Founding and Stated Aims
The institute was founded at a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1984 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the German-born wife of American political activist Lyndon LaRouche. Its stated aim is to seek to apply the ideas of poet, dramatist and philosopher Friedrich Schiller to the current global political situation. They emphasize Schiller's concept of the interdependence of classical artistic beauty and republican political freedom, as elaborated in his series of essays entitled Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man.
On November 26, 1984, the institute released a "Declaration of the Inalienable Rights of Man," which it describes as "the basis of the Institute's work and efforts worldwide." It states in part:
We, therefore, Representatives of the Peoples of the World, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, do ... solemnly publish and declare that all countries of the world are and of right ought to be free and independent States. That all human beings on this planet have inalienable rights, which guarantee them life, freedom, material conditions worthy of man, and the right to develop fully all potentialities of their intellect and their souls. That, therefore, a change in the present economic and monetary order is necessary and urgent to establish justice among the peoples of the world.
— Signators at Schiller Institute conference
Zepp-LaRouche has explained the need for the Schiller Institute as follows:
We need a movement that can finally free Germany from the control of the Versailles and Yalta treaties, which have tossed us from one catastrophe to another for an entire century." (Wir brauchen eine Bewegung, die Deutschland endlich aus der Kontrolle der Kräfte von Versailles und Jalta befreit, die uns schon ein ganzes Jahrhundert lang von einer Kastastrophe in die andere stürzt.
— Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
Among the past and present members of the institute's board of directors are Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Civil rights leader Amelia Boynton Robinson, former South Carolina State Assemblyman Theo Mitchell, classical singer William Warfield, former Guyanese Foreign Minister Frederick Wills, physicist Winston H. Bostick, Webster Tarpley, and former Borough President of Manhattan Hulan Jack. Among the founding members of the institute were Hulan Jack and French Resistance leader Marie-Madeleine Fourcade.
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