Gustav Meyrink and the Rosicrucians

Author: Theodor Harmsen

In 1890 a significant turn of events changed the life of the struggling banker Gustav Meyer (1868-1932). Already before his bankruptcy and a brief span in a Prague prison Meyer had begun to occupy himself increasingly with theosophy, magic and occultism. [1] At the same time the young dandy began moving in artistic circles in Prague, and later also in Vienna and Munich. The literary career of Gustav Meyrink, as he now styled himself, was launched with the publication of a series of successful satirical and occult short stories for the well-known cultural-satirical journal Simplicissimus. Meyrink was much interested in the modern art scene, the dramatic arts, dance, music, pantomime, puppet theatre, wax museums and cinema and all these interests can be traced in the stories. Contemporary relations with artists and illustrators stem mostly from a year spent in Vienna (1904), when Meyrink worked as chief editor of Der liebe Augustin, a magazine filled with short stories, poems and art work similar to Simplicissimus. Contacts with artists who contributed to both periodicals lasted for a lifetime. Hugo Steiner-Prag illustrated Meyrink’s bestseller Der Golem with a now famous series of lithographs which were also published independently. Fritz Schwimbeck illustrated both Der Golem and Das grüne Gesicht and Emil Preetorius was responsible for most of Meyrink’s book designs published by Kurt Wolff Verlag, from Der Golem to Walpurgisnacht and the Gesammelte Werke. At the outset of his writing career Meyrink became friends with the artist Alfred Kubin, possibly through the author Oscar A.H. Schmitz who married Kubin’s sister and stimulated Meyrink to pursue an artistic career. Mutual artist friends inspired Meyrink to write stories incorporating some of their more remarkable character traits. Thus amongst others Alfred Kubin, Richard Teschner and Franz Sedlacek figure in several of Meyrink’s novels and stories. A number of Sedlacek’s fantastical paintings appear to have been inspired in turn by Meyrink’s stories. [2]

Though many beautifully illustrated editions of Meyrink’s novels appeared over the years, the two last novels, Der weiße Dominikaner and Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster, were not illustrated nor were they reprinted so often as his other works. Their book covers, however, do have interesting stories to tell. Crucial passages in the respective novels will illustrate the main argument of this essay that Meyrink superimposed his ideas about a Rosicrucian Order, at first developed for Der weiße Dominikaner, on the English magical tradition described in his last published novel Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. Meyrink’s Brotherhood was loosely modelled after the seventeenth-century fictional Brotherhood presented in the Fama Fraternitatis as well as the historical Order of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer of the late eighteenth century. Contemporary German as well as English modern theosophists and Rosicrucians were trying to find their roots in these movements as well.

As an editor and a translator, Meyrink published a series of magical works entitled “Romane und Bücher der Magie”. These neatly published little volumes were known also for their interesting cover designs by the Austrian artist and illustrator Erwin Tintner (1885-1957). The series was published by Rikola Verlag, the publishing house founded by the influential Austrian businessman Richard Kola in Vienna in 1920 with the idea to make modern works of fantastical literature available in affordable editions at a time afflicted by inflation and general economic malaise. This situation was to last through the next decade when the book trade more or less collapsed completely. Still, Kola’s publications included many interesting titles by such writers as Otto Soyka, Paul Busson, Leo Perutz and Karl Hans Strobl. The economic crisis in 1923-1924 is likely to have caused the demise of Meyrink’s series of magical books as well. Rikola Verlag was to survive until 1926 but liquidation followed in 1929.

The series edited by Meyrink was published in the early twenties after the publication of Der weiße Dominikaner (1921), one of the first books published by Rikola, again with a cover illustration by Tintner. The series comprised fictional works by Franz Spunda and Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875), and a study on Eliphas Levi by R.H. Laarss (Richard Hummel 1870-1938). Dhoula Bel, the Rosicrucian novel by P.B. Randolph (1922) may have influenced the writing of Der weiße Dominikaner, Meyrink’s first modern Rosicrucian novel. Even though he published his novel two years before the Dhoula Bel edition, Meyrink had long pursued his interest in Randolph and his works through the English occultist and Rosicrucian John Yarker (1833-1913), a member of S.R.I.A. and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Some ideas surrounding Randolph and his working with magical mirrors may also have gone into Meyrink’s novel Der Engel vom westlichen Fenster. The American Randolph as well as English members of S.R.I.A. and the Golden Dawn such as John Yarker and Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) have been regarded as occultists working in the Enochian magical tradition of the Renaissance magus John Dee, the subject of Meyrink’s last novel. [3]

Der weiße Dominikaner came out with two variant book covers. One depicts what looks like a Dominican monk spreading out his arms, while the other simply features the title, in German Gothic type. Erwin Tintner’s figurative design could, however, be seen to merge the image of the white-robed Dominican with that of the Rosicrucian brother, the initiated father of the main character Christopher Taubenschlag – the father in turn is conceived as a mirror image or symbol of the son. In the first instance, the novel’s white Dominican is (loosely) based on the legendary character of Raimund de Pennaforte, builder of the local church in the forgotten nameless town of the novel (identified as Wasserburg) who would finally return as the final Pope under the name “Flos florum”. The image also focuses on the troubled relationship between the Catholic Church and esoteric spirituality, the dominant theme of the novel. Rosicrucian elements in the novel have been traced by Eduard Frank and Ralf Reiter. [4] The revelatory image – presented in contradistinction to the legendary Pennaforte and the chaplain’s confusions about his significance – is that of the initiation into the Brotherhood of Christopher Taubenschlag, and it is this moment of initiation that is also hinted at in Tintner’s design.

The Rosicrucian image of the chain of connected Brethren of the Order is first presented in chapter seven, where it is combined with elements from Taoism, magic and alchemy. The Taoist and magical aspects of this complex image appear to be partly inspired by the Taoist studies of a leading nineteenth-century German orientalist scholar, August Pfizmaier:

Wer die Grenzscheide überschritten hat, der ist ein Glied in einer Kette geworden, – einer Kette, gebildet aus Unsichtbaren Händen, die einander nicht mehr loslassen bis ans Ende der Tage: er gehört hinfort einer Gemeinschaft an, in der jeder Einzelne eine nur für ihn bestimmte Mission hat. – Nicht sind auch nur Zwei in ihr die da einander gleich waren, so wie schon unter der Menschentieren der Erde nicht zwei sind, die dasselbe Schicksal hätten. Der Geist dieser Gemeinschaft durchdringt unsere ganze Erde: er ist ihr jederzeit allgegenwärtig er ist der Lebensgeist im großen Holunderbaum. Aus ihm sind die Religionen aller Zeiten und Völker entsprossen sie wandeln sich, aber er wandelt sich nie. Wer ein Wipfel geworden ist und die Wurzel ‚Ur’ bewusst in sich trägt, der tritt unbewusst in diese Gemeinschaft ein durch das Erleben des Mysteriums, das da heißt „die Lösung mit Leichnam und Schwert“. (Der weiße Dominikaner, Kapitel 7, „Das mennigrote Buch“, esp. p. 151)

The Meyrink collector and occultist Lambert Binder was one of the first commentators to discuss this Taoist image in his essay “Die Lösung der Leichname”. [5] For Meyrink, the Taoist way to spiritual enlightenment through schi kiai (die Lösung der Leichname) and kieu kiai (die Lösung der Schwerter) was a kind of transformation from the physical body to a spiritual body and this could be seen to parallel the physical-alchemical process of transmutation, guided the adept towards the Philosopher’s Stone and spiritual change. This theosophical-alchemical orientation was also dominant in the Rosicrucianism from the seventeenth century onwards. In Der weiße Dominikaner, in the chapter entitled “Einsamkeit”, the alchemical process is explained. Taubenschlag, looking for his Ophelia, turns to the author of the introduction. Taubenschlag, we are reminded, is not the character dreamed up by his “author” when he started writing his fictional tale, but an invisible entity (a symbol even, p. 11), a doubled spiritual guide or a metaphysical or divine aspect of the self that has taken over his narrative expressed in the diary of an invisible one (“Tagebuch eines Unsichtbaren”):

Das tiefste Geheimnis aller Geheimnisse und das verborgenste Rätsel aller Rätsel ist die alchemistische Verwandlung der – Form. Das sage ich dir, der du mir die Hand leihest, zum Danke dafür, daß du für mich schreibst! Der verborgene Weg zur Wiedergeburt im Geiste, von dem in der Bibel steht, ist eine Verwandlung des Körpers und nicht des Geistes. […] Die Formveränderung, die ich meine, wird für das äußere Auge erst sichtbar, wenn der alchemistische Prozess der Umwandlung seinem Ende zugeht; im Verborgenen nimmt er seinen Anfang: in den magnetischen Strömungen, die das Achsensystem des Körperbaues bestimmen, – die Denkart des Menschen, seine Neigungen und Triebe wandeln sich zuerst, ihnen folgt die Wandlung des Tuns und mit ihm die Verwandlung der Form, bis diese der Auferstehungsleib des Evangeliums wird (pp. 194-195).

In chapter 12, the crucial chapter on death and spiritual rebirth entitled “Jener muss wachsen, ich aber schwinden”, his dying father tells Christopher of the secret order but not without warning him about the dangers of occultist and magical entities (pp. 240-241):

Er faßte mich an der Hand und verflocht seine Finger auf eine besondere Weise mit den meinigen. „Auf diese Art“, setzte er leise hinzu, und ich hörte, daß sein Atem wieder zu stocken begann, „hängen die Glieder der großen unsichtbaren Kette zusammen; ohne sie vermagst du wenig; bist du aber eingeschaltet, so kann dir nichts widerstehen, denn bis in die fernsten Räume des Weltalls helfen dir die Mächte unseres Ordens. Höre mich an: Mißtraue allen Gestalten, die dir entgegentreten im Reiche der Magie! Jegliche Form können die Mächte der Finsternis vortäuschen, sogar die unseres Meisters; auch den Griff, den ich dir gezeigt habe, können sie äußerlich nachahmen, um dich irre zu führen, aber zugleich unsichtbar bleiben – das können sie nicht. […] „Merke dir ihn gut, den Griff! Wenn sich dir eine Erscheinung aus der andern Welt naht, und solltest du sogar glauben, ich sei es: immer verlange den Griff! Die Welt der Magie ist voll von Gefahren.“

This is followed in chapter 14, “Die Auferstehung des Schwertes”, by a misleading apparition of an old man who invites Taubenschlag to join his father’s order (pp. 274-275). But when the old man requires blind obedience (which may, incidentally be a critical reference to an important tenet of the Gold- und Rosenkreuzer), Christopher remembers to ask for the handshake his father told him about. The grey apparition is not what he appears to be but rather advocates an occult and treacherous perversion of spiritual truth. The image finally reveals itself in the shape of a demon impersonating John the Baptist (pp. 277-282).

In the last chapter Christopher Taubenschlag experiences the spiritual change of his body:

Ich breite die Arme aus: unsichtbare Hände fassen die meinen mit dem „Griff“ des Ordens, gliedern mich ein in die lebendige Kette, die in die Unendlichkeit reicht. Verbrannt ist in mir das Verwesliche, durch den Tod in eine Flamme des Lebens verwandelt. Aufrecht stehe ich im purpurnen Gewand des Feuers, gegürtet mit der Waffe aus Blutstein. Gelöst bin ich für immer mit Leichnam und Schwert.
(Der weiße Dominikaner, Kapitel 15, „Das Nessoshemd“)

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