Theo Faiss

Theodor Alberto Faiss (1 July 1907 – 7 October 1914) was a boy whose death in Dornach, Switzerland, at the age of seven, was frequently invoked by the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner as having spiritual significance. A well-liked child who frequently ran errands, Faiss was killed while doing so for Steiner's housekeeper when a horse-drawn wagon overturned on him. Steiner invoked Faiss's death in at least fifteen speeches and lectures thereafter, repeatedly terming it a karmically voluntary sacrifice that provided a protective spiritual sheath for the Goetheanum, the headquarters of the anthroposophical movement.

Faiss was born in Brazil to German expatriates who ran a plant nursery; the family returned to Europe when he was around four. They had known Steiner before they left and reconnected with him soon after their return, purchasing another nursery next to the Goetheanum. When Faiss's father was called up to fight for Germany in the First World War, Faiss sought to help his mother, including by running errands with a small cart.

Steiner eulogized Faiss at his funeral. In 1921, the English sculptor Edith Maryon, a close collaborator of Steiner, created two versions of a relief titled In Memory of Theo Faiss, and in 1987, the anthroposophist Lex Bos tracked down Faiss's surviving family and published a biography. The relief and biography, wrote Maryon's biographer , constitute the enduring memorials to Faiss.

Early life Theodor Alberto Faiss was born in São Paulo or Porto Alegre, Brazil, on 1 July 1907. He was the first of four children born to Albert and Ida Faiss; Maria Magdalena ("Magda," born 1909), Arno (born 1911) and Hansi (March 1914 – 1980) would follow.

Albert and Ida Faiss had lived in Stuttgart in 1904, and knew Rudolf Steiner from that time. Albert Faiss was deeply interested in theosophy, and Ida Faiss likewise joined these circles; Albert's father did not approve, however, which may have been one of the reasons for the move to Brazil. They ran a plant nursery in southern Brazil from 1905 to 1911, before giving up and moving back to Europe. Arno was born during the return trip.

The months after the return to Europe were unsettled. Albert Faiss stayed with Theo in Feuerbach, near Stuttgart, where he worked in the family's business; Ida Faiss spent much of her time with her brother's family in Oldenburg. At some point, Albert Faiss reconnected with the circle of acquaintances connected with Steiner. In late 1911 or early 1912 the family moved to Arlesheim, and in the first half of 1913 to Dornach to be near an anthroposophical institute. They continued to farm a plot of land in Arlesheim, where Theo Faiss went to school. In October 1913, they purchased the nursery directly below the grounds of the Goetheanum.

By October 1914, Faiss—then seven years old—was well liked in Dornach and considered to be responsible. His father Albert had been called up to fight for Germany in the First World War, prompting the younger Faiss to respond, as Steiner later recalled, that "Now that our father has been called away, I must work especially hard and diligently so I can be a support for my mother". He would sometimes run errands with a small wooden cart, carrying vegetables and flowers, and Steiner himself would sometimes enlist his help. Also by October, Albert Faiss was either in a military hospital or still at the front, having been slightly wounded by shrapnel there in late September; his wife was informed of the injury by telegram on 5 October.

Death On the afternoon of 7 October 1914, Steiner's housekeeper asked Faiss to run an errand at a dining hall known as the , or canteen; the errand has variously been described as picking up groceries from the canteen, or dropping them off there, as Steiner would frequently receive gifts of food that he did not need. By dusk, Faiss had not returned, and his mother began searching for him. More and more neighbours soon joined the search, although Steiner, who was leading an evening programme—a reading of poems by Christian Morgenstern, a speech, and a lecture—was not alerted until around 10 pm. They soon found that an overloaded wagon carrying the furniture of the artist Käthe Knetsch, who worked on the Goetheanum, had overturned near the canteen; its driver had unharnessed the horses, then walked to Basel. Righting the wagon took until around midnight and revealed the body of Faiss underneath. In a letter that Faiss's mother wrote to his father on 9 October, she described the night:

Faiss's body was laid out in a corner of the canteen; Steiner visited daily, each time addressing Faiss as "You dear Sun-Boy, you". Steiner offered a eulogy at the funeral, held on 10 October; that evening he gave the first of his five-part lecture series The Dornach Building as a Symbol, during which he again mentioned Faiss.

Albert Faiss, meanwhile, was given a week's leave at the end of the month to visit his family. Upon his return to the field in the cold and wet autumn, he contracted pneumonia and rib inflammation; he was taken to the hospital in Konstanz on 18 December, although the post was unreliable and the family was not informed. He died five days later, and Ida Faiss left on Christmas Eve to collect his coffin. Steiner delivered a eulogy on 27 December, stating that the father was "now being welcomed by the soul of the precious child", with whom "we know your soul to be united now".

Significance Starting with his eulogy three days after Faiss's death, Steiner repeatedly linked Faiss's death to the anthroposophical movement. The "shocking event", he said then, highlighted "how karma and seemingly external coincidence are connected": "When human lives are cut short; when people die prematurely; that is, without having experienced the worries and sorrows or the temptations of life; their souls then become forces in the spiritual world. They have a certain relationship to all human life on earth, and their task is to work on those human lives still on earth". Steiner closed by reading a mantram, or blessing, adapted from one he read in honor of soldiers.

Mantram to Faiss Spirit of his soul, active guardian, May your wings bring Our souls' imploring love To the human being in the spheres entrusted to your care, So that, united with your might, Our entreaties might ray forth to help The soul they lovingly seek.

Mantram to Faiss (original German)

Mantram to soldiers Spirits of your souls, active guardians, May your wings bring Our souls' imploring love To the human beings on Earth entrusted to your care, So that, united with your might, Our entreaties might ray forth to help The souls they lovingly seek.

Mantram to soldiers (Original German)

Similarly, during his evening lecture, Steiner spoke of "a remarkable experience of karma" in which Faiss was "summoned back by spiritual powers", and added that, however heartrending, "We see clearly that, in order to bring about the fulfillment of this karma, the wagon was led to that spot, and then the wagon was overturned so that the karma of that particular individual might be fulfilled".

Steiner continued to invoke Faiss in later years, referring to him in at least fifteen speeches and lectures. In remarks made in 1915, Steiner expounded upon Faiss's death, explaining it as a karmically voluntary sacrifice that provided a protective spiritual sheath for the Goetheanum, then still under construction. In June, during the twelfth lecture from his fifteen-lecture series The Mystery of Death, for example, Steiner declared that "since the death of little Theodor Faiss the work has been made possible for me through the mediating forces for inspirations that have been made available by this boy's etheric body which has been enveloping the building". The building, he added, "has been enveloped to quite a wide extent by the enlarged etheric body of this child as by an aura". Steiner made a drawing during the lecture, showing what he understood to be the boundaries of this "etheric aura".

Fire On the night of New Year's Eve 1922 and morning of New Year's Day 1923, the Goetheanum burned to the ground, possibly due to arson. Anthroposophists have offered a variety of interpretations for why it was able to do so, despite the purported protection provided by Faiss. To , Faiss nevertheless "contributed through his sacrifice to the fact that the building, when it fell prey to the flames and dissolved into the Earth's atmosphere, was able to 'sacrifice' itself in the right way, so as to form, from then on, a special protective sheath for the entire Earth".

, by contrast, explains the fire by stating that Faiss's protective sheath had come to an end in October 1921. The interpretation relies on Steiner's belief that humans form and develop in seven-year cycles: forming an etheric body over the first seven years, an astral body from seven to fourteen, and the remainder of one's terrestrial being from fourteen to twenty-one. To von Halle, Faiss's October 1914 death, shortly after his seventh birthday in July, meant that his etheric body had only just become fully formed. In death, as it would have done in life, she states, Faiss's body continued to "age" through his astral cycle, during which time he offered protection to the Goetheanum. In October 1921, therefore—seven years after Faiss died—von Halle concludes that he passed to the next cycle, and the protection ended.

Legacy

In 1921, Edith Maryon, an English sculptor and close collaborator of Steiner, created two versions of a relief titled In Memory of Theo Faiss. Both depict a guardian-angel figure carrying the spiritual form of Faiss upwards. The first version includes three additional figures at the bottom: Faiss (this time in physical rather than spiritual form), his mother, and a man variously interpreted as Faiss's father or Steiner. In his 1993 biography of Maryon, Raab terms the work the "true monument" to Faiss. In the light of what Raab writes was a strange omission of Faiss from anthroposophical reference works, he also ascribes a documentary value to Maryon's work.

In 1987, the anthroposophist Lex Bos tracked down Faiss's surviving family and published a biography. Bos wrote that most readers of the anthroposophical journal in which it was published, though not all, were already familiar with the story. To Raab, the biography constituted "the second monument" to Faiss.