The time between the publication of Der
Unbenesiegbare (1898), List's neo-Germanic catechism, and the year 1902 marked
a period of transformation of List from someone known primarily as an artist to
an occult investigator, religious leader, and prophet of a coming age.
Concerning the generation of the manuscript for Der
Unbenesiegbare there is a story that perhaps demonstrates the growing - if
ambivalent – association between mysticism and politics in these circles. In
the summer of 1898, a law prescribing religious instruction in Lower Austria
secondary schools was being debated. Dr. Karl Lueger, who was later to become
the mayor of Vienna and a member of the Guido von List Society, was for the
bill, as were the church officials. When he was questioned on this by
representative Karl Wolf, Lueger responded “Gebt uns Besseres und wir warden
Euch folgen!” (Give us something better and we shall follow you!). It is said
that List was deeply moved by this and wrote Der Unbenesiegbare overnight. List
took the manuscript to Wolf's office the next day, but the whole idea was
eventually rejected by Wolf, as his interests in religion were “just matters of
curriculum.” The catechism was printed in an edition of five thousand copies,
*19 marking the beginning of List's more practical religious career.
Perhaps the successes he had had with the poetic
drama Der Wala Erwechung spurred List to try his hand at more drama, because in
the last phase of his conventional literary career this genre predominated.
However, to assume that List intended these dramas as mere entertainment would
be a mistake. He saw them more as Weihespiele (sacral plays) which had a
liturgical as well as didactic purpose. In 1900, he published a pamphlet, Der
Wiederaufbau von Carnuntum (The Reconstruction of Carnuntum), in which he
called for the establishment of ritual dramas and legal assemblies based on ancient
Germanic models.
In August 1899, List married Anna Wittek von
Stecky, who had sung the Wala parting his play in 1895. They were married in a
Lutheran church – which is also some indication of the decay of the Catholic
establishment and general religious dissatisfaction in Austria at that time.
This period acts more as a sort of bridge between
List's long artistic phase and his shorter, but highly intense and influential,
mystico-magical phase from 1902 to his death in 1919. It is also most likely
that during this period (1898-1902) Theosophical ideas as such became more
influential in List's worldview. After all, it was not until 1897-1901 that the
German translation of The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky appeared. Certainly
List would have had Theosophical ideas available to him long before this
(perhaps as early as the 1880's), but the evidence of a general lack of
Theosophical concepts in Der Unbenesiegbare would indicate that it was of
little influence before 1898.
In 1902, by his own accounts, there resulted in his
“revelations” concerning the “secret of the runes.”
