13 Sep Obituary: Antje Ghaznavi * October 1, 1936; + July 9, 2017
Two things we offer when we die. To the earth we offer the substance of our body; to the spiritual world we offer our life story. This is the offering of Antje Ghaznavi.
Antje Eva Bertha Ursula Christina Harding was born on October first, 1936 in Rostock in Germany. Her mother, born Barbara von Restorff, came from old German nobility who lived at Rosenhagen, a family estate near Rostock. Karl Harding, her father, worked in business; he had been a pilot in the First World War. He limped slightly from a wound he had received during the war. Because of the fact that he was a commoner, Barbara’s parents did not support the marriage, and her artistic talents had to be set aside for secretarial work. These grandparent/parent relational circumstances continued to play themselves out during the grandparents’ life and had an impact on the three Harding siblings.
During the war years Antje was joined by first a younger sister, Dörte, and then a brother Heiner. The children were at the estate in Rosenhagen until 1945, and upon the advance of the Russians, returned to Bremen during the bombimg. Some of Antje’s earliest memories were of the bombing raids. One time her mother took her out into the streets while the buildings were burning all around, and told her: “Your generation must see that this never happens again.”
After the war the family remained in Bremen, ultimately rescuing Barbara’s parents from the East. Living with her parents was an interesting exercise, as they kept up their aristocratic values to the best of their abilities. As Antje approached confirmation age, her mother arranged for her to get instruction from the Lutheran church, but after a couple sessions Antje told her: “This is not for me.” So her mother told her to look for a church that would suit her, and after some searching she found The Christian Community. Here she felt at home. Her family followed, and through this connection they also found their way to Anthroposophy and Waldorf education. Antje was actively involved in the youth work of The Christian Community.
Her love of music led her to study music for which she had sufficient talent that she was admitted to music school even though because of the war she had little formal education.. She supported herself financially by accompanying eurythmy classes at the Bremen Waldorf School. This was how she found her actual calling, for she fell in love with eurythmy and determined that this should be her path.
She spent a year working as a domestic in Basel despite having already decided that Eurythmy was her path. She presented herself to Elena Zuccoli who offered her a place in the upcoming class which started within weeks. After the first year Antje was forced to halt her studies in order to support her family financially. She worked in the Cafe und Speisehaus in Dornach so that she could continue to attend all lectures available at the Goetheanum.
For a time, to economize, she shared accommodations with younger brother Heiner and developed a closeness that endured to the end of her life. In fact, the relationship between all three siblings was one of strong and loving connection.
Her first job as eurythmist was as teacher for the high school classes at the Bremen Waldorf School, including the class which Heiner had been in and left. Then she returned to Dornach and was part of the stage group there. It was there that she met and married Uli Schmidt, a carpenter for the Goetheanum stage group. Her work also included washing the Goetheanum windows. This marriage did not last, and while the separation was progressing, she studied Curative Eurythmy in Vienna. And at last she went to Berlin, where she found a deep vocation working with mentally disabled children.
It was on a visit from Dörte that the two of them went to a disco and met a tall, dark handsome man, who asked for a dance. Antje, her divorce recently finalized, immediately felt the sense of something significant for her life. Throughout that first evening she held back, but when he suggested a second meeting, she made up her mind. This was Yaqoob Ghaznavi, and this was the beginning of a relationship which led to the birth of Corinna and marriage. At their wedding on May 27, 1966 all of the men present were Pakistani students and all of the women were eurythmists.
Through the next years of her life she followed Yaqoob to where he could find work While in Hamburg and expecting Nadim, she went through a complicated pregnancy which required complete rest. This enforced sabbatical was the first time Antje was not hard at work since her childhood.
Following Yaqoob took on a special significance when the German authorities informed him that his visa would not be renewed. Return to Pakistan was out of the question; applications to Australia were delayed and then rejected; in Ireland there were no appropriate job openings. Finally they were accepted in Canada. They went first to Montreal as the most ‘European’ city, where they were kindly received by members of The Christian Community; but Yaqoob could not deal with the French language and had no Canadian work experience. Thus it was that they came to Toronto.
Antje’s first work was at Michael Haven, with special needs children. Here she could continue her work as a curative Eurythmist and where she formed lasting friendships.
It was not yet time to settle down, however. Yaqoob received promotions which took him first to Detroit, then to Hong Kong. Particularly during her time in southeast Michigan at the Detroit Waldorf School she made further lasting friendships. In Hong Kong, although she wasn’t working, she typically found a group within the German community who were very socially aware and active, supporting Vietnamese refugees, and travelling together on a memorable trip on the Yangzee River and deep into China.
Finally they returned to Toronto, where she became the eurythmy teacher for the kindergarten and the high school classes at the Toronto Waldorf School. One of her inspirational deeds for high school eurythmy was to make it over from an obligation into a privilege. Her students came to love and respect her, and the high school program that she developed on an elective basis. This program became one of the highest quality and toured annually to other Waldorf schools in North America.
Her work now brought her onto wider responsibilities. In addition to her own teaching she took on mentoring work in Waldorf schools across North America and administrative tasks with the North American Waldorf school organization AWSNA and in the pedagogical Section of the School for Spiritual Science. For a number of years she was a class reader for First Class of the School for Spiritual Science. All the while her home was beautiful, with special accommodations for visits by her grandchildren.
An onset of illness meant that she had to retire and curtail her activities in the last years of her life. For one who had been so active this was a frustration. There was a constant struggle for her between the feeling: there is nothing the matter; I am fine; and the reality: I cannot do everything as I would like to do it. In the light of her condition she began preparing things so that Yaqoob could live comfortably after her passing. It was a shock for her when last year Yaqoob entered the spiritual world before her. To the end she remained actively present. Her passing was from the same hospice room on Sunday, July 9 in the early morning, as the full moon was setting, in which she sat with Yaqoob when he died almost a year earlier.
In contemplating a completed life story we may recognize that every life story is a work of art. The artist is the “I”, not the conscious “I” but the higher being guiding the destiny. When the life is complete, the artist puts his or her signature to the work of art. So we may look at Antje’s offering to the spiritual world. She was born into Europe as Europe was being torn apart. Her birth was in the time of Michaelmas, and we can at once recognize in her taking up her life’s tasks, a follower of the Archangel Michael. Michael’s impulse is cosmopolitan; at the midpoint of her life she was moving across the world, finally coming to a land distant from the place of her birth. And her death in the season of captures the essence of a true teacher’s hope: after me is coming one who is preferred before me; he must increase, I must decrease.
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