Herbert Witzenmann
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Herbert Witzenmann (16 February 1905 in Pforzheim? - 24 September 1988 in Heidelberg, Germany) was a German philosopher and Anthroposophist.
Witzenmann received his decisive study and work impulses through personal conversations with Rudolf Steiner.
In the 1930's Witzenmann studied with Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg. His thesis On the Concept of Work According to Nietzsche and Hegel could, however, no longer be accepted because of Jasper's forced exile under the National Socialists. Evidence for Jasper`s acceptance of Witzenmann's promotion candidacy has not been presented. Witzenmann claimed in public that his dissertation manuscript was destroyed by fire due to phospor bombings of Pforzheim by U.S. airplanes in World War II.
After mechanical engineering studies, Witzenmann was active as an industrialist in Pforzheim for many years. He was born into a wealthy family and was employed by its firm. Witzenmann expressed his regret that he had refused to attend lunch held at his family home by his father for Adolf Hitler, who sought financial support for his political ambitions. Witzenmann had refused to attend out of protest against Hitler. In retrospect, Witzenmann regretted not having met Hitler because of the latter's later most destructive historical role.
In 1963 Witzenmann was "co-opted" as a member by the Executive Committee of the General Anthroposophical Society. Several years later Witzenmann was de facto fired, because he refused to accept a new policy advocated by the majority of this Committee regarding the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung. His door key literally no longer fit the lock to his office at the Goetheanum after being changed after he walked out of an annual General Assembly meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in protest. Thus Witzenmann`s leadership of two Sections of the Free High School for Spiritual Science - Social Science, Spiritual Striving of Youth - were no longer recognized by this majority Committee. Thus in 1973 he founded for the latter section the "Seminar for the free Striving of Youth, Art and Social Order" in Dornach, Switzerland. This organisation offered various courses and claimed to be a training and study centre based upon Rudolf Steiner's Spiritual Science.
Formed through independent research Witzenmann wrote, in alleged scientific explanation, numerous articles claiming to present the Anthroposophical position concerning the theory of knowledge for present-day questions. For example, in a brochure on Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz, Witzenmann claims Descartes did not include "ergo" in his formulation cogito sum, but offers no proof. His written work appears in the Gideon Spicker Verlag, Dornach, and Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart. A selection of his work has been translated into English; it may be possible to still obtain this through the Rudolf Steiner College Bookstore. His work (along with that of Georg Kühlewind, Friedemann Schwarzkopf, and Massimo Scaligero) is believed by some to be among the most significant in furthering Rudolf Steiner's work in The Philosophy of Freedom, and had considerable influence on Jonael Schickler. Schwarzkopf attended several weekend conferences at which Witzenmann was featured as the main speaker. It is not known if Massimo Scaligero had any contact with Witzenmann, but Kühlewind replied to an inquiry by a student several years ago at a lecture given to a curative education training school in Switzerland that he had never read Witzenmann.
Witzenmann`s interpretation of Steiner`s epistemology has been attacked as fundamentally wrong by Michael Muschalle [1].
