At the Threshold of the Modern Age

At the Threshold of the Modern Age: Biographies around the Year 1861

Karl König explores the personal stories of twenty-nine pioneers whose work and experiences helped shape that era. They include artists and writers, social reformers, philosophers and political activists, and scientists. He considers how they responded as individuals to the challenges of the changing world around them. His insights and conclusions are relevant for us today, as we face our own time of change and upheaval.

The biographies include:

• Helen Keller (1880–1968)
• Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843)
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
• Lou Salomé (1861–1937)
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
• Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
• Adolf von Hildebrand (1847–1921)

At the Threshold of the Modern Age is volume 10 in the Karl König Archive series.

C O N T E N T S:

Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868) Austrian writer and painter
Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) Founder of homeopathy
Helen Keller (1880–1968) Deaf-blind author and political activist
Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian physician and philosopher
Josef Breuer (1842–1925) Austrian physician who laid the foundations of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Founder of psychoanalysis
Justinus Kerner (1786–1862) German poet and medical writer
Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) German anthropologist and biologist
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) German philosopher
Rudolph Wagner (1865–1864) German anatomist and physiologist
Alma Mahler (1879–1964) Austrian socialite
Lou Salomé (1861–1937) Russian-born psychoanalyst and writer
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) Austrian-Bohemian composer
Marie Eugenie delle Grazie (1864–1931) Writer and dramatist
Karl Eugen Neumann (1865–1915) Translator of Buddhist writings
Robert Owen (1771–1858) Industrialist and social reformer
Harry Graf Kessler (1868–1937) Anglo-German diplomat and arts patron
Charles Darwin (1809–1882) English naturalist
Charles Grant (1841-1889) Scottish poet and literary critic
Adolf von Hildebrand (1847–1921) German sculptor
Anton Dohrn (1840–1909) German Darwinist
Hans von Mareés (1837–1887) German painter
Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859–1922) German surgeon and writer

About the Author

Karl König (1902–1966) was born in Vienna, in Austria-Hungary, the only son of a Jewish shoemaker. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna and graduated in 1927, with a special interest in embryology. After graduating, he was invited by Ita Wegman to work in her Klinisch-Therapeutisches Institut, a clinic in Arlesheim, Switzerland for people with special needs. He married Mathilde Maasberg in 1929. Dr. König was appointed paediatrician at the Rudolf Steiner-inspired Schloß Pilgrimshain institute in Strzegom, where he worked until 1936, when he returned to Vienna and established a successful medical practice. Owing to Hitler’s invasion of Austria, he was forced to flee Vienna to Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1938. Dr. König was interned briefly at the beginning of World War II, but on his release in 1940 he set up the first Camphill Community for Children in Need of Special Care at Camphill on the outskirts of Aberdeen. From the mid-1950s, König began more communities, including one in North Yorkshire, the first to care for those beyond school age with special needs. In 1964, König moved to Brachenreuthe near Überlingen on Lake Constance, Germany, where he set up another community, where he died in 1966.