By Karen Davis-Brown
The twentieth century was a watershed time for humanity — scientifically, economically, socially, spiritually, morally. Eastern and Central Europe began and ended that century in turmoil; the United States asserted and consolidated its economic and military power.
Hartmut von Jeetze was part of a cohort committed to bring humanity to these times for the most vulnerable of children and adults, and to the land. His parents, Joachim and Dorothea von Jeetze, attended the Agriculture lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, and later gave their family lands near Breslau as a place for biodynamic agriculture and for Doctor Karl Koenig to establish a school for children with special needs. From the beginning, Hartmut was immersed in the teachings and work that were to shape the rest of his life.
When the Nazis drove Doctor Koenig and his work out of Germany and to the British Isles, Hartmut followed with his wife Gerda. He continued to work as a biodynamic farmer and in curative education. In Britain in the early years of the curative schools and therapeutic communities that came to be known as Camphill, Hartmut again made a deep and lasting contribution to both curative and agricultural work in its most formative years.
Hartmut von Jeetze was part of a cohort committed to bring humanity to these times for the most vulnerable of children and adults, and to the land. His parents, Joachim and Dorothea von Jeetze, attended the Agriculture lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, and later gave their family lands near Breslau as a place for biodynamic agriculture and for Doctor Karl Koenig to establish a school for children with special needs. From the beginning, Hartmut was immersed in the teachings and work that were to shape the rest of his life.
When the Nazis drove Doctor Koenig and his work out of Germany and to the British Isles, Hartmut followed with his wife Gerda. He continued to work as a biodynamic farmer and in curative education. In Britain in the early years of the curative schools and therapeutic communities that came to be known as Camphill, Hartmut again made a deep and lasting contribution to both curative and agricultural work in its most formative years.
When the first Camphill community was initiated for North America in upstate New York, Hartmut and Gerda were among its founders. During these years in Camphill Copake, Hartmut contributed to the development of biodynamic agriculture worldwide both as a farmer and as a writer and lecturer. His articles, talks, and mentoring of young farmers made deep and lasting impressions on the next generation of biodynamic practitioners. Many people — among them Henry Barnes, Woody Wodraska, Jeff Poppen, John Peterson of Angelic Organics, and Steven McFadden and Traugher Groh in their book Farms of Tomorrow Revisited — have credited Hartmut with being among the pioneers of social and economic threefolding and the community supported agriculture (CSA) movement.
In 1980, Hartmut and a group of young coworkers from Copake moved to a 200-acre farm recently purchased in central Minnesota for the founding of a new Camphill community in the heartland of the continent. There, he dedicated himself to developing this new community and to mentoring the young farmers and coworkers who came to the community to learn, work, and serve. Always able to integrate the esoteric and practical in his agricultural work in a way that was both grounded and inspiring, the effects of Hartmut’s contributions will continue to ripple through the biodynamic movement well into the twenty-first century.
When they left Minnesota in the 1990s, Hartmut and Gerda lived in a series of Camphill communities — now all across the continent — contributing their presence and wisdom as valued elders. They finally settled at a community in Ghent, New York. At the time of his passing Hartmut had been living with his daughter Bridget in nearby Chatham, having been preceded by Gerda by only a few years.
Thank you, Hartmut, for giving so unselfishly and with such vision. We will strive to take the biodynamic and Camphill movements into the next decades, as you so clearly modelled for us.
