Grounding Community

How did the thought of Meister Eckhart shape visions of new communities? This study traces the influence of Eckhartian mysticism on reformist, revolutionary, and utopian thought across six centuries, from the Grüne Wörth monastery in fourteenth-century Strasbourg, through Thomas Müntzer’s apostolic theology, Johann Arndt’s devotional writings and the Rosicrucian fictions of Johann Valentin Andreae, and concluding with Gustav Landauer’s anarchist-socialist reading of Eckhart. Across historically disparate discourses, this reception history reveals the pastoral relationship between spiritual guide and less-advanced hopeful of mystical experience as a recurring model of communal organization.