Rudolf Maria Holzapfel and Stanislaw Vincenz, i.e. Crossing Not Only Religious Borders

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to tell the story of the unusual philosophical friendship between Rudolf Maria Holzapfel (1874-1930) and Stanisław Vincenz (1888-1971). Both were born and raised in a multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious Galicia. Holzapfel began writing his life's work, Panideal, at the end of the 19th century and completed it a few years before his death. Vincenz not only translated the Panideal into Polish in close collaboration with the author, but was deeply inspired by it. In fact, without this inspiration, he probably would not have written his life's work, On a High Uplands. For both of them, the main objective was to bring out the unifying force present in each other's lives, as we read in the Panideal: “It is necessary first to bring these often mysterious phenomena, as if in a deep living well, of consciousness, creativity, the experiences of art, the ideal and religion, into the daylight of full consciousness, in order to discover the conditions of their perfection, of their synthetic fusion into a harmonious creation of the ideal whole”. Apparently, not only their philosophical and literary works, but also their activism in various fields allows us to see the same philosophical idea in them. For both Holzapfel, who came from a Jewish family, and Vincenz, rooted in the Christian tradition, crossing religious and cultural boundaries was a way to realise the ideal whole (Panideal).