In memoriam - Luise Hansen

A few weeks before her 100th birthday, Luise Hansen left her body on April 21st in Kobe, Japan. Luise, originally from Linz, Austria, had come to Pondicherry in the late sixties and had some personal darshans with The Mother. Being inspired by the vision of the Auroville Dream, she supported its manifestation from its very beginning through generous donations to many projects like the land, Matrimandir, Animal Care, Dental Care, schools, farms, Vérité, Mohanam, Svaram and others.

Luise had lived in Japan for more than 70 years, arriving there during the Second World War after being evacuated from Indonesia, where she had worked as a child nurse, and she experienced the war and reconstruction years in a nation shattered by the atomic bomb.

Having joined the first study group on Integral Yoga in Japan around M.G. Patel in Kobe, she visited India regularly and had friends in the Ashram and amongst early Aurovilians. Having successfully built up, with a Japanese partner, a large company supplying medical equipment to Japan, she distributed all the wealth to humanitarian causes and for her beloved animal friends, receiving a high national award for her pioneering work in animal rescue.

Luise was a shining example of keeping her physical discipline, having been active in sports, well into her nineties, and in spite of many falls and hip-and thigh breakages, she participated even in her late years in dance classes and preferred motorbike rides to bumpy taxis. Till her very last days she remained independent in her activities, keeping up with the daily news and happenings in the world and sustaining a vision of a new phase of human civilization and planetary future.