Marta was the daughter of the famed scientist Dr Auguste Forel, who was then chief physician of the mental hospital of Burgholzli. She grew up first in German-Speaking and later in French-speaking Switzerland in a family circle of 4 sisters and brother under the loving care of her mother, Emma Steinheil Forel. The environment of her youth left its imprint on her: the mountains, for which she longed all her life; the love of freedom; the capacity for thinking beyond national boundaries, which, as a world citizen, she took as a matter of course, these were the gifts of her homeland. Inseparably associated with them were her father's basic belief that life means work, his almost fanatical love of truth, and his ability to think with objectivity. These united in her with an all-embracing love and an inborn goodness inherited from her mother.
Working as her father's secretary in Yvorne, she met her future husband, Artur Brauns, a medical student who, as the friend of her eldest brother Eduard, spent his vacations there. After their marriage she and Artur lived at first in Munich.
During the four years of the First World War, Marta and her four children stayed with her parents in Switzerland, while her husband served as an army doctor on the Eastern Front. She suffered a good deal from the conflict between her German and Swiss loyalties, between war and peace. There matured within her in those years the resolution to work for peace.
In 1919, Artur settled down as a practising physician and psychiatrist in Karisruhe. In the newly-developing garden-city, the young physician's family found a congenial intellectual environment. Within a few years, Dr. Artur Brauns had become a well-known and sought after physician in Karisruhe, and highly esteemed for his social work as one of the town councilors. Together, the young couple studied the Baha Faith.
On September 1, 1925, which was her father's birthday, her husband was drowned in a canoe accident in the Rh6ne river. She was left, a widow with five children, to face responsibilities that demanded all the resources of her nature.
After the death of her husband she became the center of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe and later a Convention delegate from the community and a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany. She was active in the fight of the Guttempler Association against alcohol; she cooperated with the Esperantists; she served in the "Women's League for Peace and Freedom"; she was an indispensable coworker of the Kronach friends in their promotion of a garden-city. To this was added actual work on the garden and estate of her husband in Ettlingen, and she met these demands as if gardening were her real vocation. In addition, many patients of her husband transferred their confidence to her and came for advice, and the correspondence which she carried on with all parts of the world would in itself have been enough to keep one person busy. With all this she was an exemplary mother to her five children.
The years from 1934 to 1939 were a high point in the life of Marta Brauns, for during this period her mother lived with her in Karisruhe. Anyone who was fortunate enough to be a guest in the Brauns household at that time never forgot its atmosphere of happiness and self-sacrificing love. The separation from her mother, brought about by the Second World War, added to many new sorrows, not the least of which was an ever more torturing homesickness. Marta suffered from the many injustices of the Third Reich and the general loss of freedom.
The isolation of Germany from the rest of the world, the persecution of the Jews, the proscription of the Baha'i community, all these caused her much anguish.
The war demanded further sacrifices from her. In 1942, her youngest son Jiirg fell on the Eastern Front. The fortitude with which she bore the loss of this son who was really the closest to her showed her deeply religious nature. The serious war injury of her eldest son Wolf was a new calamity. In 1945 when the wife of this son, the beloved Anne, died suddenly, it was Marta who sustained him.
After her return to Karisruhe in the late summer of 1945, she tried to concentrate all her powers, beyond her home, garden and social duties, on activities for the Baha'i Faith.
The renewal of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe was due to her initiative. From this group the Baha'i community arose in the spring of 1947. As a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, reelected in 1946 following the eight-year suspension of Baha'i activity, and as a delegate to the National Convention, she was an inspiration to all the Baha'is of Germany, while her correspondence with friends in Palestine, Persia, 'Iraq, Africa, Argentina, the United States, Canada, England, Holland and Switzerland, made her known to Baha'is throughout the world.
Marta's death was sudden; as her son-in-law commented in his address at the funeral, held August 18, 1948, in the memorial hail of the Diaconiss Hospital at Ruppurr, there was no place in her crowded life for a lingering and meditative old age.
Many people gathered on that solemn occasion to pay their last respects. The Baha'i Assembly of Karisruhe, the Es-slingen Baha'i School, her Konach friends, the Board of the garden-city there (of which Board Marta had recently been elected the first woman member), were represented. Nine candles, emblems of the nine lights of Baha'i unity, burned at the head of the lavishly beflowered coffin.
These words from the funeral address, which was accompanied by appropriate Baha'i prayers and readings, summed up her life: "At a time when pacificists were sneered at, she fought valiantir for peace. Disregarding the compassionate smile of the intellectuals, she spent the days of her advanced years learning an international auxiliary language. Almost fanatically, she challenged the moral degeneration of her times, in a place where alcohol and its attendant practices were considered educational factors. She matched the conquests of science with the conquests of religion. She fought for the triumph of her religion when the authorities imaged they could destroy her spiritual treasure by confiscating her books. She suffered like a mother with all the victims of racial and religious prejudice; she tried to shield them; if one, fearing to compromise himself, turned away from her, he found her heart still open to him when he came back again for help. If she knew that someone was withdrawing from her out of coldness or jealousy, she prayed for him, seeking a way of reconciliation until she found it. She demonstrated the principle of woman's equality with man by her own life. She had her renowned father's incorruptible intellect, her mother's loving heart, a sense of responsiblity and determination equaling that of her departed husband. Wherever she came, she brought with her the clear, bright mountain air of her native Switzerland, chilling the languid and the weak, perhaps, but refreshing the strong. Her whole life was a restless struggle truly to become a Baha'i, "a bearer of light."
For her children, Marta Brauns-Forel wrote out her last wishes in a warm, human testament: "You know that I have a great aversion to visiting cemeteries. For that reason I have long decided that I would like to be interred in the small cemetery of Hohenwettersbach, at some small, hidden place and without the customary wreaths and flowers.
However, you could plant Lonicera on it which grow quickly to a green cover without permitting weeds to come up. Never seek me there!
Where I am is at Ettlingen, in our stone garden, gandmother's hill as she herself used to call it, there at your father's memorial place, and Jurg's spritiual abode.
I don't want to trouble anyone with coming there.
Therefore I ask you to have the funeral proceed quietly with only you present. I would like you so much to do what I have done after your father's passing: no mourning, no wearing of black; rather being joyful and preserving the good and the positive, the spiritual heritage of my parents and of your father. You needn't forget my deficiencies and weaknesses, though they shouldn't entirely hide the positive. The best we have given you is the Baha'i teaching. I needn't say more. It contains everything that I would want to tell you."
Working as her father's secretary in Yvorne, she met her future husband, Artur Brauns, a medical student who, as the friend of her eldest brother Eduard, spent his vacations there. After their marriage she and Artur lived at first in Munich.
During the four years of the First World War, Marta and her four children stayed with her parents in Switzerland, while her husband served as an army doctor on the Eastern Front. She suffered a good deal from the conflict between her German and Swiss loyalties, between war and peace. There matured within her in those years the resolution to work for peace.
In 1919, Artur settled down as a practising physician and psychiatrist in Karisruhe. In the newly-developing garden-city, the young physician's family found a congenial intellectual environment. Within a few years, Dr. Artur Brauns had become a well-known and sought after physician in Karisruhe, and highly esteemed for his social work as one of the town councilors. Together, the young couple studied the Baha Faith.
On September 1, 1925, which was her father's birthday, her husband was drowned in a canoe accident in the Rh6ne river. She was left, a widow with five children, to face responsibilities that demanded all the resources of her nature.
After the death of her husband she became the center of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe and later a Convention delegate from the community and a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany. She was active in the fight of the Guttempler Association against alcohol; she cooperated with the Esperantists; she served in the "Women's League for Peace and Freedom"; she was an indispensable coworker of the Kronach friends in their promotion of a garden-city. To this was added actual work on the garden and estate of her husband in Ettlingen, and she met these demands as if gardening were her real vocation. In addition, many patients of her husband transferred their confidence to her and came for advice, and the correspondence which she carried on with all parts of the world would in itself have been enough to keep one person busy. With all this she was an exemplary mother to her five children.
The years from 1934 to 1939 were a high point in the life of Marta Brauns, for during this period her mother lived with her in Karisruhe. Anyone who was fortunate enough to be a guest in the Brauns household at that time never forgot its atmosphere of happiness and self-sacrificing love. The separation from her mother, brought about by the Second World War, added to many new sorrows, not the least of which was an ever more torturing homesickness. Marta suffered from the many injustices of the Third Reich and the general loss of freedom.
The isolation of Germany from the rest of the world, the persecution of the Jews, the proscription of the Baha'i community, all these caused her much anguish.
The war demanded further sacrifices from her. In 1942, her youngest son Jiirg fell on the Eastern Front. The fortitude with which she bore the loss of this son who was really the closest to her showed her deeply religious nature. The serious war injury of her eldest son Wolf was a new calamity. In 1945 when the wife of this son, the beloved Anne, died suddenly, it was Marta who sustained him.
After her return to Karisruhe in the late summer of 1945, she tried to concentrate all her powers, beyond her home, garden and social duties, on activities for the Baha'i Faith.
The renewal of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe was due to her initiative. From this group the Baha'i community arose in the spring of 1947. As a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, reelected in 1946 following the eight-year suspension of Baha'i activity, and as a delegate to the National Convention, she was an inspiration to all the Baha'is of Germany, while her correspondence with friends in Palestine, Persia, 'Iraq, Africa, Argentina, the United States, Canada, England, Holland and Switzerland, made her known to Baha'is throughout the world.
Marta's death was sudden; as her son-in-law commented in his address at the funeral, held August 18, 1948, in the memorial hail of the Diaconiss Hospital at Ruppurr, there was no place in her crowded life for a lingering and meditative old age.
Many people gathered on that solemn occasion to pay their last respects. The Baha'i Assembly of Karisruhe, the Es-slingen Baha'i School, her Konach friends, the Board of the garden-city there (of which Board Marta had recently been elected the first woman member), were represented. Nine candles, emblems of the nine lights of Baha'i unity, burned at the head of the lavishly beflowered coffin.
These words from the funeral address, which was accompanied by appropriate Baha'i prayers and readings, summed up her life: "At a time when pacificists were sneered at, she fought valiantir for peace. Disregarding the compassionate smile of the intellectuals, she spent the days of her advanced years learning an international auxiliary language. Almost fanatically, she challenged the moral degeneration of her times, in a place where alcohol and its attendant practices were considered educational factors. She matched the conquests of science with the conquests of religion. She fought for the triumph of her religion when the authorities imaged they could destroy her spiritual treasure by confiscating her books. She suffered like a mother with all the victims of racial and religious prejudice; she tried to shield them; if one, fearing to compromise himself, turned away from her, he found her heart still open to him when he came back again for help. If she knew that someone was withdrawing from her out of coldness or jealousy, she prayed for him, seeking a way of reconciliation until she found it. She demonstrated the principle of woman's equality with man by her own life. She had her renowned father's incorruptible intellect, her mother's loving heart, a sense of responsiblity and determination equaling that of her departed husband. Wherever she came, she brought with her the clear, bright mountain air of her native Switzerland, chilling the languid and the weak, perhaps, but refreshing the strong. Her whole life was a restless struggle truly to become a Baha'i, "a bearer of light."
For her children, Marta Brauns-Forel wrote out her last wishes in a warm, human testament: "You know that I have a great aversion to visiting cemeteries. For that reason I have long decided that I would like to be interred in the small cemetery of Hohenwettersbach, at some small, hidden place and without the customary wreaths and flowers.
However, you could plant Lonicera on it which grow quickly to a green cover without permitting weeds to come up. Never seek me there!
Where I am is at Ettlingen, in our stone garden, gandmother's hill as she herself used to call it, there at your father's memorial place, and Jurg's spritiual abode.
I don't want to trouble anyone with coming there.
Therefore I ask you to have the funeral proceed quietly with only you present. I would like you so much to do what I have done after your father's passing: no mourning, no wearing of black; rather being joyful and preserving the good and the positive, the spiritual heritage of my parents and of your father. You needn't forget my deficiencies and weaknesses, though they shouldn't entirely hide the positive. The best we have given you is the Baha'i teaching. I needn't say more. It contains everything that I would want to tell you."
Marta was the daughter of the famed scientist Dr Auguste Forel, who was then chief physician of the mental hospital of Burgholzli. She grew up first in German-Speaking and later in French-speaking Switzerland in a family circle of 4 sisters and brother under the loving care of her mother, Emma Steinheil Forel. The environment of her youth left its imprint on her: the mountains, for which she longed all her life; the love of freedom; the capacity for thinking beyond national boundaries, which, as a world citizen, she took as a matter of course, these were the gifts of her homeland. Inseparably associated with them were her father's basic belief that life means work, his almost fanatical love of truth, and his ability to think with objectivity. These united in her with an all-embracing love and an inborn goodness inherited from her mother.
Working as her father's secretary in Yvorne, she met her future husband, Artur Brauns, a medical student who, as the friend of her eldest brother Eduard, spent his vacations there. After their marriage she and Artur lived at first in Munich.
During the four years of the First World War, Marta and her four children stayed with her parents in Switzerland, while her husband served as an army doctor on the Eastern Front. She suffered a good deal from the conflict between her German and Swiss loyalties, between war and peace. There matured within her in those years the resolution to work for peace.
In 1919, Artur settled down as a practising physician and psychiatrist in Karisruhe. In the newly-developing garden-city, the young physician's family found a congenial intellectual environment. Within a few years, Dr. Artur Brauns had become a well-known and sought after physician in Karisruhe, and highly esteemed for his social work as one of the town councilors. Together, the young couple studied the Baha Faith.
On September 1, 1925, which was her father's birthday, her husband was drowned in a canoe accident in the Rh6ne river. She was left, a widow with five children, to face responsibilities that demanded all the resources of her nature.
After the death of her husband she became the center of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe and later a Convention delegate from the community and a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany. She was active in the fight of the Guttempler Association against alcohol; she cooperated with the Esperantists; she served in the "Women's League for Peace and Freedom"; she was an indispensable coworker of the Kronach friends in their promotion of a garden-city. To this was added actual work on the garden and estate of her husband in Ettlingen, and she met these demands as if gardening were her real vocation. In addition, many patients of her husband transferred their confidence to her and came for advice, and the correspondence which she carried on with all parts of the world would in itself have been enough to keep one person busy. With all this she was an exemplary mother to her five children.
The years from 1934 to 1939 were a high point in the life of Marta Brauns, for during this period her mother lived with her in Karisruhe. Anyone who was fortunate enough to be a guest in the Brauns household at that time never forgot its atmosphere of happiness and self-sacrificing love. The separation from her mother, brought about by the Second World War, added to many new sorrows, not the least of which was an ever more torturing homesickness. Marta suffered from the many injustices of the Third Reich and the general loss of freedom.
The isolation of Germany from the rest of the world, the persecution of the Jews, the proscription of the Baha'i community, all these caused her much anguish.
The war demanded further sacrifices from her. In 1942, her youngest son Jiirg fell on the Eastern Front. The fortitude with which she bore the loss of this son who was really the closest to her showed her deeply religious nature. The serious war injury of her eldest son Wolf was a new calamity. In 1945 when the wife of this son, the beloved Anne, died suddenly, it was Marta who sustained him.
After her return to Karisruhe in the late summer of 1945, she tried to concentrate all her powers, beyond her home, garden and social duties, on activities for the Baha'i Faith.
The renewal of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe was due to her initiative. From this group the Baha'i community arose in the spring of 1947. As a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, reelected in 1946 following the eight-year suspension of Baha'i activity, and as a delegate to the National Convention, she was an inspiration to all the Baha'is of Germany, while her correspondence with friends in Palestine, Persia, 'Iraq, Africa, Argentina, the United States, Canada, England, Holland and Switzerland, made her known to Baha'is throughout the world.
Marta's death was sudden; as her son-in-law commented in his address at the funeral, held August 18, 1948, in the memorial hail of the Diaconiss Hospital at Ruppurr, there was no place in her crowded life for a lingering and meditative old age.
Many people gathered on that solemn occasion to pay their last respects. The Baha'i Assembly of Karisruhe, the Es-slingen Baha'i School, her Konach friends, the Board of the garden-city there (of which Board Marta had recently been elected the first woman member), were represented. Nine candles, emblems of the nine lights of Baha'i unity, burned at the head of the lavishly beflowered coffin.
These words from the funeral address, which was accompanied by appropriate Baha'i prayers and readings, summed up her life: "At a time when pacificists were sneered at, she fought valiantir for peace. Disregarding the compassionate smile of the intellectuals, she spent the days of her advanced years learning an international auxiliary language. Almost fanatically, she challenged the moral degeneration of her times, in a place where alcohol and its attendant practices were considered educational factors. She matched the conquests of science with the conquests of religion. She fought for the triumph of her religion when the authorities imaged they could destroy her spiritual treasure by confiscating her books. She suffered like a mother with all the victims of racial and religious prejudice; she tried to shield them; if one, fearing to compromise himself, turned away from her, he found her heart still open to him when he came back again for help. If she knew that someone was withdrawing from her out of coldness or jealousy, she prayed for him, seeking a way of reconciliation until she found it. She demonstrated the principle of woman's equality with man by her own life. She had her renowned father's incorruptible intellect, her mother's loving heart, a sense of responsiblity and determination equaling that of her departed husband. Wherever she came, she brought with her the clear, bright mountain air of her native Switzerland, chilling the languid and the weak, perhaps, but refreshing the strong. Her whole life was a restless struggle truly to become a Baha'i, "a bearer of light."
For her children, Marta Brauns-Forel wrote out her last wishes in a warm, human testament: "You know that I have a great aversion to visiting cemeteries. For that reason I have long decided that I would like to be interred in the small cemetery of Hohenwettersbach, at some small, hidden place and without the customary wreaths and flowers.
However, you could plant Lonicera on it which grow quickly to a green cover without permitting weeds to come up. Never seek me there!
Where I am is at Ettlingen, in our stone garden, gandmother's hill as she herself used to call it, there at your father's memorial place, and Jurg's spritiual abode.
I don't want to trouble anyone with coming there.
Therefore I ask you to have the funeral proceed quietly with only you present. I would like you so much to do what I have done after your father's passing: no mourning, no wearing of black; rather being joyful and preserving the good and the positive, the spiritual heritage of my parents and of your father. You needn't forget my deficiencies and weaknesses, though they shouldn't entirely hide the positive. The best we have given you is the Baha'i teaching. I needn't say more. It contains everything that I would want to tell you."
Working as her father's secretary in Yvorne, she met her future husband, Artur Brauns, a medical student who, as the friend of her eldest brother Eduard, spent his vacations there. After their marriage she and Artur lived at first in Munich.
During the four years of the First World War, Marta and her four children stayed with her parents in Switzerland, while her husband served as an army doctor on the Eastern Front. She suffered a good deal from the conflict between her German and Swiss loyalties, between war and peace. There matured within her in those years the resolution to work for peace.
In 1919, Artur settled down as a practising physician and psychiatrist in Karisruhe. In the newly-developing garden-city, the young physician's family found a congenial intellectual environment. Within a few years, Dr. Artur Brauns had become a well-known and sought after physician in Karisruhe, and highly esteemed for his social work as one of the town councilors. Together, the young couple studied the Baha Faith.
On September 1, 1925, which was her father's birthday, her husband was drowned in a canoe accident in the Rh6ne river. She was left, a widow with five children, to face responsibilities that demanded all the resources of her nature.
After the death of her husband she became the center of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe and later a Convention delegate from the community and a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of Germany. She was active in the fight of the Guttempler Association against alcohol; she cooperated with the Esperantists; she served in the "Women's League for Peace and Freedom"; she was an indispensable coworker of the Kronach friends in their promotion of a garden-city. To this was added actual work on the garden and estate of her husband in Ettlingen, and she met these demands as if gardening were her real vocation. In addition, many patients of her husband transferred their confidence to her and came for advice, and the correspondence which she carried on with all parts of the world would in itself have been enough to keep one person busy. With all this she was an exemplary mother to her five children.
The years from 1934 to 1939 were a high point in the life of Marta Brauns, for during this period her mother lived with her in Karisruhe. Anyone who was fortunate enough to be a guest in the Brauns household at that time never forgot its atmosphere of happiness and self-sacrificing love. The separation from her mother, brought about by the Second World War, added to many new sorrows, not the least of which was an ever more torturing homesickness. Marta suffered from the many injustices of the Third Reich and the general loss of freedom.
The isolation of Germany from the rest of the world, the persecution of the Jews, the proscription of the Baha'i community, all these caused her much anguish.
The war demanded further sacrifices from her. In 1942, her youngest son Jiirg fell on the Eastern Front. The fortitude with which she bore the loss of this son who was really the closest to her showed her deeply religious nature. The serious war injury of her eldest son Wolf was a new calamity. In 1945 when the wife of this son, the beloved Anne, died suddenly, it was Marta who sustained him.
After her return to Karisruhe in the late summer of 1945, she tried to concentrate all her powers, beyond her home, garden and social duties, on activities for the Baha'i Faith.
The renewal of the Baha'i group in Karisruhe was due to her initiative. From this group the Baha'i community arose in the spring of 1947. As a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, reelected in 1946 following the eight-year suspension of Baha'i activity, and as a delegate to the National Convention, she was an inspiration to all the Baha'is of Germany, while her correspondence with friends in Palestine, Persia, 'Iraq, Africa, Argentina, the United States, Canada, England, Holland and Switzerland, made her known to Baha'is throughout the world.
Marta's death was sudden; as her son-in-law commented in his address at the funeral, held August 18, 1948, in the memorial hail of the Diaconiss Hospital at Ruppurr, there was no place in her crowded life for a lingering and meditative old age.
Many people gathered on that solemn occasion to pay their last respects. The Baha'i Assembly of Karisruhe, the Es-slingen Baha'i School, her Konach friends, the Board of the garden-city there (of which Board Marta had recently been elected the first woman member), were represented. Nine candles, emblems of the nine lights of Baha'i unity, burned at the head of the lavishly beflowered coffin.
These words from the funeral address, which was accompanied by appropriate Baha'i prayers and readings, summed up her life: "At a time when pacificists were sneered at, she fought valiantir for peace. Disregarding the compassionate smile of the intellectuals, she spent the days of her advanced years learning an international auxiliary language. Almost fanatically, she challenged the moral degeneration of her times, in a place where alcohol and its attendant practices were considered educational factors. She matched the conquests of science with the conquests of religion. She fought for the triumph of her religion when the authorities imaged they could destroy her spiritual treasure by confiscating her books. She suffered like a mother with all the victims of racial and religious prejudice; she tried to shield them; if one, fearing to compromise himself, turned away from her, he found her heart still open to him when he came back again for help. If she knew that someone was withdrawing from her out of coldness or jealousy, she prayed for him, seeking a way of reconciliation until she found it. She demonstrated the principle of woman's equality with man by her own life. She had her renowned father's incorruptible intellect, her mother's loving heart, a sense of responsiblity and determination equaling that of her departed husband. Wherever she came, she brought with her the clear, bright mountain air of her native Switzerland, chilling the languid and the weak, perhaps, but refreshing the strong. Her whole life was a restless struggle truly to become a Baha'i, "a bearer of light."
For her children, Marta Brauns-Forel wrote out her last wishes in a warm, human testament: "You know that I have a great aversion to visiting cemeteries. For that reason I have long decided that I would like to be interred in the small cemetery of Hohenwettersbach, at some small, hidden place and without the customary wreaths and flowers.
However, you could plant Lonicera on it which grow quickly to a green cover without permitting weeds to come up. Never seek me there!
Where I am is at Ettlingen, in our stone garden, gandmother's hill as she herself used to call it, there at your father's memorial place, and Jurg's spritiual abode.
I don't want to trouble anyone with coming there.
Therefore I ask you to have the funeral proceed quietly with only you present. I would like you so much to do what I have done after your father's passing: no mourning, no wearing of black; rather being joyful and preserving the good and the positive, the spiritual heritage of my parents and of your father. You needn't forget my deficiencies and weaknesses, though they shouldn't entirely hide the positive. The best we have given you is the Baha'i teaching. I needn't say more. It contains everything that I would want to tell you."
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