Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner
PLAYGerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner traces Jacob Böhme’s life, illuminations and influence on German Idealism, Russian religious thought and depth psychology, before examining the Ungrund, the seven qualities, embodied spirit, evil, free will and redemption. A radio essay written and read for ORF’s Salzburger Nachtstudio, broadcast on 22 October 1975.
Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner — 1 recording in the archive.
Related reading: Vom Geist Europas, Band 2 by Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner.
Related reading: Aurora by Jakob Böhme.
The low worktable, the low stool, the water-filled globe that catches the light of the little oil lamp and reflects it back more brightly; the sharp smell of leather and pitch must necessarily leave a lasting impression on human nature, and indeed they do so powerfully. The light falling through the suspended glass globe onto the worktable is a realm of fantastic spirits. During the thoughtful work it fills the imagination with strange shapes and images, lending thoughts a colouring that no other lamp, patented or otherwise, could impart. Ever deeper we gaze into the shining globe, and in the glass we see the universe in all its forms and natures. We pass freely through the gates of every heaven and recognise them with all their stars and elements. The highest intimations dawn upon us, and we write them down while Pastor Primarius Richter, from his pulpit, incites the mob against us and the bailiff of Görlitz, who is to take us to prison, stands outside the door. We see so much in the shining globe, upon which the poor lamp casts its meagre light, that we can scarcely put what we have seen on paper. Nevertheless, beneath the completed manuscript we may write: written through divine illumination by Jacob Böhme, otherwise called Teutonicus. Thus Wilhelm Raabe writes in his novel The Hunger Pastor about the Silesian cobbler Jacob Böhme, who threw the pastors of his time into confusion and alarm. From his grandfather's rich library in Holzminden, Raabe possessed Böhme's The Threefold Life of Man, published in the Amsterdam collected edition of 1682. This was the edition also used by the Romantics, above all Tieck, Novalis, Baader and Johann Wilhelm Ritter. In the fifth section of the first chapter of his work on the threefold life of man, Böhme says: In the life of our soul we find a still greater hunger for another, higher and better life, for the highest good, which is called divine life. It is not unlikely that this passage became the seed of Raabe's Hunger Pastor, that novel about the spiritual hunger of the human heart. Raabe's contemporaries included Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Through both Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach they were at least superficially acquainted with the work of the Baroque mystic and theosopher. A dark but profound soul; most of it, however, requires dreadful study if one is to understand anything of…