Stories, Poems, and Meditations

Stories, Poems, and Meditations

Alongside his work with the Camphill movement, Karl König was a prolific writer of stories, poems and meditative verses. This book contains:

•  A selection of his creative work
•  Verses for specific occasions
•  Twenty-four poems
•  Four stories for children
•  Ten other short stories

An extensive introductory essay explores the cultural environments in which König was writing—including Vienna in the early twentieth century, and the challenging times leading up to World War II—and discusses the creative development of his literary work.

C O N T E N T S:

I Want the Meaning of Life

The Lyrical Work of Karl König (Introduction by Alfons Limbrunner)
Editor’s Note (Richard Steel)

Meditative Verses
Christmas 1944
Guardians of the Services
For the Goetheanum Windows
For the Children of Lake Farm
For the Friends in America

Poems
For Alfred Bergel
Untitled [1920]
Untitled [1921]
Whitsun
To You, Brother Proletarian!
For Albert Steffen’s Pilgrimage to the Tree of Life
Calling Up
Untitled [for Tilla 1938]
For You
For Me
For Turner, the Great Painter
To Germany
Untitled [ca. 1940]
For the Camphill Community
Prater
Pound and Dollar
Verse for the Human Being
Easter Morning
St John’’s Day
Whit Sunday
Eye and Ear
Calendar Verse [1961]
Calendar Verse [1962]
The Tourmaline Secret
One Last Poem? (Richard Steel)
Karl Konig’s Last Poem

Stories for Children
Two Addresses for Children
Michaelmas
Advent

Two Parables Arranged for Eurythmy
The Treasure in the Field
The Pearl in the Shell

Short Stories
The Bohemian-Moravian Brotherhood
The Monk’s Dream
The Idle Tongue
Brother and Sister
Athena Parthenos
The Three Days
Christmas Past, Present and Future
A Highland Story
One Morning 1352 bc
Also a Christmas Story

Karl Konig’’s Christmas Story (a postscript by Richard Steel)

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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.