Hamburg School

Meaning

The Hamburg School is the system of astrology worked out by the Hamburg surveyor Alfred Witte (1878–1941) and his circle in the 1920s. In English it is usually called Uranian astrology. Its distinctive features are:

• the planetary picture: any arrangement in which planets or points are symmetrical, above all a planet on the midpoint of two others, written as equations of sums and differences;
• the rotating dial, especially the 90° dial, for finding those symmetries without calculation;
• a set of reference points (the Aries Point, Midheaven, Ascendant, Sun, Moon and Node) and several kinds of houses measured from them;
• eight hypothetical planets beyond Neptune, used alongside the known planets.

Origin and history

Witte. Witte worked in the Hamburg city survey office. He took up astrology around 1910–11, when Karl Brandler-Pracht was teaching introductory courses in Hamburg (Howe gives 1910, the Witte publishing house about 1911) [4][2]. He served as an artilleryman on the Russian front in the First World War. Howe relays the story that he tried to time Russian artillery fire astrologically, and that shells falling when the stars said they should not led him to suspect an unknown planet beyond Neptune [4]. After the war he was invited to the Kepler Circle, a Hamburg study group founded in spring 1915 by Friedrich Sieggrün, and gave his first public lecture there in summer 1919; he published some forty articles between 1919 and 1924 [1]. At the Leipzig astrology congress of 1923 Sieggrün spoke for Witte's methods and introduced the name "Hamburg School" [1][4]. The Hamburg School association was founded on 31 October 1925 on the initiative of Sieggrün, Witte, Ludwig Rudolph and Hans Feddern, with 21 founding members in all [1][3].

The hypothetical planets. Witte published Cupido in July 1923, followed by Hades and Zeus (1923) and Kronos (spring 1924) [2][1]. Sieggrün presented Apollon, Admetos and Vulkanus to the group on 5 September 1927 [1] and added Poseidon in 1934 [3]. Witte did not adopt Sieggrün's points; they were taken into the school's standard repertoire only after Witte's death [3]. Hermann Lefeldt added them, with Pluto, to the 1946 edition of the rulebook [1]. The eight are Cupido, Hades, Zeus, Kronos (Witte) and Apollon, Admetos, Vulkanus, Poseidon (Sieggrün).

The rulebook. The members collected short interpretive rules from charts of clearly timed events, mainly between July 1926 and November 1927. Ludwig Rudolph arranged them into the Regelwerk für Planetenbilder (Rules for Planetary Pictures), published by his Witte-Verlag. Feist and Howe date the first edition to 1928; the Witte publishing house's biography of Witte says the manuscript was finished in summer 1928 and the book came on the market in 1929 [1][4][2]. Later editions appeared in 1932 and 1935 [2]; Lefeldt's enlarged fourth edition was completed in December 1946 [6], and a fifth followed in 1959 [4]. Rudolph introduced the 90° and 45° charts, drawn as circles for use with a dial, in 1931 [3]. Reinhold Ebertin's account differs: he credits the idea of a 90° disc, and a 45° circle, to Witte himself, who had earlier worked with a 360° degree disc on which 0° Cancer was the zero (pp. 7–8) [8]. Ebertin lists the Regelwerk as published at Hamburg in 1928 and 1935 (p. 202) [8].

Persecution. On 2 October 1936 the president of the Reich Chamber of Literature banned the third edition of the Regelwerk without giving a reason, and the Gestapo confiscated the book in January 1937 [6]. The accounts then differ. Howe records that it was later allowed back on sale in an amended version [4]. The Witte publishing house says Witte would not strike out the criticised passages or the hypothetical planets, that permission granted in March 1939 to export 500 copies was withdrawn because the books had already been destroyed, and that in 1941 the firm's entire stock was confiscated and destroyed [2][6]. (The often-repeated statement that copies were burned is not made in these sources.) After Rudolf Hess's flight to Scotland, the Gestapo arrested astrologers across Germany on 9 June 1941 [4]. Rudolph was held in the Gestapo prison at Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel and released on 28 June 1941 [6]. Witte was not interned, but on 4 July 1941 the Gestapo searched his home, sealed a room of his books and took him for questioning; he then had to report to the Gestapo regularly [2]. On 4 August 1941 he took his own life [2]. The Witte publishing house gives two reasons in different places: the note he left, saying he did not want to go to a concentration camp [2], and his wish to secure his state pension for his family, which he feared losing if he was dismissed [6].

After the war. Rudolph re-registered the firm with the military government in August 1945 [6]. The Witte-Verlag is still run by his family and has published the journal Hamburger Hefte since 1960 [1]. Witte's methods without the hypothetical planets were taken up by Reinhold Ebertin as cosmobiology.

America. Richard Svehla of the Phoenix Bookshop in Cleveland, Ohio, became the school's authorised representative in the United States in 1933. He obtained the rights to an English translation of the 1935 edition, which appeared in 1939, and took the name "Uranian System of Astrology" from a note by Rudolph [1]. Hans Niggemann in New York, who described himself as one of Witte's pupils, privately published an English version of the rulebook (library catalogues date it 1959; Howe gives 1960) [4]. Rudolph had the Lefeldt rulebook translated into English by Curt Knupfer, published in 1974 [5]. The Uranian Society was founded in New York in 1980 and is now a special-interest group of the National Council for Geocosmic Research [7]; the International Uranian Fellowship holds conferences in Europe and America [1].

How it is used

Planetary pictures as equations. Witte wrote pictures as sums and differences: A + B = C + D means the midpoint of A and B equals the midpoint of C and D; A + B − C gives a "sensitive point" [3]. Howe, who tried the system, describes pages of such equations checked against the dial and then interpreted from the rulebook [4].

The dial. On the 90° dial conjunctions, squares and oppositions coincide, so one turn of the pointer shows every symmetrical arrangement around a point. The 45° axes and, for some users, the 22.5° axes add further aspects [3]. Orbs are small.

Reference points and houses. In the 1935 rulebook Witte put the Aries Point, Sun and Moon first among the factors, then the planets, then the Node, Ascendant and Midheaven, and last the hypothetical planets [1]. Houses are counted from several of these points, not only from the Ascendant: the Witte publishing house today lists Earth, Meridian, Moon, Ascendant, Node and Sun houses, all set with the dial [3], and Witte also spoke of houses for the planets' own cycles [1].

On this site. The Midpoints panel uses the Hamburg School's tools (shorter-arc midpoints, the 90° dial by default with 45°, 360° and 22.5° options, an orb slider from 0.5° to 3°, and an optional Aries Point) but not its hypothetical planets, and it does not use Witte's systems of houses.

Examples

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879, 11:30 local mean time, Ulm):

• A picture. The Sun (23°30′ Pisces) is 0°38′ from the Venus/Uranus midpoint (24°08′ Gemini) on the 90° dial. In Witte's notation, Sun = Venus/Uranus, or Venus + Uranus = Sun + Sun.
• A sensitive point. Venus + Uranus − Sun = 16°59′ + 151°17′ − 353°30′ = −185°14′, which after adding 360° is 174°46′, that is 24°46′ Virgo. On the 90° dial this is 1°15′ from the Sun, twice the midpoint orb, as it always is for this kind of formula.
• What is left out here. A full Uranian reading would also place Witte's and Sieggrün's eight points in the chart; this site does not calculate them.

See also

The main offshoot of the school is cosmobiology. Its techniques are described under planetary picture, midpoint dial and Aries Point.