This is an old revision of this page, as edited by SlimVirgin (talk | contribs) at 04:08, 14 November 2004 (Added info about Jeremiah Duggan in mind-control section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 04:08, 14 November 2004 by SlimVirgin (talk | contribs) (Added info about Jeremiah Duggan in mind-control section)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)| LaRouche movement | ||
|---|---|---|
| History |  | |
| Active organizations | ||
| Defunct organizations | ||
| Members |
| |
| Members who separated from the movement | ||
| Critics | ||
| Related persons | ||
The Schiller Institute was founded at a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1984, and a second conference in Washington, D.C., in 1985, by Helga Zepp LaRouche, her husband, the controversial American figure Lyndon LaRouche, and American Civil Rights movement leader Amelia Boynton Robinson.
Regarded by some as a dangerous far-right cult, and by others as a legitimate political movement, 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.
Musical aims
IIn 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.
These 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).
Accusations of mind-control techniques
In October 2004, a British inquest heard that the Schiller Institute was a dangerous cult that may have used mind-control techniques on a student who subsequently died after running across a busy road in Wiesbaden.
In March 2003, Jeremiah Duggan, a Jewish student from London, attended a Schiller Institute anti-war conference in Wiesbaden after being handed a LaRouche newspaper outside the Sorbonne in Paris, where he was studying.
After attending a meeting addressed by Lyndon LaRouche himself, Duggan telephoned his mother in England at 4 a.m., in what sounded to her like a state of panic, to say he "wanted out," was "frightened" and "in deep trouble," before the line went dead. Forty-five minutes later, Duggan ran across an autobahn and was killed.
German police (BKA) concluded that Duggan had committed suicide, but a British inquest later ruled that Duggan had died while in a "state of terror," according to eyewitnesses, and that there was no evidence to support a verdict of suicide. Duggan's family have hired a Berlin lawyer to have the German suicide verdict quashed and the German police investigation re-opened.
Duggan's mother, Erica, a former school teacher, alleges that her son was brain-washed by members of the Schiller Institute, which she described in court as an anti-Semitic political cult. Her son had told her and his French girlfriend, in telephone calls during his stay in Wiesbaden, that he had challenged the Institute's anti-Semitic views and had told them he was Jewish, according to Erica Duggan's testimony to the inquest.
In an article in the LaRouche publication Executive Intelligence Review, Jeffrey Steinberg strongly denies the Institute had any connection to Duggan's death, and alleges that Duggan was suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which, Steinberg says, can cause paranoia.