Karl König Archives

Dr. Karl König was born on the 25th of September 1902 in Vienna, Austria and died on the 27th of March 1966
in Überlingen at the Lake of Constance in Germany.

Early in his life he developed a strong relationship to the values of Christianity and to questions regarding the issues of social life.

Karl König studied zoology, biology and
medicine in Vienna. During this time he struggled
with questions regarding the evolution of life. It
was the encounter with Goethes work on natural science, Goethes approach and 
methods, that gave him the direction for finding answers.

He published the results of his first research
about the effects of homeopathic substances
during the time as an assistant at the Vienna
Institute for Embryology.

Soon he got to know followers of Rudolf Steiner, and during the
first encounter with Ita Wegman she asked him to work as an
assistant at the "Klinisch-therapeutische Institut" in Arlesheim in
Switzerland. The co-founder of the institute was Rudolf Steiner.

It was also in Arlesheim where he started to give numerous
lectures and courses, rich in content and covering a great variety
of topics.

As we can read in his 'Autobiographic Fragment' the roots of his deep inner connection and relationship to children with special needs are to be found here in Arlesheim.

A lecturing journey to Silesia lead to the marriage with Tilla (Maasberg) and his deep connection with the social and religious impulses of the "Herrnhut" brotherhood where she originated.
Because of his Jewish descent he had to give up his work as general practitionerand in the institute of Pilgramshain, which he had just founded with Albrecht Strohschein and which was one of the first curative educational centers based on Anthroposophy.

Albrecht Strohschein,Walter Johannes Stein,Karl König

Also the "School for Social Work", founded bei Emil Bock and himself in Eisenach in 1932, could not be continiued. In 1936 he fled via Prague back to Vienna where he restarted his surgery. Already in 1938 he was as succsessful with his work as in Silesia. During this period he lead an anthroposophical study group with young people, many of them jewish. Together with this group he soon had to flee again.

Camphill

They reached Scotland by different ways. The old "Camphill"
estate, a former hiding place of the last knights of the "Order of
the Temple" became the place of origin for a community based
on curative education, which then developed during the postwar
years as the "Camphill Movement" and soon was called for in many countries of the world.

For Karl König the foundation of such a community was an attempt to
realize suggestions Rudolf Steiner had made for for social life based on
insight into spiritual reality. For him it was an endeavour to take up anew
the true and deeper tasks that had been hindered by the destruction of
Central Europe.

The Camphill Movement

In 1966 Karl König died in Überlingen near to the communities he had founded at
the Lake of Constance. Tireless work and effort to help children, adolescents and adults with special needs in practical, therapeutic and educational life, through publications, talks and seminars, had become more and more the central content of his life. He experienced with satisfaction that he had successfully built a "bridge back to Central Europe".

His researche covered medicine, educational theory, curative education, psychology, biology, agriculture, spiritual science, social and religious subjects. A list of the pub-
lications and an overview of the planned new edition of his collected works is to be
found under the link 'Publications'.

Today the Camphill Movement includes more than 100 diverse therapeutic communities in over 20 different countries.