Published in Tattva Viveka; Focus: Community, June 2022

by Achim Ecker

Loving is a political task – This is roughly how we can summarize how we started in the „Bauhütte“ 1978 in today‘s words. When Dieter Duhm founded this community, it was about developing a culture without violence and destruction. Since then we have come a long way. From an in-depth self-exploration, e.g. in the „Social Experiment“ and intensive community building in the Black Forest, to a well-respected and well-known seminar center in Bad Belzig, the ZEGG (German acronym: Center for experimental social design).

I was thrilled when I found the Bauhütte in 1984. At that time, at the age of 24, I followed the motto: I will stay as long as I do not nd anything more relevant for peace between people and between people and nature. I lived and learned in community, traveled the world, advised countless communities with my partner Ina

Meyer-Stoll and we spread our form of communication, the Forum1, in many countries and continents. For 38 years I was in the right place to live and work. 1991 the community moved to ZEGG in Brandenburg. Now things have changed, so that I think I have to move on from the place that I have built up and made ourish ecologically and socially with all my e orts over three decades. Today the seminar business has outstripped the community that sustains the place and taken away the importance it was supposed to have. The community has, in my perception, lost its strength and its core. In the following I will describe the process of change as best as I can. Similar processes I see in many communities and groups.

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