Theo Faiss
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theodor Alberto Faiss | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 1, 1907 São Paulo or Porto Alegre, Brazil |
| Died | October 7, 1914 (aged 7) Dornach |
| Cause of death | Overturning of horse wagon |
| Monuments | In Memory of Theo Faiss |
| Movement | Anthroposophy |
| Parent(s) | Albert and Ida Faiss |
Theodor Alberto Faiss (1 July 1907 – 7 October 1914) was a boy whose death in Dornach, at the age of seven, was frequently invoked by the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner as having spiritual significance. A well-liked child who frequently ran errands, Faiss was killed when, picking up groceries for Steiner's housekeeper, a horse-drawn wagon overturned on him. In at least fifteen speeches and lectures thereafter, Steiner invoked Faiss's death as what he termed a karmically voluntary sacrifice that provided a protective spiritual sheath for the Goetheanum, the headquarters of the anthroposophical movement.
Born in Brazil to German expats who ran a nursery there, Faiss left for Europe when he was around four, his family having decided to seek their return; they soon reconnected with Steiner, whom they had known previously, and purchased another nursery next to the Goetheanum. When his father was called up to fight for Germany in the First World War, Faiss declared that "Now that our father has been called away, I must work especially hard and diligently so I can be a support for my mother".[1]
Steiner eulogized Faiss at his funeral, and—after the elder Faiss died two months later in a hospital—did the same for the father. In 1921, the English sculptor Edith Maryon, a close collaborator of Steiner, created a relief titled In Memory of Theo Faiss. These, wrote Maryon's biographer Rex Raab, constitute the enduring memorials to Faiss.
Theodor Alberto Faiss was born in São Paulo or Porto Alegre, Brazil on 1 July 1907.[2][3][4] He was the first of four children born to Albert and Ida Faiss; Maria Magdalena ("Magda," b. 1909), Arno (b. 1911), and Hansi (b. March 1914) would follow.[5][2][4] They had lived in Stuttgart in 1904, and knew Rudolf Steiner from that time.[2] Albert Faiss was deeply interested in theosophy, and Ida Faiss likewise joined these circles; Albert's father did not approve, however, which may have been one of the reasons for moving to Brazil.[6] They ran a nursery in southern Brazil from 1905 to 1911, before giving up and moving back to Europe.[3][2] Arno was born during the return trip.[7]
The months after the return to Europe were unsettled.[3] Albert Faiss stayed with Theo in Feuerbach, near Stuttgart, where he worked in the family's business; Ida Faiss spent much of her time with her brother's family in Oldenburg.[3] At some point, Albert Faiss reconnected with the circle of acquaintances connected with Steiner.[8] In late 1911 or early 1912 the family moved to Arlesheim, and in the first half of 1913 to Dornach in order to be near an anthroposophical institute.[2][8] They continued to farm a plot of land in Arlesheim, where Theo Faiss went to school.[8] In October 1913, they purchased the nursery directly below the grounds of the Goetheanum.[8][2]
By October 1914, Faiss—then seven years old—was well liked and considered to be responsible.[2] His father Albert had been called up to fight for Germany,[9] prompting the younger Faiss to respond that "Now that our father has been called away, I must work especially hard and diligently so I can be a support for my mother".[G 1][1] He had a small wooden cart with which he would sometimes run errands, such as carrying vegetables and flowers, and Steiner himself would sometimes enlist his help.[2][7] Also by October, Albert Faiss was either in a military hospital or still at the front, having been slightly wounded by shrapnel there in late September;[7][2][11] his wife was informed of the injury by telegram on 5 October.[12]
Death
On the afternoon of 7 October 1914, Steiner's housekeeper asked Faiss to pick up groceries from a canteen.[2][13] By dusk, however, he had not returned, and his mother began searching for him.[2] More and more neighbors soon joined the search, although Steiner, who was leading an evening program—a reading of poems by Christian Morgenstern, a speech, and a lecture—was not alerted until around 10 p.m.[2] They soon found that an overloaded wagon carrying the furniture of the artist Käthe Knetsch, who worked on the Goetheanum, had overturned near the canteen; its driver had unharnessed the horses, then walked to Basel.[2][14] Righting the wagon took until around midnight, and revealed the body of Faiss underneath.[2] In a letter that Faiss's mother wrote to his father on 9 October, she described the night:
It was a terrible night; at 12 o’clock his body was recovered. It was heartbreaking for everyone; everyone was on their feet, and no one found any rest that night. Dr. Steiner broke the news to me slowly and said that his great spirit had had no room in the small body; I should take comfort, for he had been too good for the earth; everyone, everyone had grown so fond of him, and they will all preserve him in eternal remembrance with his radiant little face. Fräulein von Sivers said that he will be a good support to us in the Building; now he will truly be able to come into his own, since he is free, for he had a great spirit which he could not put to use here in the physical world.[G 2][15]
Faiss's body was laid out in a corner of the canteen; Steiner visited daily, each time addressing Faiss as "You dear Sun-Boy, you".[G 3][16][17] Steiner offered a eulogy at the funeral, held on 10 October, and, that evening, gave the first of his five-part lecture series The Dornach Building as a Symbol.[G 4][16]
Albert Faiss, meanwhile, was given a week's leave at the end of the month to visit his family.[12] Upon his return to the field in the cold and wet autumn, he contracted pneumonia and rib inflammation; he was taken to the hospital in Konstanz on 18 December, although the post was unreliable and the family was not informed.[7][2][12] He died five days later, and Ida Faiss left on Christmas Eve to collect his coffin.[7][2] Steiner delivered a eulogy on 27 December, stating that the father was "now being welcomed by the soul of the precious child", with whom "we know your soul to be united now".[G 5][19]
Significance
Starting with his eulogy three days after the accident, Steiner repeatedly linked Faiss's death to the anthroposophical movement. The "shocking event",[G 6] he said then, highlighted "how karma and seemingly external coincidence are connected":[G 7] "When human lives are cut short; when people die prematurely; that is, without having experienced the worries and sorrows or the temptations of life; their souls then become forces in the spiritual world. They have a certain relationship to all human life on earth, and their task is to work on those human lives still on earth".[G 8][21] Steiner closed by reading a mantram adapted from one he read in honor of soldiers.[22][23][24]
| Mantram to Faiss[23] | Mantram to Faiss (original German)[22] | Mantram to soldiers[note 1] | Mantram to soldiers (Original German)[26] |
|---|---|---|---|
Spirit of his soul, active guardian, |
Geist seiner Seele, wirkender Wächter, |
Spirits of your souls, active guardians, |
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter, |
Similarly, during his evening lecture, Steiner spoke of "a remarkable experience of karma"[G 9] in which Faiss was "summoned back by spiritual powers",[G 10] and added that, however heartrending, "We see clearly that, in order to bring about the fulfillment of this karma, the wagon was led to that spot, and then the wagon was overturned so that the karma of that particular individual might be fulfilled".[G 11][29][30]
Steiner continued to invoke Faiss in later years, referring to him in at least fifteen speeches and lectures.[38][39][40][note 3] In remarks made in 1915, Steiner expounded upon Faiss's death, explaining it as a karmically voluntary sacrifice that provided a protective spiritual sheath for the Goetheanum, then still under construction.[71] In June, during the twelfth lecture from his fifteen-lecture series The Mystery of Death,[G 12] for example, Steiner declared that "since the death of little Theodor Faiss the work has been made possible for me through the mediating forces for inspirations that have been made available by this boy's etheric body which has been enveloping the building".[G 13][74] The building, he added, "has been enveloped to quite a wide extent by the enlarged etheric body of this child as by an aura".[G 14][75] Steiner made a drawing during the lecture, showing what he understood to be the boundaries of this "etheric aura".[G 15][37]
Fire
On the night of New Year's Eve 1922 and morning of New Year's Day 1923, the Goetheanum burned to the ground, possibly due to arson.[76] Anthroposophists have offered a variety of interpretations for why it was able to due so, despite the purported protection provided by Faiss. To Rex Raab, Faiss nevertheless "contributed through his sacrifice to the fact that the building, when it fell prey to the flames and dissolved into the Earth’s atmosphere, was able to 'sacrifice' itself in the right way, so as to form, from then on, a special protective sheath for the entire Earth".[G 16][71]
Judith von Halle, by contrast, explains the fire by stating that Faiss's protective sheath had come to an end in October 2021.[77][78] The interpretation relies on Steiner's belief that humans form and develop in seven-year cycles: forming an etheric body over the first seven years, an astral body from seven to fourteen, and the remainder of one's terrestrial being from fourteen to twenty-one.[79][80][81][82][83] To von Halle, Faiss's October 1914 death, shortly after his seventh birthday in July, meant that his etheric body had only just become fully formed.[79][80] In death, as it would have done in life, she states, Faiss's body continued to "age" through his astral cycle, during which time he offered protection to the Goetheanum.[84][80] When Faiss would have turned fourteen in October 1921, von Halle concludes that he passed to the next cycle, and the protection ended.[85][86][80][87]
Legacy
In 1921, Edith Maryon, an English sculptor and close collaborator of Steiner, created two versions of a relief titled In Memory of Theo Faiss.[88] Both depict a guardian-angel figure carrying the spiritual form of Faiss upwards.[88] The first version includes three additional figures at the bottom: Faiss (this time in physical rather than spiritual form), his mother, and a man variously interpreted as Faiss's father or Steiner.[88][89] In his 1993 biography of Maryon, Raab terms the work the "true monument"[G 17] to Faiss.[90] In light of what Raab writes was a strange omission of Faiss from anthroposophical texts, he also ascribes a documentary value to Maryon's work.[90]
More than 70 years after Faiss died, in 1987, the anthroposophist Lex Bos tracked down Faiss's surviving family and published a biography.[91][38] Most readers of the anthroposophical journal in which it was published, he wrote, though not all, were already familiar with the story.[92] To Raab, the biography constituted "the second monument" to Faiss.[G 18][38]
