Bahá’í World/Volume 18/Dr. Eugen Schmidt
Eugen Schmidt
EUGEN SCHMIDT
1901—1982
We take leave of Dr. Eugen Schmidt. A fulfilled life has come to an end. A great, pure soul has ascended to its eternal home.
Eugen Schmidt was born in Stuttgart on 22 February 1901. He grew up in an austere Christian home where basic religious values and ethics were imprinted deeply upon his mind. ‘God grants success to the sincere,’ was his guiding motto. In his early youth his alert intellect had discovered the many terrible conflicts of life, and especially those afflicting human society; experiencing the First World War as a youth made him an ardent seeker. Deep in his heart he felt that the solution to humanity’s problems lay not in brute force but in intellectual enlightenment, philosophical endeavour, unbiased and world-embracing religious consciousness and an improved social order. After the war he gathered about him a circle of like-minded friends who, without regard to political affiliations, worked enthusiastically and with great conviction for the cause of world peace, setting before their
listeners at youth congresses, and at functions they themselves organized, the high aspirations they held for an enlightened society in which all would work together in harmony. Already, then, we glimpse Eugen Schmidt as he will live on in our memory: a man of passionate convictions and thoroughly thought-out views which he was able to present with great eloquence.
About 1924 he encountered the Bahá’í Faith. He must have been a very critical and challenging God-seeker at first, but the longer and more actively he explored the all-encompassing, clear concepts of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the more deeply convinced he became of their validity. The vision of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh captivated him and became the motivating force of his life.
Because of his father’s unemployment, Eugen Schmidt began studying rather late. In 1932 he obtained a doctorate in political science. Professionally, he had for many years held a leading position in industry. After his military service and war captivity he was employed in the service of Public Health and Social Security, a field about which he had written in his doctoral thesis. As a writer, editor and organizer he was constantly expending his energies on behalf of a ‘healthy nation‘.
On one of the first occasions when he presented a Bahá’í paper at a youth conference he met Erna Kauffmann whom he later married. Two sons and one daughter were born of this happy marriage.
Eugen Schmidt was one of the most active, conscientious and enterprising German Bahá’ís. If, in the thirties and fifties—before and after the prohibition imposed by the Nazi regime—there were three believers who decisively influenced the German Bahá’ís and led them as they took their very first steps towards fulfilling that great vision which Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi had of the spiritual reality of the German people, they were the three doctors: Hermann Grossmann, the visionary of the new Covenant of God and the divine World Order; Adelbert Mühlschlegel, the poet and mystic; and Eugen Schmidt, the pragmatic organizer, who was capable of advancing the German Bahá’í community, step by step, closer to the practical realization of its spiritual goals. He was a
member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany from 1932 onwards, and its chairman in the decisive years of re-building after World War II. He was also a member of the Spiritual Assemblies of his home communities of Stuttgart and then Leinfelden-Echterdingen; editor of Bahá’í Nachrichten, the newsletter of Germany, and of Sonne der Wahrheit, a Bahá’í periodical; an ever-available public speaker and lecturer; an enthusiastic organizer of and participant in large international conferences, World Religion Day Observances and other gatherings; and the author and translator of articles. It is my hope that the Bahá’í Publishing Trust of Germany will soon have the privilege of producing a memorial volume of his selected essays. For myself, and surely also for my friend, Dieter Schubert, the editorial consultations with Eugen Schmidt about the first issues of Bahá’í Briefe were among the most fruitful inspirations of our younger years. As a postscript to a letter written to Eugen Schmidt on his behalf on 9 April 1955, Shoghi Effendi inscribed these words, ‘May the Almighty bless your meritorious endeavours, guide every step you take, and aid you to enrich the record of your deeply appreciated services to His Faith.’
Without the intensive, personal, sacrificial service of Eugen Schmidt we would not have witnessed the dedication of the national Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds (1952) nor that of the first European House of Worship (1964). He served the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh for many years as a member of the Auxiliary Board and, until his strength waned in old age, he worked for the Bahá’í Public Relations Committee and the liaison committee of the Bahá’í International Community at the United Nations. In all these sacrificial and time—consuming undertakings extending over more than half a century, Dr. Schmidt had the close companionship of his trusted co-worker and dependable comrade, Erna. Few families have more fully exemplified the spirit of the new age in their every-day living. The Schmidt home was an inviolable centre of harmony, the embodiment of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Words, a house of peace, a house of happiness and exultation.
The German Bahá’í community is deeply
indebted to Eugen Schmidt. Only later generations [Page 802]
will be in a position to fully appreciate
how wide and secure were the foundations
which he and other Bahá’ís of his generation
laid in difficult times. The Universal House of
Justice wrote, in its cable of condolence to the
National Spiritual Assembly of Germany, on
2 June 1982:
CONVEY MEMBERS HIS FAMILY LOVING SYMPATHY PASSING OUTSTANDING STALWART DEVOTED BELIEVER EUGEN SCHMIDT. HIS LONG SERVICES ADMINISTRATIVE TEACHING FIELDS WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED. ASSURE PRAYERS HOLY SHRINES PROGRESS HIS SOUL ABUNDANT REWARD ABHA KINGDOM.
(Adapted from a memoir by PETER MÜHLSCHLEGEL)