Rudolf Maria Holzapfel and Stanislaw Vincenz, i.e. Crossing Not Only Religious Borders
Rudolf Maria Holzapfel and Stanislaw Vincenz, i.e. Crossing Not Only Religious Borders

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to recount the history of the unusual philosophical friendship between Rudolf Maria Holzapfel (1874-1930) and Stanisław Vincenz (1888-1971). Both were born and raised in the multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious region of Galicia. Holzapfel began writing the work of his life, Panideal, at the end of the nineteenth century and completed it only a few years before his death. Vincenz not only translated Panideal into Polish in close collaboration with its author, but was also profoundly inspired by it. Indeed, without this inspiration, he would probably not have written the work of his own life, On the High Uplands (Na wysokiej połoninie).For both thinkers, the principal objective was to bring to light the unifying force present in every human life, as stated in Panideal: “It is necessary first to bring these often mysterious phenomena—like a deep living well—of consciousness, creativity, the experiences of art, the ideal, and religion, into the daylight of full awareness, in order to discover the conditions of their perfection, their synthetic fusion into a harmonious creation of the ideal whole.”It appears that not only their philosophical and literary works, but also their activism in various fields, allow us to discern in them the same fundamental philosophical idea. For both Holzapfel, who came from a Jewish family, and Vincenz, who was rooted in the Christian tradition, crossing religious and cultural boundaries constituted a way of realizing the ideal whole (Panideal).

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