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The Schiller Institute is an international political and economic thinktank, one of the primary organizations in the LaRouche movement, with headquarters in Germany and the United States. It was founded at a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1984 by Helga Zepp LaRouche, the German-born wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Following the second conference, in Washington, D.C. in 1985, it has held conferences in a variety of international locations. Since 1992, it has published a quarterly magazine Fidelio, which it describes as a "Journal of Poetry, Science, and Statecraft."
The Institute's stated aim is to seek to apply the ideas of poet, dramatist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller to what it calls the "contemporary world crisis."
The Schiller Institute has been described by Scotland Yard as a "political cult with sinister and dangerous connections."
Connection with LaRouche
The Schiller Institute is closely tied to Lyndon LaRouche, describing the relationship as follows: "It is his work and his ideas, that inspired the creation of the international Schiller Institute, as well as his intellectual and moral leadership that continue to set the standard for the policies and activity of the movement."
LaRouche's writings are featured prominently in Schiller Institute communications, and he is the keynote speaker at most Schiller Institute conferences.
Stated aims
The Institute's stated aim is to seek to apply the ideas of poet, dramatist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller to the current global political situation. They emphasize Schiller's concept of the interdependence of classical artistic beauty and republican political freedom, as elaborated in his series of essays entitled Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man.
On November 26, 1984, the Institute released a "Declaration of the Inalienable Rights of Man," which it describes as "the basis of the Institute's work and efforts worldwide." It is modeled on the United States Declaration of Independence, but extends it to include all nations, especially those of the Third World. It states "...hat all human beings on this planet have inalienable rights, which guarantee them life, freedom, material conditions worthy of man, and the right to develop fully all potentialities of their intellect and their souls. That, therefore, a change in the present economic and monetary order is necessary and urgent to establish justice among the peoples of the world."
Need for the Schiller Institute
Zepp-LaRouche has explained the need for the Schiller Institute as follows:
We need a movement that can finally free Germany from the control of the Versailles and Yalta treaties, which have already tossed us from one catastrophe to another for an entire century." (Wir brauchen eine Bewegung, die Deutschland endlich aus der Kontrolle der Kräfte von Versailles und Jalta befreit, die uns schon ein ganzes Jahrhundert lang von einer Kastastrophe in die andere stürzt.
— Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
Political activity
The website of the Schiller Institute includes transcripts of conferences that the Institute has sponsored, throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, to promote the idea of what it calls "peace through development". The discussion at these conferences has generally centered around LaRouche's proposals for infrastructure projects such the "Eurasian Land-Bridge", and the "Oasis Plan", a Middle East peace agreement based on Arab-Israeli collaboration on major water projects. The conferences also typically discuss proposals for debt relief and the "New Bretton Woods," a proposal for a sweeping reorganization of the world monetary system (see Political views of Lyndon LaRouche). The Institute strongly opposes the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis of Samuel Huntington, counterposing what it calls a "Dialogue of Cultures".
The March 18, 2007 internet edition of the Danish Paper Jyllands-Posten covers the Schiller Institute proposal for a national Maglev train system in that country.
Allegations of antisemitism
The Schiller Institute has been criticized for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. In an interview in 2006 with the BBC's Newsnight, Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, an American research group that tracks right-wing movements, said: "The antisemitism at a meeting of the Schiller Institute would not be obvious at first. You would have to listen over time to a ... set of patterns, and you would begin to hear the echoes of the classic antisemitic conspiracy theories, in the way that Israel is talked about, in the way that Jews are talked about, in the way that the idea is put forward that the wars of America are somehow manipulated by Jewish lobbies and Israeli interests, and this really is an echo of the old classic antisemitic conspiracy theories. It's not that every criticism of Israel or American-Jewish lobby groups is antisemitic, but over time this pattern emerges."
Cultural activity
Music
In 1988 the Schiller Institute initiated a campaign to return to the so-called "Verdi tuning" in the world of classical music, so-called because it was Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi who originally waged a battle to stop the arbitrary rising of the pitch to which orchestras are tuned. The "Verdi tuning" is one where C=256HZ, or A=432HZ, as opposed to the common practice today of tuning to anywhere from A=440 to A in the 450+ range.
Many prominent singers and instrumentalists actively campaigned for the Schiller Institute's proposal, including several who performed recitals for the Institute to demonstrate the different quality of the Verdi tuning, compared with contemporary tuning. Beginning in 1988 the Institute starting circulating petitions calling for a change in pitch. In 1999 the Institute circulated a petition calling for the establishment of a permanent orchestra in Verdi's childhood home, Busseto, Italy, employing the special tuning in order to mark the composer's centennial. Signers of the petitions have included Norbert Brainin, former First Violinist of the Amadeus Quartet, and the following vocalists: William Warfield (baritone), Carlo Bergonzi (tenor), and Piero Cappuccilli (baritone). Other well known vocalists who endorsed the initiative include Shirley Verrett (soprano), Joan Sutherland (soprano), George Shirley (tenor), Luciano Pavarotti (tenor), Sherrill Milne (baritone), Fedora Barbier (mezzosoprano), Grace Bumbry (soprano), Elly Ameling (soprano), Peter Schreier (tenor), Birgit Nilsson (soprano), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Kurt Moll (basso), Marilyn Horne (mezzosoprano), and Ruggero Raimondi (basso).
The tuning initiative is vigorously opposed by Stefan Zucker, billed as "the world's highest tenor" and creator of Opera Fanatic magazine in New York City. According to Zucker, the Schiller Institute offered a bill in Italy to impose the Verdi tuning on state-sponsored musicians that included provisions for fines and confiscation of non-Verdi tuning forks. Zucker has written that he believes the claims about the Verdi tuning are historically inaccurate. Institute followers are reported by Tim Page of Newsday to have stood outside concert halls with petitions to ban the music of Vivaldi and even to have disrupted a concert conducted by Leonard Slatkin in order to pass out pamphlets titled "Leonard Slatkin Serves Satan".
In 1992, the Institute published A Manual on the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration: Book I: Introduction and Human Singing Voice. This book discusses the tuning issue from both the artistic and the scientific point of view.
Drama and poetry
The Schiller Institute has published a four volume series of English translations of the works of Friedrich Schiller, entitled Poet of Freedom, as well as some translations into other languages. In Germany, Institute members have organized public performances of Schiller's plays, including Wilhelm Tell.
The Schiller institute has also published a quarterly magazine Fidelio since 1992, described as a "Journal of Poetry, Science, and Statecraft." The Institute's published aim is to seek to apply the ideas of poet, dramatist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller to what it calls the "contemporary world crisis," emphasizing Schiller's concept of the interdependence of classical artistic beauty and republican political freedom, as elaborated in his series of essays entitled Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man. Its issues include articles dealing with a range of topics, including Homer, Henry VII, Benjamin Franklin, Leibniz, the “Four Serious Songs” of Johannes Brahms, Vice President Richard Cheney, Paul Kreingold’s “I.L. Peretz, Father of the Yiddish Renaissance”, and reviews of books, art exhibits, and musical, and dramatic performances.
Death of Jeremiah Duggan
- For main article, see: Jeremiah Duggan
On November 6, 2003, a British inquest heard allegations that the Schiller Institute is an ansemitic cult that may have used mind-control techniques on Jeremiah Duggan, a student who died in March 2003 in disputed circumstances in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Duggan, a 22-year-old Jewish student from London, England, attended a Schiller Institute conference in Wiesbaden with members of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Youth Movement. After six days in Wiesbaden, Duggan telephoned his mother to say he "wanted out," was "frightened" and "in deep trouble." His mother told an inquest that her son sounded terrified. His body was found 45 minutes later on a busy road near the Schiller Institute's headquarters.
The German police decided that he had been struck by two vehicles and killed. A British coroner rejected the German report of suicide and ruled that Duggan had died while in a "state of terror." Two forensic reports commissioned by his mother in 2006 suggested that he had been "battered to death with a blunt instrument as he tried desperately to defend himself." The forensic specialists found "no evidence that he had been struck by a vehicle."
Duggan's mother believes the Schiller Institute used mind-control techniques on her son to persuade him to join the organization. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has asked the German justice minister to reopen the investigation, and to determine whether Duggan's being Jewish played any role in his death, in light of Jeremiah's notes found in his bag, that "apparently point to stereotyping and antisemitic conspiracy theories." The Center also asked the minister "to impose the full application of German law to the supervision of the Larouche Youth Movement and its network of affiliates."
A spokesperson for the LaRouche movement said that Mrs. Duggan's allegation of a connection between her son's death and the Schiller Institute was part of a "smear campaign" intended to prevent LaRouche from gaining the U.S. Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nomination.
Conferences
These are highlights of conferences from the Schiller Institute's 20-year history.
- Nov. 1-3, 1985: "Saint Augustine, Father of European and African Civilization" — Rome, Italy
- Labor Day conference, 1986, featuring a performance of Mozart's Requiem at C=256HZ, with Schiller chorus and orchestra — Reston, Virginia, U.S.A.
- Nov. 22-23, 1990: "The Productive Triangle: Centerpiece of an All-Eurasian Infrastructure Program, Locomotive for a New, Just World Economic Order" — Berlin, Germany
- April 26-30, 1993: International conference on religions sponsored by the government of Sudan — Khartoum
- Aug. 7-14, 1994: Educational-cultural seminar for young musicians and artists, featuring Norbert Brainin, Lyndon LaRouche, and Helga Zepp LaRouche — Smolenice Castle, Slovakia
- July 17, 1997: Presentation by Dr. Jozef Miklosko, president of the Slovakian branch of the Schiller Institute and former vice premier of post-communist Czechoslovakia — Manila, Philippines
- Dec. 13, 2000: Memorial seminar for Russian Schiller Institute leader Taras V. Muranivsky — Moscow, Russia
Notes
- ^ Townsend, Mark. "The student, the shadowy cult and a mother's fight for justice", The Observer, October 31, 2004. Cite error: The named reference "Townsend" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ British Inquest: Coroner's Court transcript, Justice for Jeremiah website, undated, retrieved March 26, 2007.
- Minz, John. "Ideological Odyssey: From Old Left to Far Right", The Washington Post, January 14, 1985.
- Samuels, Tim. Newsnight, BBC, 2006, possibly November 28. See
- ^ "Wiesenthal Centre Appeals to German Justice Minister: "Reopen Investigation into Death of Jewish Student Attending Larouche Movement Seminar on Iraq War", Simon Weisenthal Center, November 10, 2006.
Further reading
- Schiller Institute website
- Schiller Institute Board of Directors
- Schiller Institute international conferences
- March 2003 Schiller Institute conference, attended byJeremiah Duggan
- "British student did not commit suicide, says coroner" by Hugh Muir, The Guardian, November 5, 2003
- "No Joke" by April Witt, The Washington Post, October 24, 2004
- "The Bizarre Case of Baroness Symons" by Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, June 25, 2004 (note that Executive Intelligence Review is a LaRouche publication.)
- Beyes-Corleis, Aglaja (1994) Verirrt: Mein Leben in einer radikalen Politorganisation, Herder/Spektrum, ISBN 3-451-04278-9
- "Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität", published by Informationsdienst gegen Rechtsextremismus (Information Service on Far-Right Extremism), an article on the Civil Rights Movement party founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who also founded the Schiller Institute.