Englisch EKS_27-48"":Layout 1
16.12.2011
18:23 Uhr
Seite 30
30 OFFICES AND PORTRAITS
From bobby to special needs teacher Bernd Ruf has one motif in his life: helping where help is needed by Mathias Maurer
It started in a party building …
… and in the living room
As a 17-year-old at the Goethe School in Pforzheim, Bernd Ruf and a number of other pupils wanted to know about the philosophy which stood behind the Waldorf school. Under a picture of August Bebel, one of the founders of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), in the party building, their then teacher, Stefan Leber, explained it to them. What Leber told them proved such an inspiration for Bernd Ruf that in 1973, in class 12, he decided to found a Waldorf school. The school was indeed founded in 1977 but he first had to complete his studies in Mannheim, something which he financed with a permanent job in the police. As early as during his years with the police he came face to face with his life’s task in a concrete form: how do people react in extreme situations and how can I help them? Six years later he started his work in education as an upper school teacher in German and history at the Karlsruhe Waldorf School, a period that lasted 21 years. In 1987 the Friends of Waldorf Education found themselves with a staffing crisis on their hands. There was no managing director. Who was to do that task? Bernd Ruf offered his services, his living room serving as the Karlsruhe office at the time. And this is where the decades-long collaboratioin with Nana Göbel began; both are managing directors of the Friends to the present day. The one in Karlsruhe, the other in Berlin. Ruf’s activities extended throughout the world with the growing Waldorf school movement, particularly in social flashpoints and crisis zones: Africa, South America and in the 1990s, after the fall of communism, across the whole of Eastern Europe. The Karlsruhe Waldorf school was the first UNESCO school; as a result the Friends were invited in 1993 to Geneva to the International Conference on Education with a large Waldorf exhibition. Now things began to take on a momentum of their own. No longer just a matter of collecting donations, as the flow of money grew to undreamed of dimensions, professional project management was required: in cooperation with the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation (BMZ), the Friends have so far transferred almost 50 million euros to all parts of the world – based on the system 75 percent from the BMZ, 25 percent from the Friends.
erziehungskunst special December | 2011