The Sanskrit name for thecoconut treeiskalpa vrishka , or " tree which gives all that is necessary for living . " In the early twentieth hundred , a 26 - twelvemonth - old German named August Engelhardt took that mind literally — he set out to build up a utopian , sun - worshipping sect , one where extremity would run through nothing — and utterly nothing — but coconuts .
Born in 1875 , Engelhardt was a disaffectedchemistry and physics university studentwho afterwards became a pharmacy assistant . There , he became deeply absorb in the pop Lebensreform ( " life reform " ) movement that rejected Germany ’s ever - advancing industrialism , embracing back - to - nature nonpareil , such as alternative medical specialty , raw foods , sexual dismissal and the rejection of nous - altering substances and vaccine .
He had a very long byssus and did n’t wear very many clothes . Both dimension cast him as a hippie of sorts in an extremist - stodgy European society . He spoke in public of his beliefs , for which he was bluntly poke fun , but still , he remained undeterred in his phantasmal and nutritional quests .
Cuckoo for Coconuts
In 1898 , he co - authored a book with the unwieldy claim of , " A Carefree Future : The New Gospel ; Glimpse Into the deepness and Distance for the Selection of Mankind , for the Reflection of All , for Consideration and Stimulation , " which was pack with lifestyle ideals andeven poemswith titles like , " Mother Coconut , " " The Coconut Spirit , " and , of course , " How to Become a Coconut . " He hoped to attract similar - minded vegetarians to conjoin him in an leak to the South Pacific , far from the reach of their restrictive motherland .
Thanks to a substantial inheritance , Engelhardt had the way to follow his coconut - crazed dreams . He bought 185 Akko ( 75 hectares ) onKabakon , a lowly sparsely - populated island located between what is now Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands . He took along his subroutine library of 1,200 rule book , chuck out all clothing , and begin living in a mere army hut . He purchase , of course , a coco and banana plantation , one that never really made any money .
Engelhardt was certain that the bright tropical sun hanging overhead was the life reservoir of the cosmos , and that in doing aside with clothing , he was bringing himself closer to healthy living . He was convinced that the brain , being closest to the sun , was human race ’s most important organ , elevated above the dark recess of the gut . And because coconuts had a go resemblance to the human head and produce at the tippy tops of sun - bonk trees , he believed that these nutswere the grandest of all Earth ’s harvest , arrest everything that the body required for nourishment . So , that ’s all he eat .
While coconuts have good sum of fatness and carbs , they arelacking in Vitamins A , K , B6 and B12 , as well as calcium . A cup of coconut meat only has about3 grams of proteinor 5 per centum of your day-by-day requirement . Assuming three or four cupful in one Cocos nucifera , Engelhardt would have had to use up more than 14 coconuts a daylight to get enough protein for his 5 foot 8 inch ( 1.7 measure ) shape .
Not that knowing such mundane nutritionary data would have deter Engelhardt . " He held that man was a tropic animal , not intended to know in caves called houses , but to wander , as Adam did , with the Dominicus beating upon him all mean solar day and the dews of heaven for a curtain at Nox , " explain a 1905New York Times storysensationally entitle " bankruptcy of a Womanless Eden in the Pacific — A Strange Story from the South Seas . " Engelhardt believed that living such a life " would in time render a man so immune that unwellness could be overcome " and he would capture death " and be as deity , " The NYT wrote .
Hell Is Other People
Engelhardt ’s self - created cultus was calledSonnenorden(Order of the Sun ) , and he compose letter that ultimately convince about 15 people to join him at his sun - soaked Shangri-la . Do n’t dread malaria , he wrote to his chance , the warmth of the sun and the healing powers of the coconut will heal whatever pain you .
Two of those converts were particularly remarkable . One was Heinrich Eukens , a 24 - class - old vegetarian smite with Engelhardt ’s extreme lifestyle . The other was Max Lutzow , once the conductor and a player in the well - consider Lutzow Orchestra of Berlin .
Eukens enthusiastically plunged into the sun - worshipping coconutiness , but his Constitution of the United States was n’t able to hold up the disconnected strong-arm changes . Within weeks , he dropped numb . The sect ’s other following were dismay but carried on .
Lutzow , on the other hand , got on excellently with the island ’s loss leader , but for one detail – he ’d brought along his euphony accumulation and oftenplayed pieces that grate on Engelhardt ’s nerves . After one wrangle , Lutzow twine up stranded on a mission sauceboat far from shore , and since there was no sweet yield on board , he refused to feed . By the sentence he return to ground , he was feverish beyond repair , perishing under the hot sun .
Other group members match their ends through siriasis , drownings and , of class , malaria , because the sun most in spades did not serve as an adequate stand-in for quinine . In a bit of irony , at least one cultist perish after being struck by a falling coconut meat .
Those who did n’t perish fled the island , leaving their loss leader to a lonesome existence . The German government , aware of Engelhardt ’s lunacy , actively preclude other wayward youth from similarly macabre conclusion .
Engelhardt himself continued , sealed that his followers died just because they ’d cheat on their mono - coconut palm diet , contaminate their bodies with impureness and poisonous substance from other solid food sources . But his wellness , too , was go . Photographs , some taken by tourists who go out of their way to visit the nongregarious madman , show the sect drawing card as little more than a whiskered bag of bones , his skin erupt in lesions and malformation clearly demonstrating his nutritionary inadequacies .
Eventually , even he was too faint to defy advanced aesculapian care , and a local Doctor of the Church was able to breastfeed him back to wellness in Papua New Guinea . Engelhardt rewarded his physician ’s efforts by escaping back to his island , negociate to survive until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 .
The following twelvemonth , he wascaptured as a captive of state of war , but expel from cantonment at least in part because he was so intelligibly mentally sick . Still , he carried on , until 1919 , when his consistency could no longer allow malnutrition . He died at years 44 , reportedly weighing less than 70 Cypriot pound ( 31 kilograms ) when he was regain on the beach .
