To tell the biography of any person is an enormous challenge. To tell the biography of a founder of what has become a world movement (Camphill) is really a challenge. Is their biography a foundation for this movement? Do their experiences, their ideas and ideals help to make present, perceivable, inspiring, and welcome others, to the biography of the movement? What stands at the beginning of this adventure into a new land?…

Camphill was founded by a circle of individuals who took strong initiatives; the strongest was to work together, for the good…

Anke Weihs, born in the southern hemisphere, spoke several languages, and most importantly for the new little community in a new country – spoke English. She brought with her another experience of community, but of a very new sort, together with experiences of the intense loneliness of a modern individual. Her life included meeting some of the most interesting people of the 20th century. She had had very difficult physical and emotional experiences, but through the spiritual experiences that she began to have at an early age she was sustained…
Anke Nederhoed was born on June 30, 1914, in Melbourne Australia – so almost 102 years ago!!…

Her very early memories are of travel by boat, travel by train, into the next taxi, packing, next house, unpacking, being left alone in hotel rooms while her parents went out; endlessly…
One day at the beach in Japan, her nanny took her hand to gently urge her to come home. Anke writes, ‘In that moment a swift shaft of light was hurled silently across the sky to pierce a tiny fragment. What was Before retreated out into the dark and the Now advanced to stake its claim. The pricked target quivered like a droplet of molten glass at the end of a blow-pipe. This droplet was I – a girl aged three. A fierce sensation of bliss mingled with grief was injected into my bloodstream. My conscious Self began its uncertain course and there was no turning back to the state such as it was before the prick.’…

She was eleven, and back with her mother who was so poor they ate sporadically, living in a shabby flat with bedbugs. She began spending her time in the park, occasionally taking in the demonstrations of the Communists and their arrests by the police. A dare to jump off a high statue with subsequent terrible bruising was very important for Anke as it lead to a new thought: “The impossible remains impossible but with a different condition of mind, one can jump from the possible into the impossible, from one dimension into another without a bridge to walk on. There was a magic in one’s ultimate attitude to circumstances, which opened ways where there were no ways. One might have to lose a little of oneself, but one could get through where there was no way – always.”  This ability to jump inwardly and outwardly is central to Anke’s life… 

Rhythmic dancing lessons happened every Friday afternoon, for the girls; Anke ran with the boys. One time she heard the same music as what she had heard in the Orphanage; lightening struck again and this time she went in, asked to join, wrote her mother for a length of green silk to make herself a tunic. “I discovered that the body itself can be a musical instrument and the person inside it the musician”. Here she found part of her future…

During a holiday with her mother she was woken late in the evening to come down to meet the great dancer Isadora Duncan, who embraced her and said, “My child, you must become a dancer”.  Anke was not impressed but her mother was and later sent her to all kinds of dancing teachers. She writes how she was inwardly a dancer ever since the music broke upon her through the Beethoven…

Then she joined a troupe of State Opera Dancers, often being lead dancer. They travelled Europe, meeting many fascinating people: Anthony Eden, Lord Beaverbrook, Eva Curie, Benjamin Britten, danced with the great Eva Wiesenthal. One evening in Vienna Alban Berg was going to give a concert of his violin concerto on the radio. A friend of Ankes had a friend with a good radio, and so they gathered in the Weihs family flat. Thomas was there with his inseparable friend, Peter Roth. Anke had met Carlo Pietzner at an artist’s party, and Alix Roth at the photography studio that had done a series on her. When Anke became ill with urticaria [itchy rash on skin] the student doctors said she had to meet Dr Konig… 
She had gone up to Kirkton House out of her relationship to Peter, and had in her pocket a favourable contract to dance in various German cities, which she intended to honour. She showed it to Dr.Konig, who thanked her for whatever she could contribute while she was there. Soon after a violent thunderstorm she felt a thunderstorm inside herself that told her that she has no options – she had been called and this is were she was meant to be. This was shattering for her and she slowly realised they were all undergoing similar transformations. This engendered an intense love for one another that far transcended the personal. Over the years, Anke felt that all people, who have come to Camphill, have been called by this same spirit, and she would meet you in the spirit of this experience…

Here you can begin to see how Anke’s first 23 years of her life had prepared her for the darkness of these times and the poverty of their situation. The many spiritual experiences, the loneliness of the modern human being, the desperate poverty of the soul environment around her, the physical violence she had felt as a very young child, and the self awareness and inner strength she knew-she experienced- was to be known, now met up with people that had ideals, visions of how all human beings can live. The spiritual was just a part of life, self evident. She also brought with her so many experiences, which the others did not have, of being able to cope with being poor, to garden, farm, sew, be with animals, tell stories, perform plays, cook on a tiny gas cooker, do all household jobs. Yet she was very shy about herself. The book about her childhood she specifically had published only after her death as she didn’t want sympathy, she was not a victim, but wanted to bring and make good use of all she had learnt to help birth this new spiritual adventure…

Anke was always involved in all aspects of the building up of the outer and inner Camphill Community. For her, who you were mattered and the continuing working on your striving was central to Community Building. Those who stayed and became carrying co-workers, became a part of the spiritual community, outer work was nourished by inner work. Central to this was her very strongly held knowledge that our communities can not coast along on the past inner work of others but that each generation needs to “reconquer the spiritual work and create the community anew in each one of us”, only that way will it stay alive and metamorphose.