Die Gruender der Christengemeinschaft: Ein Schicksalsnetz
By Rudolf F. Gaedeke
Translated by Cindy Hindes

OTTO BECHER
January 26, 1891, Holzminden/Weser – July 19, 1954, Pforzheim

When Otto Becher died after a severe operation in Pforzheim on July 19, 1954, another of the founders of our earthly work was lost. He was sixty-three. What he had given shone as a special color in the picture of the first decades.

Otto Becher was born in Holzminden/Weser on January 26, 1891. He grew up in this landscape of old Carolingian spirituality near the Corvey monastery. His mother, Anna, died early. His father Emil was pious, with a personality of positive faith. His son admired him very much, even though later in his studies, Otto Becher belonged to the most radical wing of critical theology.

Something particularly straightforward lived in Otto Becher, in his whole being, but especially in his thinking and judging. “In the service of that which was recognized as true and that which was felt to be sacred, he consumed himself completely with those powers which were at his disposal.” — that was how his friend Rudolf Meyer described it.

Initially, Otto Becher had worked in Leipzig with Wilhelm Wundt in the Psychological Seminar. Then he moved to Göttingen to study the strictly phenomenological direction of Edmund Husserl. Studies in the philosophy of religion and the pedagogical seminar with Professor Arthur Titius revealed Becher’s talents so strongly that Titius invited him to teach with him. But the twenty-four-year-old refused. His honesty in discernment forbade him to pass along what was traditional and dogmatically obscure. But he studied intensively; he received a scholarship and was allowed to live in the Theologischen Stift. His external needs were always modest. When Rudolf Meyer met him in 1915, he was like a monk in his cell—but embracing all cultures in spirit.

During their heated discussions and conversations ‘in his cell’ about Julian the Apostate, the phrase emerged: “What you are looking for could be called, in the sense of Goethe, the cross entwined with roses.”

This appealed to Otto Becher in the depths of his soul, after which the friends sought Goethe’s poem “The Mysteries”; it described how Brother Mark finds the gate of the Brotherhood of the Rosicrucian.

Rudolf Meyer had found his way to anthroposophy in 1916. He had heard that at the first Goetheanum building, a stage curtain was planned to show an image of the motif of Brother Mark finding the Rosicrucian Gate. Otto Becher was horrified that his friend was getting involved in such fantastic things as anthroposophy. Nevertheless, he began to familiarize himself with the new spiritual science and subsequently became a thorough connoisseur and exponent of anthroposophy.

It was clear to Otto Becher that he could not take on any position as pastor or lecturer. So he first worked as a house teacher at the Silesian castle of Lubowitz near Ratibor, from which Josef von Eichendorff came, then with Stegemanns at Gut Marienstein, north of Göttingen. He also worked for a time as an educator with Paul Geheeb at the ‘Odenwaldschule’.

When the very first circle of eighteen students gathered with Rudolf Steiner for the June Course in Stuttgart in 1921, Otto Becher was among them. For him, the consequence was to withdraw from his spiritual-scientific studies and turn to the work of religious renewal. Four months later, he attended the Autumn Course for theologians in Dornach and expressed his will to cooperate, even though he thought he had only weak forces. From May 1922, he prepared the foundation of a congregation in Breslau.

In the Breitbrunn photo, we see him standing in the middle next to Pastor Karl Ludwig. Compared to the youth of most of the participants, both were already more mature professional men. Emil Bock ordained Otto Becher in Dornach on September 16, 1922, the day of The Christian Community’s founding.

After the Dornach events, Otto Becher founded the congregation in Hannover together with Claus von der Decken. But he remained there only a year and then, at Rudolf Meyer’s request, worked in the Görlitz congregation.

This circumstance made it possible for him to attend the conference at Koberwitz Castle near Breslau from June 7-16, 1924, where Rudolf Steiner held the agricultural course that spiritually founded the biodynamic way of farming. A small insignificant episode has come down to us from those days, but it characterizes Otto Becher’s poverty and frugality. On the daily train ride from Breslau to Koberwitz, a lady noticed that Otto Becher was wearing no socks and completely worn shoes despite the wet and cold weather. She immediately made sure that he received what he needed as a gift.

In October 1924, Otto Becher, at the age of thirty-three, took up his work in the Pforzheim community. It had been founded by Walter Gradenwitz, who then worked with him for some time.

For over thirty years, he built up and maintained the congregation in Pforzheim. Of benefit was his comprehensive education in many areas, his pedagogical experience in religious education for children and youth work, but above all, his spiritually clear and modest, engaging, friendly manner.

Although Rudolf Meyer had repeatedly asked him to write, he did not publish any of his work. A wealth of manuscripts were confiscated by the Gestapo when The Christian Community was banned, and he was taken into custody for three weeks. During the time when the Christian Community was banned, he worked as a secretary in Herbert Witzenmann’s metal tube factory.

Apart from Pforzheim, he gave lectures in only a few towns in Baden. According to the judgment of his colleagues, these were true gifts of the spirit.

With his commitment as a member of the board of the school association, he promoted the founding of the Pforzheim Waldorf School. He was wholeheartedly involved in the work of the branch of the Anthroposophical Society. In addition, he was a well-known personality in that town, which on February 23, 1945, had been so severely hit by the war.

So it was natural that at Becher’s death, the mayor wrote a heartily cordial letter and that the newspaper paid detailed tribute to his work in the city.

Perhaps two things characterize Otto Becher best: The topic of his last series of lectures in the congregation was: “The Work of Christ in the Intellectual History of the Occident.” His innermost concern was to trace Christ’s activity discerningly and serve Him in worship. And secondly, he was like a secret knight who sensed his proper hour approaching. Thinking of repeated earth lives, he himself considered his rich working life only as a preparatory incarnation.

He cared for the renewed sacraments as a priest for thirty-three years.

226 Otto Becher

MEMORANDUM

For a long time I had the feeling that the will for a religious renewal, which had begun to flow at our first course in Stuttgart in June, had since then increasingly moved from the practical-religious to the theoretical-theological and thus threatened to peter out. Through Mr. Rudolf Meyer and Mr. Borchart, I have now been informed that many of us course participants have become aware of this and have decided to call for the purification of the original impulse through explanations.

I hereby join these rallies. Even if, on the one hand, the whole magnitude and gravity of our task cannot be brought seriously enough into consciousness, and the inadequacy of one’s own powers, measured against the task, is experienced in a particularly deep and painful way, I nevertheless believe that it is precisely the cliff of hidden egoism that is avoided if, trusting in the soul-strengthening and enriching effect of the spiritual knowledge that Dr. Steiner has made accessible to us, one courageously begins with practical religious work. Personal imperfections are certainly best overcome in spiritual-religious action and life itself. It is foreseeable that from the beginning of our practical work, all means will be used to fight against us. However, I now believe that a preceding public theoretical propaganda in the theological world will rather aggravate than alleviate the conflict with it. For the confession of the Spirit is, after all, ultimately a matter of will. Yes, there is a danger that our impulse will be stifled by the agitation of the press if the public learns of our will sooner than it has become action. Furthermore, it should be noted that the economic possibilities of church planting are only getting smaller and smaller, and that the financing of our movement can only really start to flow after the practical work has begun. First the spiritual reality must be really experienced, if Impulse is to awaken in the people, which help to carry and spread the religious movement. The how of starting would have to be clarified quite soon in a meeting and to ask Dr. Steiner to give us further advice in this direction.

On the question of the leadership of our movement, I would only like to emphasize here that the spiritual freedom, the initiative, and the sense of responsibility of the individual co-workers must not be impaired in any way. The ideas of threefolding will have to guide us in this.

Finally, I declare that I am willing to use my weak forces for our practical-religious goals as soon as I am free in my line of work, which will probably be the case at the beginning of June.

Otto Becher

Marienstein, February 22, 1922.

TWO TEXTS BY OTTO BECHER

This is the course of the great development of the world and of mankind: The power of the gods slowly becomes – from embodiment on earth to embodiment on earth – the power of the human being himself. Only in the distance from the gods can the human being develop independence, and only here can spiritual love arise from freedom and grow stronger. The earth is the place of the unfolding of the human ego and the human community. The true new community is based on the voluntary sacrifice of the strong. People who have awakened to the “I” are free to unite in the service of hatred and destruction, of the massification and disenchantment of the human being, or for his liberation and exaltation, for true humanity. To this kind of union above the word of Christ applies: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” And Paul writes to the Colossians “When Christ comes to be revealed, you also will be revealed with him.” Thus the human being experiences himself as a germinating force for a new humanity and a new earth … The development of the will must not take place without transformation and healing; there must be a readiness to receive the divine power of grace, as in the archetype of Mary, but also of Mary Magdalene. Again and again we must become aware that we can “do no works” before God. All talents have an antisocial effect as long as they are not transformed and put at the service of Christ. Not paralysis, but highest increase of impulses is connected with it; now our goals become the world goals, and the world goals become our goals. The spiritual nobility of a true priestly royalty then moves into our souls.

Today, the anxious concern is everywhere: How will a peaceful cultural construction such as this be possible? The right bringers of peace can only be those who are inflamed by true Christian impulses. A true Christian community is called to carry out into the world the new angel’s work: “Peace on earth to men of good will.

FROM THE “PFORZHEIMER KURIER” OF JULY 21, 1954:

Pastor Otto Becher died.

The Christian Community of Pforzheim lost its pastor.

Unexpectedly and suddenly, the Christian Community in Pforzheim lost its highly honored pastor, Pastor Otto Becher, after a brief serious illness. On October 31 of this year, it would have been three decades that Pastor Becher had ministered here. Born on 26.1.1891 in Holzminden, he first enjoyed a humanistic education and then studied theology and philosophy in Göttingen and Leipzig. At the age of thirty he came to anthroposophy as a constant seeker, but then found inner clarity and from this became the co-founder of the Christian Community in Germany already one year later. When he came to Pforzheim after another two years, he had soon settled in and devoted himself to this city and the circle of people he pastored with all love and intensity. His greatest and most prominent concern was to work out of silence. For the Pforzheim congregation his passing means an irreplaceable loss, since it revered him not only as a faithful intimate pastor, but also as an outstanding scholar of the humanities, as a joyful, life-loving artist, and as an excellent organizer with a talent for improvisation that was peculiar to him.

October 5, 1888, Preeten Castle – August 24, 1977, Kassel

The midwife had to navigate the flooded Elbe meadows to get to Claus von der Decken’s birth on October 5, 1888, at Preeten Castle near Neuhaus. Claus was the second of four children who were joined by a foster sister. His father, Ernst, from the old Hanoverian landed gentry, was the administrator of various estates. His mother, Anna, was born von Arnswald, whose three sisters were abbesses of the noble convents of Bassum, Medingen, and Ebstorf. Anyone who was brought into a noble convent had to have sixteen full noble great-great-grandparents.

Claus von der Decken was what was then called a country gentleman. But his father, who was actually an artistic man, had an unfortunate hand in his property management. The property, which he had invested in large tenement houses in the early years, brought him losses instead of the profits he had hoped for. Nevertheless, his relatives let him continue to work and helped him.

The last small property his father still had was in Adendorf, not far from Lüneburg. From there, Claus and his two brothers went to school in Lüneburg for a while. At times they also had tutors; the young governesses of the three boys had a lot to put up with.

Claus completed his schooling (around 1904) and then took up voluntary military service with the Saxon Guard Riders in Dresden, which he finished as a lieutenant in 1908. He could then devote himself entirely to his artistic inclinations. He studied painting – especially portraiture – at the art academies in Düsseldorf, Dresden, Munich, and Paris. He also undertook an art trip to Rome during this time.

Claus wrote poetry throughout his life – sometimes up to fifty poems a year, but he also wrote dramas and more. When he studied in Düsseldorf, he was friends with the family of Lory Smits, who later became the first eurythmist. The elder Smits taught Rudolf Steiner a poem by Claus, which he praised. Tradition has it that Claus was sitting in the next room of the Smits house in 1909 when Rudolf Steiner gave the well-known lecture cycle on the angelic hierarchies in the salon. It is certain that Claus had not yet found access to anthroposophy at that time, although his very first encounter with Rudolf Steiner had probably taken place a year earlier.

While still a student, he was secretly engaged to Cécile von Bodenberg. The family of the nobles and freemen of Bodenberg belonged to the so-called dynastic nobility. They had their own vassals, owned land the size of a principality between the rivers Aller and Weser, and naturally belonged to the Guelph party and wanted to see the king reinstated in Hanover.

His father ordered the bride and groom to wait seven years before getting married. Naturally, Claus volunteered for military service in the First World War after finishing his studies. But when his two brothers soon died in the field, Claus was transferred to the rear echelon to spare him as the last scion of his family; then, his father allowed him to marry. The wedding took place on October 3, 1916, in Hudemühlen, ‘Estate Three.’ Back in the military, Claus was constantly commissioned to make portraits of comrades and superiors. He was stricken with typhoid. After the war, he painted some portraits of fallen members of parliament for the Reichstag building in Berlin, but they later fell victim to fire.

During the war, he encountered anthroposophy anew with great intensity. After the end of the war, it was Rudolf Meyer who pushed him hard: “You came through the war alive. You must make yourself available to Rudolf Steiner and the Threefold Movement!” Claus von der Decken did not listen to him.

From January 1918 onwards, the family grew by one child a year until there were seven to feed. They lived in an outlying estate of Hudemühlen, Hademstorf, a rural inn. Claus earned money by painting portraits, some of them quite “lucrative.” Being nobility and recommended in aristocratic circles, he painted on estates as far away as Silesia.

Once again, Rudolf Meyer approached him. It was in summer of 1921; the first steps towards religious renewal in the sense of anthroposophy had been taken. The June Course had taken place. Rudolf Meyer was looking for co-workers and met Claus von der Decken in a confectioner’s shop in Hanover to invite him to join the Autumn Course in Dornach and to help with the future work. Only then had the decision matured to commit himself – thirteen or fourteen years after his first acquaintance with anthroposophy and his first encounter with Rudolf Steiner. Although the family already had three children – a fourth died in the same year – and the economic prospects were very poor, Claus von der Decken decided to take up the priesthood.

On September 16, 1922, he was ordained as a priest by Emil Bock in Dornach. Together with Otto Becher, he founded the community in Hanover. The family could continue to live outside in Hudemühlen (today Hodenhagen/Aller). When money became too tight, the father moved out again, far across the country, to paint portraits.

Martin Schmidt, a rye breeder who later became widely known, had the means at that time, both through the superheated steam machine production in Kassel and through funds from America, to acquire his own farm in 1924, shortly before the Koberwitz course, which established biodynamic agriculture and in which he participated. He bought the Eschenhof in Grammersdorf on Hemmelsdorfer Sea, northeast of Lübeck. This soon became the home of the von der Decken family. From there, Claus von der Decken took over the community work in Lübeck that Joachim Sydow had started from Rostock.

On the Eschenhof, the family had to endure difficult destinies, both humanly and in terms of health. Cécile von der Decken died in 1928, two years after the birth of her seventh child. Four years of family separation followed. The three older children moved with the Schmidt family to Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe to attend the Waldorf School. The three younger children stayed in Lübeck with their father and were looked after by his mother and sister.

On October 5, 1931, Claus von der Decken took up church work in Kassel. In 1932 he entered into his second marriage. Melly von der Decken, née Hegewald, had taken on the difficult task of raising six children as a stepmother under oppressive hardships. Until one month before his death, she faithfully stood by her husband for over forty-five years.

Claus von der Decken worked as a priest in Kassel for over four decades. The ban on the Christian Community (from June 9, 1941) brought better economic times for the family. At last, there were sufficient funds for subsistence because Claus was painting portraits again. On the other hand, a second heavy blow of fate struck the the family when two sons fell in the war.

The priest’s unusual humanitarian commitment had already amazed those around him in Lübeck, where he spoke and prayed with alcoholics about the Blue Cross’s work against alcohol addiction. One of them later had himself married by him. In Kassel, he helped Jewish people to escape during the Nazi era. During the heavy bombing raids, he visited the rubble sites, once rescuing a woman from the flames and giving her shelter with his own family.

He was distinguished by a particularly rich, strong emotional capacity. Unforgettable was his humor that expressed itself so quaintly when he told stories in the Low German dialect. He was an artist and a priest. His poems were published in the magazine The Christengemeinschaft. Of his dramas, Pontius Pilatus was published in 1963. Claus von der Decken experienced a special, humanitarian and amicable fulfillment of his work on the occasion of a series of community camps, which he organized with Wolf-Dietrich von Kurnatowski, Friedrich Gädeke, and other colleagues in the 1950s and 1960s on the Sonnenberg in the Upper Harz, north of St. Andreasberg.

As a poet and painter, he was tirelessly active. His most important works for the priests’ circle are probably the two fine death portraits of Friedrich Rittelmeyer and Emil Bock. But he had been committed to working for a new priesthood ever since he asked Rudolf Steiner: “Can the priesthood be conducive with my artistry?” and the latter had replied: “Yes, your artistry can be conducive to your priesthood.” Many destinies in the priest circle would have been better mastered if this sentence had been taken to heart.

On August 24, 1977,  Claus von der Decken died in Kassel a few weeks before his 89th birthday.

Hermann Fackler, March 10, 1886, Lörrach – July 19, 1978, Stuttgart

Hermann Fackler, too, was already a long-serving pastor when The Christian Community was founded. At thirty-six, he belonged to the group of the older ones at that time. Nevertheless, he was still able to serve the movement for over fifty years.

Hermann Fackler was born in Lörrach on April 10, 1886, as the son of a Protestant veterinarian and a Catholic mother from Breisach. He was baptized Catholic. His mother died shortly afterward as a result of the birth, so his father had to place his young son in the care of a loving, simple cobbler family for the first seven years. In the first ten years of his life, the boy was not spared serious childhood illnesses. Due to whooping cough, he suffered a lifelong ear ailment. For the next two and a half years, however, he was healthy and spry, apart from an accident in the icy Sudeten Mountains, which later afflicted him greatly.

When his father married again, this time to a Protestant woman, the boy was allowed to move in with his parents in Donaueschingen in 1893. He attended the humanist grammar school and Protestant religious instruction but also had deep religious experiences when visiting his mother’s relatives in Breisach and Freiburg and attending mass in the cathedrals there.

When his father was transferred to the Ministry of the Interior in Karlsruhe in 1898, his son attended confirmation classes with the city pastor Brückner, who impressed him so much that the boy wanted to become a pastor himself. Immediately after graduating from high school in 1905, he went to Heidelberg University, where he studied philosophy with Wilhelm Windelband, dogmatics with Ernst Troeltsch, and exegesis with Adolf Deißmann. He went to Berlin for two semesters to hear Adolf von Harnack lecture on church history and Reinhold Seeberg on dogmatics. All these professors have gone down in the history of science with their life’s work.

Nevertheless, for the young man, the study was unsatisfactory. It brought a lot of useless head knowledge (textual criticism, for example) and no preparation for religious practice. One learned to preach but not how to pray with people. The theoretical and practical examinations were taken in 1908/09. Then followed vicar positions in Baden, among others in Waldshut on the Rhine, where he met his wife. He received a position as “pastoral chaplain” in Immendingen (Hegau) in 1912. His wife, Getrud, née Leyendecker, had been a deaconess in Freiburg and was able to help him with the care of a large parish area and several military hospitals in the following years during the First World War.

If the discrepancy between studied theology and practiced religion was already difficult for Hermann Fackler, the problems grew even greater when he became intensively involved with the star mythology of Professor Arthur Drews from Karlsruhe during these years (1913-1919). He knew Drews personally from many visits and found access to the cosmic aspect in his book Die Christusmythe [The Christ Myth]. But how could he proclaim death and resurrection if Christ had not lived at all? Even the philosophy of ‘as if’ only helped to reach an insipid compromise.

In 1919 Hermann Fackler became parish administrator in Rheinfelden on the Upper Rhine, not far from Basel. The dean who introduced him invited him to his Freemason lodge because of his inaugural sermon (on 1 Peter 2:5), in which a word about Freemasonry had been spoken. The dean was Master of the Chair. Thus Hermann Fackler became an ‘apprentice’ in the Lodge “Friedrich zur Eintracht” in Lörrach and found cultic brotherly fellowship in which he could feel a remnant of the air of mystery.

In September 1920, a blind man asked Hermann Fackler to come with him to Dornach near Basel to see Rudolf Steiner’s ‘crazy house’ through his eyes. This is how Hermann Fackler found his way to the first Goetheanum and was immediately enthusiastic. He and his wife then went repeatedly to Dornach. They attended eurythmy performances and began to read Rudolf Steiner’s books.

In the autumn of the following year (1921), he took a short holiday with his wife in nearby Waldshut that was broken off after a week due to inner turmoil. At home, a single letter was found that had not been forwarded. It was an invitation from a completely unknown Rudolf Meyer from Stuttgart to come to Dornach for the theology course which was about to begin.

Hermann Fackler immediately arranged everything necessary and commuted daily from Rheinfelden to Dornach to attend the autumn course. There, the true science of God dawned on him when he experienced Rudolf Steiner for the first time and absorbed his lectures. And he immediately committed himself to the movement, which wanted to renew Christian religious practice with liturgical celebrations.

So he resigned from his ministry on July 1, 1922, and later even resigned from the church, for he had now found his spiritual home and his real task, which he was to serve for another half-century.

He was present in Breitbrunn for the preparatory meeting of the founders and was ordained on September 16, 1922, in Dornach at the Goetheanum, to whose forms he owed his first access to anthroposophy. When he asked Rudolf Steiner whether he should begin the congregational work of The Christian Community in Rheinfelden – also because people there had already asked – he did not find it possible. In November 1922 the church began in Constance (until August 1924). This was followed by important years of work in Berlin (1924-1929). In Naumburg/Saale, he then replaced Eberhard Kurras in the activity (1929-1931, until some difficult working years in Göppingen (Württ.) followed (1931–1936), after which Reutlingen became his place of residence for over forty years. (1936–77).

Hermann Fackler survived the ban on community work (1941) smoothly – without imprisonment and almost without theft of books. He then worked as a gardener and in the tax office, and finally as a language teacher with tutoring, before work in the community could begin again after the end of the war in 1945.

In the fifties, it was possible to buy a house and build a community room in Goethean style, which still serves the community today. Beginning with the first volume of The Christian Community magazine, a wealth of essays by Hermann Fackler has appeared, reflecting the breadth of his education and interests. He also published articles in other journals and newspapers, such as Die Kommenden, Blätter für Anthroposophie, Entscheidung, Die Drei, Die Tat, and others. He also wrote poetry and painted. As a lecturer, however, he was less prominent. He worked in silence through many visits and conversations and appeared outwardly closed.

However, he met people with constant friendliness and kindness. Perhaps his quiet manner was also due to his suffering from his ear. Fully aware of this, he continued to work spiritually until he was very old – he translated St Augustine – before ending his final years on July 19, 1978, in the Haus Morgenstern nursing home in Stuttgart.

MEMORANDUM

I, the undersigned, born in 1886 and after eight semesters of theological and philosophical studies and active since 1909 in the service of the Protestant Regional Church of Baden, see myself compelled, after conscientious self-examination, to make the following declaration: I became aware of the anthroposophical movement in 1920. After initially reading a few critical writings and systematic presentations of anthroposophy, I soon began to study Dr. Steiner’s writings myself, as far as they were available to me through the book trade. Soon seized by this study, I spent every hour that my ministry allowed me with it. I visited the Goetheanum several times to gain a personal impression of spiritual science and its building in Dornach. So it was with joy that I accepted an invitation to take part in the religious course in Dornach, which took place there from September 26 to October 10 last year under the direction of Dr. Steiner. The impressions I received from what I heard there, as well as in personal contact with the participants in the course, were so profound that even then, the decision matured in me to adjust my life to the new movement, and I signed the pledges made in Dornach. Soon after completing the Dornach course, I was accepted into the Anthroposophical Society, so that Dr. Steiner’s esoteric lecture cycles now became accessible to me, at least in part. The study of these cycles, especially the cycle on the Gospel of John, the inner processing of what I had received in Dornach, the daily practice of meditation, all advanced me inwardly to such an extent that I now feel inwardly impelled to make the following solemn and binding declaration: I am ready and determined to apply for my release from the pastoral ministry as soon as accommodations are available for my family and me in the sphere of activity I have already envisaged, in order then to place myself entirely at the service of the anthroposophical religious movement and to serve the spread of this movement with all my strength. I would gratefully welcome it if Dr. Steiner could give a preparatory course to those who are ready for this life’s work, in which all that is connected with this work would be discussed.

Badisch Rheinfelden, February 20, 1922

Hermann Fackler

June 20,1879, Schweinfurt – January 19, 1960, Wiesbaden

From Die Gründer der Christengemeinschaft: Ein Schicksalsnetz, by Rudolf Gädeke

Heinrich Rittelmeyer was born on June 20,1879, in Schweinfurt. His childhood was marked by illness and physical weakness. Only when he grew up did he become stronger and reach a ripe old age. In the weak child, there lived a strong, irascible soul, which repeatedly flared up until the boy attacked an adult with a knife. This experience frightened him so much that he decided to fight the anger with the power of Christ. For years he struggled in prayer until he had conquered his temper. At thirteen, he told his father: “I want to be a pastor.”

But the confirmand already got into difficulties because he had to profess a faith that would bind him for life. When, in the same year, his brother Friedrich, who was seven years older, traveled home from his intermediate semesters in Berlin and had conversations with the confirmand, further uncertainties arose; years of doubt followed. Yes, Heinrich Rittelmeyer felt himself to be a ‘heretic.’ But he was quite sure: “God is a reality, and the divinity of Christ is a reality because they had brought about the change in my temperament.”

At about eighteen, the student gave a lecture on “Parzival and the Grail.” At twenty-one, he passed his Abitur at the Gymnasium and began studying theology in Erlangen. The course lasted eight semesters, three of which were completed in Berlin. Like his brother, Heinrich Rittelmeyer belonged to the Uttenruchia fraternity. He passed his first examination in 1902 as the third best student and was appointed to the preacher’s seminary in Munich for two years. There he had to preach sermons and give religious instruction in the city and its surroundings.

In 1904, Heinrich Rittelmeyer became a private teacher with the dean in Kitzingen. He gave religious instruction and experienced in a drastic way the untruthfulness with which funeral addresses were given. His difficulties became so great that in 1905 he applied for a leave of absence from the Bavarian church ministry, which was dominated by dogmatism.

From spring to Christmas 1905, he taught at the Protestant Pädagogicum in Godesberg on the Rhine. In addition, he attended lectures in German studies and philosophy in Bonn. The liberal theologian Martin Rade, editor of the journal Die christliche Welt [The Christian World], then found him a position as city vicar in Gotha. There was a free working atmosphere among the very diverse pastors. He was able to pass the Second Theological Examination in 1906 and the philosophical examination at the University of Jena at the end of 1907. Both were not easy to master, as they had to be done in addition to his abundant work at the teacher’s seminary in Gotha. His work as an educator in the subjects of religion, German, and history over eleven years, from 1908 to 1919, filled him completely; it shaped many young people for life.

In Godesberg, Heinrich Rittelmeyer and Änne Kottmann (1884-1967), who had been governess in a German family in Greece for over three years from 1905, became engaged. In April 1908, they celebrated their wedding in Gotha. Two adopted sons grew up in the family. Diverse activities among the educated of the city kept him busy in addition to his teaching activities. He eventually became chairman of the German ‘Sprachverein’ [Language Society]. He now planned to acquire a doctorate in philosophy in Jena. However, he had to abandon this plan when health difficulties made the necessary journeys to the university city (in addition to his work as a teacher) impossible.

About once or twice a year, it was possible to talk personally with the elder brother Friedrich. The latter had become acquainted with anthroposophy in 1910 in Nuremberg through Michael Bauer and had met Rudolf Steiner personally in 1911 in Munich at the last lecture in the series “Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit.” He told Heinrich about this afterward. It was not until five years later, in 1916, that Heinrich asked what he should read. The answer was: How to Know Higher Worlds. In spring 1917, Friedrich Rittelmeyer was already working in Berlin when his brother visited him there. A public, so-called Architects’ House Lecture by Rudolf Steiner was announced: “Beyond the Senses and Beyond the Soul” (March 31, 1917, GA 66). Heinrich was the first to hear this lecture. Friedrich then offered him the printed lecture cycles to read, which were still inaccessible to non-members at that time.

Heinrich not only studied them thoroughly on an ongoing basis, but he also excerpted them stenographically, thus acquiring a solid basic knowledge of anthroposophy. Heinrich Rittelmeyer used his understanding of anthroposophy to help a former pupil who had returned from the war with a serious wound and was drawn to spiritualism by questions about the meaning of life. Heinrich intimated to him that anthroposophy was the only sensible thing to do in this situation. To his surprise, this student became a member of the Anthroposophical Society before himself.

Heinrich Rittelmeyer, who had a special relationship with Luther from childhood and had found his personal access to Christ through Lutheranism, gave a lecture in the four hundredth commemorative year of the Reformation, 1917, on Luther’s birthday, which he also had published in print, titled: “Luther, the Prophet of the New Germany.”

In April 1919, Heinrich Rittelmeyer took over the position of vice-principal in the Herford teacher training college. Because of his special interest in Germanic mythology, he applied to the Westphalian Minister of Culture to go to the area where the memory of Germanic history was alive. His professional responsibilities in Herford became even greater.

In the field of anthroposophy, he had now gained so much confidence that he was able to become a member of the Society and the branch in Bielefeld in 1920. From 1921 onward, he publicly advocated for Rudolf Steiner in lectures. From such a lecture on June 28, 1921, came the writing: Was will Dr. Rudolf Steiner? [What does Dr. Rudolf Steiner Want?], which appeared in at least six editions.

The years 1920 and 1921 also enabled him to have two conversations with Rudolf Steiner, which mainly dealt with meditation. In the meantime, Heinrich Rittelmeyer had changed from a person who prayed intensively from his youth, and indeed prayed for many other people throughout his life, to a person who now also meditated energetically. He received many impressions, but he did not like to talk about them. Out of Heinrich Rittelmeyer’s conversations with Rudolf Steiner it is important to note that Steiner’s indication that Luther and Raphael were in Rome at the same time but did not meet in person remained with him for the rest of his life.

He was a particularly quiet and, in a way, sober person in addition to being a teacher.

Now the time was approaching when he learned of the preparations for the founding of The Christian Community. In the spring of 1922, he had decided to place his life in their service, and so he was ordained priest by his brother on September 16, 1922, in Dornach. At the age of forty-three, he was already one of the older ones.

Without his family, who remained in Herford, he founded the three congregations in Karlsruhe, Mannheim, and Heidelberg in the twenty-five months from October 1922 to November 1924.

After working in the twin congregations of Mannheim-Heidelberg and Herford-Bielefeld, he continued his work in Wiesbaden Mainz starting in 1935.

After the banning of The Christian Community on June 9, 1941, Heinrich Rittelmeyer was arrested together with Fritz Blattmann by the Gestapo in Darmstadt on June 12. SS men indiscriminately dragged laundry baskets full of books and manuscripts (even the bride’s letters) from the flat; under threat of punishment, the parents were forbidden to inform their son in the field of this action. After his release from prison on  August 16, 1941, friends found him a job at the Erdal-Werke in Mainz with the task of writing about the historical development of the shoe and its care. After the total bombing in October 1944, Heinrich Rittelmeyer lived with friends in the Taunus until June 1945. Then, after the re-establishment of the Wiesbaden congregation (1945), he worked there until his death on January 19, 1960. After twenty-two years, he followed his brother, under whose importance he had suffered throughout his life, into the spiritual world.

An important teacher of his students, a praying pastor who accompanied all the people of his congregation daily in his consciousness, he also included the deceased in his prayers daily with the help of a little book in which he had entered hundreds of names. He was a humble, faithful minister in the performance of the sacraments, a courageous advocate of anthroposophy, and a quiet meditator: that was Heinrich Rittelmeyer. He rightly wore the ring of the archpriest (see also August Pauli and Rudolf von Koschützki).