Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish
Encyclopedia
Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish (1856? – February 29, 1936) was the founder of the religious movement known as Mazdaznan
Mazdaznan
Mazdaznan is a syncretistic religious health movement based on Zoroastrian and Christian ideas with special focus on breathing exercises, vegetarian diet and body culture. It was founded at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century by Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish, born Otto Hanisch...

. His origin is not verified, and differing birth dates are mentioned in various documents. According to some sources, he was born Otto Hanisch, a German immigrant from Poznan
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...

. He adopted the name Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish in 1902, and his European follower David Ammann claimed that he was born in 1844 to a Russian diplomat in Teheran and to have been sent as a child to a secret society of Zarathustrians in the Iran mountains due to his serious congenital heart defect, where he was trained to master his hypoxic
Hypoxia (medical)
Hypoxia, or hypoxiation, is a pathological condition in which the body as a whole or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply. Variations in arterial oxygen concentrations can be part of the normal physiology, for example, during strenuous physical exercise...

 condition with control of breathing.

Early life

According to Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...

, Hanisch lived in Mendota
Mendota, Illinois
Mendota is a city located in north-central Illinois in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. The city has 7,272 residents, and is the fifth largest city in LaSalle County, though recent estimates have shown that the population has decreased to 6,995 residents. It is part of the...

, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, and his career included such varied pursuits as sheep herding, typesetting, mesmerism, and spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...

. He is also reported to have joined the LDS Church, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church
Christian Catholic Apostolic Church
Christ Community Church in Zion, Illinois, formerly the Christian Catholic Church or Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, is an evangelical Protestant church founded in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie. The city of Zion was founded by Dowie as a religious community to establish a society on the...

 and to have been a member of James Brighouse
James Brighouse
James Brighouse was a late-nineteenth century American leader of a splinter sect in the Latter Day Saint movement called the Order of Enoch. Brighouse was one of the first persons to claim to be the "One Mighty and Strong" that Joseph Smith, Jr...

's Mormon splinter movement.

From 1900 Hanisch lived in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. In 1908 Hanisch and his follower David Ammann published a magazine entitled Mazdaznan in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, which dealt with philosophy, physical education and dietary practices. Following the publication of the magazine Hanisch adopted the name Otoman (Zar-Adusht) Ha'nish. From 1917 he was resident in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

Hanisch published several books including Health and Breath Culture and Inner Studies.

Billy Lindsay case

For many years Hanisch maintained a temple at 3016 Lake Park Avenue, Chicago. He first achieved notoriety in January 1912 through the so-called Billy Lindsay case. Billy's mother Elizabeth had become a member of Hanisch's movement and had sent Billy to travel across the country with Ha'nish. The boy's relatives became worried about the boy's welfare and after a coast-to-coast search Billy was discovered living in the Lake Park temple. His uncle filed a dependent petition on Billy's behalf and he was taken into custody, but he and his mother fled before the hearing.

During the juvenile court hearing on the petition, the uncle's attorney sought to prove that Billy had been neglected by his mother and also tried to prove that the whole Mazdaznan movement was immoral. As evidence, he had a chapter on marital relations from Hanisch's Inner Studies, in which pure tantric sexual intercourse was described, read into the record. According to the Chicago Daily News
Chicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...

, the reading caused a number of women to leave the courtroom and even Hanisch himself blushed at hearing his own words.

The judge concluded the hearing by issuing a judicial decree which declared that Billy was a "neglected and dependent child, having no guardian of his person other than his mother", who because of her "religious fanaticism" was unfit to raise him. Additionally, it declared that Ha'nish was "not a proper person to have control of said child". The decree appointed the boy's uncles as his new guardians and authorized them to take him into their custody when he could be found. Elizabeth Lindsay was found to be in contempt of court for fleeing; this prevented her from obtaining a writ of error, since to do so she would have to bring Billy back, when she would lose custody of him. However, it turned out that Hanisch could sue for a writ of error since he had appeared in the proceedings, even though he had sworn that he had never had any custody or control of Billy.

1912 arrest

The Lindsay case prompted an investigation of the movement, and after Hanisch sent an alleged obscene book by express to another state, the temple was raided on March 4, 1912 and he was arrested. He was convicted of sending obscene literature in interstate commerce, fined $2,500 and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. The "literature" in question was his book Inner Studies which was reported at the time to be sold from anything from $10 to $50 depending upon the resources of the purchaser.

1920 charges

In early 1920, Hanisch was again arrested in Chicago, and sent to Los Angeles to answer criminal charges, a grand jury having voted ten indictments against him on June 14, 1918 after hearing charges. Several of the complainants were children ranging in age from 11 to 15 years old. The Los Angeles police revealed that Hanisch's real name was Otto Zachariah Hanisch, that he was a Russian, that his father was a Milwaukee music teacher named Richard Hanisch, and that he had been lecturing under the name of Dr. Ken Wilson.

1930

On February 25, 1930 Hanisch was cited in a divorce suit by Herman R. Huber, a draftsman, who in his suit said that his wife had become "fanatical, idiotical, and unreasonable by following the repugnant rituals of moaning, raving and silly actions of the cult." He added that the power that the "master mind" held over women made them think more of his teachings than they did of their homes and families. Hanisch, 85 at the time, was described in the suit as "Ottoman, czar of Adusht, master mind Hanisch of the Mazdazans," and gave the address of his temple as 1159 South Norton Avenue, Los Angeles.
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