This is an article about the destinations of the Post Conference Tour 2001,
written by ICSA-President Dr Bill Metcalf for „Communities magazine",
Winter 2000 issue, #109.
I am staying at ZEGG commune in eastern Germany, and working on plans for the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA) conference to be held here June 25-July 7, 2001. This gathering of community members and communal scholars from around the globe will be followed by a tour of intentional communities in the area.
ZEGG, as always, is both challenging and inspiring. Their "freed-love," or quot;liberated-love" approach to social and sexual life spills over into all other areas. I feel challenged and enthused by their openness, honesty and directness, while impressed by their spirituality.
Just as when I previously visited ZEGG (see "ZEGG: Free Love in Germany" Winter '98 issue), I am thoroughly impressed by their environmental and economic achievements, as well as their innovative approach to cultural and social life. But mostly, I am impressed by how well these 70 or so adults and 20 or so children manage to interact and have a great time, largely avoiding jealousy, power struggles, and sexual manipulation, and effectively dealing with the issues that do arise. ZEGG is really a fun place to be.
I now follow the route which ICSA's Post-Conference tour (June 29-July 1) will take next year, including passing some famous sights in Berlin-Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden, "the wall," and the Reichstag.
An hour northeast of ZEGG my first stop is UFA Fabrik, an urban commune in central Berlin. UFA Fabrik prospers and changes with the times, while providing a home and income for about 50 adults and children. The community's five-acre site was formerly the infamous movie studio that made Nazi propaganda films. When these communards first claimed the land (squatting here in 1979), the site was dirty, dusty, and ugly. Since then, they have altered and painted the buildings and considerably "greened" the site with shrubs and flowers. The community now has a small wind generator, sod roofs, power and heat co-generation, and a constructed wetlands water cleaning and waste-water recycling system.
All UFA Fabrik members work on site for community businesses. About a third of the community income derives from several small businesses such as a cafe, bakery and fresh food shop. Another third derives from their business organising entertainment and cultural activities. The last third comes from the community's most famous businesses, a circus and a samba band. The UFA Fabrik Circus entertains about 200,000 people each year.
The community has so much work, in fact, that they employ about 100 non-communards. This reliance on outside labour both challenges them and offers a sign of their undoubted success, similar to many Israeli kibbutzim.
Several of the old film studio buildings have been converted to accommodations for members and guests. Each member has a private room, while almost all meals are eaten together. The community operates a small alternative primary school for their own and neighbourhood children, although older children attend a city high school.
UFA Fabrik members are adamant that they live communally solely for practical reasons and hold no overarching ideological vision. But their actual, inherent vision is surely to show people that it is possible to live a sane, prosperous, and sustainable lifestyle, even within the crowded and hyperactive city of Berlin-and to have a great time doing it.
From Berlin, I travel southwest to Kommune Niederkaufungen, near the small city of Kassel. Only occasionally on my worldwide travels to intentional communities does a group strike me as a place that even I, a crusty scholar, would want to live, but this community does just that. They are lovely people with a superb communal set-up.
Niederkaufungen started in 1986 on a four-acre site which contained a centuries-old manor house and several enormous barns, all in beautiful timber framed "Fachwerk" style, right in the centre of a village. Because this group had been together for some years before forming the community, they had already worked out a set of principles and practical rules of social and economic life. They also had some savings to invest, so they quickly established an impressive social and physical infrastructure. (See "Kommune Niederkaufungen" in the Spring '97 issue.)
Today about 70 people live in Niederkaufungen, which holds what they call an "eco-socialist" value system. Each member has a private room in living groups of three to 10 adults, plus children. Each living group has its own bathroom and a living room. All Niederkaufungen members eat together in their large and comfortable dining room. Cooking is done by several members, mostly men. Members do not often change jobs, as is common in many other communal groups.
Members operate several community businesses, including a construction crew, metal fabrication and carpentry workshops, a community kindergarten, a dairy farm, and a guest house. Several members work off-site in various professions. Income is pooled, which pays all communal expenses. Niederkaufungen donates the equivalent of about US$1000 each month to a charity or to environmental and social change projects. They also offer support to other European communal groups in their early stages.
When people join the community after a six-month probation period, they turn over all their money and other assets to the collective. When/if they leave, they are given a negotiated amount of money to meet their needs. In other words, when people leave, they take away what they need, which could be more or less than what they brought.
Members don't receive a salary or any personal allowance from the community businesses, but simply take what cash they need for personal expenses from a pile of money on a shelf in the office. They record this in a book, according to how it will be used, such as for toiletries, travel, or clothes. Very significantly, this is tallied and displayed each month according to how the money was spent but not according to who spends it. Trust and honesty are crucial at Niederkaufungen. These are enhanced by their weekly meetings and their biannual three-day retreats.
That evening, still following the schedule of the tour, I dine with Niederkaufungen members, and stay overnight in their lovely old guest house. The meal, all organic, is excellent, and served with style. I particularly enjoy the wine from their bar. Never before have I known a large communal group which regularly has alcohol available, for free, to members and guests. This makes scholarly research far more interesting and pleasant!
The next morning, after a superb breakfast and more talk about ecospirituality, I drive north to Ökodorf Sieben Linden, passing through many old, almost medieval villages of the former East Germany. I seem to be in a time warp, moving between a modern motorway and small country lanes and village squares.
While ZEGG, UFA Fabrik, and Niederkaufungen are old, well-established communes, Ökodorf Sieben Linden is a fairly new aspiring ecovillage. The planning group came together in 1993, and moved to their 50-acre site in 1997.
Although they plan for 300 residents ultimately, only about 30 now live here. The community's several enormous old farm buildings, built around a courtyard, have been renovated to provide kitchen, dining, and office space, as well as facilities for workshops of all sorts, small conferences, and guest accommodations. As in many communities, members are responsible for providing their own housing, with only the land, community buildings, and general infrastructure such as the water system and recycling facilities owned by the community. Until they can build houses, many members live in old travel trailers.
What is so unusual and impressive at Ökodorf Sieben Linden is that instead of people building single family houses, as I have seen at most ecovillages, the first two houses under construction are for cooperative living groups of 10-12 people. Another group of members plans to build a strawbale dwelling and, unlike the first two groups, who have independent incomes, will live as an income-sharing commune. This inclusion of various housing arrangements and financial structures within an ecovillage seems like a brilliant way to get the best of all worlds.
As we share an organic, vegetarian lunch, I am struck by the fact that while members here are younger than at the other groups I have visited, they are no less determined to make their intentional community work, nor less aware of the challenges they face.
It costs the equivalent of about US$10,000 to buy into Ökodorf Sieben Linden. Members provide their own employment and income, unlike at UFA Fabrik and Niederkaufungen, and to some extent, ZEGG, where members work in community-owned businesses and share incomes.
Many people argue that ecovillages and cohousing projects, because they offer sufficient private space and independent finances, represent the future of intentional communities. The contrary argument is that combining private space and independent finances might just result in the worst of all worlds; i.e., losing some privacy and independence for very little environmental and economic gain. I must admit to being sceptical of the utopian claims of some ecovillages, yet here at Ökodorf Sieben Linden, for perhaps the first time, I can really see the ecovillage ideal working out with admirable results. They are an impressive group.
At the nearby old village of Poppau, a plaque on a large stone proudly claims the village is "The Centre of the World." It seems that several centuries ago the people, using chains, measured all the known world and established that the centre of the world was-exactly here!
This claim leads me to wonder about intentional communities such as those I've just visited. Are ZEGG, UFA Fabrik, Niederkaufungen, and Ökodorf Sieben Linden best characterized as fringe social groups, or, given their innovative environmental, economic, and social systems, at the centre of a new world emerging in the new millennium? Are these communities examples of what can be a sustainable and more equitable future? Has my short tour indeed taken me to the centre of the world?
Join us at the ICSA conference and post-conference tour in June' 01 and decide for yourself.
Learn more about the ICSA conference and post-conference tour by checking out
the Web site, www.antenna.nl/icsa/; emailing the author
or Christa Falkenstein at ZEGG or writing
the author c/o AES, Griffith University, Nathan, 4111, Australia.
Discounts are available for early enrollment and community members.
Dr. Bill Metcalf of Griffith University, Australia, has since the early 1970s studied both contemporary and historical communal groups around the world. He is President of the International Communal Studies Association, a Fellow of the Findhorn Foundation, and author of Shared Visions, Shared Lives: Communal Living Around the Globe (Findhorn Press, 1995; available from Bill Metcalf) and From Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality (University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1995). Bill has lived communally for about half of his adult life. Note: We preserve the spelling of our Commonwealth authors.
Reprinted with permission from Communities magazine, Winter 2000 issue, #109.
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