Initiation and initiative : an exploration of the life and ideas of Dimitrije Mitrinović

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the old—all this struck an answering chord within Mitrinovic. Much of his later life was devoted to the development of these insights. In particular, in the group life that he orchestrated in London in the 1930s he sought ways of developing amongst those gathered around him that new consciousness required by the new age wherein, according to Gutkind, “the I’ must perish, but ‘We’ must put forth life.”

In the meantime, however, his letter to Gutkind was rewarded with an invitation to visit the Gutkind family home in Jena. He set off from Munich on July 19th 1914. In a letter to Kandinsky written on the day of his departure he expressed the hope that whilst at Jena he might meet that “dear and noble old man” Professor Rudolf Eucken. He then planned to go on to Berlin armed with an introduction to Gustav Landauer provided by Gutkind, thereby obtaining access to European socialist and anarchist circles. “Through Landauer,” he observed to Kandinsky, “one could get to Kropotkin.” In Berlin he also hoped to call on Franz Oppenheimer, then on to Bayreuth to visit H. S. Chamberlain. He expected to be back in Munich by July 24th. At a later date he planned to visit Umfrid and then on to “my much respected” Mauthner at Lindau.

But first there was the meeting with Gutkind. Mitrinovié set off “full of confidence” and “happy with hope.” He was not disappointed, the visit proved a great success. In a note to Kandinsky of July 21st he wrote:

Gutkind is a wonderful personality; a depth of soul and a purity of inner-ness which elevates one. We have fundamentally understood each other . . . it was good beyond expectation.!9

It was a meeting of two “men of genius” according to LeRoy Finch:

Mitrinovic’s genius lay in direct dealing with people, while Gutkind’s was expressed in ideas and writing. What they shared was that in both of them the ordinary concerns of the self had been replaced by a new intensity of vision (as much, it seemed to many, physiological as psychological). The self-security and selfenhancement (which consciously and unconsciously determine the lives of most men) had been transformed in them into a clairvoyant kind of “seeing.”2°

Gutkind was at that time deeply involved in an initiative for world peace based on similar premises to the movement “Towards the Mankind of the Future.” Kandinsky had, in fact, already talked with Mitrinovié about Gutkind’s venture, describing it as an “organisation for a pan-human little brotherhood of the most world-worthy bearers of present day culture.”?!