The family coat of arms for the von der Schauenburg family was a broken trunk with a savage hedge rose wreathing around. The family motto was: "Findus in silvis sientibus" (Faithful to the silent forests).
Their castle once stood on Schauenberg. The last descendants of one of the last robber barons was caught in an ambush by the archbishop of Passau. The elder one was decapitated but the youngest was reprieved and exiled. Being the last of his family he went into the vaste primeval forests around Dreisselberg and settled down on the shore of Plöckensteinsee. Here he lived a life as a forester. From him the family Schauberger emerges, who during nearly one millennium have been foresters, fishermen and woodsmen.
The wild hedge rose which is wreathing around the broken trunk and gain new lifeforces from this, shows symbolically in a beautiful form the recently emerged life which is supporting on the dying lifeforms. This eternal "to die and then arise" had these "from the mounting viewing" (Schauberger) without doubt, seen trough in all its ground causes and even inherited with their blood and gift, the art of seeing trough the secrets of the natures processes.
They had not their faith in the church doctrines even though they served the crosier for a millennium, and even less had the science their belief. They only trusted in what they saw with their own eyes and felt with their born intuition. Most of all they know, the healing forces of water and understood to use peculiarly shaped waterchannels, who only worked during the cold night, in order to create a greater harvest than their neighbours. However, their main interests was to care for the forest and its wildlife.
Many times flooding uncovered the strange waterconstructions that they built in the mountain creeks for the purpose of floating timber. These constructions forced the water to bend in peculiarly shaped curves, in spiral looking or "snake" shaped movements. Of course the term "cycloid spacecurve movements" was unknown to them, but strange enough, they used the essence of this term so skilled that the shaping made the channels work rhythmically so the water and the logs got a tremendously "schwung" so it sometimes passed upwards, as to making fun of the law of gravity.
Just think of the aesculpuastaff with its wreathing snake or the "tree of knowledge" in the bible. This winding snake movement is to be found everywhere as a symbol to this form of movement that gave power to knowledge.
From my early childhood it was my highest wish to be a forester as my father grandfather and in fact all my ancestors had been. When I was received by an elder forester as an assistant in his domain, my dreams came true in a way that I had not been able to paint in my dreams.
Replacing an elder forester I got my own hunting domain after the WW I. It was the most distant but therefore also the best regarding hunting. As my nearest manager treated me in a patronising way our relation was not the best, but instead the landlord's, fürst von SchunburgLippe, confidence for me hastily increased. When he got married shortly after, I won one more favourer, the extremely beautiful young princess as I, on her birthday, managed so that she was able to shot a mighty twelve spined stag.
In the huntinggrounds the princess confided that her housebond was close to loose his estates, because of the changes that the war had brought. He had lost a lot of his prosperity and could only keep his estates if his economy could increase.
Before this I had already brought a plan to the estate management that would had saved the costs of the timber transports by 90 %. But this plan was rejected as unrealistic. The management said that according to Archimede´s law, timber from oak and beech could not be floated as it is heavier than water.
However, the princess came from an openminded family and did know of my plan. She had a feeling that this plan could save the large domain. She had also learnt about the attempt to bribe me, for the purpose of making me not to realise my plan, that had been done from the company that bought the timber "on root" from the prince. Suddenly she asked me: "how much did they offer you" ? I answered: " three times my annually wages". She abruptly stopped and asked again: "How much could be saved if your construction will be realised ?" Today the transport cost of one cubic meter of timber is 12 Schilling. We fell 30 000 m3 per year, this will be about 360 000 Sch. How much would one m3 cost with your construction ? " I answered 1 Sch plus the pay off."
In his domain the prince had to make an yearly investment of 80 000 Sch. and soon she had counted how much that could be saved. "OK", she said, "lets do it".
I asked for complete freedom in my work and overtook the full responsibility, and the princess kept her promises. At this time I had no idea of the risk I took. But, I was lucky, even in the most critical moments. During one of these moments I was able to make an observation whose enormous impact I realised many years after.
The construction was completed in 4 month. The huge timber logs laid ready on the store place. One day I did a simple test. One medium heavy log was placed in the entrance of the channel. It floated about 100 m and laid "dead" on the bottom. The aftercoming water flooded over. Immediately I saw all scornful and malicious faces in the front of me. I realised the full consequences of my failure and was furious. I removed the log from the channel. The diagnose was clear: not enough of water and to much fall. I had no idea of what to do. At first I sent away my working staff to be able to think in peace.
The shaping of the curves was allright, no doubt about that. But, why did the construction not work, so I did think. I walked along the channel slowly and finally I came down to the gathering and sorting dam which formed the entrance of a new channel. The dam was full of water, I sat down on a rock and overlooked the water surface.
Suddenly I felt a movement under my leathertrousers. I stepped up and saw a snake that had been laying there when I sat down. I throw it in the dam where it immediately swam to the shore and tried to get up. But the rock wall was steep and the snake searched swimming for a better place to land. When the snake crossed the dam I looked after it. Then a thought crossed my mind: how is it possible for the snake to swim so fast without any fins ? Quickly I got my binoculars and saw the snake's strange winding movements in the crystal clear water. The snake reached the opposite shore and landed. I stood petrified for a while when I repeated every change in the snakes movement under the water. It was a combination of vertical and horizontal curves. The process of the movements struck like a lightning !
One hour later I was by my men in their lodge where they were cooking dinner. Resolute I gave my orders: "Get ready at once. Three men goes to the saw mill and requires a truck from the management and then bring 300 of roof battens made of larch to the entrance of the channel!" The men looked strangely at me. A foreman from Tyrolia asked me: "what will you use these for" ? I cut him off with: "do as you are told !" I took the master of construction with me to the entrance of the channel. I said to him: "You will get doubled paid if you, if necessary, work all the night nailing all these roof battens to the channel as I will show you !" The master shrugged his shoulders and nodded in consent. After a couple of hours the truck with the roof battens arrived. All night the beating of the hammers sounded. Carefully I monitored the opposite curves that the roof batten should form in the channel in order to force the water into a movement like the one that the snake had done.
Arriving at my home at midnight I found a letter from the super forest officer telling me, that next day around 10 o'clock the prince and his princess along with some experts and branch people would be present to overlook the first test. While calculating, I slowly laid the letter aside. The men could be ready about 8 or 9 in the morning, if they worked all night of all their powers. I took my alpstick and my rifle, after one hour I arrived at the working place. Far away I heard the beating sound of hammers and saw the light from the truck.
"When will you be ready?" I shouted. The master of construction guessed around 9 in the morning. I promised everybody 3 times their wages if they could be ready by 8 . They made it to half past 7. I said to the men: Take your breakfast and be at the entrance at half past 9. There we have one more hour of work to complete and then you will have one day of resting double paid. The master told me to take a break before I would fall down. But I rejected him with a gesture and went to the entrance. There I waited until my men came back and shortly after the prince his princes and some of my worst opponents, the experts and the branch people arrived. I saluted the prince and his princess and the super forest officer, the rest I did ignore. The princess looked worried at me and there, leaning against a pole, stood the old transport master with a patronising smile on his lips.
I told the men to open the flood gate. Behind the gate my men put smaller logs into the water. But when they tried to hide away one heavy, about 1 yard thick log, the old transport master suddenly said: "well, well that heavy log should be in it too!". I waved at the men and slowly the heavy log came closer to the entrance. The log flooded the water that slowly raised, no one said a word. Everybody stood and stared on the log which raised along with the water. Just in the next moment the channel would have been over flooded, then a gargling sound was heard and the heavy log firstly turned to the right and then a little to the left, after this it winded as a snake with its front part high above the water and then darted away on the water.
Everyone stood staring after the gone log. Finally the old channel master spitted into the channel and caught with a hooked index finger his old quid out from his toothless mouth and through this into the channel, while he muttered: "kiss my ass, it really worked!" The prince who did not hear what he said wondered what he did say. I stammered something that he had cited something from Götz von Berlichingen.
"Well, then it is working", the master forester officer said. I shortly said goodbye and disappeared into the wood with my alpstick and my rifle. As soon as I was out of sight I sat down on a stone and dried my cold sweat from my forehead. Once, but never again I thought. If I had not seen that snake my life would have been gone.
After a couple of days I was appointed as the master of the whole forest and hunting domain. Later on they where coming from all over the world, experts, branch people and also ministers. Shortly after, I was noticed to the agriculture department in Wien. Then a struggle started that still is going on. Often it has taken the most unpleasant forms. I will probably never have any kind of peace since the day I promised the princess to build that floating channel.
Galilei discovered the movement of the earth. The church and the scientific world was outrageous. The pope threaten the discoverer by excommunicate him. Bishops and other high masters tormented him with long processes. Finally, hardly pressed by his colleagues, he was forced to reject his discovery. But, his last word was "even then, she moves", just before he died.
But I was not thinking about Galilei, Archimedes, Meyer, Newton, Pytagoras or other discoverers of the laws of nature. I was only studying these logs and other matter that was heavier than water, which during special circumstances could swing like fishes in the water. I also studied the places where they floated straight up. Places where over powered thrust forces works and where these logs went to the bottom and became laying.
The snake who was making such strange movements in the water displayed the double twisted movement and helped me with my great success. One hundred thousand of the heaviest logs have followed the first one as it was no difference in their density. Now I understand why my ancestors did construct their floating channels the way they did, and why the directed the water as a wild sow is throwing water.
The final preparations of the construction was nearly sabotaged by the super forester officer who promptly should show his superiority. Supported by the political leader of the forest department he came to our working place and forbid all work and destroyed my carefully done schedule. I was forced to show my ideas and plans to a commission that was composed of hostile higher forest officials monitored by the domain intendent.
The "masters" declared that a19 yard high catch dam would not manage to stand the pressure from the water. They declared that if it would break, the flood would make enormous damages to the villages down below.
I saw and heard the hostile and ruthless attitude at the commission. However, I had early learnt about the commission and been able to make some preparations. The reason why the commission was put together was that they wanted to see my fall.
Therefore, I did not answer the intedent but calmly walked down the stairs to the dam, took my rifle and shot two shots up towards the stream. This was the signal to the man that was posted along with the upper dam to open the great flood gate and let the huge amount of water rush down the furrow to the place where I stood. These men were faithful to me but the commission thought that I had gone mad shooting two live shots in the air. They ordered me to lay down my rifle and to get up to the plateau where the members of the commission stood wildly gesticulating.
Then, a tremendous roaring came closer. I pointed up along the stream and around the closest bend, a 6 yard high brown wall of water full of whirling logs came rushing. "For Gods sake come up here immediately!" the intedent yelled. The members of the commission waived crazily their arms and shouted exited into each others mouth. This behaviour seemed quite mad from my point of view. After a short side view on these confused people I bended over the apparently weak dam wall and studied very interested the forward rushing masses of water which in a short time should hit the wall on which I was standing.
This was what the members of the commission thought, who stood on the plateau holding their breath. But the masses of water did not act this way, instead they came as a weak breaker, turned around and rushed with a tremendous force against the later incoming water. In this way the two waves hit together breaking each others force while the logs raised straight up and even jumped as salmons high above the whirling water.
The dam which contained 1 million m3 of water was filled in a short time and the dam wall stood easily where it has been placed. The man who opend the flood gate emerged. He did not give a single glimpse to the crowd that was standing on the plateau, but leaped down the stairs asking: "well it worked?" I nodded shortly, reloaded my rifle slowly walking up the stairs.
"Now you had more luck than sense !" the intendent said. I measured him top to toe with my gaze and said: "Mr intendent, I think the weak sense is to be found somewhere else !" Then I left him. The other "masters" followed silently talking about the event. When they where ready the intendent called for me and informed me that the dam should be carefully measured and tested by a consulting firm from Wien. Even though the dam had held, it is surely not strong enough, he said. These gentlemen came after a weak. Their result after measuring and testing was that the dam was twelve times stronger than it had to be, because of a skilled construction.
I demonstrated once more the filling of the dam for these gentlemen, who in spite of careful calculations could not explain how the dam worked. I made them to notice the way how the water hit the wall of the dam and how the opposing wave did break down the aftercoming main wave. I got the idea to the dams profile from a hens egg, not from some kind of technical university !
The nature as a master of knowledge.
Everywhere in the nature, movements is created through differences in temperature and tension. In the cross sections of these the basic and natural forces of life are created.
Natural events that has been untouched by human hands gives us the clue how to shape a new kind of technique. To do this, a good power of observation is needed. We must be able to understand the nature in order to copy the natures moving processes. As a master of the wild life in a distant forest domain which hardly could have been visited by humans, I was able to do the following observations, and these lead to the implosion technique.
In Hetzau below the Ring, Die Ödeseen (The Desolated Lakes) are situated. After a long period of hot weather they start's to "bühlen" (bellow), as the local people names the thundering sound that emerges from the lakes at the same time, tornadoes of water, high as houses, rises from the centre of the lake.
The following is an attempt to describe what I experienced: One hot summer day I sat by the shore and was just thinking to take a cooling swim in the lake. At the moment I was going to do it I noticed that the water of the lake started to twist into strange spiral shaped curves. Trees that had fallen into the lake was removed from the shore and started to do a spiral shaped "dance" and a centripetal movement towards the centre of the lake. Coming into the centre they suddenly erected vertically and was sucked into the deep with such force that the bark was peeled from them. Just like a person that is lifted up in the air by a cyclone and then fall down without any clothes. However, these trees never came up again.
The lake was calm for a short time, as it was satisfied with its pray. But this calm was an ominous waiting for the next event. Suddenly a rumbling sound was heard from the bottom of the lake. At once a tornado of water, high as a house erected form the centre of the lake and a thundering sound was heard when the graal shaped water column stood up. Then the column fell down, waves was swallowing against the shore and I had to run away when the water edge abruptly raised.
What I had experienced was the primeval birth of water, renewal of water in a lake without any inflow. I had now started to understand but still had a lot to learn. One more event helped me to fully understand this interesting question.
As a young forest assistant I used to row in a handy boat on a mountain lake that was situated close to our cabin. I was fishing and hunting ducks among other wild animals. My greatest wish was to be able to shoot a mighty seaeagle. There was one coming every evening and circulated in peculiar ways over the lake. At the right moment it let it self to fall like a stone and the next moment while flying away, it had a big fish in its claws.
The biggest enigma was how the eagle always could catch live fishes without dive into the water. The fishes never came up to the surface. I took a long time before I was able to solve the riddle. I must really make a careful observation of the hunter and his pray, I thought. On a nearby rock I found an old spruce, strong enough to carry me. One day I sat hidden up in the spruce armed with my binoculars and was able to study every movement of the eagle and the fishes which swam around in the water.
As always he came at he exact moment, first flying close to the water's surface with a mighty cry and remarkable strong wing beats. It was as he wanted to announce to his victims that he was here and wanted his tribute. Then the eagle raise nearly vertical in a spiral winding movement, now and then controlling its flight with a beat of its wings, making the spiral more and more closer. Then he let himself fall like a stone with its wings close to the body and just above the water, he braked. Suddenly there was a struggling fish in his claws. Heavily loaded he flew, turning against the woods and was gone.
Logically, the most interesting thing was the behaviour of the eagle. I forgot to watch the fishes, who apparently safe, swam around in a reasonable depth. But the next time I also studied their behaviour. The eagle came and flew its well known close spirals. What I now saw, was so incredible that I almost fell into the water. Unconsciously I imitated the movements of the fishes when they completely copied the eagle's spiralling movements upwards. As thread on a string, they came swimming up against the surface, and as the eagle, making the spiral more and more closer until those who where in the centre was pushed up above the surface. Then the shadow from the eagle came, a small whirl was seen and he had one of the biggest in his claws and then sailed away.
As soon as I had the opportunity, I studied this drama and was always surprised over that I almost got hypnotised by the movements of the fishes.
This article is taken from IMPLOSION nr 7.