The International Camphill Movement as a Central European Jewish Subculture

• In Event: Rethinking Jewish “Subcultures”: Algerian, Parisian, Viennese, and Beyond

Abstract

In the winter of 1938/39, a group of Jewish doctors and therapists fled Vienna, reassembled in northern Scotland, and founded an intentional community for the care of children with disabilities called Camphill Special School. In an era when shame, blame, and institutionalization were the response to disability, Camphill was founded on the principle that disabled children could enrich communities and that doctors should abandon the search for cures. Their radical position was rooted in their unusual approach to medicine. They were followers of the Austrian occult philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, whose philosophy, called Anthroposophy, spawned alternative medical, educational, and agricultural movements. In spite of these unorthodox credentials, Camphill soon grew into an international movement; there are over 130 communities around the world today.

Though the Camphill movement is headquartered in the US today, I argue that it began as a Jewish subculture of German Anthroposophy and that this legacy remains definitive today. The framework of Jewish subcultures, as conceptualized by David Sorkin, brings into focus the ways in which Camphill facilitated Jewish acculturation into German anthroposophy and yet also made the Jewish presence in that movement separate and visible. Putting this analytical framework into conversation with recent work in cultural history by scholars such as Lisa Silverman, I trace the ways in which Jewish difference has shaped Camphill’s history. The Jewish anthroposophists who founded Camphill existed as a group because they were never fully accepted by non-Jewish anthroposophists in interwar Vienna. When they resolved to emigrate together, Jewish refugee aid organizations facilitated their flight to Scotland. The first patients at Camphill Special School were the children of fellow Central European Jewish refugees who could not get visas to the United States for their disabled children. And Camphill expanded into an international movement because networks of Jewish parents raised funds and sent representatives to Scotland to request the establishment of a community in the United States. Finally, Camphill introduced ideas and rituals adapted from Jewish traditions into the Anthroposophical spirituality that ties the communities together. Based on correspondence, written work by the founders, and oral history interviews with elderly community members and parents, I illustrate the story of Camphill’s relationship to the Anthroposophical center and argue that it is one of push and pull between a Jewish subculture and the broader collective which it coexists.

Author

• Katherine Sorrels, University of Cincnnati