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Schiller Institute Founder:

Helga Zepp LaRouche

Board of Directors

Fred Huenefield, Theo Mitchell, Harley Schlanger, John Sigerson

Helga Zepp LaRouche was born on August 25, 1948 in Trier, Germany. After high school, in 1968 she continued her education as a journalist in Hamburg and Hannover. When she had completed volunteer time with the Hannover press, she worked as a free-lance journalist. In 1971, she traveled for many months through China, as one of the first European journalists, at the highpoint of the Cultural Revolution.

After her return, she began to study political science, history and philosophy at the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin. Later she continued her studies at the Frankfurt/Main University.

Helga

On December 29, 1977, Helga Zepp and Lyndon H. LaRouche were married in Wiesbaden. Since then, together with her husband, she has pursued her political activities in many Asian nations, Europe, Latin America and practically all the states of the United States. She has met with numerous political leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Mexican President Jose Lopez-Portillo.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is one of the world's leading authorities on Friedrich Schiller and on Nicolaus of Cusa, the man who contributed more than anyone else to the launching of the European Renaissance of the Fifteenth century. Her scientific work extends from the German Classical period, to the humanist tradition of universal history, and Confucianism.

In October 1977, she wrote for the international Cusanus Congress in Trier on “Nicolaus of Cusa and his importance for today's education." In all her speeches and articles, she has drawn time and again on the ideas of Cusa's collected works. In 1987, her work "On the Happiness of Truth" was published, in which she discussed "On the Vision of God," Cusa's presentation of man's participation in God.

In 1989, she organized, for the 550th anniversary of the Council of Florence in Rome, a conference on "Nicolaus of Cusa and the Council of Florence." In 1993, she developed Cusa's ideas in a speech which she delivered at the Russian State University for the Humanities: "Nicolaus of Cusa and the Conceptual Basis for a Renaissance in Russia Today."

In April 1979, Zepp LaRouche published a groundbreaking sudy on "The Secret Knowledge of Friedrich Schiller." In November 1980, she organized a several-day Schiller Symposium in Mannheim, "Friedrich Schiller and Today's Culture, Poetry, Education, Theater," whose highpoint was a Schiller Evening with Will Quadflieg and a podium discussion on the crisis and future of Classical theatre with well-known German experts Prof. Benno von Wiese, Will Quadflieg, Peter Otten, and others.

In the summer of 1984, Helga Zepp LaRouche founded the worldwide Schiller Institute, which is based upon Schiller's concept that the goal of mankind is none other than "the education of the powers of human beings, progress." At the July 1985 founding conference in Washington, D.C., the theme of her keynote was Schiller's role in laying the conceptual and aesthetical foundation for the science of the 19th century.

In an essay at this time, she set forth her ideas "on the recitation of Classical poetry." Ten years later, she treated the theme "Poetry and Music," touching on the "motivic thorough-composition in the example of Friedrich Schiller's `Song of the Bell.'" At her initiative, every year in November, performances honoring Schiller's birthday are revived.

In 1981, Zepp LaRouche, in the article "The Classics and the Republic," discussed the principles of statecraft. She spoke at that time of the modernity of Schiller's contemporary, Wilhelm von Humbolt's educational ideals and the meaning of natural law for classical statecraft.

Helga Zepp LaRouche has attacked the cultural pessimism of the modern era since the beginning of the 1980s, calling it the "sickness of the spirit." In the Summer of 1982, she identified Nietzsche, in a brochure against "the Green Danger," as the progenitor of the green counterculture, which she wrote on "the historic roots of green fascism." At a conference of the Schiller Institute in December 1994, she sharply attacked "the Conservative Revolution" as "an oligarchical countermovement to the Renaissance."

During her husband's five-year period of unlawful incarceration, from 1989 to 1994, Helga Zepp LaRouche tirelessly spoke and traveled on behalf of his freedom, and of the policies, such as the Productive Triangle and the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which he and she believed were key to transforming the newly freed Eastern European nations into a thriving engine for global economic development.

In February 2000, Helga Zepp LaRouche exposed the murderous intent of the violent video culture, and particularly the Pokemon cult, charging that ``America's children are in mortal danger.'' the Institute helped to found a National Commission Against the New Violence, launched in July 2000, to combat the media and videogame violence which is turning America's children into killers.

Helga Zepp LaRouche's world view is characterized by optimism, which she recently described: "My optimism comes from the conviction that we will win in this great world historic struggle. And this conviction derives from a philosophic idea of Nicolaus of Cusa, that {concordia}, unity, in the macrocosm is only possible if all microcosms are developed. In other words: Peace in the world will only come about, and civilization can only continue, if all nations have the possibility of full development."

Contact Helga Zepp LaRouche:
schiller@schillerinstitute.org

 

Selected Links (Partial List):

 Photo Album 



Helga Zepp and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. at the Schiller Institute Landbridge Conference, Kiedrich, Germany
 

Helga Zepp LaRouche on the coast of China, the "Eastern Terminal of the Eurasian Landbridge", 1996

 


Helga Zepp-LaRouche testifies at the Russian
Duma
, 2001



Helga Zepp LaRouche at the Dialogue of Civilizations, Rhodes, Greece, 2003.
 

Lyndon H., Jr. and Helga Zepp LaRouche at the President's Day 2003 Conference of the Schiller Institute, Reston, Virginia.

 


Lyndon H., Jr. and Helga Zepp LaRouche in India, 2003
 

Amelia Boynton Robinson and Helga Zepp LaRouche at the Labor Day 2003 Conference of the Schiller Institute, Reston, Virginia.

 


Helga Zepp LaRouche at webcast from Germany, 2007
 

Amelia Boynton Robinson and Helga Zepp and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. at a conference of the Schiller Institute, 1984.