Following Bert Hellinger’s Tracks:
I’ve often wondered why the founder of Systemic Constellation work, Bert Hellinger was so shy to talk of his time spent in South Africa, or of the traditional African origins of family constellations. In the inaugural book of family constellations entitled, Love’s Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, it is clear that his time in South Africa deeply influenced his work; particularly his observation of reverence and dignity between children and parents. I have spoken to many of his original students who have confirmed the importance of his time in South Africa. However, there has also been a strong voice against this influence, which has become stronger over the years in the constellation community. It’s gone so far that significant voices in the field state that there was no influence on the work from Zulu people. Perhaps it is because Hellinger was not that forthcoming with information about his time spent in South Africa. I suspect in many cases it was because of the way that he was asked: Does constellation work come from the rituals of Zulu people? To this question, I would also answer no. It was much more subtle than that.
There were so many unanswered questions for me regarding Hellinger’s time in South Africa:
- Why did he leave it all behind?
- Why would he not talk about a place where he lived for 16 years?
- What did he give and what did he take?
Since I first trained in constellation work, I felt constantly engaged with the mystery of Hellinger’s time here through an ongoing need to honour his work as the origin of my own work. I always felt that family constellations connected me on a deeper level to South Africa and its traditional people and cultures.
How strange then that I had to travel to Germany when I first encountered constellations and wanted to learn it – something which feels so deeply connected to the African continent.
The connection between Zulu culture and constellations at first felt obvious to me: the inclusion of ancestors and similarities with the placing and reading of the bones thrown by a sangoma. Through the throwing of bones, the sangoma would look at the relationships between all the elements and could assist in revealing where the difficulties stemmed from, especially ancestral influences. The reading of relationships between bones looked like the reading of the relationships between representatives in a constellation. I am by no means comparing the work of a constellation facilitator with that of a sangoma, but I assumed we were working in the same knowing field and I felt there was something more; something that would shed light on the healing effect of family constellations. African cosmology and constellations also recognizes that dis-ease stems from things (physical, spiritual and relational) not being in right relation.
I decided to go in search of where Hellinger was stationed in KwaZulu-Natal for the 16 years he was here as a missionary priest in the Catholic Church. I found the St Mary’s Seminary where he served as the rector purely by following my intuition, looking at the map and deciding on a starting point. I arrived at a huge red-brick building in the rural hills of KwaZulu-Natal. The old structure looked strange in amongst the grass-covered hills dotted with round mud huts. The place was eerie and dilapidated but there were some signs of dedicated labour in a time where resources in the Christian church are few. A skeleton staff remained. I wondered what it was all for. What did the missions achieve? What must it have been like for Hellinger to arrive in the wild lands of Africa believing that he was there to save the local people from their ‘non-religious’ ways?
“Sawubona” – I see you.
I am greeted by a young black priest who fills me in on the history. Trappist monks arrived in the 1800s and the mission soon warned the locals to stay away from their own traditional beliefs in favour of the Church. Since the 1980s, the priest was proud to report, the missions support all forms of traditional beliefs that promotes life and healing. At the same time every decision must still be passed through Rome.
It feels like a part of the past is standing still. Some advances are evident in the way the priest has decorated his private study with an eclectic mix of Catholic and African iconography, spears and shields, bibles, traditional African cloths, crosses, lions and pictures of the lily-white virgin Mary.
Later that day I meet two, grey-haired European priests who knew Hellinger. They don’t say much other than that he was a very gifted and wise man, but I sense there is more that is not being said. I’m told that Hellinger was quite in the limelight’ in his day and highly thought of by the African priests because of his fluency in Zulu. By doing all the text translations of the liturgy he was ‘bringing the faith to the people in their own images and language. He was responsible for building a church at his rural parish and was considered a white raven’ – someone out of the ordinary, someone special. But not all reports were positive and he was allegedly ‘intolerant’ of old-fashioned ideas, which caused some difficulties within the hierarchy. He often spoke the ‘harsh truth’ and ‘who is ready to hear the truth about yourselves’ said one sister. There were also harsh words, woundedness and piercing analysis by a priest who knew Hellinger about his family life.
I visit the seminary where Hellinger taught and while it is inhabited it feels deserted. Another large red-brick building on top of the hill in the middle of nowhere. Leading down from the looming façade is a pathway to a magical, overgrown garden and there, nestled amongst the thorn bushes and flaming aloes, stands Mother Mary. There are signs of life but there is nobody around.
Finally, I visit the secondary school where Hellinger was principal for a brief period. Here there are people going about their business. Steve Biko was schooled here during the 1960s, as well as many other important figures in the black consciousness movement. I wonder to myself whether they knew Hellinger. I’m excited and brimming with questions. What was his role? Who were his students? I find no evidence of him in the principal list of the school though and am left with no answers.
Visiting the mission’s museum of artefacts, I am struck by the sangoma clothes and regalia that are on display. They are displayed like trophies showing the local culture being conquered, that the great medicine men and women were being converted and stripped of their ‘witch doctor’ ways. Traditional healing was demonised just as the witches were in Europe in the 1800s; their herbal and animal medicines seen as potions for black magic and evil doing. What is very clear is that these medicine people used spiritual healing. They used their connection to the ancestors and the connection to life force, to God and to Creation for healing physical, emotional and spiritual maladies. They knew how to work with good and with evil. They could cure the possessed and the incurable, performing what seemed like miracles when there was seemingly no hope. These medicine people were a threat to the Church and to its power to convert the people.
I didn’t have all the information when I set out to follow in Hellinger’s footsteps, but I fortuitously found a small book in a dusty corner of a bookshop at the end of my quest. The historical information I was seeking was in this booklet, published in 1983, about one hundred years after the establishment of the Mariannhil Monastery. The information was key to my understanding of Hellinger as well as to what was happening at the time in the country.
Hellinger arrived in South Africa in 1953, a conservative time in the country, and shortly after his ordination as a priest in Wurzburg in Germany. He was asked by the local bishop to do a BA degree in teaching at the University of Natal, and fresh from his studies he was appointed as the acting rector of s Mary’s Seminary in 1956. He was named rector in 1957 and it was while he was teaching at the seminary that he also completed the UED (University Education Diploma). Through this degree he was given a deep understanding for reforms needed in modern education at the time. The modernisation he was exposed to here also enthused his interest in liturgical and catechetical matters.
Known as ‘Suitbert’, the name given to him by the mission, Hellinger was interested in lifting the mental and social life of the school. He was well esteemed by the authorities due to his active participation in recruiting boys to join and study the vocation. He became fluent in Zulu and played a very important role as the main driver and liturgical expert for the diocese based on changes made at the Vatican. The liturgy refers to the rites, ceremonies, worship, songs, sacraments, symbols and prayers used in the Catholic church service.
During the translation process of the liturgy into Zulu, he came into contact with an older generation of missionaries with whom tensions arose. Although it is not completely clear what their issue with Suitbert were, many of them held conservative views and didn’t support his more modern ways. In 1957 he asked to be moved from St Mary’s due to tensions arising from his reformist practice in both the catechism and the seminary. He was appointed to the position of Circuit Inspector of the Mission Schools in the Mariannhill Diocese.
He moved to Himmelberg, a very remote rural mission station and here he worked closely with the local Bishop Streit, who liked Suitbert and supported him in his endeavors. Suitbert completed his sermons and prayers in Zulu, which were used specifically for outstation Sunday services where there were no priests. With the sisters at Himmelberg, Suitberg wrote and compiled religious hymns in Zulu to African music. It was a great success and several years later after he had left, these were incorporated into the new edition of the Zulu hymn book. His church at Himmelberg was the first to be renovated according to the new requirements of the liturgy and was called ‘a model of liturgical renewal.’ According to the historical archives of Mariannhill, Suitbert had many opponents but was continually supported by Bishop Streit, who appointed him as parish priest of Mariannhill. Suitbert became the principal of St Francis College in 1967 for one year, and again attempted more progressive education methods and continued with the translation and publication of important documents into Zulu. He was then asked to establish a pastoral institute at Mariannhill but the opposition he encountered was too much and nothing came of his endeavors. In 1968, while celebrating matric with some of the students, he was called a ‘heretic’ by some of the older members of the church and was then recalled to Europe by his superiors and became the rector of the Pius Seminary in Wurzburg.
What was clear from my findings was that Bert Hellinger did not have the easiest time in South Africa. Although he accomplished much and was well respected by certain priests in the parish, he was also challenged and ultimately rejected for his progressive ideas. Knowing this brought greater understanding to South Africa’s history at the time and Bert Hellinger’s place in it, as well as a more personal connection to the ambivalence one encounters in the stories when trying to understand his time in South Africa.
by Tanja Meyburgh www.africanconstellations.co.za
Hellinger, B., Weber, G, & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s Hidden Symmety: What makes love work in relationships. Heidelberg, Germany: Carl-Auer-Systeme-Verlag.
Meyburgh, T. (2024). Reclaiming Ancestors. Cape Town, South Africa: Apis Books.
