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Introduction

The Camphill Network was created in the 1940’s by a group of Austrian refugees from Nazism who were inspired by the Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy developed by Rudolf Steiner. They began meeting in Vienna in the late 1930’s, brought together by Dr. Karl König. He was Viennese by birth, originally Jewish, but after being deeply inspired by Christianity he eventually became an Anthroposophist. After the Anschluss they fled Vienna, and met up again in Scotland just before the Second World War broke out. The Camphill Schools began by working with mentally handicapped children, and subsequently developed to create communities where mentally handicapped adults (villagers), worked alongside other people (co-workers), to support themselves. Throughout the world today there are well over 120 Camphill Communities in about 20 countries.

The farms and gardens in Camphill Villages are usually biodynamic, producing food of the highest quality while nurturing both soil and wildlife. Villages in England have pioneered waste water treatment using ponds, reedbeds and ‘Flow Form’ water cascades. These are now standard in the Norwegian villages and can be found in many Camphill villages worldwide. Buildings, communal halls, chapels and residential houses, are largely constructed out of natural materials. 

There is a great deal of self sufficiency. As much as possible of the food eaten is home grown, organic or preferably biodynamic, and both recycling and composting are practised. Many co-workers receive no personal salary, and are organized into income sharing economic fellowships. Work is seen to be something that is freely given within the fellowship, recognizing that some people have higher capabilities than others.

In many cases in mainstream society, mentally handicapped people are peripheralised and ‘looked after’ and so denied an active and useful role. In the world of Camphill, every person has something to contribute and feels self-worth even when fetching the milk or laying the table.  Camphill strives to create fellowship in the economic life, and a flexible equality in the social sphere.

I have lived continuously in Camphill Solborg in Norway since 2000 after having visited and spent time in other Camphill communities. One of the traditions of Camphill is to celebrate a Bible Evening every Saturday in each household, and this became part of my weekly round. The Bible Evening is a social phenomenon, having a life of its own.

My fascination for the Bible Evening led me to wonder where it came from, and chance readings about the life of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf, the founder of the Moravian Church, caught my interest. He had lived and worked in what had been Eastern Germany, very close to the border of the Czech Republic. Many of the earliest communities of the Herrnhutters, inspired by him, had been founded in Silesia and surrounding areas of southern Poland.
Eastern Europe had been traditionally an unknown region for me, growing up in the cold war era of the 1960’s. Then we could travel pretty freely throughout Western Europe, though we still had to line up at border crossings and have our passports read thoroughly, and even undergo the occasional unpleasant search. But Eastern Europe was closed. There were too many visa requirements and too many tales of a sad, grey repressive communism emanating from the Kremlin. Who wanted to go there when we could hitch-hike to the Mediterranean coast, eat for pennies and drink cheap red wine?

So I never considered Eastern Europe.

Now, decades later, here was something interesting and fascinating beckoning to me. The Berlin Wall had fallen nearly two decades before, and the Eastern European countries lay wide open. I felt the urge to visit the places where Zinzendorf had lived, to find out more about those strange people who emerged out of hiding in the deep forests of Moravia and Bohemia to settle in the village of Herrnhut that he founded.

In the autumn of 2007 my wife Ruth and I received a sabbatical year’s leave from our community, and found ourselves able to travel down through Eastern Europe by car, with time to visit communities and see whatever sights we wanted to. Here at last was the opportunity to find out more about Zinzendorf and the communities he had founded, and those that had inspired him. Here was an opportunity to locate where König had begun his working life and to see where he had been inspired. The idea of writing a book about it only occurred as we travelled, getting deeper into Eastern Europe, the Bible Evening and its roots.

I hope by writing this to give some depth to those already celebrating Bible Evening, and to inspire others to take it up.

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