Camphill is an international movement that establishes intentional, life sharing communities to meet the needs of children, adolescents and adults with
developmental disabilities. Camphill has been responding to this need since
1939. Today there are over one hundred Camphill Centers worldwide, eight of
which are in North America, providing residential care, education, training and
vocational opportunities for thousands of people with developmental
disabilities.
Camphill focuses on the abilities of each person, not the disabilities. In Camphill individuals with developmental disabilities live and work together with career volunteers in extended family settings. Members of such house communities learn from each other in a process of mutual interaction. Each individual is encouraged to contribute his or her own special gifts and talents.
Camphill was founded by humanitarian Dr. Karl Koenig, M.D. (1902-1966), and is inspired by the anthroposophical work of Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D.(1861-1925) which upholds the spiritual integrity and reality of the human individuality.
Dr. Koenig was an Austrian pediatrician, educator and accomplished student of anthroposophy. In 1939 he and a small circle of friends fled the Nazi invasion of Austria and settled in Aberdeen, Scotland. This circle, which included young physicians, artists and care givers was committed to establishing a community based on the practical application of anthroposophical principles in the social and healing arts.
The prospects for the success of such a venture were bleak. For a time the men of the community were incarcerated as potentially hostile aliens. Nevertheless, the small band of refugees persevered in their determination to enkindle a small flame of hope and goodness in a dark time.
A seminal moment came with the community's decision to dedicate itself to living and working with mentally handicapped children. Its focus would be on finding socially effective ways of including these children in the community life. With this decision Camphill anticipated by decades the fundamental rights to education, inclusion, care and normalizing, noninstitutional experiences that have come to characterize all contemporary models for the care and education of developmentally disabled individuals.
In 1941 Dr. König and his friends were given Camphill Estate, a grand old property on the river Dee, which made it possible to establish the first Camphill Community. Under extremely modest circumstances and with very limited resources this community struggled to realize their ideal of a community for and with developmentally disabled human beings. In the end they not only persevered, they succeeded beyond their greatest expectations.
Today Camphill continues to foster a community life in which children, youth and adults with developmental disabilities can live, learn and work with others in healthy social relationships based on mutual care and trust. Camphill is as much an impulse for social/spiritual renewal as it is a highly innovative, effective and well-regarded care model. As such it combines all the elements that constituted the original aims and vision of its founders.
Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D. was born in Austria in 1861. As a child he exhibited an aptitude for academic achievement. He received an outstanding and thoroughly modern education, first in Weiner-Neustadt and later in Vienna where he attended The Polytechnic Institute. He studied all the modern sciences, advanced mathematics and philosophy and augmented his scientific education with an individual study in classics and the humanities.
He was entrusted, at the age of 21, with the task of editing The Scientific Writings of Goethe for the complete Deutsche Nationalliteratur edition of Goethe's work. Later he became a well-known collaborator in the Goethe and Schiller archives in Weimar where he edited the Sophien-Ausgabe edition of Goethe's scientific writings. In 1891 he received a Doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of Rostock. By the age of 36 he was the author of four well-received works on philosophy: Truth and Science, The Philosophy of Freedom, Friedrich Nietzsche, A Man Against His Time and Goethe's World Philosophy.
At the turn of the century he took the bold step of introducing anthroposophy, a science of the spirit. Anthroposophy meets the modern demand that all knowledge must be based on fully conscious, thought directed experience. It is conceived on a philosophically objective basis, which recognizes that the human capacity to develop knowledge of the spirit is rooted in thought. It was introduced out of the conviction that the needs of our time dictate a new form of spiritual insight into the nature of humanity and the cosmos.
As a discipline, anthroposophy requires absolute clarity of thought, warmth of feeling and active willing. From 1902 until his death in 1927 Rudolf Steiner was actively engaged in advancing this science of the spirit. In the course of this time he was the author of numerous essays and books and lectured extensively throughout Europe and Great Britain on a wide range of subjects.
Activities arising out of anthroposophy include Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine and architecture, curative education, youth guidance and social therapy, eurythmy (the art of visible speech), anthroposophical speech and drama, various forms of art and therapy, organizational development and banking.
The general Anthroposophical Society founded at Christmas 1923-24 at Dornach, Switzerland is dedicated to anthroposophical research. Its current membership consists of over 40,000 members worldwide.
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