Friedrichshof Commune: the horror of Otto Muehl and his art criminal sex cult
Despite never being particularly interested in art myself, I can see how the promise of a culturally liberated, artistically minded sect living separately from the world can be an appealing prospect.
After all, just what exactly is so great about the modern world for the vast, vast majority of people?
You’re not going to succeed, you’re not special, you’re not going to get the life you deserve, so shut your face, get back to work, and if you learn to love it, you might just like it? Absolutely fucking not. Why slave away for the chance to have your work mean something (a hint, it won’t) when you could take control of your own life and live by your own terms?
It’s a tantalising prospect. One promised by so many people who seem charming, trustworthy and extraordinarily intelligent on the surface. The problem is the fact that in pretty much every example of this phenomenon, you will not be taking control of your own life or living by your own terms. You will instead be trading in societal subjection for personal subjection. Your life is not in the hands of a government, but a single person with an almost god-like hold over your life.
You might think this sounds overly specific, but the truth is that there have been several cults founded originally as art communes. The most infamous of which is Otto Muehl’s Aktionsanalytische Organisation, a cult more commonly known as the Friedrichshof Commune that he founded in his native Austria. A radically left-wing cult that saw him try to force ideals of art onto real life.
A strange prospect on the surface, but look a little deeper, and you can see the grain of truth this lie stemmed from.
How did Otto Muehl start his cult?
Born in Mariasdorf, Austria, in June 1925, Otto Muehl had a very good reason to despise the state and everything it stood for. This was a man who grew up in Austria just in time to be conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in time for World War II. Muehl served during the last two years of the war and survived, yet the experience clearly warped him, and he spent the rest of his life committed to dismantling any structure of accepted society he could find.
This began in the world of art. He was always an artistically minded soul, but in the 1960s, he started milling around with the Vienna art scene, in particular the Viennese Actionism movement. A defiantly counter-cultural project that viewed mainstream art as bourgeois symbols of oppression, and the only true form of art was the kind that flew in the face of mainstream society. Soon enough, though, that wasn’t enough for Muehl.
Soon, he began to talk about Actionism as a concept that needed to go beyond art and into real life. That all actions that supported mainstream society were unacceptable, and thus, the only way to truly live was to live in a way that flew in its face. Marriage? Families? Private property? State education? The enemy, all of them. The only way to live freely was to reject all of them. Which, paradoxically, meant living by Muehl’s rule and Muehl’s rule alone. The irony of that statement is missed by many people who choose to live in Muehl’s commune.
Soon, the commune became, as these things often do, its leaders’ playground. Muehl did precisely as he wanted, and all the wealth, power and influence flowed up to him. From the commune’s official establishing in 1972, Muehl took whatever he wanted, whether it was money, acclaim, women or, as it would transpire, children. Muehl was arrested in 1990 for child sex offences and jailed the same year, kneecapping the commune and leading to its disbandment. Many former members have spoken candidly about their time inside, and their stories are harrowing.
Muehl only spent seven years in prison for his crimes; however, he did seem to emerge a changed man. He even issued a public apology for his actions leading the commune in 2010, a few years before his death in 2013. Still, that could only be cold comfort for the real people victimised by his unconscionable actions, which should always take precedence over some maniac finally coming to his senses.