Waldorf Festival
From 7 to 10 June, around 1700 people came together at Schloss Hamborn (DE) to celebrate Waldorf 100 with music and with lectures on the tasks of the school movement.
«This is Waldorf Woodstock», said one of the 1700 guests of the Waldorf Festival, as everyone was listening to the bands that played late into the night on the large green, before they withdrew to the many tents in the camping area.
It all started when educator Mischka Kaiser had the idea to organize a summer festival to celebrate the centenary. The huge park-like campus of Schloss Hamborn, which encompasses an old castle, a Waldorf School, residential areas and a nursing home, is the perfect venue for such a festival. Work groups for adults on education and theatre, circus and sports activities for the younger generation alternated with lectures. Speaker Henning Kullack-Ublick referred to the field of tension between the increase of official regulation and the individualization of the students. Gerald Häfner spoke of the Waldorf School as both a creation of and a laboratory for social threefolding. Michaela Glöckler discussed the tasks of the Waldorf School in the digital age, and Wolfgang Held spoke, in that context, of the Waldorf teacher’s inner work as the essence of Waldorf education. Claus-Peter Röh looked at how the day and night aspects of the human being, in other words environment and initiative, play into each other. That so many young people came to the festival was probably due to the evening and late-night programme with bands and music groups for which no expense had been spared.
The residents of the nursing home right next to the concert venue could also listen to the blues and samba sounds that drifted across and enjoy the picturesque sight of the trees that were illuminated after dark.
At the end the wish was expressed that there should be a similar event next year.