Hermann Kallenbach

• 1. Introduction

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  Hermann Kallenbach arrived in Johannesburg in 1896 as a young Lithuanian-born architect joining his uncles, with no particular reason to become one of history's most devoted political companions. Yet within a few years, he would donate a 1,100-acre farm to Mahatma Gandhi, share a house with him, fast beside him, and march with him. The man who named that farm after Leo Tolstoy had once been a wealthy bachelor with considerable property. He became something else entirely. What transformed a successful, sports-loving architect into a dedicated follower of nonviolent resistance? And what does it mean that Gandhi called him his "soulmate"? The life of Hermann Kallenbach, who was born on the 1st of March 1871 and died on the 25th of March 1945, traces a path from the village of Žemaičių Naumiestis in Lithuania to the ashrams of Gandhi's South Africa, to a kibbutz in Israel where his ashes were finally buried.

• 2. From Lithuania to Johannesburg

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  Žemaičių Naumiestis was then part of the Russian Empire when Kallenbach was born there in 1871, the third eldest of seven children. His father, Kalman Leib Kallenbach, worked first as a Hebrew teacher and later as a timber merchant. Childhood in that small Lithuanian village revolved around education, sports, and friendships with local youth. Those physical habits stayed with Kallenbach all his life; he became a skilled ice-skater, swimmer, cyclist, and gymnast. He later studied architecture in Stuttgart and Munich before crossing to South Africa in 1896. Once settled in Johannesburg, he built a successful practice, accumulated substantial property, and took up citizenship. Nothing in that trajectory predicted the transformation that a single introduction would set in motion.

• 3. Soulmates in Satyagraha

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  Gandhi and Kallenbach met in 1904, and what began as long discussions on religion and philosophy deepened into something Gandhi himself described with the word "soulmates." Kallenbach absorbed Gandhi's ideas of satyagraha, a philosophy of nonviolent resistance, and equality among people, and became both friend and devoted follower. The two men shared what is now known as Satyagraha House, a dwelling Kallenbach designed for them both. When Gandhi needed land in 1910, Kallenbach gave it freely: his own 1,100-acre farm near Johannesburg became the site of the famous Tolstoy Farm, which housed the families of satyagrahis during the struggle. Kallenbach chose the name himself, drawn to Leo Tolstoy's writings and philosophy. On that same land, the prosperous bachelor shed his comfortable life and adopted Gandhi's habits of simplicity, vegetarian diet, and commitment to equality. Henry Polak was another close associate of Gandhi during this period, but Kallenbach took on a particular operational role, serving as manager during Gandhi's satyagraha movement from 1907 to 1913.

• 4. Marching and Fasting

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  In 1913, Kallenbach stood beside Gandhi at Phoenix during Gandhi's first penitential fast, undertaken over what Gandhi described as the "moral lapse" of two residents. That same year, the 1913 satyagraha movement in South Africa reached its peak with what became known as the Epic March. Kallenbach had been part of the organizing work that led to that climactic event. The South African struggle formally wound down in 1914, and Kallenbach accompanied Gandhi and his wife on their final voyage from South Africa to London. The two men had developed a private shorthand for their relationship: Gandhi was "Upper House," Kallenbach was "Lower House." Lower House, in their shared joke, prepared the budget; Upper House vetoed it. It was a small domestic metaphor that captured something real about their dynamic.

• 5. Internment and Return

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  Kallenbach had planned to follow Gandhi to India in 1914, but the outbreak of World War I intervened in a harsh way. As a Lithuanian-born subject of the German-allied Russian Empire, he was classified as an enemy alien and interned. From 1915 until 1917 he was held as a prisoner of war on the Isle of Man. After the war he returned to South Africa, resumed architectural practice, and maintained a correspondence with Gandhi. Then came a second transformation. The rise of Nazism and Hitler's antisemitic propaganda shook Kallenbach into a rediscovery of his Jewish identity. He became a Zionist, served on the Executive Board of the South African Zionist Federation, and began planning to settle in Palestine, which he referred to by its Hebrew name "Ereẓ Israel." His vision for that society was distinctive: no state, no military, no industry, a structure designed to avoid the colonialism he feared Zionist settlement might otherwise reproduce.

• 6. Gandhi and Zionism

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  At the request of Moshe Shertok, later known as Moshe Sharett, Kallenbach traveled to visit Gandhi in May 1937. The mission was to win Gandhi's sympathy for the Zionist cause. Kallenbach wrote back about the reunion in words that collapsed the years between them. "I join the whole programme," he wrote, describing the experience as "almost as the old joint life, as if the 23 years, with all the events that affected millions of people, had disappeared." The friendship held even as the political disagreement sharpened. Kallenbach and Gandhi did not agree on Zionism, and they disagreed about whether violent resistance to Hitler was justified. Yet Kallenbach returned to visit Gandhi again in 1939. After Kallenbach died in 1945, his estate reflected the two commitments that had defined his later decades: a portion went to South African Indians, the bulk was directed toward Zionism, his book collection went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his cremated remains were buried at Kibbutz Degania in Israel.

• 7. Archives, Monuments, Legacy

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  The Indian Government intervened in July 2012 to prevent the Gandhi-Kallenbach Archives from being auctioned by Sotheby's. The government described the purchase of that private correspondence as a way to protect the legacy of their cultural and socio-philosophical leader from being sold for profit. What those letters reveal, scholars and biographers have read with differing conclusions. Joseph Lelyveld, in his book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India," quoted cultural historian Tridip Suhrud describing Gandhi and Kallenbach as "a couple," a claim that drew controversy. The biography written by Isa Sarid, daughter of Kallenbach's niece Hanna Lazar, together with Christian Bartolf, traces the friendship in depth. Shimon Lev's 2012 book "Soulmates: The Story of Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach," published by Orient BlakSwan, also examined the bond between the two men and Gandhi's stance on Zionism. In the film Gandhi directed by Richard Attenborough, Kallenbach was portrayed by Günther Maria Halmer. On the 2nd of October 2015, Gandhi's 146th birth anniversary, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius and Indian Minister of State for Agriculture Mohanbhai Kundariya unveiled a statue of Kallenbach and Gandhi together in Rusnė.