The Rudolf Steiner Archive

About the Author — Willi Sucher (1902–1985)

Willi Sucher was born on August 21, 1902, in Karlsruhe, Germany. In 1919, at 17 years of age, Sucher first encountered the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner through his uncle, Karl Sucher. It made a deep impression on him and he recognized that anthroposophy would be his life path. He joined the Anthroposophical Society at the age of 17.

Rudolf Steiner was a scientist, philosopher, educator, and scientist of the spirit. Through his highly developed clairvoyance he was able to bring to those who were willing to consider his research much remarkable information about the spiritual realms, the nature of the human being, the evolution of human consciousness and with it a new understanding of history, all for the modern consciousness of his times. Steiner also brought impulses for many human endeavors, for education, medicine, agriculture, banking, the arts, curative work, and ideas for new social forms. Steiner had frequently pointed out that the old astrology had become very decadent and that what was needed by present humanity was a new star wisdom. This was the task that Willi Sucher undertook as his own life challenge and destiny. As did many of his generation after the First World War, Sucher wanted to do something that would serve both humankind and the spiritual world. To renew astrology seemed just such a task, and at 17 he began to read the literature on astrology in an effort to understand it. Time and again he was repelled by its fatalism. He sensed that the human being had greater dignity than astrology allowed.

Sucher continued to study anthroposophy and to attend lectures. In 1922 he joined a small bank in Stuttgart, Bankhaus Der Kommende Tag, which attempted to put into practice some of Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the Threefold Social Order. It was here that Willi Sucher met Rudolf Steiner for the first time and, through friends, his future wife, Helen. After the First World War times were difficult in Europe, and the bank Sucher worked at had to close. He then found work in another bank in Bruschal. Helen and he both joined the Christian Community and were married in 1927 by its first leader, Dr. Friederich Rittelmeyer. When the newlyweds could finally afford it they rented an apartment in Bruschai. Each evening after work Sucher would study for two hours.

The year 1927 was important for Sucher’s life, not only for his marriage, but because he became aware of the work of Dr. Elisabeth Vreede that same year. She was head of the MathematicalAstronomical Section at the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland and a member of its first Council, the Vorstand. In 1927 Sucher came across a report of a lecture given by Dr. Vreede. There Dr. Vreede referred to words of Steiner’s concerning the configurations of the heavens at the time of death. For Willi Sucher “this picture struck home like lightning’’, and he wrote later, “A ray of hope, which seemed to shed light on man’s quest for freedom, fell on the complex of astrology.” So began Sucher’s research into just these biographical rhythms which seemed to confirm again and again that the human being has great significance for the cosmos and was not “a helpless object of the rhythms and movements of the stars”.

At the age of 26, Willi Sucher became a student of Elisabeth Vreede. She encouraged and challenged him. A lively correspondence developed between them, and Dr. Vreede would often send him a comment that Steiner had made on some relation of the human being to the heavens with the command, “I cannot do it. You must do it.” Vreede was the one who suggested to Sucher that he investigate the prenatal star events during the human’s embryonic development, advising him to use for his research the ancient Hermetic Rule that had originated in ancient Egypt.

At the age of 30, Sucher lectured at the Anthroposophical Headquarters, the Goetheanum, and a bit later at the Anthroposophical Clinic in Arlesheim. During 1934/35, Dr. Vreede published a series of Astrological Studies on behalf of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section. She composed the first study, but the others were written by Willi Sucher. Vreede wrote, “The following Studies are meant to inform the reader about the investigation of our co-worker, Willi Sucher, as he has developed them in conjunction with the Mathematical-Astronomical Section for some years now. Willi Sucher’s point of departure has not been traditional astrology, which was known to him, but Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science, especially Rudolf Steiner’s suggestions concerning the realm of astrology.”

But Hitler was on the rise and conditions in Germany were becoming untenable. Sucher’s letters to and from Dr. Vreede were intercepted. Astrologers were arrested. Anthroposophists had to meet secretly. Willi and Helen Sucher knew they had to get out of Germany. During a visit to Vreede in 1936, a trip to Holland and England was arranged. By this time Vreede and her colleague Ita Wegman, due to internal conflicts, were no longer members of the Vorstand. During the Suchers’ visit to England, through first Eugene Kolisko and then Fred Gueter, the couple was invited to come and work at an anthroposophical home for handicapped children at Clent, called Sunfield Home. It took several months before the necessary papers came through. Helen and Willi left for England, ostensibly on a visit, with only 20 marks on them and just a few personal belongings. Willi Sucher was 30-five years old.

Sucher was assigned to the nursery and Helen to the kitchen, both struggling at their tasks in a new language. But much was gained in this period for the work that Sucher was so devoted. He gathered clinical experience and was able to apply it to Steiner’s indications that a devoted staff, who worked with a child’s star configurations, could bring towards a healing.

Sucher met Elisabeth Vreede for the last time at a Conference held in Bangor, Wales, near Penmaenmawr. He described how he and Dr. Vreede had climbed up a hill to two Druid stone circles, and “took leave of one another at least for the time being, in proximity of witnesses to an age-old star wisdom and with a deep feeling of responsibility for its future.” Dr. Vreede died on August 31, 1943, in Switzerland.

During the Second World War, because of concern about enemy informers in Great Britain, all the Austrian and German men were rounded up and interred in detention camps. Sucher, along with several other anthroposophists (among them Dr. Ernst Lehrs and Dr. Karl König), were kept in what had been a summer resort on the Isle of Man. They shared their research with each other and Sucher was able to continue his work. After his release Willi and Helen went to work at Dr. König’s Camphill home for children in Aberdeen, Scotland. He continued his research, traveled about giving lectures and began to write a “Monthly Letter” for a number of subscribers. At one such lecture at Sunfield Home, Sucher met Hazel Straker, who was to join him later, along with a few others, in his star work. In 1944 Willi and Helen returned to Sunfield for two years, then in 1946 at the request of Eleanor Merry and Mafia Schindler, the two moved to London and taught evening classes. In 1947 Willi was offered the job of director in a curative home in Garvald, a curative home in Scotland. Later Dr. Alfred Heidenreich, the founder of the Christian Community in Britain, invited them to work at Albrighton Hall near Shrewsbury, a center for Christian Community conferences. Hazel Straker came with them from Garvald. This was an immensely productive time for Sucher. “...Dr. Heidenreich gave me absolute freedom to develop my work…” The English manuscript of Isis Sophia was prepared in that time and published in 1951. Then Man and the Stars was published in 1952.

It was during Sucher’s time in Shrewsbury that the “family” of co-workers was formed which would give lifelong support to Sucher’s work. Joining Hazel Straker was Helen Veronica Moyer and her sister, the artist, Maria Schindler. They lived and worked together. Sucher’s travels increased in answer to requests to speak in England, Scotland, and Holland. It was during this period that Sucher’s work on the cosmic background of the Greek, Norse, and Celtic mythologies was presented. Also he did research into historic personalities and periods. It was here that Sucher’s pioneering work on the heliocentric and lemniscatory views of the universe began to unfold.

When the Conference House closed for financial reasons, the little family moved to a curative home in Kent, England, called Larkfield Hall. Sucher continued his lecturing while his co-workers worked with the children. Often in the evenings they would sit with Willi to work over the incarnation charts of the children. Sucher had picked up the task set for him by Dr. Vreede, to look at the gestures of the stars during the embryonic development. Hazel Straker writes, “...This meticulous, painstaking work which he had carried out over the last years showed rich fruits as he led us through the starry events to the great imaginations behind, which were able to inspire us in a very helpful way for our further work with the individual children...”

Sucher was invited to speak at the Threefold Farm of the Anthroposophical Community in Spring Valley, New York. During his four and a half months in the United States he gave 70 lectures and workshops. He gave a course also in Los Angeles for the teacher training at the Highland Hall Waldorf School. Later, Los Angeles would be the scene of his further working.

Home again in England Sucher began and then completed his book, Drama of the Universe. In this book he brought forward his research into the heliocentric perspective of human life, a totally new view of the human beings’ connection to the stars. In 1958, when that was completed, the family of coworkers vacationed across America and visited, among other places, Los Angeles. There had been many requests for them to come and work at Highland Hall and to begin a much needed curative school. They decided to emigrate.

In 1961, a group of four moved to Los Angeles: Willi and Helen Sucher, Veronica Moyer and Hazel Straker. They founded the Landvidi Center for Exceptional Children there. That endeavor lasted seven years. During those years, Sucher traveled frequently giving lectures in America as well as in England, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany.

When the school closed in 1968, they “retired” to a small home in Meadow Vista, California, situated in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains not far from Sacramento. Sucher, with the help of his coworkers, continued his research and his writing. He also continued to travel for lectures and to give courses or hold study groups in his home. During this period Cosmic Christianity (1970) and The Changing Countenance of Cosmology (1971) were published. These have recently been reprinted in one volume by the Anthroposophic Press (1993).

For Sucher the three years of Christ from the baptism to His death on the cross profoundly changed the cosmos and the relationship of the human being to that cosmos. About his research published as Cosmic Christianity, he wrote, “Finally I must mention the research work which I did about the Christ Events. I came more and more to the impression that these cosmic perspectives of the Christ Events are a foundation for the experience of the workings of the Christ Impulse in times after the so-called Mystery of Golgotha. It turned out that whenever one of the Cosmic Events during Christ’s Ministry repeats itself, then there is offered the opportunity to understand and even to realize in an inner spiritual sense the significance of the corresponding Deed of Christ. As I said, these possibilities are ‘offered’ to the human being. He can freely accept them and identify eventually with them.”

During this period too, many individuals sought Willi out, looking for help with their lives. Sucher’s profound pictures out of their prenatal and birth asterograms were able to shed light for many about their destiny tasks.

He also continued to write the “Monthly Star Journals” (1965-1975). In one journal he quotes Rudolf Steiner from Steiner’s lecture cycle, Christ and the Spiritual Worm (lecture 5), “...It became clearer and clearer to me, as the outcome of many years of research, that in our epoch there is something like a resurrection of Astrology of the third epoch (the Egypto-Chaldean civilizations), but permeated with the Christ Impulse. Today we must search among the stars in a way different from the old ways, but the stellar script must once more become something that speaks to us...”

In 1972, Willi Sucher, aged 70, was invited to speak at an International Youth Conference at the Anthroposophical Society Headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. It had been 41 years since he had spoken there at the behest of Dr. Elisabeth Vreede.

It was a great sorrow for him that so few took up actively the development of Astrosophy. He saw it as a tremendous need if humanity was going to be able to face the great trials that were coming at the turn of the century.

Sucher continued to lecture. His writings were limited mostly to the ongoing “Monthly Letters” to subscribers. Some of these letters were published in Sucher’s final book, Practical Approach Toward a New Astrosophy. It contained much of his continuing research into a spiritual approach to a heliocentric astrology. This opened the way for an understanding of the heliocentric Copernican view of the universe.

In 1973, because of family concerns, Hazel Straker returned to England. Helen Sucher died two years later. Veronica Moyer took over the housekeeping tasks and kept up distribution of the books. But no new books were added. Sucher continued to travel to give lectures and workshops, but then gradually curtailed that activity. However he continued to teach closer to home. For the following ten years his home became a center of activity. The study groups, the countless individuals seeking guidance, all helped Sucher to feel that his work had not been in vain but that he had laid a firm foundation which would be built on in the future.

Before his death, with a few friends, he founded a Trust, The Astrosophy Research Center, to care for his publications, personal papers, and library after his death.

Willi Sucher died peacefully in his sleep on May 21, 1985.

Shirley Latessa,
New York City, 1996