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Alheidis von Bothmer 03 September 1928 - 25 April 2021
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Countess Alheidis von Bothmer was born in 1928 as Alheidis von Raven, at Manor Groß-Luckow in the Uckermark, as the third of five children. Till the age of sixteen she spent a carefree childhood in the country, moving "more on horseback than on foot," as she used to say. She grew up in a famous equestrian family, got to know agriculture from an early age and loved her uncomplicated life in and with nature. On this foundation she built her rich life.
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The death of Milarepa
When Milarepa has known all things
and built up his own home the last time,
when he was used well to shape-shifting
like a bear changes its winter fur in spring,
And spelling one word he could rise hills
and stones fell upward, if he liked -
One night Death came and sat beside
him on the bench, to smoke a pipe.
„I came for you – he said – get ready!” Beside
one another, they sat silent for a long time
watching the infinite distance; the view
vanished slowly in falling twilight
“Wait until tomorrow” said Milarepa “I want
to make up my mind. I’m sure you understand.”
And Death left. Early next morning
lama hit the road to see his old master.
„Oh, Master – he said – death is calling me
but I feel, he is under my control;
Tonight again he is going to visit me!
Let me chase him away from my home.”
And the Master answered: “You can do
it, if you feel sorry for your dusty-home.
If you shout at him, he will obey, but even so
remember: this magic is a forbidden one.
If you do it, no grass will grow roses
and stones will not obey your spell
and the silly elderberry will not grow
dates, anymore if you want it, never.
Then you must eat, when you are hungry
your mind will no more overrule desire.
That’s all, I can say you. Now act
as your heart’s wish will you advise” –
Said the Master then he went to sleep.
And Milarepa thanked him aptly.
Going home he played scattering fair silver-
pollen into the fruitless nuggets of earth.
And asked the river to flow backward
- done. All things obeyed his every word.
Fishes chirped on the tree, heavy elephants
like a bird flew across heaven.
Getting home, he pondered; for the last time
kidded gaily with this world out of joint. Then
he put everything into order. And the same
evening, with Death, he went away.
Gábor Garai (Hungarian Poet 1929-1987)
(Translation Mária Mesterházy, Krisztina Mogyorosi)
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A Memory of Alheidis
Fate gives us the opportunity to develop through encounters. The meeting with Alheidis von Bothmer was one of the most important encounters of my life. Since our first meeting in Moscow in the winter of 1991, the warmth of her heart has welcomed me and continued to accompany me throughout my Bothmer training. Right from the start, I received a “loan of trust” from her and I had to prove to be worthy of this trust. In the course of time our connection grew even stronger.
As a teacher at the teacher training, she was sometimes strict and serious, sometimes funny and humorous - she was so human. What particularly impressed me about her was her sympathy: if someone discovered something profound by himself while practicing and communicated this, she always agreed and was happy with and for the person.
When Stephan Thilo and I organized our first BMI training course in Moscow, after a while we decided to invite Alheidis to this course. At that time she also had a BMI course running in Stuttgart, so she was torn and could not make a decision. Stephan was able to persuade her and so she came at the beginning of the 4th year of the Moscow-training.
We wanted to pick her up from the airport by car, but arrived late due to a traffic jam. Alheidis stood there alone, looking forward to seeing us and after the hug and greeting she said: “All right! I'm here, but my luggage is not. You're supposed to fill out some papers with the man over there. ”Outwardly, she showed no concern. But it shocked me a bit . Alheidis was 80 (!) years old, flew alone and now stood there with only a toothbrush and her handbag. Her suitcase with all things (except for the toothbrush, of course) got stuck somewhere in Prague. In addition to this hassle we were late too! Nevertheless, she seemed happy.
We organise for her everything, what she needed, of course, and her luggage arrived the next afternoon. Alheidis was completely immersed in the class at the time. When she came out of the gym, she simply said, “Oh, how nice, my suitcase is back! Could you carry it into my room? "
I tell this story because it shows that the “Bothmer principle”: ‘You really have to let go in order to get something back’, has become life with Alheidis!
In class, she attached great importance to the quality of movement. She repeated tirelessly: “Let the movement go! Relax! This is gymnastics for the lazy ”, and also:“ You should take risks! Go to your limit! ". But she always found the right words and images for everyone. One noticed how the quality of the movement gradually changed over the course of the week. The students were deeply touched by Alheidis` nature and drunk in everything she gave. Alheidis also fell in love with the group. At the end of the week she expressed her wish of the Moscow and Stuttgart courses doing something together.
That was what her heart wanted. She didn't know yet what it supposed to be. But at the end of the year of training, she organized it. We came to Stuttgart in the summer to prepare and present a street performance (thanks to Marc Vereeck for the idea and for directing it). We succeeded and she was happy. In my opinion it was also very symbolic – her last and our first “Bothmer children” belong to the same “family”! That's why they ought to be together.
After a few years we met again at a BMI teacher meeting in Stuttgart. At this meeting Alheidis informed us that she would no longer lead courses. On the last day she wanted to order a taxi to the airport for me and asked when my flight was. When she got the answer from me, she was happy and said: “Then we'll go together! You will take me with you. ”I flew back to Moscow and she flew to Riga in order to be driven from there by car to Estonia, because people there wanted to get to know Bothmer gymnastics in a small Waldorf school. With whom else of course, if not with Alheidis von Bothmer!
She accepted the request, because she happened to have had time. I asked carefully if it wasn't too strenuous for her. She replied: “I think I can do it. I find it difficult to jump but I can find someone who can do it for me. ” Whenever people wanted to get to know Bothmer gymnastics, she was ready to share it with them. Because that was what made her life so special.
Dmitry Milakov, Moscow
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“ The “I” is the stillness of consciousness.” [1]
When Fritz Graf von Bothmer speaks about his gymnastics, he also speaks about the greater human being, which can be invited into one through movement.
In remembrance of Alheidis von Bothmer, I see her in front of me moving nobly: a dignified personification of width, height and depth. Especially her arms, hands and her face have "matured" in the years of practice and were permeated with the delicate forces of spatial dimensions. When she did the gymnastics exercises, she exuded a calm sovereignty, completely at one with herself and with those around her. An encounter with her and with her greater human being in movement was an encounter with a fulfilled destiny. In commemoration of Alheidis, I do experience in person: this "infinite Greater Human Being" connects us all.
She has worked hard and long for this. Infinite and finite are dependent on each other, are opposing poles and sometimes contradict each other. The constricted everyday human existence, combined with requirements or regulations, always troubled Alheidis. When the constraints got too much, she chose—up till her last Life-period—her own way. As open, generous and inviting she was in the gymnastics, as independent, sovereign, self-sufficient and suspicious was she in her private life. That is to say, she belonged to the generation that did not talk much about how she managed to bear and endure the power and impotence of the 20th century, characterized by nationalism, war, flight, the expectations on women at the time, several radical changes of career as well as separations, often not knowing what to expect. Alheidis’s life story was connected with an unerring feeling for what is True and Real.
Just as her encounter with Bothmer gymnastics. The gymnastics appeared in her life through her husband Hans Jörg, who was the son of Fritz Count von Bothmer. Her first impression of the gymnastics was more scepticism than anything else, until she saw Knut Ross doing Bothmer gymnastics at a movement conference in 1964. Then she became certain that this type of gymnastics embodied something that she was looking for. Her own higher human being recognized this immediately. It was part of her being that following this experience she left again everything behind. She moved to Stuttgart to support her teacher, Gretl Krause-Eppinger, and to devote herself entirely to Bothmer gymnastics. She started teaching courses in almost all training centres in Stuttgart. (Just like at the end of her life she left Stuttgart behind with the same consistency.)
In 1977 - unbelievably, at this point the eternally young Alheidis was already 49 years old - a handful of inexperienced young people from the USA, Belgium, Holland and Germany find themselves together in Stuttgart to learn Bothmer gymnastics. During our first gymnastics lessons - there was still no real Bothmer School - Alheidis did not feel that she was a leader or teacher, but she was rather a fellow seeker, a learner. From the very first lesson, however, her teaching carried the characteristics of freedom-coloured with Greek simplicity and clarity-, worked with the reversal from the infinite to the body and was filled with a silent dialogue with the forces of space. This inspired and fulfilled us. We felt very much in the process of being seen by her as we really were. One day she said to me: “Nice Marc! Your sport-muscles are becoming more absorptive, more receptive. You are gradually involving space within you. ”I hadn't felt anything, let alone really understanding it, but she had already seen it. As a person of will, she foresaw the future potential in many others.
Some of us “pioneer-students” of the early days, soon wanted more than two hours of gymnastics a day. When we then asked for other subjects and even for a second and later for a third year, which in turn contributed to the creation of a the "real" Bothmer school, she always affirmed and dedicated herself fully to the research of what else Bothmer gymnastics can offer. And soon enough, without further ado, full of confidence, she trusted Jaimen and me with taking over her weekly Bothmer gymnastics course for beginners. She also didn’t think it was beneath her to “go to school” together with us, with her own students and to learn to greek dance, to sculpt, although she often insisted on not being good at those things.
Alheidis grew visibly with the steadily expanding task of not only setting up and managing the three-year international full time training centre, in cooperation with Jaimen, but also in meeting countless Waldorf teachers, eurythmists, priests, anthroposophists, sport- and movement-freaks all over the world. She disliked intellectualism and the desire for recognition. Her contribution has always been of service, with a central, flexible calm in motion. That had a freeing effect.
As soon as she met someone who had taken hold of his/her “Greater human being” in life, she quietly cultivated a private, long-term and loyal relationship. She had great friendships with well-known priests such as Friedrich Benesch, Gérard Klockenbring, and Diethard Jaehnig in Sacramento, with the New York Chekhov theatre group around Ted Pue, or with the world-famous anatomist Johannes W. Rohen. With the latter, the two of them working together have inspired each other to develop a new approach to anatomy. It was Professor Rohen who also encouraged and supported her to write a book about Bothmer gymnastics and to publish it in the scientific Schattauer-Verlag. [2]
Her book shows how clearly Alheidis was able to observe and understand the manifold relationship of the development of the physical-bodily and the mental-spiritual, in movement and in life. As a result, in addition to the exact description of each Bothmer exercise, she was able to supplement not only the pedagogical, but also the therapeutic aspects of the exercise. With this she quietly continued down the path that Count Fritz von Bothmer had already implied and about which he would have gladly exchanged ideas with Rudolf Steiner.[3]
And she went even further: “The person, who practices this gymnastics every day for over 30 years, s/he will move for that many years in spiritual substance.” A certain wisdom originated from Alheidis, This wisdom did not come from the head, but from the far-reaching explorations of movement through her limbs. Everyone felt how Alheidis pervaded the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the expanses and the narrows, the falling down and getting up of being a human on many different levels and layers. This led to the fact that for many Bothmer gymnasts she was not “only” a teacher, but she became a life coach, the mother of an ever-growing Bothmer family. Everyone who visited her - even after the Bothmer School had closed - was welcomed with a hug and provided with advice, action and cake.
Her work unfolded once again in a wonderful complement. As a guest teacher at the College of Waldorf Education in Stuttgart and at the last three-year Stuttgart course, now as part of the "Bothmer Movement International". As typical for her, she accepted this position only after reservation and only after an explicit request was made to her. And then, once again, in her old age, she bonded with each and every student with loving devotion. One could clearly see in Alheidis how this gymnastics works in harmony with the balanced forces of the space, how rejuvenating these forces are. When she moved I always forgot how old she was. That changed rapidly when she stopped doing gymnastics for good.
Our last encounter, which was initiated by her, was influenced by her decision to withdraw into her own self, to return to the infinite in her. What deep powers of fate prevail here when someone at the cremation of Fritz Graf von Bothmer (!) reported that he said to him at the tram stop: “If I come to a rest, when my life is going towards its end, then I don't want to live here in Stuttgart. I will move away before it comes to that, far away, so that no one will see me. No, I don't want that. ”[4] And far away from Stuttgart, but in the neighborhood of her well-beloved daughter in Krefeld, she died after a silent period of suffer.
I consider it a great gift that through Alheidis von Bothmer I was able to experience over the years how the finite human being can also be part of infinitely greater human being. When I do the Bothmer exercise "The Cross" after her death, I see her in front of me and the space is expanded and filled with her present, with an unlimited joy. It obviously gives orientation, on both sides.
Marc Vereeck
[1] Biography with personal testimonials. Compiled by Alheidis Countess von Bothmer. Page 90 written by Fritz Graf von Bothmer
[2] The Bothmer Gymnastics. Educational and Therapeutical Applications, written by Alheidis von Bothmer,
[3] Bothmer Gymnastics Exercises by Count Fritz von Bothmer
[4] Biography with personal testimonials. Compiled by Alheidis Countess von Bothmer. Page 98 written by Fritz Graf von Bothmer
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"Gifted with fate"
I got to know Alheidis von Bothmer 1985-1988, during my training at the Graf Bothmer School for Gymnastics in Stuttgart.
She was a special woman and a teacher. I felt immediately welcomed, accepted and taken seriously by her. Amazing, when you consider that in the beginning you only have questions and things, which you do not or not yet, understand.
All of this gave me an inner motivation to continue this “journey” for 3 years and bring it to a positive end.
How Bothmer gymnastics speaks to you depends a lot on the personalities you meet as a student. In the course of time I realized which intensity Alheidis went her way and encountered her challenges. After she experienced several negative encounters with Bothmer gymnastics (… you are one of Bothmer's, aren't you? Then you must have something to do with Bothmer gymnastics, don't you?), she did have an encounter that was an affirmation of this path.
She had a job and was fully engaged at home as mother of two children. Nevertheless, she made an inner decision to devote herself to Bothmer gymnastics. And that meant: practicing! and learning to penetrate the gymnastics. She did so every morning, at around 4:30 a.m., before the family woke up. Just imagine this nowadays; who would get up early in the morning to make an art of movement their own? Hearing this alone created a great deal of respect and awe in me.
I still remember the recurring topics that she tackled with us in class: for example walking. For those who do not know the premises in the Bothmer School in Stuttgart: there were two gymnastics rooms in the basement, each with two wide columns in the middle. A total of approximately 36 m². So not a lot of space to run or move. If you practiced walking with her, you ran a lot in circles ...
In class I was sometimes 'confronted' with statements that I could not understand as a beginner. For example, the remark she made to a fellow student of mine: ‘You work too much with your head. Try to let go... ‘ The fellow student said yes.
Another characteristic I found was that she kept asking questions and challenged us to follow up and try out how something worked. She accompanied the process with patience and humour, but often with deep seriousness as well. For example, she asked the question: ‘what is a growing width? Try to depict it in a movement, but as an activity without emotional expression.’ We tried. Then there was the possibility to depict it 'with emotions'; everything was allowed. And at the end she showed how Graf von Bothmer had shaped this exercise.
At the time, she was well into her 50’s, but still spent long hours in the Bothmer school every day, with three groups and a colourful mix of people from all (spatial) directions. I think that was a huge attraction for new students and she enjoyed it, too. She just loved people!
Alheidis von Bothmer was also very active for a long time at the gym teacher conferences, in the work of the group preparing the conference as well as giving Bothmer courses at the event. She decided to say goodbye to the gymnastics teacher conference in June 2001, in Hamburg Bergstedt.
I was also part of the group, preparing the conference. This group didn't want to let her departure go unnoticed. The theme of the conference was: ‘Teaching and learning in movement lessons - experiencing the soul and spirit in action.’ Alheidis worked with Isabell Röhm and they offered a course with the theme: ‘Bothmer exercises in the upper classes: "building a bridge to the world for myself".’
So the idea arose to represent the spiritual world with some colleagues in our plenum. Of course one person was very present in this world: Fritz Graf von Bothmer! He was brought to the audience by an angel, together with his wife Hildegard. Bothmer looked down at the world and saw that something was missing from his Bothmer gymnastics; one last exercise that he couldn't manage in his lifetime.
And this exercise was then given to Alheidis as a gift, as a gesture and a heartfelt thank you. The exercise was called: 'The Big Heart'; a big hug from the two actors with Alheidis in the centre.
Alheidis was the big heart of the (Waldorf) Bothmer community. At the end we sat together in the amphitheatre of the Christophorus School, with 120 sports teachers and Marion Lemcke asked Alheidis about her impulse and insights into sports, Bothmer gymnastics and its significance for today's young people.
A very intimate atmosphere was created in the midst of 120 sports colleges.
As a last thing I would like to share an expression, which I have only heard from Alheidis: May you be 'gifted for fate!' An expression, which in my opinion has a very clear connection to the relationship, which we through gymnastics, build to our body, our temple and to the Space.
In the here and now, open and awake, with a warm heart in life, she has set an example.
Eric van Wijnen
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