This is a CTP of initiative: Ecovillage Sieben Linden (Germany)
“We started with a small group of five people writing a concept for an ecovillage in the end of the 80´s, which was based on the research of many existing communities and tried to make a step forward to make a real alternative to the capitalist society” (text contribution Dieter Halbach).
The main intention was to build a new independent ecological village with 300 people, for being able to practice self-sufficiency in ideally all areas of life. With their special letter for a new community movement called “Ecovillage News” (today Eurotopia directory of communities and OYA magazine) they have started to publish this vision.
The young initiative met for more than three years of time in ‘shared weekend experiences’, in sommercamps and in longer periods of 1-2 months with practical experiments in ecological, self-sufficient and communal life. With high ambitions they aimed at building a full-featured, fully ecological and self-sufficient ecovillage as a residential owned and planned community of 300 residents.
“The members lived in all areas of Germany. Some of us build a planning group and looked for places for the new village. In 1993 we found a place between the old borders of East- and West-Germany near the Wendland. We rented it and some of us were about to moved there. It was on the ground of an older village, which had been destroyed by the DDR government, because it was to close at the Western border. The local government was very interested in the project, but there was a strong resistance from the agro-business on the Western side. In the end the communal center of the project was burned down. Many families and people had left their previous homes and did not know where to go now.” (text contribution Dieter Halbach).
In this situation it was extremely difficult to find a new piece of land under timepressure which is large enough and for which one gets planning permission to build a new village. Therefore, the group decided to look for a smaller site.
“After the disaster of the burned house, the plan was to look for a so called “Ecovillage Center” as a next step” (Interview Dieter Halbach). A small group of the many members of the ecovillage association (about 200 in this time) was ready to start. Their children were getting to the school age and they had given up their jobs in their previous places, ready to move to a new home.
The crucial turning point was that the majority of this small group decided to make a step in between: The compromise was to build a project planning centre in combination with a laboratory for community experience and a seminarhouse with smaller experiments of ecological building technology.
“We have found a large farm house in ‘Groß Chüden’ in Eastern Germany in the end of 1993 and bought it with the ‘ecovillage friendship circle’ association, which we had founded in 1991 as well as the newly founded cooperative.” (Interview Corinna Felkl).
“A fruitful, productive and also partly chaotic time started when 15 people plus children moved into Groß Chüden project centre. Living together pushed the motivation and commitment for the initiative” (Interview Corinna Felkl). At this time members founded and established a publishing house in Groß Chüden centre, a food cooperative, a seminarhouse, a woodcraft enterprise and a free school in the neighbouring village.
“The community-lead planning process for a potential ecovillage was practically stopped in this period, because of the efforts of daily life. Community processes had become the focus of our group. After three years, the original vision of the ecovillage project was started again by a small group and with the support of the TATorte Award from the German Environmental foundation (DBU). Without this support the process would not have been successful. The planning group could work with the appropriate time, power and the competences that were needed. It also received the necessary authority from the initiative to independently work out a way to plan the village.
In this time we had lots of conflicts, it was like a test for everyone: who would stay and who would go. Additionally there was tension between professional and participatory planning methods. This process is written down in a report for the German Environmental Foundation (DBU).” (text contribution Dieter Halbach)
The project centre Chüden is a vibrating initiative with seminar house till today, also after a part of the group – as initially intended – moved to Sieben Linden in 1997, the ecovillage place.
The major external co-productive support had come with the ‘TATorte Award’ of the German Environmental Foundation (DBU), an Award for supporting innovative projects to act against the marginalization of rural areas. This support helped the initiative to install an authorized planning team and to professionally advertise their plan of an ecovillage to municipalities.
“For the very first time, we have invested time and finances into our community building by inviting an external supervision on a regular base” (text addition Dieter Halbach).
Planners and experienced in project managers convinced the group to take a step ‘in between’ and use the time in Chüden as planning phase rather than starting from scratch with an entire ecovillage.
Another important coproduction implied connecting to like-minded, broader social- ecological movements. Closely connected to the Anti-Atomic movement against the ‘Castor’-waste transports, the initiative had a special relation to the ‘Wendland’ area in the very Eastern part of Lower Saxony at the border to the East German Republic at that time. In ‘Wendland’ already a number of ecological and politically minded people had settled down in the eighties and had founded the ‘Free Republic of Wendland’. “The first impulses for a self-empowered village has emerged in the ‘Free Republic of Wendland’” (Interview Dieter Halbach).
A major political event that provided supportive conditions for the breakthrough of the ecovillage initiative was the German reunification. Since in November 1989 the Berlin wall had come down, the group had an eye on the ‘New States’ and specially in the ‘Altmark’ in East Germany next to ‘Wendland’ where they had connections to the Anti-Atomic movement. East Germany had become very attractive because of affordable land prices and an exceptional openness in terms of bureaucracy and permissions. It has been a historical momentum, also for the realisation of unusual, alternative projects during a time window after the wall came down and the openness for a ‘third way’ was still alive.
“There would be no ecovillage Sieben Linden without the falling of the Berlin Wall.” (Interview Corinna Felkl)
The main power of co-production in realising this step of buying the project centre ‘Groß Chüden’ came from a group of members inside the initiative. Mostly those members with children, who wanted to participate more in the process. Living together in ‘Groß Chüden’ with about 15 members of the initiative had filter those people who were ready to go further by deepened the connection and commitment towards the larger project of an ecovillage later (see next CTP).
“The zeitgeist was about bringing everything to one location and live it in reality, in community” (Interview Corinna Felkl).
Around the time when the group started to form itself, the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989 and Germany was reunified.
First, this opened new opportunities to search for a suitable piece of land for realising the ecovillage endeavour.
Second, in 1990 a joint meeting of Eastern and Western ecological initiatives was organised where more people also from East Germany joined the initiative (Ost-West-Begegnung).
(Literature: Voß, Elisabeth (ed., 1990): Reader zur Vorbereitung: Ost-West-Begegnung selbstorganisierter Lebensgemeinschaften (Kommunen, Ökodörfer, spirituelle Gemeinschaften und andere alternative Lebensformen in Kleinmachnow bei Berlin, 14.-17.Juni 1990)
The group started to controversially discuss the intention. The person who mainly developed the first concept in the eighties had left the group, when the supervision started. The ecovillage concept was further developed then and the three themes of spiritual openness, working on relationships and regional networking were added to the previous focus of autarky. The intention of self-sufficiency was not dropped but has evolved from complete autarky to a realistic degree of self-sufficiency on food and energy next to a culture of self-made and repairing.
Inside the initiative, there were different opinions on how to plan and start an ecovillage. While some intended a central top-down planning office in Berlin; others preferred the bottom-up-approach and just wanted to start organically by moving somewhere with a small group of people and grow over time.
With buying Groß Chüden, the bottom-up people had asserted their approach. Nevertheless, the conflict appeared again when families were overwhelmed and just needed to settle in daily life. The ‘bottom-up follower’ had a certain resistance against professionals. On the other hand it only proceeded when a professional planning task force was established with the funds of the DBU foundation.
“When the initiative started in 1990 with an umbrella association of ‘Ecovillage East’ in Berlin, we already had the idea to develop a planning concept that would have a chance to get legal permission. On the other hand the bottom-up intentions wanted to simply start and move to the country side” (Interview Dieter Halbach)
Anyhow, it was a challenge to get legal permission to build a new village. Buying a piece of land in Germany to build a new village turned out as nearly impossible because the German landscape planning laws are very strict and limited with building larger settlements. (see next CTP)
After the first people had almost moved to the previous place for living together, the burning of this house was a shock. It was actually planned taking time to find a large enough place and getting political permission to realise the ecovillage. Buying the farm in Groß Chüden had to happen very fast after the previous house had burned down. Buying the Chüden farmhouse was the only alternative at this point.
In this early phase, different ideas had been developed like establishing a planning office in Berlin at a central point. Buying the Farm in Groß Chüden showed that the practice people of experimental living had won recognition.
Living in Chüden then, was experienced as overwhelming because of the daily life in a new community while renovating the houses at that time. They wondered who they could ever manage to ever build a new village. Today, the interviewee 1 says, it was part of the process to learn village life and grow practically into the tasks of running an ecovillage community. While a part of the group needed time to settle with their families and get to use to the new life, other members has always been pushing the project.
“Without the TATorte Award of the DBU Foundation, the ecovillage would probably not have been realised” (Interview Dieter Halbach).
The young initiative had realised that it first needed a smaller step before realising the entire ecovillage. It was rather for the sake of gaining trust of local governments than for their own learning. They had to realise the governments first wanted to see the project in action. In other words, the governments were suspicious how and if such an ambitious project of an ecovillage can work and therefore did not provide any permission for it. Therefore, the initiative had to proof that they are able to bring this large project into action and chose to start with a small farm house.
With the project planning centre Chüden, the initiatives worked towards getting known by presenting what they had built up so far. Chüden became a kind of model and ‘open-air museum’.
The learning experience for the group firstly happened on a visionary level. From a focus of complete autarky, they further developed the concept of an ecovillage towards more holistic dimensions with a rather pragmatic than dogmatic approach. Part of this conceptual learning was the importance of elaborated community building. They understood that it needs time and a space to try out communal living to develop adequate methods of community property, decision making and social life. With some professionals in carpentry, handicraft, eco-housing, environmental planning, team building, coaching and other areas the initiative has worked out realistic methods.
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