World Heritage: Hildegard of Bingen

Executive summary

The International Hildegard of Bingen Foundation and the Hildegard of Bingen Society in Constance, Germany, with its 1900 Members as well as the associated societies in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Sweden, Finland and Poland are applying herewith for the healing art of Hildegard of Bingen to be officially entitled World cultural heritage.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) combined a spiritual and cosmic understanding of the world through art, music, medicine and religion. She recommended and described all-inclusive visionary ideas 800 years ago concerning holisitic thinking and living. She was interested in the important questions of mankind, what causes healing and how to maintain health. 
Each and every one of Hildegard of Bingen's books is about health, in which she „describes the way of healing and well-being and the universal continuity on which health is dependent." (Ruth Marie Walker-Moskop, Dissertation, Texas Austin, 1985).  

Hildegard recognizes, that health includes all the physical, psycho-social and spiritual components in the individual and his or her relationship with the entire cosmos. Health is always a unifying power in all of her works. Hildegard's cosmological and ecological visions are held in esteem today more than ever before. And now finally after 833 years the significance of Hildegard of Bingen's work is being appreciated and recognized by the canonization and appointment as a Doctor of the church in 2012.

Psychotherapy and Psycho-Somatic

Hildegard's virtues or values of life found in her book LIBER VITAE MERITORUM present a complete psychotherapy, probably the most complete behavioral therapy we can imagine. None of the modern behavioral therapies in existence comes close to Hildegard's holistic therapy.

Hildegard Healing Art - Health for the Future

According to the 6. Kondrtieff the knowledge of maintaining physical, psycho-social, mental and spiritual health as well as health protection through nutrition will be a powerful locomotive for a booming economy in the coming 50 years. No technology, research and development is able to influence the future so powerfully, as the need and wish of the people in the whole Western world for health, wellness, prevention and natural nutrition.

Why should the Healing Art of Hildegard of Bingen be declared a World Cultural Heritage?
Hildegard's book of divine works or LIBER DIVINORUM OPERUM is the epitomie of her visionary work in which theology, medicine and cosmology are presented as undivisable totality. It is a masterpiece of Christian meditation such as we find in the wisdom teachings of the East but which is almost a lost rarity in the West. By simple meditative listening and observing Hildegard received and discovered the source of universal, timeless wisdom and cosmic intelligence.

Hildegard of Bingen successfully combined world and human being, creation and creatures to a universal oneness and this precious wisdom belongs without a doubt to our world cultural heritage.
  We therefore request accepting the Healing Art of Hildegard of Bingen as a World Cultural Heritage. 

Dr. Wighard Strehlow, Hildegardzentrum Allensbach am Bodensee

President of the Internationalen Hildegard of Bingen Foundation and the Förderkreis Hildegard of Bingen Konstanz Germany, 78476 Allensbach on Lake Constance, Germany

From the Belgian Hildegard study group 

Herewith we support the request of Dr. Wighard Strehlow to consider the work of Hildegard of Bingen as World heritage. Concerning the selection criteria, we present the following argumentation:

Her work represents a real masterpiece of Christian meditation, on all aspects of the creation: cosmology, music, plants, animals, gemstones, etc, and is of a very high standard. No one else ever wrote such wonderful things. It exhibits an important interchange of human values, over almost 1000 years, and is becoming more and more known throughout the whole world.  
Her work is an outstanding example of literature, music, cosmic science and her recommendations concerning health-topics are extremely helpful.

It is also an outstanding and unique example of a vision showing the interaction of man and his environment. It is directly associated with events or living traditions, especialy the Christian tradition, and her literary works are of outstanding universal significance.

For more details, I send you also the synthesis that Dr. Wighard Strehlow has sent you earlier. Dr. Med. Lutgart Gillis MD

President of the Study group Hildegard of Bingen (SHB) Lage Vosbergstraat 2840 Rumst
+32-15-31 92 05
shbingen@gmail.com
www.shbingen.be