August Engelhardt had a big plan: He wanted to redeem mankind from all the evils of civilization. That’s why in 1902 he founded the “Sonnenorden” on an island in the middle of the South Seas. Here the dropout preached a strict diet: coconuts. “If you want to overcome sorrow, pain and death, live from the fruit of the tree of life, the coconut palm,” he propagated. But instead of immortality, illness and ruin awaited Engelhardt’s followers. For them, the supposed South Seas paradise turned out to be a trip to hell.
Engelhardt was actually only concerned with the question of how to live healthily. He was born in Nuremberg in 1875, did an apprenticeship as a pharmacist and in 1899 joined a “homestead and model institution for pure natural life” in the Harz Mountains. The basic principles were simple: nudism and vegetarianism. However, the authorities of the prudish empire were so unimpressed by the “sanatorium” that they put the director in prison for quackery.
Engelhardt was probably fed up with the constraints of the state and wanted to leave “small-minded Germany”, as the cultural scientist Dieter Klein writes. Conveniently, the German Reich was in the process of building a colonial empire at the time, including areas in Africa, Asia, China and the South Seas. Imperial flags had already been hoisted on the island of New Guinea and the surrounding Bismarck Archipelago in 1884, and from 1899 the Empire officially administered the “protected area” German New Guinea.
Precisely this region, almost as far away from Germany as possible, was Engelhardt’s goal. In 1902, at the age of 26, he fled to Herbertshöhe (today Kokopo) on Neupommern, the headquarters of the German administration. The dropout immediately bought the 66-hectare island of Kabakon, 40 kilometers east of Herbertshöhe. There was a coconut plantation there, which was managed by around 40 Melanesians.
Between palm trees and the sea, Engelhardt founded a whole philosophy of life that – in keeping with his island – revolved around coconuts: cocovorism: “The pure coconut diet makes you immortal and united with God,” explained the dropout. And: “Only the fruit eater – the coconut eater – feels the true joy of existence, the purest happiness in life.”
The coconut is the perfect food for humans because it is shaped like a human head. That being said, it grows closest to the sun and offers plenty of “solar-rich compounds.” The “energy of the sun”, according to Engelhardt, transforms people into peace-loving, balanced beings. In general, humans belong in the tropics, not in Europe, the “kingdom of winter”.
Based on these thoughts, the do-gooder immediately wrote a “Coconut Gospel” in which he proclaimed himself the “1. Coconut Apostle” explained. He truly saw himself as the “founder of a new religion,” says Dieter Klein, as the redeemer of mankind. Engelhardt followed his words with deeds and founded the “Sun Order” with which he wanted to found an “international tropical colonial empire of Fructivorism”.
He tirelessly sent letters to Germany in which he praised life in the South Seas and tried to win followers. And in fact, about a dozen visitors should make their way to Kabakon in the coming years. In December 1903, the first guest, a 24-year-old from Heligoland, arrived. He was dead just six weeks later, probably from malaria.
The second visitor, Max Lützow, a popular musician, fared better – initially. He considered Kabakon to be the ideal “place for fruit eaters”. Engelhardt himself wrote on a postcard to Germany: “We live here permanently naked and almost only enjoy fruit, especially the sacred coconut.”
In fact, in 1904 other potential “cocovores”, as Engelhardt’s followers were known, ventured into the South Seas. However, their happiness was short-lived. In the following year, Lützow became so ill that he had to visit the government hospital in Herbertshöhe. On the way his boat got caught in a storm; the musician died shortly after being rescued.
Another “Kokovore” also died in a boat accident, other supporters left the supposed paradise sick and disappointed. Apparently, the pure coconut diet had severely weakened the dropouts; Engelhardt also demonized the then common antimalarial quinine as a “poison”.
The Order of the Sun was about to fall when the writer August Bethmann, an old acquaintance of Engelhardt, rushed to the island with his fiancée. In the meantime, however, the power of coconuts had failed even with Engelhardt. “He suffered from scabies, had skin ulcers and could no longer walk as a result of the exhaustion,” describes Dieter Klein. At a height of 1.66 meters, the 1st Coconut Apostle weighed only 39 kilos. In 1906 Engelhardt was forced to be taken to the hospital in Herbertshöhe, where he was fed with “Liebig’s meat extract” of all things.
When he returned to his island, the mood had finally changed. Bethmann no longer believed in the power of coconuts and wanted to leave the island. But shortly before his departure he died. How is unclear. The rumors ranged from accident and illness to murder and a deadly jealousy drama between him, his fiancé and Engelhardt. In any case, the last “kokovors” left Kabakon in 1907.
Still, giving up was out of the question for Engelhardt. With his magazine “Sun, Tropics and Coconut” he tried to win new followers. There weren’t any, but the first tourists who wanted to take photos with the coconut apostle came. “Some thought the man extravagant, others thought he was a great philosopher,” wrote one traveler of Engelhardt.
During World War I, Australian troops occupied New Guinea, which was the end of the “German South Seas”. Engelhardt was interned for a short time, but was then allowed to return to his island. He died there in 1919 at the age of 44, despite the supposedly immortal coconut diet.
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