza\u2019s frivolous pistol shot. Bismarck could not deal with principles and ideas. They lay outside the circle of his worldview. He could only negotiate with human beings who replied with real facts. Had Lassalle remained alive, he would probably have brought the workers to the point where they could have found a solution to the social question for Germany in agreement with Bismarck by the time Bismarck was ripe for plans for social reform. At the moment Bismarck needed to solve the social question, Lassalle was missing. . . . If Lassalle had confronted him as a power factor, with the workers as this power, then Bismarck could have founded the social state with the king at its head.\u201d<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It is also clear from other mentions of Lassalle that Rudolf Steiner respected him very much: \u201cI know of no human being who was a greater thinker than Lassalle. He was only very one-sided.\u201d<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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Helene von Schewitsch, youth portrait 1865. All photos by Helene von Schweitsch are from the book Von anderen und mir. Erinnerungen aller Art.<\/em> Berlin 1909.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Lassalle wrote to Helene on August 20, 1864, in his reply to her farewell letter: \u201cBut, if you shatter me through this roguish betrayal, which I cannot overcome, may my fate fall back on you and my curse follow you to the grave! It is the curse of the most faithful heart, deceitfully broken by you, with which you played the most shameful game.\u201d When we look at the further course of her life, we may very well ask ourselves: Did this curse work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meeting with Blavatsky<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After Lassalle\u2019s death, Helene von D\u00f6nniges met with hostility from many sides, especially when, after a short time, she married Janko von Racowitza. But, he died of a lung disease after a few months. Helene broke with her family and was thereby left completely penniless and forced to work. She trained as an actress\u2014her speciality was the \u201csalonni\u00e8re\u201d\u2014and, in 1868, married her teacher, the character actor Siegwart Friedmann (1842\u20131916). The marriage ended in divorce in 1873, but the two remained good friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Helene went to St. Petersburg to recuperate for a while after a strenuous tour, she met Sergei von Schewitsch [alternatively spelled, Shevitch] (1848\u20131911), whom she had known in passing. Von Schewitsch was in the Russian civil service but was a staunch socialist. They became a couple, emigrated to America in 1877, and married there. Helene von Schewitsch performed in German-language theaters; Sergei became editor of the socialist New Yorker Volkszeitung<\/em> [New York Newspaper of the People]. But Helene gave up the stage after a few years for the sake of her husband, who suffered from her frequent absences. She turned to medicine and studied at New York University for four years. Shortly before her doctorate, she fell seriously ill and abandoned her plans. She applied herself to writing and painted pictures of flowers to sell.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Serge and Helene von Schewitsch, 1895<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

A decisive event for Helene von Schewitsch during this time was her personal acquaintance, indeed friendship, with Helena Blavatsky, through whom she discovered Theosophy. She described her path in the book Wie ich mein Selbst fand<\/em> [How I found my Self], published anonymously in 1901. In it, she describes not only a series of spiritualistic experiences but also her encounter with Helena Blavatsky and the basic teachings of Theosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Tragic Death<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 1890, the couple returned to Europe, partly because Sergei von Schewitsch had to protect the rights to his land in Russia, which had been temporarily revoked. They lived in Riga for a while. After Helene fell seriously ill, they travelled for several years until they settled in Munich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1903, Helene von Schewitsch invited Rudolf Steiner to give a lecture in her home and stated in the invitation letter that, as she was \u201cpersonally friends with all our authoritative Theosophical leaders,\u201d she did not want to join any particular Theosophical Society: \u201cI want to hold myself free, but devote my life, force, and work to the cause!\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> On March 5, 1904, she wrote to Rudolf Steiner: \u201cTo my great joy, dear, so greatly revered Doctor, I hear that you want to give us the next Saturday at 4:30 p.m. for a conference at my home!\u201d In a subsequent letter, she even referred to him as a \u201cfriend.\u201d In the autumn of 1905, she sent him a long article on \u201cDie Geheimlehre und die Tiermenschen der modernen Wissenschaft\u201d [The Secret Doctrine and the animal-men of modern science], which followed on from J\u00f6rg Lanz von Liebenfels\u2019 remarks. Rudolf Steiner published her article in three parts in Lucifer-Gnosis<\/em> (1905\/06) but subsequently added his own comments in which he contradicted her views. He pointed out the dangers of interpreting higher insights too materialistically<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and wrote: \u201cI have . . . not concealed from the author that I will openly express my opinion on the matter after it has been printed.\u201d<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> He presumably spoke to her personally about this because in a letter dated February 6, 1906, Helene von Schewitsch thanked him \u201cfor the extraordinarily interesting private afternoon that you devoted to us in my apartment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Helene von Schewitsch, 1905 (Frontispiz).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

On October 11, 1907, in a card to Marie von Sivers, she sent her regards to the \u201chighly esteemed Herr Dr. Steiner,\u201d after which there is no further evidence of their correspondence. This may have been due to her recurring illness; in addition, the couple became impoverished over the next few years\u2014to the point where they were completely overindebted. It is likely that it was on this account that Sergei von Schewitsch committed suicide on September 27, 1911<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u2014and a few days later, on October 1, 1911, his wife took poison. One senses the deep tragedy of this act when one reads what she had written about suicide in 1901: that it was considered \u201cone of the gravest sins of the theosophical secret doctrine.\u201d The one committing suicide \u201cnot only does not escape the suffering he flees, but he heaps worse upon himself.\u201d<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Two months later, Rudolf Steiner commemorated her with the words: \u201cI consider it my special duty today to commemorate here the departure from the physical plane of a personage who was well known in all theosophical circles, who was torn from us by a painful death, who worked much, whom we . . . think of with love . . . . You know her books and I need not characterise them in detail. I must emphasise that the circumstances were such that I always rendered her request when she bid me to hold a lecture in her circle during my stays in Munich. I would only like to point out that for me, myself, this whole life shows itself as something deeply tragic, and I may well say that Mrs. von Schewitsch was extraordinarily trusting towards me and that I am justified in saying: This life had profound tragedy.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also mentions her later in his autobiography as \u201can interesting personage\u201d who represented \u201ca significant piece of history\u201d for him: \u201cIndeed, she was the lady because of whom Ferdinand Lassalle met his untimely end in a duel against a Romanian. She later went on to pursue a career as an actor and became friends with H. P. Blavatsky and Olcott in America. She was a worldly lady whose interests were deeply spiritual at the time when my lectures took place at her home. The strong experiences she had had gave her bearing and an extraordinary weight to what she put forward. Through her, I would like to say, I was able to see the work of Lassalle and his epoch, and through her, some of the characteristic features of H. P. Blavatsky\u2019s life. What she said was subjectively coloured, often arbitrarily formed by fantasy; but, when one took that into account, one could still see the truth through some of the veiling, and one had before oneself the revelation of an uncommon personality.\u201d<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The life of Helene von Schewitsch was so incredibly dramatic, so full of twists and turns, and populated with so many of her famous contemporaries that if this extraordinary woman\u2019s biography were a novel, much of it would be considered a complete exaggeration. Alfred Meebold described \u201cher indomitable temperament, her perpetually lively intellect, . . . her empathy, which was instantly implemented as either sympathy or antipathy, her lively imagination . . . . All this contained, as I understand it, an enormously strong urge for freedom. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9190,"featured_media":38990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11473,8846,8847],"tags":[10459,11540,8814],"class_list":["post-59293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-rudolf-steiner","category-history","category-portrait","tag-2022-24-en","tag-english-issue-33-34-2024","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59293","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=59293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}