Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn
Dutch spiritualist who founded the Eranos Conferences in Ascona.
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn was a Dutch spiritualist who spent most of her life in Switzerland. She founded the Eranos Conferences in Ascona, an annual gathering that brought together scholars from diverse fields to explore human spirituality.
Quick Facts
- Born
- 19 October 1881
- Died
- 25 April 1962
- Birthplace
- London
- Nationality
- Dutch
- Spouse
- Iwan Fröbe
- Children
- Twin daughters (born May 1915)
- Notable for
- Founder of the Eranos Conferences
Facts from the source article.
Early life
Olga Kapteyn was born in London as the first child of Truus Muysken, a feminist and social activist, and Albertus Kapteyn, an engineer and inventor. Her father had moved to London in 1881 to work for the Westinghouse Air Brake Company and became Director-General of the London site by 1887. Her mother befriended figures such as Bernard Shaw and Peter Kropotkin. Olga attended the North London Collegiate School, where she was a close friend of Marie Stopes, and later studied at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich and the University of Zurich. The family moved to Zürich, where her mother became central to a group of reform-minded intellectuals. Olga studied art history, became an avid skier and mountaineer, and in 1909 married Croatian-Austrian flutist and conductor Iwan Fröbe. His career took them to Braunschweig, Munich, and Berlin; at the outbreak of World War I they returned to Zurich, where Olga hosted a literary salon called the Table Ronde. She gave birth to twin daughters in May 1915, but Iwan died in a plane crash near Vienna in September 1915.
Studies
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn first came to Ascona, Switzerland, in 1920 with her father, visiting the Monte Verità Sanatorium. Not long after, her father bought Casa Gabriella, an old farmhouse nearby, and she made it her permanent home. There she turned to Indian philosophy, meditation, and theosophy. She was influenced by the poet Ludwig Derleth and by Richard Wilhelm, whose I Ching translation opened that text to her. She was also connected to the Ecumenical Circle in Marburg and to Count Keyserling’s School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, a group exploring the shared roots of religions. It was likely at the School of Wisdom that she met Carl Jung, who later contributed to the first Eranos gatherings.
Eranos Conferences
In 1928, Fröbe-Kapteyn built a conference room near her home with no clear purpose. Carl Jung suggested using it as a meeting place between East and West, giving rise to the annual Eranos meetings. Religious historian Rudolf Otto proposed the name Eranos, and his human-centered concept of religion deeply influenced the conferences. Carl Jung remained a significant participant in their organization. Although not specifically Jungian in focus, the symposia employed the idea of archetypes. The annual lecture program began in August 1933, with lectures published as the Eranos Jahrbuch. Fröbe-Kapteyn studied symbols and created a series of meditation plates; her works have been included in exhibitions since 1978, such as the 2021 Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism
Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn tracked down images for a series of annual lectures. Across the 1930s and 1940s, her deep dive into archetypes led her to major collections across Europe and the United States, such as the Vatican Library, the British Museum, the Morgan Library in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The thousands of pictures she gathered formed her Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, a resource that supported many Eranos speakers and other researchers for years.
More in Mythographers
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced