Bert Hellinger

Bert Hellinger (born 16 December 1925, in Leimen, Baden, Germany as Anton Hellinger) is a German psychotherapist associated with a therapeutic method best known as Family Constellations and Systemic Constellations. In recent years, his work has evolved beyond these formats into what he now calls Movements of the Spirit-Mind. Several thousand professional practitioners worldwide, influenced by Hellinger, but not necessarily following him, continue to apply and adapt his original insights to a broad range of personal, organizational and political applications.

Anton Hellinger was born into a Catholic family in Germany in 1925. Hellinger states that his parents' "particular form of [Catholic] faith provided the entire family with immunity against believing the distortions of National Socialism." At age 10, he left his family to attend a Catholic monastery school run by the Order in which he was later ordained and that sent him to South Africa as a missionary.

The local Hitler Youth Organization tried without success to recruit the teenage Bert Hellinger. This resulted in his being classified as 'Suspected of Being an Enemy of the People' In 1942, Hellinger was conscripted into the regular German army. He saw combat on the Western front. In 1945, he was captured and imprisoned in an Allied P.O.W. camp in Belgium. After escaping from the P.O.W. camp, Hellinger made his way back to Germany. Hellinger entered the Jesuits (Society of Jesus), a Catholic religious order, taking the religious name Suitbert, which is the source of his first name "Bert". He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Würzburg en route to his ordination as a priest. In the early 1950s, he was dispatched to South Africa where he was assigned to be a missionary to the Zulus. There he continued his studies at the University of Pietermaritzburg and the University of South Africa where he received a B.A. and a University Education Diploma, which entitled him to teach at public high schools.

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