Who Was Paul Schatz
Artist/Sculptor, Inventor and Mathematician
Paul Schatz was born in Constance on Lake Constance on December 22nd, 1898. His early life was shaped by his comfortable, middle-class background – his father was a town councilor and owner of a small engineering works. The technological achievements of the new century, in particular those of aviation, were welcomed and encouraged everywhere with tremendous enthusiasm. In 1916, the second year of World War I, the gifted student was awarded the Count Zeppelin Prize, a scholarship granted for coming first in mathematics and the sciences. At age seventeen, he was sent to the Western front as a radio operator. After the war, he began to study mathematics, mechanical engineering, and philosophy at the Munich College of Technology. Shortly before he was to take his diploma, he changed over to astronomy instead. Disenchanted by the abstract approach to the sciences prevalent at that time, he discontinued his studies in 1922 and began training as an artist at the Warmbrunn School of Wood-Carving in the Riesengebirge.
Between 1924 and 1927, he worked as a sculptor and had his own studio on Lake Constance. At the same time, he also began to intensively study anthroposophy, which increasingly led him to search for the origins of his own art work in an attempt to find a way of thinking the clarity of which does not freeze art to death, and to become a truly creative artist out of a clearly perceived reason and not one shrouded in darkness and beyond human control. As a result of this discussion, he published his book – A Quest of Art Based on the Strength of Perception.
In 1927, he and his wife, Emmy Schatz-Witt, moved to Dornach (Switzerland), where the artist, inventor, and technician lived and worked until his death on March 7th, 1979.
Paul Schatz saw his developing of novel technical designs in the sense of the Greek word techno as a simultaneous practicing of art. His great ideal was to seek and realize a new technology suitable for man and in harmony with nature.
When he died in March 1979, Paul Schatz left a rich and striking oeuvre. His work was entirely dedicated to bridging the gap between the artistic and scientific activities of Man.
A large part of human suffering in the shape of war, destruction of the environment, and the social gradient within society is to be attributed to this chasm between the emotional and the cognitive-analytical abilities of Man. The biographical impulses of his life’s work are due to his experience as a young World War I volunteer at the Western front and as a student in the revolutionary Munich of the postwar years between 1918 and 1922. In the humanities approach of Rudolf Steiner he found, on the one hand, the tools of epistemological methodology and cognitive theory and, on the other one, the artistic approach this required.
His discovery of the laws of inversion within geometric bodies, in particular that of the cube, is an expression of the mental and spiritual revolution or inversion necessary to Man. Paul Schatz defined the much admired objects and inventions as ‘‘waste products’’ of his spiritual-artistic vision. Indeed, the pedagogical value of the geometric models or the architecture to be developed from them can only be under-stood by considering this background. Without any training of one’s own imagination and mental capacity, not least supported and stimulated by the idea of inversion, progress in social life would be difficult to achieve.
One consequence of the inventor’s and discoverer’s activities is his many technical inventions. Novel clocks, ship’s engines, mixers and agitators, motors and other technical developments strive to develop a machine or engineering art taking into account the needs of the environment and Man.
Born in Constance in 1898, Paul Schatz moved to Dornach, Switzerland, in 1927, where he was to spend the main part of his productive life. A first and important success of his technical invention was owed to Willy A. Bachofen AG, the Basel machine factory that sold thousands of his Turbula mixers for industrial and pharmaceutical applications all over the world over the years. Until this came about, there was a 20-year long battle against skepticism, criticism, and ignorance. The technical requirements to master mass forces and complex movements of the inversion kinematics resulting from the inversion of the cube were immense.
Four years before he died, Paul Schatz finally established OLOID AG. This company was to study and apply the many possibilities of Oloid technology. To enable this, Paul Schatz developed some new patents (CH Patent No. 500000) and prototypes but did not live to see the economic success they would bring. These were the very developments that showed how far into the future his inventions would reach, not least because the technical requirements proved an additional challenge compared to the Turbula.
Thus, Paul Schatz remained largely isolated, although he had become known for some of his objects and inventions in both Switzerland and Germany, and his merits did not find their just acclaim. The actual discovery of Paul Schatz and the significance of his ingenious works and suggestions are still outstanding.
On the Foundation and the Society
In 1983, the ‘‘Paul Schatz Verein’’ (Paul Schatz Association) was founded in Dornach, near Basel. At the beginning of 2000, all rights of the association were transferred to the Paul Schatz Stiftung (Paul Schatz Foundation). For our German friends and interested parties, and for the activities within Germany, the ‘‘Deutsche Paul Schatz Gesellschaft’’ (German Paul Schatz Society) domiciled in Göppingen was established in 1991. It makes every effort to support the Swiss foundation and helps realize projects in Germany. The German society enjoys the status of a public charity and in Switzerland, donations to the Foundation may also be deducted from taxes.
Foundation and Society Tasks
Paul Schatz left a lot of discoveries, inventions, and manuscripts that comprise interesting and important impulses for mathematics, geometry, and architecture. His contributions to mechanical engineer-ing enable the construction of plants and facilities of utmost interest to agriculture, water treatment, and power generation. These apparatuses and inventions may also be used for pharmaceutical processes and offer new vistas and prospects of industrial fabrication. Besides, his mathematical discoveries have a high pedagogical value, too.
The above-mentioned fields of work provide the Foundation with a broad and fascinating field of activity that is divided into three basic parts:
Archive and Estate
The foremost and central task of the Foundation is the conservation of the archive. The respective manuscripts, diaries, letters, drawings, and models as well as machines (prototypes) have to be protected against decay and preserved. The writings in the estate have to be put in order, organized and made accessible to the public. From Paul Schatz’s period as a sculptor, there also is a highly varied curve composed of sculptures and woodcuts to be put in order and safeguarded.
Public Relations
His work can be conveyed to an interested public by way of conventions, exhibitions, and publications. The geometrical models, too, are to remain or to be made available to interested parties with the help of professional contractual partners. In addition, a co-operation with other foundations and societies is to be sought. Researchers and institutions that study the oeuvre of Paul Schatz or its continued development may have their say at conventions or in writings published by the Foundation.
Exhibition
The Foundation owns exhibits that depict the curve of Paul Schatz and encourage beholders to actively participate. It is the task of the Foundation to put these objects at the disposal of museums, schools, and other institutions. These exhibits comprise, in addition to the discoveries made by Paul Schatz, the Platonic bodies and Johannes Keppler’s objects from which Paul Schatz deduced and derived the concept of the inversion of space. Besides, the Foundation is the custodian of documentation on additional objects that are yet to be built.
The exhibition leads the beholder by way of the beauty and mobility of geometric bodies to a more profound contemplation of the puzzle of space. Today’s studies of currently active researchers are continually integrated into the exhibition. Researchers studying the topics Paul Schatz focused on and working to realize and continue these developments will be given a forum at Foundation and Society conventions and publications in which to present their ideas.
Research and Further Development
Paul Schatz has accomplished a lot of new things – above all in the field of technology and science and, in particular, in the field of mathematics and geometry. Some of these things only exist as suggestions and proposals, as a fragment or not yet statistically proven research result. In particular on the topic of treating potable water and turning it into a high-quality food and remedy, there is a high demand as to research as yet. Interesting studies focus on imaging methods (images of droplet formation, rising water columns, and crystallization, etc.).
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Nevin Eckert
Water Quality Specialist
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