Alexander von Bernus founded the laboratory Soluna in 1921 under the name "Laboratory Stift Neuburg." On Stift Neuburg near Heidelberg, years of intense research, primarily the writings and work of Paracelsus, led Bernus to the development of his own medical remedies. Since 1914, he worked together with Conrad Johann Glückselig, an Alchemist from Stuttgart. Glückselig later produced his own spagyric medicine, which is still being produced and sold by the company Phönix located in Bondorf near Stuttgart.

After the sale of Stift Neuburg in 1925, Bernus moved to Stuttgart. There at Schellbergstraße 41, he again established a laboratory. Already in 1921, before the sale of his estate in Heidelberg-Ziegelhausen, he had purchased the little castle Donaumünster, where he also set up a laboratory, which enabled him to continue his work on medical remedies during the stays in the country, primarily during the summer months. In 1943, the family resettled to castle Donaumünster after their house and the laboratory in Stuttgart had been completely destroyed during a bomb raid. Up to his death in 1965, Alexander von Bernus continued to work at castle Donaumünster, as both a poet and an alchemist.

After his death, the anthroposophic medical company "Wala" took over the production of the Soluna medical remedies and the sales section was managed out of castle Donaumünster by Isa von Bernus.

During the eighties an Italian, printer by profession, who was also a photographe, claimed to the baroness to be very interested in alchemy and poetry, along came Karin Proeller and the laboratory was changed into a PLC, whereby the majority of the shares did not rest in the hands of the Baroness; all of the PLC's shares were later sold to the Italian and Karin Proeller (the last shares out of the Baroness hands for DM 1.-). The building where today's laboratory is located (which was used as a garage during Bernus' time since he always had his laboratory inside the castle) as well as the entire estate, were at first in form of a loan, and later after the remittance of this loan transferred to the Italian and Karin Proeller, without any payments ever being made.

The Baroness did not really understand these (and quite a number of other) transactions; even in 1994/95 she was still of the firm believe that the Soluna laboratory was hers, until she was informed that this was not the case all.

As the Baroness began to understand the extent of all that she had given away, she took legal measures and tried to have the incriminating contracts annulled. These attempts failed, but resulted for her in tremendous legal fees and court charges.

During the last years of her life, the Baroness was attacked on both the physical and the spiritual plane, whereby Bernus' daughter out of his second marriage played a very gloomy role: Ursula Pia, known as "Ulla" who marketed herself in the media as a "witch" and "black magician". It was characteristic, that the spirits she called to harm other people turned at last against her as she committed suicide, on this, for all of us unforgotten Easter morning, as Isa finally recovered from a serious pneumonia! Goethes' "Magic Apprentice" is as current now, as it was ever!

Isa said three weeks before her death: "You don't do enough against the evil doers! This frightened me very much. After I asked her what she thought that I could do, she already looked into completely different spheres and remained silent.

Isa was much too wise to just let black and white analysis pass. Isa was never one "Lieschen Müller" naïve

enough to be satisfied by simple single line additions. Who at the end were or are "the bad ones" and whether the simply obvious and patent allocations were true - I actually do not know.

Perhaps sometimes it is helpful, to gain some distance in mind. It feels good to let go of flat opposite positions, and let some new views enter the often stiffened thinking pattern of ones own intellectual discourse. And therefore, at this moment the poetical words which Isa quoted again and again still remain valid: " And there was a time and the time passed by. And everything is as it is ".

Irmhild Mäurer