Hedwig Michel

Controversial cult leader? Garden writer? Entrepreneur?

I was browsing through my set of Horticulture magazines from 1959, looking for articles written by Algine Neely, when I ran across an article in the February issue written by Hedwig Michel. “Hey, that’s my last name!” was my first thought, followed by, “I wonder if I’m related to her.”¹

And then I fell down into the weirdest rabbit hole I’ve ever been in while searching for and finding out about a Lost Lady of Garden Writing.

Photo of Hedwig Michel courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times, November 1975, by George Leposky

Her Biography

Hedwig Michel was born in Germany in March 1892. Per an article in the Tampa Bay Times written in 1975,

“Her father had been a university professor in Frankfurt, and the family’s friends included Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.

In the 1920s she was a publicist for the Municipal Theatre in Frankfurt. “I lost that job when Hitler came to power,” she recalls. “As a Jew I wasn’t welcome.”

She then became business manager for a symphony orchestra of Jewish musicians organized by cellist Boris Huberman and William Steinberg, who was musical director. With the assistance of Arturo Toscanini, the orchestra departed for Palestine in 1935. Miss Michel stayed on in Germany to run a private school for 45 children in her huge 17-room house. Her pupils, being Jewish, had been excluded from public schools.”

In 1938, Hedwig left Germany and came to the United States, landing in New York City. Then in 1940, she moved to Florida to join the Koreshan Unity, a cult whose members believed, amongst other things, that the earth is hollow. She became their president in 1960. She later donated most of the land owned by the cult to the state of Florida to become a state park once all the members died. When she died in 1982, she was considered the last Koreshan.

And with that little bit of info, I have greatly simplified the life of an interesting, complicated, controversial woman who just happened to also do a bit of garden writing.

If you want to know more about her life and how other members of Koreshan Unity felt about her, I encourage you to read The Allure of Immortality: An American Cult, a Florida Swamp, and a Renegade Prophet by Lyn Millner. There is a chapter about Hedwig that goes into much greater detail. If you want to know more about the Koreshan Unity cult founded by Dr. Cyrus Teed, there are several YouTube videos, like Koreshan Unity: A Quest for Utopia, that you can watch, or read that book.

Within the state park, there is also a garden dedicated to Hedwig with a plaque.

Photo courtesy of FlordiaMemory.com

The plaque has written on it:

“Hedwig Michel Garden Dedicated in honor of Hedwig Michel Educator, Historian, Botanist, Editor, Humanitarian October 17, 1976.”

"A native of Frankfort, Germany, she came to the Koreshan Unity, Estero, in 1940. She ministered continuously to the Koreshan Unity residents until the last original settler deceased in 1974. Mrs. Michel revived, as editor and publisher, the monthly newspaper, The American Eagle. She founded the Pioneer Educational Foundation, serving as its President. She also served as President of Koreshan Unity. In 1961, Mrs. Michel led a successful effort to donate 305 acres of the Koreshan Unity homeland to the State of Florida, which made possible the preservation of these historic grounds and beautiful gardens for perpetual public enjoyment."

"She loves the promise of youth, flowers, and ideas."

Her Garden Writing

As mentioned, I found an article written by Hedwig in Horticulture magazine in February 1959. It is about how houseplants stay small indoors in the north but turn into giant plants outside in Florida.

Then I found more articles written by Hedwig about gardening and plants in various newspapers, like one she wrote in 1959 about using geese as “non-toxic weedkillers” and her fruitless search for geese to use for that purpose in Florida. It was interesting and humorous too.

I also found many articles she wrote for the Fort Meyers, Florida News-Press. Some were about the social life in Estero, where the Koreshan Unity cult was located, and others were about gardening, plants, and even migrating birds.

I think if you found copies of the Koreshan Unity’s monthly newspaper, The American Eagle, you would also find other articles about plants and gardening written by Hedwig. As described in Book Lover’s Guide to Florida, edited by Kevin M. McCarthy, 1992,

“The Koreshans established The American Eagle, a political weekly, in 1906 and later developed it into a highly respected horticultural magazine. After a brief suspension of the paper, Hedwig Michel revived it in 1965 as a monthly devoted to the conservation of the state’s natural resources. The early issues are valuable for historians, genealogists, and scholoars of early farming methods.”

The Controversy of Hedwig Michel

I have barely scratched the surface of the life of Hedwig Michel.

She is controversial. Some descendants of the Koreshan Unity thought she saved the cult from dying out when she arrived in 1940, finding a handful of residents with an average age of 79. Others complained that she took advantage of them, driving around in a Cadillac and going on yearly trips to Europe, while they claimed they didn’t have enough to eat. It’s not even clear if she believed in the teachings of the cult, about a hollow earth, etc.

Originally, I thought she had written just a few articles about gardening and wondered if it was enough to find out more about her. But the more I explored and searched, the more gardening-related material I found. I think Hedwig does belong on the list of Lost Ladies of Garden Writing.

What do you think of Hedwig Michel?

Do you know of other women authors of gardening-related books that I should research as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing? Send them my way via a comment or email!

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I’ll return with the next Lost Lady of Garden Writing article in two weeks, on April 30th. In the meantime, you can find me in several other places online: my website and blog, The Gardenangelists podcast, and my weekly newsletter, In the Garden With Carol

1. I am not related to Hedwig Michel. That branch of my family has been well-researched, so I feel pretty certain about this.