Oh my gosh, Stefan, I've
been to Schloss Templehof! I was there in July of 2011 with my friend Ronny Müller, a co-founder of the Lebensdorf project out of Freiburg. Two Aussies, Paul and Anne, who live in Gulawah Community in New South Wales, were with us too.
We were hosted by Clinton and Marion Callahan, who were two early members, but they've left since then. I'm so glad to hear that things are going well there. What a beautiful place, too! It's rare to find what we call in the States a "turn-key" community, meaning, you just buy the
land and buildings and move right in.
For others reading this post, the founders of Schloss Templehof looked for land for years. Then they got the idea to google (in German of course) "village for sale." And voila! one popped up, and they bought it. They bought a whole tiny village, with apartment buildings, a few homes, a kitchen and dining room & meeting room building, and, of course, a
schloss (castle!). I was going crazy with history/architecture excitement as I took trains around Germany with Ronny. I learned the difference between a
schloss (mansion-style castle) and
berg (fortress-style castle). As we tootled around Germany on its fabulous train system, I kept exclaiming
"Schloss!" or
"Berg!" as I'd spy one out the train window up on mountain crag. I was in architecture-history heaven in Germany. And then there were all these hundreds of square meters of bright blue rushing by just outside the train windows. My jaw dropped. Not lakes, not houses with blue roofs. Whole huge rows upon rows of
solar panels. And up on the hills, enormous white slowly turning wind generators three stories high, I swear. I was
so impressed with Germany's commitment to off-grid power and ecological
sustainability. Light years ahead of us in North America, folks.
Well, at Templehof did a talk and slide show about ecovillages, and then an informal afternoon workshop. It centered on some basic issues which I thought of as "structural conflict" there, which many of the members were concerned with. We did some role-playing and pretending to respond effectively to certain other folks, away from the community at the time, who tended to offer their ideas of what the community
should do in authoritarian, ways. I also encouraged people to put more folks on the finance committee, instead of just one person who figured out what to pay and a second signer of checks. I suggested that these important decisions be shared by several different people on a finance committee, and the notes of their decisions be shared with everyone else. So there would be lots of transparency and equivalence, as well as efficiency. Clinton later wrote me and said people were discussing these ideas, and whether or not to implement them. I hope my time there was helpful!
And I'd love to come back to Templehof and do a seminar this summer, as I'll be in Europe from April through July. Thank you so much for asking! Ronny is free to translate for me in workshops we could do on the weekends of July 6-7 and again on July 13-14 (both sides of the GEN-Europe annual conference in Switzerland). (By the way, Ronny is a Permaculture teacher and he teaches and organizes all over Germany and other parts of Europe too.) I'm also free in the first three weeks of June and the last part of July.
Thanks so much again for your post, Stefan.
Diana
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