Brothers and Sisters: The Order of Birth in the Family

By Karl König

Are you an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? What effect has your birth order had on your life? In this classic work, Karl König attempts to explain the various characteristi of first-, second- and third-born people, without losing sight of the tremendous individuality of the human being. Just as our environment shapes our language, social behaviour and mannerisms, so our place in the family also determines how we encounter life. This book is a fascinating handbook for parents, teachers and carers. Over the years it has become a definitive reference on the subject of child development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Floris Books
• Release date: Mar 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781782501015

Karl König

Karl König (1902-66) was well-known as a physician, author and lecturer. He began his work at the Institute of Embryology at the University of Vienna. In 1940 he founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. Based on the educational ideas of Rudolf Steiner, the special education schools for children and villages for adults with special needs are now established all over Britain and Europe, North America and Southern Africa.

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An Evergreen Piece of Pioneering Work

Alfons Limbrunner

There are some books which accompany us for a long time, sometimes even for half of our lives. If we ask people for their favourite titles and authors, they will give diverse and very individual answers. We will probably be faced with the entire spectrum of great literature and poetry; and it is likely that nobody would think to mention a non-fiction book. If we specifically wanted to find out which factual book people might actually name, some would remain silent. If I were asked, only two rather small volumes would come to mind: Romano Guardini’s Die Lebensalter and Karl König’s Brothers and Sisters.

Somehow, I feel, these two publications — one by a Catholic religious philosopher, the other one by an anthroposophical physician and curative teacher — are even related, due to their content and use of language. For me, both publications are literary evergreens, the kind of books I have recommended to social studies students year after year, and which I am always happy to give as a present for the bedside table.

Ever since the late eighties, my interests and academic research have been focussed on anthroposophically oriented social work and curative education. However, Karl König’s book had come into my hands already before then. Looking for the source of König’s work, I was led back to 1924: After Rudolf Steiner’s visit to the Lauenstein near Jena — the first curative school for children ‘in need of special soul care’ — and his lectures on curative education held at Dornach, Karl König formed an ongoing connection with this kind of work. König — and many others besides — felt called upon to realize the words Steiner expressed at the end of his Curative Education Course: ‘If we who are in this spiritual movement are constantly thinking, How can this spiritual movement be made fruitful for practical life? then the world will not fail to see that it is verily a movement that is alive.’¹

During the time of the Nazi regime, no further development was possible in most of Europe; in Germany; almost all care homes and schools had to be closed. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, work carried on largely undisturbed. For Karl König, who was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1902 and died in Überlingen in 1966, the chance of going to Great Britain was a real opportunity. After Hitler’s march on Austria, König left Austria and, like his mainly Jewish young friends from Vienna, went by various detours to Scotland. There they lit its first ‘Candle on the Hill’ in 1940, which has since become the symbol for the worldwide Camphill movement. During the 1950s, when all the different approaches to curative education and social work — and therefore also anthroposophical curative education and social therapy — really started taking off in Germany, König found a way to reconnect with his roots in German-speaking parts of the world. The foundation of centres near the Lake of Constance mark this final period of his life.

He worked tirelessly as an advocate for people with disabilities. He suggested that the idea of curative education would have to be viewed in a much wider context ‘to see its true purpose,’ and in order to counter the increasingly prevalent ‘threat to the individual person’ in a helpful way. ‘The curative-educational attitude needs to express itself in any social work, in pastoral care, in the care of the elderly, in the rehabilitation of mentally ill and physically handicapped people, in the guidance of orphans and refugees, of suicidal and desperate individuals.’² König did not live to see the speedy rise of all aspects of social work during the seventies and eighties, which seemed as if it was in answer to his words — a development further helped along by a favourable socio-political climate, thereby also benefiting the foundation of many anthroposophical centres. We can assume that König was the kind of person who would not have been impressed by general developments leading away from a true understanding of empathy and care for another to the point where care was viewed as a commodity and further developments saw the rise of the ‘social work industry.’

König was a visionary — not only working practically, but also a man of the spoken and written word. Time and again he was moved to make verbal or written statements on, for instance, the situation of disabled people within society, a growing concern for the suffering of humanity, and the attack on the dignity and integrity of human beings.³ The breadth of his wide-ranging interests can be seen through his writing. Topics included considerations on embryology — his original field of work — as well as history, biographies, agriculture and zoology. He wrote as a physician, teacher, researcher and scientist. His writings include texts of artistic character, lyric poetry and drama, and combine aspects of science and poetry, revealing his desire to go beyond a strictly scientific formulation of discoveries made. Hans Müller-Wiedemann observed:

I would say that it was precisely this faculty which made it possible for him to become not a scientist in the pure, classical sense but to remain in that intellectually and linguistically alive realm which enabled him to communicate with everyone, and — especially in the therapeutic environment of Camphill — to speak a language which could be understood equally by houseparents, therapists and teachers. It was a language which required to be understood artistically, and it was a major factor in enabling König to be both scientist and curative educator.⁴

This may explain why it was particularly his books — along with the founding of therapeutic centres and life-sharing communities — which earned him the respect and recognition of so many people, far beyond the anthroposophical realm.

Work on Brothers and Sisters

We can assume that König started to engage with the themes of Brothers and Sisters systematically in 1957. The notes in his diary from November 10 reveal the following:

My attempts at trying to find literature regarding the influences of birth order on siblings during childhood have been almost in vain. However, the related questionnaires I have distributed among colleagues are gradually developing into pretty revealing material. The more of them I have started reading, the more it has become clear that there are indeed basic characteristics specific to first children, second, etc. To me, the first child increasingly appears in the light of Janus. It faces towards the parents on the one hand, and towards its siblings on the other, and I am hoping that this image will help me to find further information and gain further insights.

On the following day he wrote:

In the second part I am trying to outline the general characteristics of the first child. In the way its relationship to the second child has been described by a specific word, my eyes have been opened in a completely new manner. Since I am writing that it has to defend its position, the term ‘defender’ shows me the entire world of the first child, who has to guard and preserve; and even if unwillingly, must be an advocate and protector of all things traditional.

It is impressive how König familiarized himself with this topic despite his limited material means, that is without university facilities and research assistants or professorial liberties. He had read Alfred Adler’s individual psychology, was familiar with Freud and Jung’s writings, studied biographies and autobiographies, made use of scientific literature accessible at the time, considered what the story of creation, the Greek myths of the gods, and other fables and fairy tales might say about the relationship between siblings; he conducted empirical research with questionnaires and statistics, drew on his own professional experience as a curative teacher and medical doctor — and all that became part of the diverse mixture leading to the conception of Brothers and Sisters. This ‘process of conception’ was never completed, despite the initial publications, since it was actually the preparatory work for something greater.