Daniel Nicol Dunlop

Daniel Nicol Dunlop, usually only D.N. Dunlop ( born December 28, 1868 in Kilmarnock, Scotland, † May 30, 1935 in London, England) was a Scottish theosophist, anthroposophist and founder of business associations.

Life and work

Childhood, education, marriage and children

Dunlop was born on 28 December 1868 in Kilmarnock, the only child of Alexander Dunlop and Catherine Nicol ( 1847-1873 ). The father was an architect and preacher at the Quakers. After the early death of his mother he came into the custody of his grandfather Daniel Nicol on the Isle of Arran, where he learned the fishery. After his death in 1882 he moved back to his father Alexander to Kilmarnock. Here he attended elementary school and then served an apprenticeship in Ardrossan ( North Ayrshire ) in a machine shop.

In 1891 he married Eleanor Fitzpatrick (ca. 1867-1932 ); from the marriage were born three children, including Ronald Ossory Dunlop, a well-known painter. With Eleanor Charlotte Merry (1873-1956) joined him in 1922, a deep friendship.

In the economic

After differences with his father about 1886 Dunlop left the parental home and worked at a bike shop in Glasgow. In 1889 he went to Dublin, where he took a job as a tea and wine merchants. After Dunlop had moved with his family to New York in 1897, he again worked in a machine shop. In 1899 he obtained the post of Sales Manager for Europe of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation and then returned the same year to Britain, where he lived in London.

From 1911 he was the organizer and first director of the newly launched British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers' Association ( BEAMA ) ( Association of British electrical manufacturing ), which still exists today. In 1924 he organized the World Power Conference ( WPC) (World Energy Conference ), the forerunner of today's World Energy Council ( WEC). At the first meeting of the WPC on July 11, 1924 Dunlop was appointed Chairman.

As a theosophist

After Dunlop had left his parents' house and started in 1886 to work in Glasgow, he began to be interested in the occult and philosophical works. In 1887 he met George William Russell, which developed a lifelong friendship. After moving to Dublin, he was in 1891 a member of the local lodge of the Theosophical Society (TG), which gained notoriety from that time under the name The Household. Likewise, he associated with Russell and William Butler Yeats in the Hermetic Society. In October 1892 he founded the periodical The Irish Theosophist, for which he also served as editor. The last issue of this paper was published in September 1897, then he had to stop due to his relocation to the U.S. magazine.

When the TG split in 1895, Dunlop was a member of the Theosophical Society in America ( TGinA ). During his stay in the USA 1897-1899, he served temporarily as a private secretary to Katherine Tingley, president of TGinA. The end of 1899 he resigned from the TGinA from ( maybe he was excluded, the source is unclear ) and was a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar ( Adyar -TG) in London (probably in the Blavatsky Lodge). Publications by him appeared in The Theosophical Review, and in The Vahan. In 1909 he called summer schools to life, regular international meetings with theosophical lecture cycles and to get to know. In 1910 he initiated at the Manchester Institute Blavatsky and in the same year along with Charles Lazenby magazine The Path ( not to be confused with the homonymous journal of William Quan Judge ). During this time he founded his own theosophical lodge under the umbrella of Adyar -TG with name Light on the Path, whose president he became.

The 1911 incipient cult of Jiddu Krishnamurti and the Order of the Star in the East, he was hostile to what led to an increasing alienation of Theosophy. On 8 May 1922, he resigned from the Adyar -TG.

As anthroposophist

Around 1905 Dunlop first met with Rudolf Steiner together, then Steiner was General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society ( DSdTG ). The person Steiner impressed Dunlop deep, and later he invited him to give lectures to England. In December 1920 he joined the Anthroposophical Society (AG) and called under whose umbrella the Human Freedom Group to life, which he led as president. Again, he brought the idea of ​​now anthroposophical summer schools, which were realized in 1923. 1928 Dunlop organized in London the first and only anthroposophic World Conference and reached in 1930 the post of Secretary General of AG in the UK.

Disputes and power struggles within the AG led in April 1935 to the fragmentation of the organization and to exclude from the Dunlop AG.

Dunlop died on 30 May 1935 in London at the consequences of appendicitis.

Works (selection)

  • Protean Man, London 1912
  • Symbols of Magic, London 1915
  • Studies in the Philosophy of Lorenz Oken. London 1916
  • Duty, London 1919
  • The Path of Knowledge, London 1920
  • Nature- Spirits and the Spirits of the Elements, London 1920
Anthroposophy W. B. Yeats Owen Barfield Name Authority File
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