Eberhard Kronhausen was born on September 12, 1915. He was brought up in Europe and “had firsthand experience of Nazi Germany”. Phyllis was born on January 26, 1929 in Minnesota. The Kronhausens met in 1954 at the
University of Minnesota, where Phyllis, then 25, was an undergraduate studying business, and Eberhard, at the relatively late age of 39, was getting a Masters in psychology.
Erotic art collection After publishing
Pornography and the law, the Kronhausens began to acquire a collection of erotic art. This brought them to Europe, where they were active during the 1960s. As they reminisced in 1978: It so happened that from 1960 on we came to spend more and more time in Europe, first on psychological consultation and later because we felt that we had both been spending too much time in the same cultural environment and needed a change for our own personal development. In Europe we collected more erotic art, our most notable discoveries from the beginning of that period being the Dutch painter Melle in Amsterdam, the German painter
Hans Bellmer, the Trieste-born artist
Leonor Fini, and the French surrealist
André Masson in Paris. [...] We had occasion, in fact, to watch the transformation of pornography into art before our own eyes when Hans Bellmer one day worked in our presence, making a complicated and highly erotic engraving from a series of common pornographic photographs. Their books were translated into German and French starting in the late 1960s. They organized the “First International Exhibition of Erotic Art" at a public museum in Lund, Sweden in 1968 – overcoming a lot of institutional resistance. They even succeeded in having the public poster for the show feature a graphic representation of sexual intercourse. "What poor, sick, twisted guilt-ridden, neurotic mind first conjured up a sexless Garden of Eden?" the article begins. The Kronhausens then argue that the Bible has been misunderstood, and that the story of Adam and Eve is not about the discovery of sin, but about the loss of innocent enjoyment of sex - "and with it the appearance of false shame where none is called for, and needless guilt where no evil has been committed." The paintings that illustrate the article were said by the Kronhausens to be by an anonymous artist and dated to 1850-1900, but could well be 1970s imitations of 19th century art, and are not necessarily about the Garden of Eden. On March 31, 1979 the Kronhausens sold their erotic art collection at an auction in New York City.
New-age period One reason for the sale was that, starting in the late 1970s, the Kronhausens had turned to
New Age spirituality. They were living at that time in California, and came into contact with the teachings of the Indian-born
theosophist and spiritual director
Jiddu Krishnamurti, at his American headquarters in the New Age hotspot of
Ojai, near Los Angeles. They watched many of Krishnamurti's talks at the video library there. At the turn of the millennium they became involved in
Buddhist philosophy and psychology. They attempted to apply the result of these studies to the fields of history, politics, and psychotherapy in their last book,
Staying Sane in a Crazy World (2008) – a print on demand book sold by
Amazon.com. Eberhard died at the age of 94 on December 5, 2009. Phyllis died at the age of 83 on April 16, 2012. ==Trivia==