HOW THIS PUBLICATION CAME ABOUT
Second
American English Edition
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n Whitsuntide May 12, 848, Parzival succeeded his uncle Anfortas as
Grail King in Munsalvaesche Castle situated on the Hornichopf Hill in the
Hermitage of Arlesheim, a picturesque village near Basle, Switzerland. This may
certainly appear to be one of the most sensational findings of this research
report that was originally published back in 1974 by the Goetheanum, School
for Spiritual Science in the neighbouring village of Dornach, Switzerland
under the title Wolfram von Eschenbach und die Wirklichkeit des Grals
(Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail). And indeed, among the
anthroposophical community in and around the international headquarters of the
General Anthroposophical Society, it caused a veritable, albeit short-lived
sensation. For did this book not bring the whole medieval romance of Parzival
and the Grail down to earth, so to speak?
But then, just as the general
enthusiasm and praise for this work was at its height, a devastating review by
the well-known anthroposophical historian Christoph Lindenberg appeared
purporting to show that this book was not only way “beyond truth and reality”,
but also questioning the integrity of its author. This official denouncement by someone considered a leading
authority in the field quickly dampened and dispelled the initial enthusiasm
with which the book was received, especially by those who had not really
studied it. The sincere hopes expressed by the then president of the General
Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Grosse, in his foreword to this remarkable
book that it might initiate a serious scientific discussion came to naught;
Grosse’s immediate successor in his office, the late Manfred Schmidt-Brabant
appeared to take the side of Lindenberg by, among other things, drawing the
attention away from the Arlesheim Hermitage to Santiago de Compostella in
present-day Spain as the central Grail area, and consequently all discussion in
the ‘official’ anthroposophical media concerning this startling new work came
to an abrupt halt. The publication by the Goetheanum of the two remaining works
in Werner Greub’s trilogy, which were announced as forthcoming in the first
volume, was held back until the day of the author’s death on May 12, 1997, when
the rights to his literary estate, excluding this present volume, were passed
on to his family.
This in a nutshell is the
‘official’ story of a book that was initially published by the Goetheanum*, and subsequently all but ignored, if
not suppressed; one notable exception being the fact that in the year 2000 the
Goetheanum Press finally granted the Willehalm Institute in
The Willehalm
Institute
The above mentioned events and those leading up to this publication may
themselves lay some claim to being a future footnote to the continuing history
of the Grail. They form at least an episode on how the news was gradually
spread to the English-speaking world that Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Grail sites have been found. With regard to this
translation, the footnote begins with the founding of the Willehalm Institute for Anthroposophy as Grail Research, Royal Art and
Social Organics under the name Eremos
Institut für Gralsforschung in 1985 in Arlesheim. This was in connection
with an exhibition on the historic Arlesheim Hermitage as an English Garden
during which for the first time aspects of the work of Werner Greub relating to
this ancient Celtic sacred landscape at the foot of the Jura Mountains were
presented to the general public in the form of a text The Arlesheim Hermitage as Grail Landscape (see appendix III) as
well as guided tours of the Hermitage and evening discussions with Werner Greub
in the local museum Trotte. The
original name of the Institute, Eremos,
Old-Greek for hermit, was chosen in connection with the Hermitage. Its aim was
and is to further Grail research in general and the work of Werner Greub in
particular, and thereby protect and foster the spiritual heritage of the
Arlesheim Hermitage in light of the corroboration by Werner Greub of Rudolf
Steiner’s identification of this sacred site as the actual place where Parzival
in the 9th century had his decisive meetings with his niece Sigune
and his uncle Trevrizent, both of whom lived in seclusion as hermits not far
from the Grail Palace Munsalvaesche.
After the close of this six-months long
lasting exhibition, which was well received by the national Swiss press, the
Institute, due to lack of local support, left the Hermitage behind and moved
its base to Amsterdam, Netherlands where, in order to align itself with the
original founder of the House of Orange – not to be confused with the later
William the Silent – it changed its name from Eremos to Willehalm. Willehalm is
the leading figure of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s epic poem by that name, who in
the following pages of this research report appears as none other than the
mysterious master or singer Kyot the Provençal, the source for Wolfram’s Grail
‘romance’ Parzival. Historically, Willehalm is known as the Frankish Count
William of
Willehalm-Kyot
In
1991, after having gained the implicit permission from the author, the
Institute – now finally settled somehow in Amsterdam – published in manuscript
form the second volume entitled Willehalm-Kyot/ Der
Gewährsmann Wolframs von Eschenbach
(Willehalm-Kyot/ Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Source) of Greub’s projected trilogy based on his
finding that Willehalm as master Kyot is the historical source for Wolfram’s
works. This second volume, which is
carried by the Goetheanum bookstore in Dornach, contains a documented foreword
by the publisher on the dramatic background of this edition that, as already
mentioned, was originally announced as forthcoming in 1974 by the Goetheanum
Publishers, but then, due to internal struggle and strife, never did appear
there. Among the documents in this foreword is a motion submitted to the General Assembly of the General
Anthroposophical Society in Dornach in 1986 requesting the Executive-Council,
as the ones ultimately responsible for the
publication policy of the Goetheanum Press, to finally inform the members why
publication of Greub’s two remaining volumes was being withheld for so long. The motivation to this request to the
Executive-Council, who failed to give a satisfactory answer, included a letter
from the noted writer and researcher Count Adalbert von Keyserlingk, son of the
Count at whose estate Rudolf Steiner in 1924 held his course on biological-dynamic
agriculture. In this letter, the Count called Greub’s work “Ein Ereignis für
die gesamte Gralsforschung” (an important event for Grail research as a whole).
A translation of the letter can be read in appendix IV.
Also included in the foreword were references
to two favourable reviews on How the Grail Sites Were Found from
non-anthroposophical journals. One was published in 1975 in a French journal
established by Déodat Rocher on the Cathars Cahiers
D’études Cathares, Nr 68. Entitled “À propos Guillaume d’Orange”, its
writer, Madame S. Hannedouche wryly noted: “The book has only one fault, it is
written in German.” The other review appeared in the Swiss Zurich Journal Die Literarische Tat on
Based
on the historic source of Wolfram’s Parzival and the dating of
Parzival’s Grail kingship by means of planetary calculations, these findings
provide a great number of other well-founded dates as well as the settings of
the history of the Grail that Wolfram narrates. Such a provocation cannot be
ignored by a science that until now has merely based itself on assumptions.
Werner Greub’s findings must be thoroughly examined by German and Roman
scholars, experts in Celtic Studies, geographers, geologists, astronomers and
archaeologists. It would be worth their while. The result of Greub’s research
is to regard Wolfram primarily as a chronicler. It sets the Grail history back
into the 9th century, and dates and localizes all the events. Kyot
the Provençal turns out to be the author of the epic poems translated by Wolfram
into Middle High German. He (Kyot) is a contemporary to, eyewitness of and
actor in the events. Greub even succeeds in answering the question as to why
the source, Kyot the well-known master,
is no longer known, and he is furthermore in a position to recognize the triple
conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Pisces of the Grail
year 848 as the star of the Three Kings above the cradle of the year 7 B.C. All
this sounds as fabulous as it is. A real effort is required. May one take this
notice, which cannot begin to repeat the rich and varied chains of evidence and
their triangulation, as a challenge to joint research that should not first and
foremost deal with the polemics, but advance the subject at hand.
This second volume also contains
a ground plan and description of the Grail castle Munsalvaesche derived from
the original Middle High German text of Wolfram’s Parzival, which can be
consulted here in appendix II.
Willehalm in The
In the meantime, connections were made with family and
friends in
The Translator’s Note to this publication
entitled Wolfram’s Grail Astronomy, published by Paul Platt from Star
Cross Press in
With
the private pre-publication of these chapters on the Grail astronomy in Wolfram
von Eschenbach from the work by Werner Greub (1909-1997) for the American
conference on Astrosophy and the Grail to be held in Boulder, Colorado in June
1999, the scientific discussion about this exciting, even ground-breaking new
research that Rudolf Grosse, the then President of the General Anthroposophical
Society, anticipated in his introduction written in 1974, seems finally to
enter a second decisive phase. For since Lindenberg wrote his scathing review
entitled Beyond Truth and Reality of
Greub’s first book Wolfram von Eschenbach
and the Reality of the Grail (translated later as How The Grail Sites Were Found, ed.) in the organ of the Anthroposophical
Society in Germany Die Drei
(December 1974) – Two Misleading Paths
for Grail Seekers (the other ‘false’ one being the book Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft)
all ‘official’ discussion came to an abrupt halt and the publication by the
Goetheanum of the two remaining volumes in Greub’s trilogy, which were
announced as forthcoming in the first work, was held back until the present
day.
This is not the place to completely counter this criticism, because for
one thing it is directed primarily against the geographical aspects of the
first tome by Greub, which is not (yet) available in translation. Suffice it to
say however, that this dramatic turn of events caused quite a stir, because
here the Goetheanum, home of anthroposophy that according to Rudolf Steiner can
also be called science of the Grail, was after all accused of nothing else than
publishing an anti-Grail work!
From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s
Anthroposophy
Soon however, as word spread in America about
the devastating criticism by Lindenberg, it did become necessary to counter it,
because it threatened to do the same thing in the New World as it already had
in the Old, namely to prevent potential readers from studying this book
themselves and making up their own minds as to its merits. It had already
caused some anxiety to the publishers of Wolfram’s Grail Astronomy who,
not being able to read German, were unable to judge the matter for themselves.
Therefore, it was decided to a write a thorough step-by-step rebuttal of
Lindenberg’s review, include it in the appendix to Werner Greub’s third volume From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s
Anthroposophy and present it
during the said conference in
Towards a Willehalm Society
For Grail Research, Royal Art and Social Organics
In the beginning of this introduction, we referred to the
apparently sensational finding that Parzival was crowned King of the Grail
during a Christian mystery play enacted at the Grail castle on the Hornichopf
Hill in Arlesheim during Whitsuntide 848. Indeed, apparently sensational,
because put in this way it expresses only the apparent, external side of this
eminently spiritual event. In the sense of this book as elaborated towards the
end of the magnificent chapter on Wolfram’s Astronomy, indeed in the highly
contemporary sense of Wolfram’s Parzival, the real marvel is,
paraphrased in the incredulous words of Trevrizent (P. 798): the
circumstance that Parzival won the Grail by having God the Father enforce the
Holy Trinity to fulfil his [Parzival’s] wishes! That is the underlying significance of what Werner Greub calls
the Star of Munsalvaesche, the repetition of the Star of Bethlehem, over
the Arlesheim Hermitage skies at Whitsuntide in the year 848. This means
nothing less than that Parzival overcame the age-old hereditary principle, the
bloodline of the first Adam if you will, replacing it with a new spiritual
principle of the second Adam. He was, after all, not destined by birthright
to become Grail King (Grail Knight yes, but not Grail King), but nevertheless
won the Grail through his own incessant striving for it. He was the
first one, as it were, to enact Rudolf Steiner’s most important and lasting
work The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom). This is what so
amazed Trevrizent, calling it the greatest miracle ever and then coming quickly
with the pertinent advice to practice humility, for from this newly gained
spiritual stature, arrogance looms in the wings. Our Willehalm, as spiritus
rector of the Grail events and, according to Greub, Parzival’s teacher for a
year and a half must have played a leading role in preparing him for this Grail
coronation. This new Parzival paradigm points at the same time to a new concept
of knighthood, indeed kingship, through a new Royal Art that we wish, in
continuation of Rudolf Steiner and Herbert Witzenmann, to call Social
Organics – also known as the noble, but difficult art and science of
realizing the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism.
This new principle of civilization is, after all, destined to transform and
supersede the more than 2000-year-old democratic principle. Within eyesight of
the Arlesheim Hermitage, this new principle was instituted in an archetypal way
through the founding anew of the Anthroposophical Society during the so-called
Christmas Conference of 1923 by Rudolf Steiner and some 800 anthroposophists,
who had come from the four corners of the world to assemble in the Carpenter
Shop – the first Goetheanum had been burned down and reduced to ashes – on a historic hill in Dornach. This can be
seen as nothing less than a collective renewal of the bond between heaven and earth,
dear Horatio (Hamlet), originally established individually by Christ
during the mystery of Golgotha in Palestine that, even though much denied and
besieged from within and without, can be duplicated, multiplied as it were, by
establishing a living copy of it in one’s own (professional) practice and
(smaller or greater) circle of friends and associates.
This is
not the proper context to elaborate on this new principle of civilization, no
matter how significant it may be. Much more than giving a timely reminder of it
is not possible here. However, we did indeed want to at least give some idea
how the Grail can be quested in the 21st century and refer the
interested reader to other spiritual scientific study material in English made
available by the Willehalm Institute, such as The Principles of the
Anthroposophical Society as a Basis of Life and Path of Training and The
Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics both by Herbert Witzenmann
(1906-1988), former member of the Executive-council of the General
Anthroposophical Society.* This
publication must be seen in the context of the previous ones put out by the
Institute, and we beg potential critics who may find this reference to social
organics as a Grail impulse a little on the shallow side, to respectfully take
this into consideration.
How The Grail Sites Were Found – Prospects And
Acknowledgments
We now return to the title of this publication on a more personal note.
It was indirectly suggested by the author Werner Greub himself when, towards
the close of the afore-mentioned exhibition on the Arlesheim Hermitage in 1985,
he handed us a chapter from his third volume for publication as a guide book to
the Grail sites in this old English Garden. This particular chapter on the
Hermitage has not yet seen the light of day in the German original, but is
included in our English translation of the third volume, which is only
available directly from the Institute as private study material, since we have
not yet acquired the translation rights from the Werner Greub Literary Estate.
In the course of translating this volume, the idea then arose to use this title
for this current publication with its German title as the subtitle. This first (and
second) edition contains no bibliography and index of place names. We hope to
make this up in a later edition. In the notes at the end, there is a note on
the books used for the translations of Wolfram’s texts.
With an expression of many thanks to all those who aided
us in one way or another, such as Jan Pohl from the Goetheanum Library in
Dornach and Herman Boswijk from the Rudolf Steiner Library in Den Haag, Holland
and of course Joseph Morel from the Goetheanum Press for granting us the translation
rights, we close this introduction on the eve of a fourth visit to Canada and
the USA. As reading material for the flight we have already laid aside our copy
of Holy Grail Across the Atlantic – The Secret History of Canadian Discovery
and Exploitation by M. Bradley in order to connect with the local lore.
Upon arriving in Montreal, our old homing ground in the sixties, we hope to
further present and promote this present volume, including the setting up of an
international, interdisciplinary research team to carry out further research on
the sites discovered by Werner Greub, especially on the Hornichopf in Arlesheim
and also on those sites suggested by him in Africa that are waiting to be
discovered. (The Dutch author D. Koelman, in his book Foenix en Graal
has already made some interesting claims there. Also, the young German research
pair Katharina and Konrad DeGand is treading new historical, geographical and
karmic/spiritual grounds in the wake of Werner Greub’s research.) For as Greub
himself states, only (but not exclusively) archaeological research will
ultimately help prove to a sceptical world the reality of the Grail as narrated
by his beloved poet-historian Wolfram von Eschenbach and the enigmatic Master
Kyot as historic forerunners of Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy or science of
the Grail.
Amsterdam, Whitsuntide 2001 Robert
Jan Kelder
Willehalm Institute for Anthroposophy as
Grail Research, Royal Art and Social Organics
Postscript: The introduction to the improved second edition in
letter-size was, apart from the different format, similar to the first except
that at the end the following box was inserted. The conditions for ordering this edition mentioned in this text no
longer apply; for further particulars see appendix VII on the Willehalm
Institute and its publications.
Further Acknowledgments and Note On The Availability Of
This Second Edition
This
second, proofread and revised edition was published in Montreal, Canada with the
aid of a grant from the Johannes Foundation in the Netherlands and computer and
printing assistance from Guy Agoston of Aston Laser Connections in this city,
where on June 28 the first edition of this translation was presented during a
lecture by the translator to members of the local Anthroposophical Society –
exactly three years, as it turned out to be, after a slide-show on the same
subject. Thanks also go to my brothers Johannes and Dirk as well as to my
parents in
An extended errata version for
this second edition, done with the kind and keen help of Paul Platt in Sheffield
(MA) was printed by the Willehalm Institute Press in the Great Barrington area
(MA) in August 2001.
* A second facsimile
hardcover edition was published in 1996. A French and Dutch translation is
forthcoming.
* See Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New
Grail Community a report published by the Willehalm Institute (4th
ed.) on two working visits to America and Canada between 1997 and 1999 at the
invitation of the Anthroposophical Societies, respectively the Social Science
Section of the Goetheanum in America to give slide shows and lectures on the
work of Werner Greub and Herbert Witzenmann. On the work of the latter, see
Appendix VII.
* Herbert Witzenmann
had no part in the actions and decisions by his fellow Executive-council
members mentioned earlier with regard to the work of Werner Greub. This is
because since 1974 he was formally on leave from all the daily meetings of the
council and thereby not co-responsible for any decisions flowing out of these
meetings. This contractual arrangement was made by him because of
irreconcilable differences of opinion between him and the other Council members
on the nature of the Anthroposophical Society and the Goetheanum, School for
Spiritual Science.