Ideas
The project is not just a renovation. It is an attempt to think differently about how society organizes learning, work, and community — and to test those ideas in practice, on a farm, with real people.
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Explore
- Concept Map — an interactive visualization of the project’s theoretical landscape
- Transformation — the four dimensions of change: economic, social, cultural, ecological
- Sustainability & the UN Goals — how the project maps to the 2030 Agenda
- Craftsmanship & Making — why making things with your hands matters
- The Language of the Project — a word cloud of the concepts that shape the work
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The Diagnosis
More and more people experience alienation in educational institutions, in work life, and fragmentation in their personal life. There is no narrative that effectively holds this society together. Young people look for meaning in films, series, and games — many would rather guard the Wall of Ice in Game of Thrones than find a place in a society experienced as indifferent and functionalist.
The school system is heading into crisis. A growing group of students is not even learning the basics. Male adolescents are at particular risk. The teaching profession is losing attractiveness. And the welfare state, however differentiated, can only absorb consequences — not address causes.
“It is not a matter of developing ever more precise diagnostic instruments and pedagogical interventions… what matters is that they grow up differently and better, right from the start.”
Five Pillars
The model rests on five interconnected elements. Theory exists on each individually — unconditional basic income, self-directed learning, community entrepreneurship — but not on their interaction in an integrated design. That integration is what makes this a transformative community project.
1. Active Civil Society
Citizens taking social, economic, and educational responsibility — not waiting for the state. The post-institutional era.
“We are not waiting for state support and financing, but we are doing it from our own resources.”
2. Rethinking Work & Income
An unconditional basic income as incentive for entrepreneurial activity and social responsibility — not as redistribution. Manual and intellectual work equally valued. Roofers and philosophers, carpenters and educators, working side by side. Deceleration. Space for contemplation.
3. Self-Directed Learning
Compulsory schooling transformed into self-designed compulsory education. Young people move between projects — farm to mill to urban workshop — in self-determined years of journeying (Wanderjahre). Grades and certificates replaced by university entrance examinations.
4. Community-Based Entrepreneurship
Abandoned properties in East Germany — farms, train stations, chateaux — turned into living projects. Commons-based resource sharing. Local economies built on cooperation rather than competition.
5. Transformation
The binding philosophy: seeing oneself as part of economic, social, cultural, and ecological transformation. Not reform of existing systems, but the creation of new ones alongside them.
Read more about transformation →
Philosophical Roots
The project draws from several traditions:
Communitarianism (Taylor, Sandel, Walzer, MacIntyre) — social embedding without collectivist coercion. The decline of values and solidarity under neoliberalism, and the response: communities that preserve individual freedom while providing belonging.
John O’Donohue — the Irish philosopher of belonging and thresholds. The appreciation of the inner richness each person brings. His concept of Anam Cara (soul friend) and the meaning of consciously crossing thresholds in life.
Erich Fromm — To Have or To Be? Being makes you happier than having. Questioning the fixation on material accumulation.
Gilles Deleuze — the society of control. How control systems diminish individual freedom and manifest in educational institutions. The path from control society to active civil society is a central framing across all three documentation volumes.
Joseph Beuys — social sculpture. Society itself as an artwork shaped by everyone. The farm as Soziale Plastik.
David Weikart — the HighScope Summer Camp in Michigan. Activity-oriented, creativity-driven, holistic education in a farm-like setting. The direct experiential precedent for this project.
Safeguards
The project engages honestly with criticism:
- Government agencies must oversee such projects. Human rights must be guaranteed. Democratic principles must be reality.
- In German society, there is mistrust of commons concepts — they recall GDR socialism. This must be addressed openly.
- Critics connect the idea to abuse of power (e.g. Colonia Dignidad). Projects must prohibit conditioning, indoctrination, manipulation.
- People who long for self-created work can still carry the mental pressure of the capitalist system. Learning to release that pressure is part of the transformation.
“We hope to stimulate discussion so that people question the fixation on the accumulation of material goods that is dominant in today’s Western societies due to capitalism, hoping to arrive more at a philosophy of being.”
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The theoretical framework is elaborated in the Frontiers in Sociology article and the De Gruyter monograph.