Alanus University mourns “founding father” Wilfried Ogilvie

08.06.2024 - Wilfried Ogilvie, co-founder of Alanus University, passed away on 23 May 2024 at the age of 94.

From the University

Wilfried Ogilvie, co-founder of Alanus University, passed away on 23 May 2024 at the age of 94.

Wilfried Ogilvie was a universal artist – architect, sculptor, painter and cellist. And a man of great ideas: without him and his “founding impulse,” Alanus University would probably never have come into being.

Born in Amsterdam in 1929, Ogilvie studied painting after graduating from secondary school and later sculpture in Stuttgart and Munich under renowned artists of his time. “For Ogilvie, the arts served far more than pure ends in themselves. He wanted art to contribute to general human education. Art was meant to provide important and lasting impulses, whether through sound, color or form,” recalls Annette Weißkircher, Professor Emerita of Eurythmy Therapy at Alanus University.

Ogilvie was therefore deeply delighted when he rediscovered “his” ideas in the books of Alanus ab Insulis. This gave rise to his wish to found a university. “Until he once again lay awake at night and sensed that the founding impulse wanted to extend beyond the boundaries of the visual arts, that the university should become a comprehensive place for the wholeness and unity of all the arts,” writes Nikolaus von Kaisenberg, Professor of Architecture and one of Ogilvie’s first architecture students, in his personal recollections (see below).

For four years, Wilfried Ogilvie traveled across the country looking for young, dynamic artists and those who wanted to become such artists, in order to realize this idea with them. Finally, in 1973, a small group of anthroposophically oriented free thinkers founded the independent art study center “Alanus-Hochschule der Musischen und Bildenden Künste” at Johannishof in Alfter. A time of living, working and creating art together began. For 19 years, Ogilvie taught painting, sculpture and architecture and shaped the development of many artists.

Over the years, this “rebellious nucleus” developed into a privately run university of arts and social sciences that has been state-recognized for 22 years.

With great gratitude for his special merits, we remain deeply connected to Wilfried Ogilvie. Our sympathies go out to his family.

Foto Wilfried Ogilvie, Gründungsvater der Alanus Hochschule

Memories of Prof. Nikolaus v. Kaisenberg

Wilfried Ogilvie, the initiator and co-founder of Alanus University, passed away on 23 May 2024 at the age of 94. As an artist, he lived and worked in all fields of the visual arts. He was equally close to the performing arts. Thus, people who worked with him were able to experience different tones of his creative work.

In the eighties and nineties, the Department of Architecture was housed in Alfter Castle. When Ogilvie visited us there for classes, he usually came from one of the university’s other locations in Alfter, from a studio, a workshop, or from consulting with other people. And one could hear in him the echo of his work on building up the young university when he gazed thoughtfully from the high rooms into the park. We were standing at the sculpting stand. It was about the development of a plot of land on a hillside. Yes, he said, the design is already quite interesting, but the mountain. How so, I asked, what about the mountain? Yes, it’s still a bit boring, it needs to be steeper, think of a fjord. And then he took the spatula from my hand and set upon the model. We were then able to immerse ourselves in his nature, which was sustained by energy and also by trust in the forces that meet us in artistic activity. Forces of imaginative perception and ordering elements that help make a form or a movement visible. And so the mountain and the house grew together. Ah yes, it takes a certain boldness to bring something new into the world, boldness and a sense of proportion.

This was precisely the process Ogilvie later referred to when he spoke about the path toward founding the university. There was a time when he felt compelled at night to bring an academic education for the arts into being. Until he decided to establish a place for painting, graphic art and sculpture. First as a concept, as a faculty, then at a geographical location. This decision and the first steps brought him some peace. Until he again lay awake at night and sensed that the founding impulse wanted to extend beyond the boundaries of the visual arts, that it should become a comprehensive place for the wholeness and unity of all the arts. So music, movement art and acting were also to be added. Ogilvie accepted this task with great respect. He traveled to Stuttgart to discuss his doubts with Else Klink, then director of the Eurythmeum. Why don’t you do what lies within you and what is being shown to you, was her question. Bernard Lievegoed in Driebergen (NL) also reaffirmed this advice. And so the process of gathering like-minded people began. Constellations formed and changed. The question of location remained open until Dr. Günter Schönemann finally brought the founding to the Bonn area in 1973. The inner and outer development of the university had begun. This was a process that gradually took shape. The name, too, only emerged during the preparations. Wilfried Ogilvie felt drawn to the School of Chartres and to Alanus ab Insulis, the Doctor universalis, who was moved by the vision of a new human being and the unity of the seven liberal arts. The community of the arts as an idea opened up a space for Alanus University that students and visiting lecturers from all over the world sought out in order to participate. Again and again, it was to be newly explored and set forth that the boundary-transcending dialogue of the arts simultaneously contributes to their deepened autonomy. That a sculptor should not also study music and eurythmy, but can, in encountering them, find foundational experiences and inspiration for the ever-present forces of rhythm, melody and choreography.

Ogilvie preferred to orient himself toward concrete perceptions rather than theoretical constructs. He always encouraged new artistic experiences that we can penetrate and expand with consciousness. In doing so, he was sustained by the firm confidence that this way of working makes possible things that were previously unknown to us.

Outside the university, Ogilvie was active as a designer for development-oriented school architecture as well as for healthcare and devotional buildings. In this way, he indicated that, alongside the expansion of the arts, he was also seeking in the long term a renewed rapprochement with the sciences and with a new spirituality.

In class, Wilfried Ogilvie sometimes quoted from the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. Here Franz Marc: Art is the will to form. This also includes the willingness to dissolve form in order to make ever new form possible. He, too, demonstrated this art.