Alfred Schuler

Who was Alfred Schuler?

Alfred Schuler was a religious founder, a gnostic, a mystic and a visionary. Franz Wegener has called Schuler the last of the German Cathars. Schuler saw himself as a reborn Roman of the late imperial era. Also a neopagan, he was the spiritual focus of the "Munich Cosmic Circle", and made a broad impact without ever publishing a book during his lifetime. Stefan George and Ludwig Klages were, amongst others, significantly influenced by him.

Schuler studied Archaeology in Munich but came to see archaeologists as "desecrators of graves ripping out of the earth what has been sanctified by the rite of burial, and confining to the unwholesome air of museums the lustrous force rightly working its mighty influence under the cover of darkness". After his studies Schuler made his living as an 'independent scholar' in Munich. He held his own "rebirth into an unpleasant epoch" to be the responsibility of an evil demon. Schuler died during an operation meant to remove a malignant tumour.