# The Life and Times of August Forel

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Sheila Banani, The Life and Times of August Forel, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> T h e L if e and T im e s of August For el
> Sheila Ba n a ni
> 
> In 1848, the famous “year of revolution,” on September 1, August
> Henri Forel was born, the eldest of four children to Victor Forel (b.
> Switzerland) and Pauline Morin (b. France), in the country house
> called “La Gracieuse” belonging to his paternal grandparents near
> Morges, on the shore of Lake Geneva [see photo, next page].1
> As a young child he was sheltered by his overly protective mother
> who isolated him from outdoor play and friendships, leaving him
> bashful and timid, bored and lonely. He found fulfillment in his
> physical environment, in nature, initially in the lives of snails and later
> in wasps and ants. The “social” life of insects fascinated him in their
> encounters, both fighting and assisting one another, and intrigued him
> to learn what was inside their nests. But his parents and grandmother
> forbade him to keep living insects and he was allowed only to collect
> dead ones. This was the beginning of what would become Forel’s life-
> long passion and result, ultimately, in his famous book The Ants of
> Switzerland [1874] and later the donation of part of his extensive ant
> collection, one of the largest in the world, to the Geneva Museum in
> 1922.
> Forel’s Protestant mother gave him a religious education which
> taught the Bible, both Old and New Testament, was the revealed
> Word of God, “even the most incomprehensible passages,” he wrote
> in his autobiography. As a result of his loving respect for his mother,
> by the age of fourteen his religious doubts and conflicts led him to
> regard himself as “a hardened, outcast sinner, who need not hope for
> God’s mercy,” though he still hoped that his “conversion” would come
> upon him like a Biblical “miracle” (Forel 25). His schooldays were
> passed in Morges and later at the College Cantonal in Lausanne. By
> the age of 16 [1864] he faced the dreaded “confirmation” discussions
> with the local Pastor. He stammered to the Pastor, “I can’t believe.” In
> his autobiography he later wrote: “In the quiet meadows round my
> home I had often cried in despair to the so-called personal God: ‘If
> you really exist, destroy me here and now; then I shall know that you
> exist, but otherwise I cannot believe in your existence!’ But all was
> silent; I was not destroyed” (Forel 47).
> By 1866, while not particularly attracted to the prospect of
> entering education for the field of medicine, he did recognize the
> connection between medicine and his love of natural science. So, with
> his growing unbelief in God, despite his increasing sense of
> independence and self-confidence, he felt himself a pessimist. “On
> 2   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> every side I saw only lies and disappointments in human intercourse. It
> seemed to me that life was hardly worth living. My only consolation
> was, and remained, natural science” (Forel 51).
> This    fateful    year
> [1866]       Forel      met
> Edouard Bugnion, a
> fellow       entomologist,
> who became his future
> brother-in-law when he
> married Forel’s eldest
> sister in 1873. It is
> through Bugnion that
> Forel first learned about
> Charles Darwin [1809-
> 1882] and his work.
> Forel wrote in his
> autobiography: “When I
> read [Charles Darwin’s]
> The Origin of Species
> [written 1859] it was as
> though scales fell from
> my eyes.... I saw that the
> study of medicine was
> worthy of my highest
> endeavour. It must have
> been about this time that
> the notion of monism
> first dawned upon me,
> for     I    placed     the
> following reflections on
> record: ‘If Darwin is
> right, if man is a
> descendant of animal
> species, and if therefore
> his    brain     also      is
> descended from the brain of the animal, and if, moreover, we think
> and feel with the brain, then what we call the soul in man is a
> descendant (an evolutionary product) of the animal soul, of the same
> fundamental structure as the latter, and, like it, entirely conditioned,
> in its simpler or higher development, by the simpler or higher
> development of the brain.... Consequently ... psychology cannot in the
> last resort be other than a sort of physiology of the brain’” (Forel 53).
> In the University of Cambridge Darwin correspondence files
> [internet], I found evidence that eight years later Forel sent to Darwin
> [written in French on 23 September 1874, from Munich] a copy of
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 3
> 
> his newly published book on Swiss ants [Les Fourmis de la Suisse,
> Geneva] and notes points and passages that Forel thinks will interest
> him. Darwin responded [28 September 1874] with thanks to Forel and
> recommends he read Thomas Belt’s The Naturalist in Nicaragua
> [1874] by Darwin’s fellow-countryman. In his autobiography Forel
> states: “He [Darwin] asked me the question: ‘Do you read English
> easily?’ I [Forel] had no knowledge of English, and felt greatly
> ashamed of the fact on receiving this book” (Forel 99-100). Forel
> then finds someone to help translate Thomas Belt’s book and writes,
> “by the time we finished it I could read English pretty fluently, and in
> time I even learned to speak it after a fashion. For this Darwin was
> responsible, and I have been grateful to him all my life. Darwin also
> sent me his own interesting observations of ants, which led to a brief
> exchange of letters” (Forel 100).
> In Forel’s last year of medical school in Zurich [1870-1871] he
> became enormously interested in psychiatry. “I felt that here, where I
> perceived the contact of brain and soul, must lie the key to the
> monistic-psychological problem which was engrossing me” (Forel 63).
> This interest led him to Vienna [1871-1872] where he prepared his
> thesis under the guidance of Professor Theodore Hermann Meynert
> [1833-1892], finally passed his medical examinations in Lausanne and
> was graduated as a doctor (Forel 79-85). He then received his first
> medical appointment in Munich as assistant physician under Professor
> Bernard Aloys von Gudden, an asylum director and head of a
> laboratory, where he was able to work on the anatomy of the brain
> and make the “first thin microscopic section of the human brain,”
> which had never been done before (Forel 93). Upon completing and
> publishing his book on Swiss ants he was awarded in 1875 the Thore
> prize by the Paris Academy of Sciences. This greatly surprised him
> until he learned that the politics of granting their academic
> distinctions favored not giving it to a Frenchman (Forel 96).
> Treatment of the patients in the asylum, some of whom were very
> violent, challenged Forel who tried various experiments of separating
> out the physically infirm for better care and, for the first time [in
> 1876], he began to understand the insidious role of alcohol as a
> problem for the patients. However, it was not until a few years later
> that he became convinced that only total abstinence from alcohol was
> healthy.
> In 1877 Forel became qualified as a lecturer in the University of
> Munich and, as a member of an entomological society, met and
> became close friends with Edouard Steinheil, the father of the child
> Emma [then twelve years old] who, years later [1883], becomes
> Forel’s wife (Forel 105). Edouard Steinheil had previously made a trip
> to South America [Colombia] and now, with Forel, planned a six-
> 4   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> month ant hunting expedition there, so Forel took a leave of absence
> from his work in 1878 and they set out together. On their voyage
> when they reached the Caribbean, at the first stop at the island of St.
> Thomas, Steinheil took ill while still on board ship and suddenly died
> of tropical heat-stroke. His body was taken ashore for burial on the
> island where Forel served as his only mourner (Forel 109-111). Forel
> returned immediately then to Munich to break the news to Steinheil’s
> family and returned to his own family home in Morges, to his old
> room, since he was still on his six-month leave of absence from his
> work at the Munich asylum and as a lecturer at the University. During
> this period Forel received and accepted an appointment to become
> assistant physician at the Burgholzli Institute, an asylum in Zurich. He
> served at Burgholzli for the next nineteen years [1879-1898]. Upon
> his arrival at the asylum, he found himself having to act also as its
> temporary director as well as physician and to look after the women’s
> division in an insane asylum with more than 300 patients. Within a
> few months he was formally appointed the Burgholzli Institute
> Director and given a full professorship in the University of Zurich
> (Forel 138).
> Now that his career path seemed quite settled, Forel arranged for
> the widow of his fellow entomologist friend Edouard Steinheil and
> her children [including young Emma, now a teenager] to come from
> Munich to visit his parents while he too was on a vacation at home. In
> subsequent visits to the Steinheil home, Forel’s affection for Emma
> began to grow slowly though his naturally pessimistic outlook led him
> to fear that she would reject him as too old [he was 35 at this time].
> But on the contrary, he relates in his autobiography, “I was positively
> dizzy with joy when at last a young girl, and, indeed, the daughter of
> the family I loved so dearly, confessed that she loved me. A totally
> new world was opening before me, and I can truly say that at one
> stroke the pessimism that had hitherto oppressed me vanished and was
> replaced by a firm, optimistic confidence. I could not only love,
> deeply and tenderly, but — and this seemed a sort of miracle to me — I
> could also be loved” (Forel 145). The wedding took place in the
> nineteen-year-old bride’s family home in Munich the end of August
> 1883 with both families present in a simple ceremony. When Forel
> took his bride Emma back to Zurich she quickly made friends with
> various inmates of the Burgholzli asylum, organizing a choir and
> various festivities for those patients able to participate. Their first
> child, Edouard, was born November 15, 1884 followed by five more
> children, altogether four girls and two boys, the last child born in
> 1896 when Forel was 48 years old (Forel 231).
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 5
> 
> In these early years at
> Burgholzli he met a boot-
> maker, Jakob Bosshardt,
> who tried to convince him
> that alcoholism was not
> curable except by total
> abstinence which Bosshardt
> exemplified by rescuing and
> curing by abstinence many
> alcoholic former patients of
> the Burgholzli Institute.
> Forel, although a believer in
> the temperance movement,
> did     not    accept     total
> abstinence until he slowly
> began to realize the positive
> success rate and cures
> accomplished by abstinence.
> Forel relates that he asked
> Bosshardt, “‘I want you to
> explain something: I am a
> psychiatrist, employed, as
> director of the asylum, to
> heal the sick, and you are a
> shoemaker; how is it, then,
> that I have never yet been 1883 marriage to Emma Steinheil. ‘Everything
> about her was tender and thoughtful.’
> able to cure a drunkard
> permanently, while you are          Source: Vader, between pages 4 and 5
> so successful?’ To this Bosshardt replied, with an understanding smile:
> ‘It’s very simple, Herr Direktor: I’m an abstainer, and you are not!’....
> On that very day both my wife and I signed a pledge to abstain from
> alcohol.... This incident was for me the beginning of a new period of
> my life” (Forel 152-160).
> Forel’s brain research led to his formulation of what later became
> known as the neuron theory. He wrote a paper on the subject, “Some
> Considerations and Results relating to the Anatomy of the Brain,” and
> sent it to the Archiv fur Psychiatrie in Berlin but it did not appear in
> publication until January 1887. However, without Forel’s knowledge,
> Professor Wilhelm His [1831-1904] of Leipzig had arrived at similar
> results and published them in a periodical which appeared two months
> earlier [October 1886] than Forel’s. Both papers were generally
> ignored until 1889 when in Barcelona Professor Ramon y Cajal [1852-
> 1934] completely confirmed their results “mentioning His and
> [Forel], though only briefly” (Forel 163) and, in 1906, Santiago Ramon
> y Cajal was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his
> 6   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> work on the structure of the nervous system which was shared with
> the Italian anatomist Professor Camillo Golgi.2
> Hypnotism also intrigued Forel because of what he saw as “the
> relation between brain and psyche, or between the physiology of the
> brain and psychology, and the true monism or unity between cerebral
> and psychic phenomena.” He read of research by a Professor Bernheim
> of Nancy so he traveled there where he received from Bernheim
> instruction in “hypnotism or suggestion, which are one and the same
> thing” (Forel 166-167). Forel later wrote a very popular book on this
> subject, Hypnotismus und Psychotherapie [1889] which reached its
> twelfth edition by 1923.
> Forel traveled to North Africa [Tunis and Algeria] for a month in
> the Spring of 1889 because of his great interest in ants of that region.
> While there he observed the results of famine in some areas and
> “comparatively savage people — the Arabs, very difficult to civilize,
> because of the influence of Islam — governed by a cultured nation,
> the French” (Forel 186). Soon after his return to Burgholzli, he noticed
> the people of Zurich were taking a greater interest in the “drink
> problem” and, in 1890, an Abstinence Society was founded which was
> to become “The International Society for Combating Indulgence in
> Alcohol.” He also founded the Ellikon sanatorium for the medical
> treatment of alcoholism.
> He began to see in his activities and interests the inseparable
> connection among alcoholism, social problems, psychiatry, penal law,
> and science as well as education. “What is the solution? The
> renunciation of alcohol in childhood; freedom of belief, and the
> teaching to children of the scientific truth, and their social duties.”
> Further problems occupied him: the “sexual problem” [prostitution],
> the “feminist problem” [he became a supporter of women’s right to
> vote, and women’s rights in general], the problem of an international
> auxiliary world-language to promote mutual understanding [he
> studied Esperanto], and, the problem of what he called “the human
> races” [“Which races can be of service in the further evolution of
> mankind, and which are useless? And if the lowest races are useless,
> how can they be gradually extinguished?”] (Forel 193). Please recall
> the full title of Charles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species by
> Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in
> the Struggle for Life, which dealt with evolution and selection, had
> persuasive influence on Forel. He worked out the draft of a Swiss
> Insanity Law which, in 1894, was accepted by the Psychiatrists’ Union.
> He also was commissioned to draft a bill to abolish brothels (Forel 201-
> 206).
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 7
> 
> Following a three-
> month expedition to
> Colombia, this time in
> the company of his
> brother-in-law Bugnion,
> he      returned       to
> Burgholzli        feeling
> exhausted in mid-
> 1896, just in time for
> the birth of his sixth
> and last child. By 1897
> he was nearing a
> general breakdown. “I
> had already given up
> the anatomy of the
> brain, I had handed
> over the direction of
> the Ellikon asylum ...,
> and I had reduced my
> studies of the ants to a
> minimum” (Forel 237).
> He was not yet fifty.
> “After my retirement I
> can          concentrate
> wholly, if I wish, on                   Family Group, 1898
> those      social    and   Above:  left to right, Inez, Edouard, Martha
> scientific tasks which I         Centre:  Mme   Forel and A. Forel
> regard       as     most          Beneath:   Oscar, Cécile, Daisy
> essential” (Forel 238).               Source: Miall, page 225
> By Spring 1898, Forel left the asylum in the hands of his successor and
> friend, Dr. Eugene Bleuler. Soon after [1902] Carl Jung worked as a
> psychiatrist under Dr. Bleuler at Burgholzli. Jung was to meet
> Sigmund Freud in Vienna in 1907.
> Forel and his family left Burgholzli to begin his retirement near his
> childhood home in the little country village of Chigny in the canton
> of Vaud, Switzerland. He took up bicycling and archery. His brother-
> in-law Professor Bugnion persuaded him to give a few lectures on
> psychology at the University of Lausanne, but he soon discontinued
> them because too little interest was shown in the subject (Forel 251).
> Forel traveled to the United States, where he delivered a lecture at
> Clark University on the occasion of their jubilee festival [1899], and
> to Russia [1902] as a member of the International Criminological
> Union invited by the Russian Minister of Justice Muravieff (Forel 253-
> 261). Forel observed “Moscow was at that time a curious mixture of
> barbarism and culture, with striking contrasts between wealth and
> 8   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> poverty, education and ignorance, integrity and corruption, feasting
> and starvation. And everywhere society was fermenting under the
> surface” (Forel 263).
> In Forel’s autobiography, he gives his “retrospect” of the 19th
> century at its close: “The beginning of the century stood under the
> sign of the French Revolution, whose consequences influenced the
> whole century; after which the technical and scientific discoveries that
> followed one another with headlong speed, and the names of
> Napoleon I, Lamarck, Darwin, and Bismarck, gave the century its
> peculiar stamp. If I had to make a choice I should call it the century of
> Lamarck and Darwin, in which the doctrine of evolution gave birth to
> the germ of the discovery of the identity of the human soul with the
> brain, and therewith dealt the deathstroke to the dualism of body and
> soul. Compared with this, what is the significance of conquerors,
> diplomatists, and technical discoveries?” (Forel 256).
> In 1903, Forel and his family moved to the village of Yvorne in the
> midst of vineyards near the little town of Aigle at the foot of the
> mountains and overlooking the Rhone valley which opens westward
> on Lake Geneva. Their home, which his wife called “La Fourmiliere”
> [The Ants’ Nest], is where he lived productively his final twenty-eight
> years. In 1908, on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary, the
> Forels celebrated by journeying to Algeria, Tunis, Cairo, Carthage,
> and Italy (Forel 264-270). Upon their return to Yvorne, Forel set out
> again on lecture tours throughout Europe, the Balkans, Greece and
> 
> “The Ants’ Nest,” Forel’s last home, in Yvorne/Aigle, Switzerland 1903-1931
> Source: Sheila Banani photo.
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 9
> 
> Turkey, visiting organizations for the support of abstinence and
> helping form Leagues of Youth. Upon his return to Switzerland, he
> celebrated the marriage [1910] of his daughter Martha to Dr. Arthur
> Brauns. It is from this couple, ten years later, that Forel learns of the
> Bahá’í Faith.
> The end of July 1910 Forel endured the sudden and tragic death by
> embolism of the pulmonary artery of his first son, Edouard, who had
> just passed his examination in medicine and was engaged to be
> married (Forel 280-281). Disheartened at his loss, he nevertheless
> continued on lecture tours throughout Europe speaking on behalf of
> the International Order for Ethics and Culture on such subjects as
> eugenics, heredity, instinct and intelligence, morality in men and
> animals, heredity and progress in married and sexual life, social and
> hygienic requirements of the twentieth century. He expressed the
> hope to “gradually build up and firmly establish the new agnostic
> ethic, the religion of social welfare” (Forel 283).
> Forel had also been studying the new ideas of psychoanalysis
> advanced by Sigmund Freud [1856-1939] who had written a review
> of Forel’s Der Hypnotismus book when it was first published [1889],
> but he absolutely rejected Freud’s “exaggerations in respect of
> infantile sexuality, dream-interpretation, and the like.” (Forel 284)
> Longing to see the tropics in another part of the world [Africa,
> Madagascar, the Indian Ocean] and possibly travel back by way of
> Japan and Singapore, studying ants wherever he would go, Forel made
> preparations to be gone about one year [from August 1912-1913]. He
> had even written his Will [which is included in his autobiography by
> the publisher in the German and English editions, but not the French
> which was the language in which he wrote his Will]. But on May 17,
> 1912, as he began to dictate something to his secretary, he was
> conscious of a tingling and numbness in his right arm and he could
> not find the right words to express himself. He thought he might
> have had a slight stroke but a doctor friend examined him and said it
> was just due to excessive fatigue. However the symptoms continued,
> his speech became indistinct and he fumbled for phrases. Within days
> he was paralyzed on his right side. Now he was certain that it had been
> a stroke and that he would have to give up his journey to the tropics.
> He gradually trained his left hand to do many things. In the autumn
> of 1912 he began to write his memoirs, using his wife’s journal since
> she had kept an almost daily diary, and continued working on these
> memoirs until 1916 when he put them aside for awhile. With his son-
> in-law Arthur Brauns he went to Zurich in September for the session
> of the International Union for Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy
> where he was obliged to accept the Presidency in spite of his
> compromised health (Forel 290-295).
> 10    Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> He eventually regained sufficient dexterity to be able to prune his
> peach trees and do other gardening at home as rumors of war became
> more threatening in Europe. In May 1914 he had written an article at
> the request of the Hamburg Allgemeiner Beobachter concerning the
> idea of a “United States of Europe” saying he was not in favor of
> confining the League of Nations to Europe since he believed it should
> include the whole world (Forel 299). As war approached, his eldest
> daughter Inez married and moved to Canada, his remaining son Oskar
> went with his Alpine regiment to the Swiss-Italian frontier, and his
> son-in-law Arthur Brauns left in August for Germany where he was
> appointed as an army surgeon in an auxiliary hospital. In Yvorne the
> men had to join the frontier garrison. Forel and his remaining family
> organized a crèche for infants and young children so the mothers
> could replace their husbands in work on the land. He also began
> writing pacifist articles which appeared in various periodicals, in both
> French and German, and some were issued in pamphlet form in 1915
> on the subject Les Etats-Unis de la Terre [“The United States of the
> World”] (Forel 303). He expressed this view in his memoirs: “The truth
> is that in the interest of the German people, whom I love and esteem,
> I cannot too strongly condemn German feudalism and the militarism
> and megalomania of the Pan-Germans. On the other hand, in France,
> and even in my own country [Switzerland], I was often regarded as a
> friend of Germany, and, indeed, suspected of secret Pan-Germanism....
> In 1914, and again until 1918, I kept my pacifist correspondence in
> special drawers in my library.... Far more significant for me were the
> considered writings of really eminent minds, conceived in the neutral
> sense of an international reconciliation and a lasting inter-State peace.
> These I arranged in a drawer of their own in my library. My own ideas
> in respect of the whole problem were recorded in [Forel’s pamphlet]
> ‘The United States of the World’” (Forel 305).
> The biologist Professor Ernst Haeckel [1834-1919], in his 70’s by
> 1906, had formed the German Monist League along with a board
> which included Forel. The Monist League argued for “biosocial
> reform” and was an expression of Haeckel’s “social Darwinism” views.
> Its philosophy claimed that, on scientific grounds, man was merely a
> part of nature with no special transcendent qualities. At the same
> time, German social Darwinists claimed Germans were members of a
> “biologically superior community,” advancing some of the ideas that
> were to become part of the core assumptions of national socialism.3 It
> is interesting to note that in 1933, when Hitler became chancellor of
> Germany, the Monist League was disbanded.
> Views on “racial purity” spread worldwide. The eugenics movement
> affected even California when, in 1909, it became the third state to
> legalize the sterilization of the feeble-minded and insane. Eugenics
> sterilization was in the mainstream of science and politics and upheld
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 11
> 
> by the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventually, more than 30 states with such
> laws sterilized about 60,000 — a third of them in California, which
> finally repealed its law in 1979.4
> But Forel disagreed with some of Haeckel’s views. He wrote an
> “open letter” in 1914 to Haeckel in Jena, the French version of which
> was published in the Journal de Geneve, criticizing Haeckel’s essay on
> “World War and Natural History” which he had sent to Forel in which
> Haeckel had accused foreign countries of misrepresenting the German
> Army as a “horde of barbarians and incendiaries.” Forel reminded
> Haeckel that he had written in the Monistische Jahrhundert for
> November 13, 1914 that it would be “highly desirable for the future
> of Germany, and a federated Continental Europe, to besiege London,
> to divide Belgium between Germany and Holland, and to give
> Germany the Congo Free State, a great part of the British Colonies,
> the north-eastern departments of
> France, and the Baltic provinces of
> Russia. To this you [Haeckel] add
> that Poland should be amalgamated
> with Austro-Hungary.... and your
> colleagues    demand      that   the
> Emperor of Germany shall be the
> President of the future United
> States of Europe, and that the
> military security of this federation
> of States shall be entrusted to
> Germany.... If these assertions have
> any reality, then all foreign
> countries, and even our little
> Switzerland, will be compelled to
> defend themselves against your
> schemes of hegemony to the last
> drop of their blood” (Forel 303-304).
> Haeckel did not reply to Forel.
> Shortly after Forel became a
> Bahá’í [1920], the U.S. Bahá’í
> educator Stanwood Cobb and his
> wife, Nayam, visited the Forel home Arthur and Martha Brauns-Forel,
> in Yvorne which he records in an Forel’s daughter and son-in-law, from
> article on Forel published in The whom he first learned of the Bahá’í
> Bahá’í Magazine of September 1924: Faith in 1920. Arthur died in 1925 in a
> “After a most interesting tour of his canoe accident. Martha became one
> of the pillars of the German Bahá’í
> library, ... we noted the pictures of community under the Nazi regime,
> Goethe, Haeckel, and Darwin, when the Bahá’í Faith was outlawed.
> favorites of Forel (though he told me
> he found Haeckel much too Source: Vader, between pages 22-23
> 12    Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> dogmatic, contrasting unfavorably with the modesty of Darwin)...”5
> When I visited Switzerland and Forel’s home in Yvorne in 1990
> and again in 1991, Auguste Forel’s picture was imprinted on the one-
> thousand Franc banknote of Switzerland and it had been in circulation
> for a few years. His portrait had also been on a Swiss postage stamp
> issued in 1971. However, in 1997 a Swiss Citizens Commission on
> Human Rights (CCHR Switzerland) claimed credit that it had
> “exposed how the face of the 1,000 Swiss Franc bill was adorned by
> one of the founders of the ideology that spawned Nazism — Swiss
> psychiatrist August Forel” and that eight months later Forel’s face was
> removed from the currency.6
> 
> Swiss National Bank
> 1000-franc note,
> obverse and reverse
> 
> Source: Iraj Ayman
> photocopy of
> original bank note
> 
> During World War I Forel continually supported anti-war efforts
> and movements, even attending international peace organizations
> formed in The Hague. On May 1, 1916 he wrote an appeal stating, “I
> believe only an international Socialist revolution can help us.... The
> human race must kill the three dragons that are strangling it:
> Capitalism, Militarism, and Alcoholism, or it will perish, the victim of
> all three.... But by overcoming these, by the eugenic mating of the
> best, the sterilization of the worst, and the help of social education
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 13
> 
> and the training of a well-disciplined, industrious Peace Army of all
> men and women ... we may gradually begin a steady ascent to social
> welfare on the basis of a supra-national peace.... Yet in vain I seek to
> light the lantern of Diogenes, and with it enlighten the rulers of
> Europe and America; so far I can find no man among them. Perhaps
> one will come even yet.” And in July 1916 he resolved to become an
> active Socialist (Forel 313-315).
> Switzerland suffered during the war years and the Forel family,
> with rationing, was unable to adequately feed and warm themselves.
> Forel’s memoir recites that his wife even boiled earthworms for a meal
> and that the price of coal forced them to give up central heating and
> to content themselves with their fireplace during the winter of 1918-
> 1919 (Forel 317). At this time the Russian Legation in Bern informed
> him that he had been appointed a member of the new Academy of the
> Russian Soviet, but he had already heard of the “misdeeds of the so-
> called dictatorship of the proletariat” so he sent a letter to the Russian
> Legation declining the appointment “unless the deeds of violence of
> which I spoke ceased immediately.” He never received a reply and later
> heard the Russian Legation was expelled by the Swiss government
> (Forel 322-323).
> Forel’s memoir, Out of My Life and Work, closes in 1920, eleven
> years before his death July 27, 1931 and cremation in Lausanne on
> July 29, 1931. His son, Oskar, wrote in August 1934 in an Epilogue to
> his father’s autobiography, “August Forel left the publication of his
> memoirs to Herr Ernst Reinhardt, publisher, of Munich, since he
> wished to make sure that his own family would not be involved in
> their publication.... [T]he editor, with the permission of August
> Forel’s widow, has greatly abridged it....” Forel himself wrote, “I have
> made so many friends and enemies that I have felt afraid that my
> obituary would be tendentious in one sense or another. For this reason
> I preferred to write my own memoirs.... Many readers will take
> offence at my opinions, and this I sincerely regret. But to tell the truth
> when it must be told, and yet hurt no one’s feelings, is an art which is
> beyond my capacities, and I cannot get out of my own skin, nor do I
> wish to ...” (Forel Preface).
> He wrote his personal “Testament” in the year 1912 which he states
> in his memoir will be read by his son [Oskar] “as my own funeral
> oration, during the cremation of my body” (Forel 332). [note: Bahá’í
> law stipulates burial, not cremation, although Forel may have been
> unaware of this law]. When Forel became a Bahá’í he added a Codicil
> in August 1921 to his Will which was also read at his funeral before
> hundreds of colleagues and admirers and it was included by the editor
> in his memoir. It is this important document which states his Bahá’í
> belief, “Our children should not be discouraged; they should, on the
> 14    Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> contrary, take advantage of the present world-chaos, by helping in the
> difficult building of an ennobled and supranational human fabric on
> the basis of a universal League of Peoples. In the year 1920, at
> Karlsruhe, I first made acquaintance with the supraconfessional world-
> religion of the Bahá’í, founded in the East seventy [sic] years ago by
> the Persian Bahá’u’lláh. It is the true religion of the welfare of human
> society, it has neither priests nor dogmas, and it binds together all the
> human beings who inhabit this little globe. I have become a Bahá’í.
> May this religion continue and be crowned with success; this is my
> most ardent wish.... I am dying — I have died — in peace, desiring for
> my ashes nothing better than the eternal rest, the ‘Nirvana,’ which
> awaits them.... My ashes are sleeping the sleep of death. Remember
> this, and think of me only with a quiet and cheerful mind, as you
> think of my ants, my books, or the old walnut-trees in the garden....
> We dead can do no more to alter the past; you living can give the
> future a different form. Courage, then, and to work!” (Forel 341-343)
> Dr. John Paul Vader wrote a valuable monograph (drawn from his
> dissertation) published as For the Good of Mankind: August Forel and
> the Bahá’í Faith [1984] which covers specifically those years
> following the writing of Forel’s memoir [1920-1931] after he became
> a Bahá’í. A summary of Vader’s work would make this essay too long
> but, for a more complete view of Forel’s life, Vader’s book is
> recommended. As Vader states, “It is theoretically possible for Forel to
> have heard about the Bahá’í Faith before the winter of 1920-21....
> Forel himself, however, clearly dates his first meeting with these
> teachings to the winter months of 1920-21 which he spent at the
> home of his daughter and son-in-law, Martha and Arthur Brauns-
> Forel.” Dr. Arthur Brauns had opened his psychiatric clinic in Karlsruhe
> and, in 1920, both he and his wife joined the Bahá’í Faith.7 Before
> continuing with August Forel’s last years of life, when he was a Bahá’í,
> let me conclude the story of the Brauns family since it is through them
> the Faith is carried on today by the Forel family.
> On September 1, 1925, Forel’s 77th birthday, tragically Arthur
> Brauns was drowned in a canoe accident on the Rhone river, leaving
> Martha a young widow with five children. Martha Brauns-Forel
> became the center of the Bahá’í group in Karlsruhe and later served as
> an elected member of the Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly of
> Germany. During World War II she suffered greatly, both personally
> [her youngest son died on the Eastern Front and her eldest son was
> seriously injured] and as part of the German Bahá’í community during
> the eight-year suspension of Bahá’í activity in Germany [1937-1945].
> She died at the age of 60 in August 1948.8 In May 2000, the
> Karlsruhe Bahá’í community celebrated their 80th anniversary which
> included an internet website review of their Bahá’í history from its
> beginnings with the activities of Dr. Arthur and Martha Brauns-
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 15
> 
> Forel.9 The review states: “Marta Brauns experienced significant
> difficulties during the Nazi regime. Shortly after the Nazis came to
> power, it became apparent that Bahá’ís would be targets of hostilities
> due to their global world views as well as their contacts with people
> from all over the world. In 1937 Germany, Himmler outlawed the
> Bahá’í religion. Marta Brauns-Forel was accused of participating in
> the Bahá’í cause and being in contact with Jews and foreigners. She
> was treated badly and insulted by the Gestapo. She wrote the
> following to one of her sons: ‘My dear, dear child! It has happened
> more than once in my life that I thought this must have been the most
> difficult thing that could ever happen to me: August 1, 1914 [the
> beginning of World War I], September 1, 1925 [Arthur Brauns’
> death] ... but once again, fate has brought me days filled with horror
> and dismay, causing me to fear for my own sanity.... I have been to
> the Secret State-Police four days in a row now, and I thank God that
> you have no idea what that really means.... The Gestapo has taken
> everything. All letters and addresses ... no books, not a single page, no
> prayer book, not a single one of those framed Golden Words.”10
> Soon after Arthur and Martha Brauns had become Bahá’ís in
> Karlsruhe, Forel sent ‘Abdu’l-Bahá a letter dated 28 December 1920,
> in which he explained, “For my part, I am a monist, in the following
> sense: I am convinced that the functionings of the brain and of the
> human mind (or soul) are simply an inseparable whole. It follows that I
> cannot believe that the individual soul survives after the brain has
> died.... In metaphysical matters, on the other hand, I declare myself a
> complete agnostic, like the philosopher Socrates or the great naturalist
> Darwin, which means that ‘God’ for me is nothing but the Essence of
> the Universe, presumably absolute, but for man absolutely
> unknowable.... Despite all my admiration for your human principles, I
> must confess that I do not understand your ‘Divine’ principles. This,
> then, is my question: May I, yes or no, belong to the Bahá’í Faith, with
> the agnosticism I have mentioned above, without deceiving myself
> and others?” (Vader 14-15)
> Forel’s fascinating letter, quite fully describing his beliefs,
> activities, and Bahá’í literature he had read apparently was received in
> Haifa but not responded to by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá until 21 September 1921
> [among the last Tablets composed before ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s death 28
> November 1921]. His Tablet to August Forel,11 known now to Bahá’ís
> as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s proof of God’s existence, was not received by Forel
> in Switzerland until March 1922, more than one year after Forel had
> written to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and one year after Forel had already decided
> to consider himself a Bahá’í.12
> Some explanation is helpful to understand why there were delays in
> the response to correspondence between Forel and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
> 16   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> Forel’s letter13 needed to be translated in Haifa to receive ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá’s considered answer and this was during the last few months of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s busy life. Then, after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet was
> written, it was decided in Haifa to have it translated into English and
> French for wider distribution to Bahá’ís worldwide which is explained
> in the cover letter written by Shoghi Effendi, dated 27 February 1922
> Haifa, Palestine and sent with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet to Forel. In
> Shoghi Effendi’s letter he tells Forel that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sudden
> passing, “has plunged us all in profound grief and added heavily to
> our preoccupations and responsibilities. Happily, however, the full
> answer to your [Forel’s] epistle had been written, and signed by him
> [‘Abdu’l-Bahá] many days before his passing ...” (Vader 18-19)
> This essay will not include an analysis of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s famous
> Tablet to Forel but, for the purpose of this work, it is important to say
> what Forel responded to Shoghi Effendi when he wrote back on
> Sunday, 19 March 1922: “... Of course I empower you to publish the
> long and interesting answer which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá took the trouble to
> give me. Out of love for truth I must tell you, however, that I stray
> from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s opinion on one point although at heart I am a
> follower of the twelve Bahá’í principles ... the soul dies with the brain,
> and I cannot believe that it lives on after the individual has died....
> The short and simple question which I ask you please to answer
> concisely, in place of your late lamented Grandfather, is this: ‘May I,
> yes or no, consider myself a Bahá’í, without being a hypocrite after
> the confession of faith I have just made? ... I would like to be a Bahá’í
> without misunderstanding and without hypocrisy, a ‘leftist’ Bahá’í if
> you like, but with the same rights as are enjoyed by the rightists. I
> wanted to ask ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself [Forel seems to have forgotten
> that he did ask ‘Abdu’l-Bahá this very same question in his 28
> December 1920 letter], but it is too late. This is why I ask you to
> answer in his place ...” (Vader 19-21) Vader reports in his book that
> there is no evidence in Forel’s papers of a direct response by Shoghi
> Effendi to this letter, though Forel said he corresponded often with
> Shoghi Effendi, since tragically much of Forel’s correspondence and
> possessions were disposed of after his death. Nevertheless, Forel
> undoubtedly considered himself a Bahá’í and continued to identify
> himself as one in his letters and publications from 1921 until his death
> in 1931.
> After his declaration of Faith he had contact with several
> prominent Bahá’ís including visits from Hippolyte Dreyfus, Stanwood
> Cobb and his wife, Consul and Mrs. Schwarz, Mr. and Mrs.
> Mountfort Mills and Miss Martha Root (Vader 28-29). Forel founded
> the “Bahá’í group” in Lausanne in May 1922.
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 17
> 
> He immediately set himself to teaching and defending the Faith,
> particularly on behalf of the persecuted Iranian Bahá’ís in the mid-
> 1920’s, to influence European public opinion. He audaciously wrote
> of these persecutions to the French Foreign Minister Edouard Herriot
> [10 April 1925]; to the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna [26 April 1925]
> and other newspapers; and to the Secretary-General of the League of
> Nations Sir Eric Drummond [12 May 1926] from whom he received a
> disappointing, but expected, response stating the League of Nations
> was powerless to help since Persia had not accepted an international
> agreement for the protection of minorities. When all members of the
> Local Bahá’í Assembly of Constantinople were on trial on charges of
> subversion, Forel wrote to Mustapha Kamal Pasha [Ataturk] in
> Ankara on 18 November 1927. In this letter he advised Ataturk, “... if
> you were to declare the Bahá’í Faith as an official religion of Turkey,
> in addition to Islam, you would make a great step towards progress
> and would give an example to all of Europe and even to all the
> nations of the world!” The trial of the Bahá’ís did have a favorable
> outcome (Vader 53-59).
> Among the most well known of his articles written for and
> published in Bahá’í sources is “World Vision of a Savant,” first
> published in Star of the West in February 1928 and included in The
> Bahá’í World, Volume III, 1928-1930. In this article, Forel shares his
> “scientific” views on human behavior which reflect the racist
> understandings and attitudes of that time: “... one makes a pretext
> that there are differences in races; but if one excepts those races,
> altogether inferior, with a lighter cerebrum (according to Wedda
> about eight hundred or eight hundred and fifty grams instead of one
> thousand) it is a fundamental error.... There are several conditions of
> utmost importance which Bahá’ís ought to meet if they wish to remain
> scientific.... They should refrain from metaphysics, from seeking to
> know the Unknowable; and should occupy themselves wholly with the
> social good of humanity here on earth.... Our duty as Bahá’ís is not only
> to speak and think of God, but to be active for the social good.”14
> Vader cogently reviews those areas of Forel’s beliefs which diverge
> from Bahá’í belief as understood today. These include Forel’s concept
> of God, in which he considered himself agnostic, monist, pantheist
> and unable to believe in a “personal” God, and his rejection of the
> immortality of the soul after death. Forel also was outspoken in his
> political views, defining himself as a “leftist” and with anti-capitalistic
> views, which he incorporated in a listing of 12 principles entitled
> “Principles of the Bahá’ís” and published in Sonne der Wahrheit, the
> German contemporary official Bahá’í magazine. The final area of
> divergence from Bahá’í beliefs was in his racist attitudes, no doubt
> influenced by anthropological views of his day (Vader 33-38). Forel
> also was among many well known individuals who signed the Anti-
> 18   Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> Conscription Manifesto of 1926 which included Albert Einstein,
> M.K. Gandhi, Martin Buber, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore,
> and H.G. Wells. The 1930 petition Against Conscription and the
> Military Training of Youth was signed by Forel, along with some of
> the others mentioned before, and also Jane Addams, Paul Birukoff
> and Valentin Bulgakoff (secretaries of Leo Tolstoy), John Dewey,
> Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, and Upton Sinclair among others.15
> When Forel passed away, his Bahá’í daughter Martha Brauns-Forel
> informed Shoghi Effendi16 to which Shoghi Effendi’s secretary, H.
> Rabbani, replied on Shoghi Effendi’s behalf dated 10 September
> 1931: “... However great the contradictions in Dr. Forel’s testament in
> regard to his attitude towards the Cause we cannot fail to recognize
> him as a Bahá’í who had but a partial glimpse of the Bahá’í
> Revelation. No one can claim that his knowledge of this Revelation is
> adequate, especially in the embryonic stage of its development. Dr.
> Forel was sincere in his convictions but like every human being his
> comprehension was limited and this was not in his power to change...”
> (Vader 40)
> The year of Forel’s death,
> four months later, Shoghi
> Effendi penned his magnificent
> letter to the Bahá’ís of the world
> [“The Goal of a New World
> Order,” November 28, 1931] in
> which he ponders the decade
> since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing
> [1921-1931], the same last
> decade of Forel’s life as a Bahá’í.
> Shoghi Effendi laid before us a
> description of a war-weary world,
> the signs of impending chaos, the
> impotence of statemanship, the
> guiding principles of world
> order, and the principle of
> oneness, the “pivot” round which
> all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh
> revolve. The call for a federation
> of mankind, a deep wish of ‘My beloved Emma, my faithful, kind
> August Forel, would, Shoghi and devoted comrade, the unfailing of
> Effendi wrote, require “the fire sunshine in my life ... bestowed upon
> of ordeal.” Both a call, and a me ... the most precious things in life:
> warning, which the world ignores           love and optimism.’
> at its peril.                       Source: Vader, between pages 60-1
> Lights of ‘Irfán Book Six 19
> 
> Appen di x : Significant dat es o f e v e nts an d correspondenc e
> of August Forel a n d ‘ Abdu’l- B a há
> Birth & Death of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: May 23, 1844 — November 28, 1921
> Birth & Death of August Forel: September 1, 1848 — July 27, 1931
> December 28, 1920: Forel wrote an inquiry letter to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> asking if he could be considered a Bahá’í after explaining his
> “agnostic views.”
> September 21, 1921: Two months before His passing, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> wrote His famous Tablet to Forel on the existence of God. The
> original Persian text was then published in Cairo in 1922. Forel did
> not receive ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s answer (Tablet) sent from Haifa until the
> end of February 1922.
> February 27, 1922: Date of the cover letter to Forel from the
> Guardian Shoghi Effendi written from Haifa, as the “grandson of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” explaining the delay in sending ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s answer
> (Tablet) to Forel (various translations were being made). Following
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s passing, Shoghi Effendi had arrived in Haifa on
> December 29, 1921 from England. The Guardian then left Haifa on
> April 5, 1922 for rest and recuperation in Europe and was gone for 8
> months, returning December 15, 1922. He had left his Great Aunt
> Bahiyyih Khanum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, and an “assembly” of 9
> persons in charge during his absence.
> March 19, 1922: Forel acknowledges receipt of Shoghi Effendi’s letter
> and the various translations (into English and French) of ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá’s Tablet to Forel, 15 months after Forel’s original inquiry to
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asking whether he [Forel], could consider himself a
> Bahá’í “without being a hypocrite.” No specific answer to Forel’s
> acknowledgment of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet was sent from Shoghi
> Effendi, but he had left Haifa (see above) on April 5, 1922 to be gone
> 8 months. Very little of the correspondence remains in Forel’s papers
> between Shoghi Effendi and Forel because of disposal by Forel’s heirs.
> Forel states, in a Codicil added in August 1921 to his original Will
> and Testament, which he had written between 1912, following a
> stroke, until 1924, that he learned of the Bahá’í Faith in Karlsruhe in
> 1920. The Codicil was read, at Forel’s instruction, by his son Oscar at
> the ceremony on July 29, 1931 following Forel’s cremation. This is the
> one reference of his Bahá’í beliefs left in his writings which survives
> today:
> At Karlsruhe, in 1920, I first came to know of the
> supraconfessional world religion of the Bahá’ís, founded in
> the East more than 75 years ago [this was written in 1921] by
> the Persian Bahá’u’lláh. This is the true religion of human
> social good, without dogmas or priests, uniting all men on
> this small terrestrial globe of ours. I have become a Bahá’í.
> 20    Life and Times of August Forel
> 
> May this religion live and prosper for the good of mankind;
> this is my most ardent wish.
> 
> NOTES
> August Forel, Out of My Life and Work, translated by Bernard Miall
> (New York: W.W. Norton, 1937) 20. Hereafter referred to in text as
> (F o re l with page number reference).
> Santiago Ramon y Cajal Biography, Official website of The Nobel
> Foundation, last modified June 27, 2003.
> George J. Stein, “Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism: The
> Promotion of racist doctrines in the name of science,” American
> Scientist, January-February 1988, 76, 50-58.
> Mike Anton, “Forced Sterilization Once Seen as Path to a Better
> World,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2003, A-1, A-18.
> Stanwood Cobb, “Man and the Ant,” The Bahá’í Magazine, 15:6
> (September 1924): 166-170.
> http:/www.cchr.org.
> John Paul Vader. For The Good of Mankind: August Forel and the
> Bahá’í Faith. Oxford: George Ronald, 1984, 13. Hereafter referred to in
> text as (Vader with page number reference).
> “In Memoriam: Marta Brauns-Forel 1888-1948,” BW Vol. XI, 1946-1950,
> 481-483.
> http:/www.bahai.de/karlsruhe/80jahre.html: translated from the German
> by Houshang Banani, August 2003.
> ibid.
> First English translation by Dr. Zia Baghdadi published in SW 13:8
> (November 1922): 195-202; another English translation was published in
> BW XV (1968-1973): 37-43.
> Forel had added the Codicil to his Will in August 1921 declaring himself
> a Bahá’í.
> Forel’s letter was dated 28 December 1920 although mistakenly referred
> to in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablet as dated 28 July 1920.
> August Forel, “The World Vision of a Savant,” BW III (1928-1930): 286-
> 287.
> http://www.peace.ca
> Her letter was dated 22 August 1931.
>
> — *The Life and Times of August Forel (Used by permission of the curator)*