Paul W. Scharff

To review the remarkable life and work of Paul Scharff of the Fellowship Community we offer several perspectives. There are his own words, a 2006 interview with Michael Ronall for 'The Listener' (p.36). Below are remembrances from his wife and colleague Ann, from former co-workers at the Community Kathleen Wright and Harold Bush, and from Claus Sproll. All have been edited. –Editor

by Ann Scharff

Rudolf Steiner tells how spiritual beings wishing to incarnate onto the earth bring individuals together who will be the parents. And so it was that Georgiana De Jong and Fritz Scharff were destined to meet on the North Sea in a cattle boat going over the English Channel at which time Georgiana was chastising the captain for his mistreatment of the horses he was carrying. This spritely, determined voice sparked an interest in Fritz Scharff and this began their future life together.

Georgia was born and raised in midwest America in Iowa. She learned and mastered many aspects of the work on the farm where they lived. The greatest influence in her early life was the untimely death of her sister that led her to her mission of becoming a doctor. She entered medical school as the only woman physician in her class at a time when women physicians were rare or unknown. She then entered into a life of service, going to Kentucky to serve in a small mission hospital, spending many of her hours riding horseback from village to village or to single homes in the hills of Kentucky tending the poor and the needy. She sought further education and took leave to go to Vienna to study pediatrics.

Fritz was born in Vienna and received his higher educational experiences at the Technical University in Vienna. His life there had given him a rich cultural heritage. During the First World War he was taught ballistics by Walter Johannes Stein, later one of the early Waldorf School teachers, who gave Fritz 'Occult Science' to read. When the first reading didn’t touch him sufficiently, Stein gave it back and told him to read it again. Fritz became a dedicated student in his pursuit of anthroposophy. Important in his life was the death of his brother who was killed during the war.

This couple pursued their life together back in the hills of Kentucky where Fritz worked in Churchill Weavers, an organization dedicated to bringing weaving as a home industry movement to these mountain people. Ultimately they moved to Lorain, Ohio, a town on the shores of Lake Erie, where at least a quarter of the population came from all over the world, many employed in the large U.S. Steel plant. During depression times, Fritz was able to find work as a laborer there as well. Georgia established a medical practice in their home.

Their first child, Carl, was then born, a child who was to carry his destiny as an uncontrolled epileptic for 56 years. Two years later, their second child, Paul, was born. As Carl’s illness picture became clear, neither parent would consider institutionalization. With this, the needs of this child started to unfold what became a small community of people to build a life commensurate with his needs. This included a two-year period for him living at the Sonnenhoef in Arlesheim, Switzerland, after which time he was ready to return to America. To prepare for this, the Scharffs moved to a farm near Lorain in Amherst, Ohio, located on Oberlin Road. Oberlin College was at the other end of the road. A second factor was the unfolding of the future life work of Margaret Deussen, a musician graduating from the Conservatory of Music in Berlin. She worked with Dr. Otto Palmer, the first anthroposophical doctor in Germany, and she became very active in anthroposophy and participated in the effort to bring the Threefold Social Order to Germany. Later in Dornach she took up curative education and eurythmy. She accompanied Carl back to the U.S. and became a member of the household. Her interests and experiences were major influences in Paul’s life.

When Paul was thirteen, he asked to have a normal brother within their home; the social relationships of another young person seemed an important experience for him. The county orphanage fulfilled this wish and Joe Selmants came to be a member of the Scharff family.

Paul was growing up, participating in farm activities relating to the animals, fields, orchard and gardens, all that we know in our lives here at the Fellowship Community. These were intimate and vital experiences for him all of which laid a foundation for our work here. This included toting around his mother’s black bag as he joined her on house calls to see her ailing patients. It also included setting up a little wood shop in the old coal room when they no longer needed coal for stoking the furnace. This was the beginning of the wood shop and the many building needs here over the years. During these early years, he and his brother shared the same bedroom; living with an individual with epilepsy was an integral part of his life. Seizures in the middle of the night were not uncommon. The anguish and torment of the epileptic before a seizure could be experienced sometimes for days prior to a seizure. Then came the seizure and for Paul this was followed by an aura of light, living light, a guiding light of such magnitude that it has been and will continue to be a guiding light for the evolution of this community. Those here over the years know how individuals with epilepsy have played a significant role.

Six years old: a visit to the farm from Ehrenfried Pfeiffer to advise the Scharffs and Margaret Deussen on various aspects of the care of their farm, including making preparations together. A rich cultural heritage surrounded him; Oberlin Conservatory students joined in. Music camp.

Early school years: considered a dumbling, the teacher asking his mother to withdraw him because he would never learn. Grade 1: the blacksmith shop outside the window of his first grade class was of great interest. – The community school housed all twelve grades. The janitor, Carl Schifferstein, was at the door greeting each as they entered and left for the day. For Paul this individual was like an angelic being tending the school. He wished to be a janitor.

Twelve-thirteen years old: a life-long question posed by the superintendent, Mr. Powers, who placed 3+4=7 on the blackboard and then asked the class what happened with the plus and equals. No answer. This question was pursued by Paul for years. – This was an awakening time. Upon graduation, a teacher said, “We loved you, but never understood you.”

College at Oberlin: very intense and difficult. There were many pre-med students but only seventeen graduated having fulfilled the requirements. Paul developed significant problems with ulcers over that time; stress and need for very hard work was great. Illness was a constant life companion starting in his teens.

I too was a student at Oberlin. Toward the end of Paul’s senior year, there was a meeting of students in Finney Chapel. Paul saw me at a distance and recognized our relationship. This was confirmed in a dream that night. He found me in the library the following morning. I knew that I had just met the man whom I would marry.

In autumn of that year, 1952, Paul started four years in Western Reserve Medical School. It did not take him long to learn that independent thinking and ideas contrary to the established thinking were not acceptable. He was early on called into the Dean’s office and told that he was there to learn what was being taught otherwise he would be asked to leave the school. – Studies in anthroposophy were a daily part of his work, the 'Philosophy of Spiritual Activity' a continual challenge. With a physician, Dr. George Deutsch, we also studied lectures on education and on the Gospels. – Following medical school a year’s internship in Cooperstown, NY, followed by two years of military service in the Public Health and then our move to Spring Valley.

Service time: Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland. Already at this time a strong recognition that with these laws, patient care would not be the emphasis, but procedures with minimum time for talking to patients. What would that mean for individuals in the future? A view of the care of the aging came as a huge question. – Our first child, Christopher, was born. – A further year in Public Health was spent in West Virginia, in charge of the hospital in the only Federal Women’s Penitentiary. Industrialization of medicine and proceduredriven therapeutics was already growing.

A look into the future brought us to Spring Valley in 1959. – The work ahead included eight more years of residency training in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry. For Paul this was necessary in order to work medically with both illnesses of the physical body and illnesses of the soul. – It brought a renewed connection with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer and the esoteric impulses with which he strove. Pfeiffer shared Rudolf Steiner’s concern that human anatomy and physiology would be crucial for a deeper understanding of anthroposophy, a challenge and task that Paul strove to take up and work with.

Michael, our second child, was born celebrating our arrival into the Threefold Community, followed in 1961 by Katherine’s birth when her grandparents, her uncle Carl, and Miss Deussen moved from Lorain to join us. 1961 was also the year Nancy Laughlin, neighbor and philanthropist called in October with her urgent and formative question to Paul: “What can we do with the Monges property?” [See details on p.36ff.]

Knowing from his brother the 24/7 care needs of individuals. — Concerns in the care of the aging. — Regimen of established institutions as in medical school. — Procedure-driven medical care. — Neglect of care needs because of skeletal weekend and holiday staffing. — Very little interest in the problems of aging; no sense for a coming crisis in our society and the world. — Insights of Rudolf Steiner for all ages.

Need for a humanly concerned lawyer: Max Mason. — Town of Ramapo: needing variance in zoning laws to build; finally approved as “An Experiment in Long Term Care.” — Building plans: who could help to get started? The care of old people was not popular. — Liesel and Willi Ringwald: guided in their decision to come help by the early death of their daughter. — Guidance of the living by the dead in future community building. — Dedication of the Fellowship Community, July 3, 1966. — Birth of John, our last child.

[Contributions below and the interview p.36 describe Paul’s work in anthroposophy, medicine, legal-political and rights areas.]

These are just a few thoughts about our nearly 48 years of the Fellowship Community. Many [at this memorial service] will have shared in this. Each can bring another part of the whole story. Paul’s dedicated work together with hundreds of others and his intense, active life will stand as a living reality to grow into the future with those here now and those who will come to join into this evolving endeavor.

by Kathleen Wright

Paul Scharff’s death came as a shock, not because I was unaware that he had had lymphoma since 2000, but because he was such a Giant of Will Forces, that I thought he should live to be at least 100! To just about every anthroposophist in America Paul is known for being the founder of the amazing Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge, NY. I happened to be a co-worker there for three years, many years ago, and Paul was my “sponsor” for joining the Anthroposophical Society (a practice that is no longer required) exactly thirty years ago. I would like to share some of my memories of him as a tribute.

When I first met Dr. Scharff in 1982, I was very touched by how he managed to find the time to try to get to know new co-workers and to help them adjust to life at the Fellowship, which was by no means easy. To the outside world, it may have looked like “the best place on earth to live and die” as one New York newspaper characterized it, but living in community can at times be the “worst” place to live as well. Paul told me that the average coworker lasted just eighteen months.

One time shortly after I arrived, I had gone to him in tears because I had heard that someone had said a disparaging thing about me. He cheered me up by saying, “If you think it’s bad what they are saying about you, look what they are saying about me!” I had to laugh because it was true what he said of himself. It seems that just about every person of charismatic stature acquires as many critics as admirers. (Look at how the members tortured dear Ita Wegman!)

Paul shared with me many spiritual conversations that I have never forgotten. One time, after I had complained about the obnoxious behavior of a very prominent anthroposophist, he asked me if I knew the difference between the 'individuality' and the 'personality'. He told me that the individuality is one’s ego, that lasts from life to life, but that the personality is what manifests on the outside due to the hereditary forces. It evidences in one’s temperament, and is often chosen by the individuality to fulfill his/her destiny. Often one needs characteristics that sympathetic idealists may perceive as harsh in order to accomplish great deeds. He gave as an example Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who had great difficulty in personal relationships and was despised by many. Yet, Paul said, this man spoke with the angels; he accomplished incredible deeds. Rudolf Steiner had such faith in him that when Pfeiffer was a very young man, he gave him a long list of things he must do every day. When Pfeiffer replied that there aren’t enough hours in a day to do all that Steiner asked of him, Steiner told him he needed to learn to do without sleep and he actually gave him exercises to help him accomplish that. Later on it occurred to me that what Paul said of Pfeiffer could be applied to himself, for Paul Scharff was indeed a mighty Individuality, yet many experienced his personality as difficult. Though he never said it, I felt that the motto of his personality was: “Whatever doesn’t kill you strengthens you… No rest for the weary!” However, he never asked of co-workers anything he hadn’t been doing himself his whole life long. In spite of terrible physical suffering (ulcers, pernicious anemia, and eventually lymphoma), frequent inner turmoil, and constant outer conflicts, Paul accomplished amazing deeds, and that is a gift for the angels and a boon for one’s soul development.

What was it that formed Paul’s personality? I had a wonderful conversation with Paul’s father, Fritz Scharff, who was a patient or “member” at the Fellowship and passed away during the time I was there. I had a special fondness for Fritz because like my own grandfather he was from Vienna, and we shared a love of Wagner’s operas. Although he had never met Rudolf Steiner, Fritz had the privilege of serving under Walter Johannes Stein, who asked Fritz to read 'Occult Science' and report back in a week about what he thought of it. After reading the book, Fritz replied: “I am sorry, Sir, but it goes against everything I have been taught and believe.” So Stein said: ‘Read it again!” This same ritual occurred three times and finally Scharff said, “It’s starting to make sense. Do you have any more books by this Steiner?” And so began a lifetime of devotion to anthroposophy, passed on to his son Paul.

Fritz also told me of how he met his wife, Georgiana... Their first child was a boy named Carl who had severe epilepsy all his life. Like Fritz, Carl was a patient at the Fellowship when I arrived, and he passed away at 56, shortly before I left.

Paul described his mother to me as a “strict disciplinarian” and as incredibly devoted to her many patients. From her Paul received his incredible energy and drive to perfection, his stubbornness, his tenacity, and his veritable mission in life. While Paul had many reasons for founding the Fellowship Community including his friendship with Dr. Linder, the first anthroposophic physician in America, it was Paul’s mother’s contracting polio and his brother’s crippling epilepsy that eventually led Paul to realize this was his destiny. Georgiana and Carl were among the first members at the Fellowship....

The Scharffs arrived in 1959 in the part of Spring Valley, New York now called Chestnut Ridge. The Fellowship Community opened in 1966. Today approximately 70 elderly members and 60 co-workers and their children reside there. It has grown immensely over the years, adding land, animals, buildings, and tasks. There are a number of cottage industries including a printing house (Mercury Press), candlemaking shop, weavery, dairy, woodworking shop, and the Otto Specht School, an education program for mentally and emotionally handicapped children. A small store called Hand and Hoe sells the Fellowship’s products.

Dr. Scharff insisted from the very beginning that every co-worker should have a variety of work experience. No one should have to spend all day indoors in the hospital wing, nor all day outdoors in the fields. Artistic work should also be part of one’s work experience. One recalls Paul’s own childhood—lessons in violin, voice, and piano, farm work, gardening, household chores, school, going with his Mother to see patients. A true Renaissance man, Paul wanted others to experience such a life as well. The Fellowship also held delightful festivals for its members and children and there were innumerable study groups.

In addition to founding the Fellowship Community and holding all its members in his consciousness, Paul had quite a resumé of service to anthroposophy and to the world-at-large: He had a medical practice open to the public, and many of his patients were Hasidic Jews, a great credit to him since Hasidics usually deal with their own community. He had training in psychiatry, as well as internal medicine; he formed the Fellowship of Physicians and started ANTHA (the Anthroposophic Therapy and Hygiene Association). He was active in the Medical Section of the Goetheanum; he wrote and published many articles and pamphlets; he trained co-workers in all aspects of care; he was a Class Holder of the School of Spiritual Science, and he helped to establish the North American Collegium of the School.

Paul spent his life battling the dragons of the state regulators and the dehumanizing of modern medicine. He helped to form “Patients Have Rights,” a political action group. He worked to pass three laws in NY to permit variances in the law to support care in a community. He worked to promote two laws for freedom in health care regarding complementary and alternative medicine.

Paul leaves behind his wife, right arm and Twin Soul, Ann, their four children: Michael, Christopher, Katherine, and John, and many grandchildren.

One cannot help but admire Paul’s creative genius and the incredible vision he was able to bring to reality. He was a profound scholar of the time-spirit Michael, a dedicated meditant, a warrior against the “ahrimanization” of medicine; an amazing intuitive; the corniest joker ever. He was teacher and father figure to all who worked with him, and a perfectionist like his mother, seeming to demand the same of others, and few could measure up.

A great leader and activist is gone from us. May those who follow in his footsteps have the strength and will to carry on Paul’s great mission!

We are not granted

A rest on any step;

The active man must live and strive

From life to life,

As plants renew themselves

From Spring to Spring.

So must man rise

Through error to Truth,

From fetters into Freedom

Through sickness and through death

To beauty, health and life.

~ Rudolf Steiner

by Harold Bush

In the summer of 1972 my wife, who was pregnant at the time, was suffering from acute asthma. I needed to find an alternative to allopathic drug therapy which wasn’t working and was causing us concern for our soon-to-be-born child. I was given the name of an “alternative medical practitioner” who turned out to be Dr. Paul W. Scharff, an anthroposophic physician. In the subsequent 42 years he became my physician, my friend and my mentor.

In the late 1970’s I was recruited by Paul to volunteer at the Fellowship Community as a co-worker living off site. This offered an opportunity to experience and understand Paul’s (and Ann Scharff’s, it is not possible to separate them) approach to community where one finds a medical doctor working in the gardens, cleaning, working in the wood shop, doing building maintenance, and so forth. The ideal of care as a central activity creates the form, a Rosicrucian community, built on the fundamentals of threefolding, to manifest a truly human experience. It is a Michaelic work that I feel privileged to have observed.

In a medical office visit early in our relationship I asked what I might read to learn more about Rudolf Steiner’s work. He very appropriately suggested I first read 'Eleven European Mystics'. I also came to appreciate his sense of humor. After working through cancer, my office visits were necessarily less frequent; he would often come into the waiting room and ask me, “Still alive?” Anyone who worked with tools in the early work days at the Fellowship had the humorous experience of reading pharmaceutical instructions (think suppositories) which Paul and Finbarr Murphy adhered to the handles. Our relationship was informed by our mutual appreciation for each other’s experience of farm life in our youth and a mutual respect for the application of common sense in all facets of life. Over forty-two years there were many conversations of a spiritual nature and many instances of caring and support. Many lessons were learned by pondering answers given to my questions. One lesson in particular that I carry and find immensely helpful came from his life experience of having a brother with a challenging incarnation. Relating what he understood of that incarnation gave me an understanding of the karma of humanity as a whole. How certain souls incarnated in circumstances that took on our collective karma that allowed us to do the work in privileged circumstances that would not have otherwise been possible. Paul’s was an individuality specifically tasked by anthroposophy to carry the work forward, who will continue in that regard from the spiritual world and through the legacy of his writing.

by Claus Sproll

Whenever I talked with Paul, and that was many times over the last twenty years, I experienced a sense of the magnitude of the moment, of importance and often timelessness. We talked about community, the spiritual world, the meaning of work, governance in today’s world full of opposing forces, and the seriousness of being on the path of spiritual development.

I spent hours listening to his many ideas and discussed—and challenged at times his approach—some of the ideas that he has attempted to bring into the world. Some of those ideas and insights (flat organizational structure in circles of responsibility, attendance to details to the small things, etc.) are challenging for our current set of concepts. Some are future-bearing and we struggle to understand. I was very well aware of how many colleagues and friends did not find the patience or perseverance to listen to Paul going often over the same content, same ideas—but I was determined to understand and listen to the message behind the words.

I had experienced Paul in his fifties as member of the medical section, as a mover and shaker in the fight for patients’ rights, and I experienced his striving to bring about change. I shared with him aspects of community building in Camphill and he had much to say about this; he had talked with Carlo Pietzner and explored the needs for community. I saw him in moments of illness, of recovery—one time he had to learn to write again—and moments of interacting with coworkers in his place, the Fellowship Community—his life’s work and really his building, his community and social temple in this incarnation. So, who was this man? He was a medical doctor with keen insight into the person with an illness. We could experience a strong personality with charisma, ability to influence and at times control people; a caring person, devoted to Rudolf Steiner as his spiritual guide; a striving person in the context of community.

We honor his spirit by acknowledging that he was a ROSICRUCIAN.

We honor his soul by acknowledging his TEMPLE building in the social and physical realm.

We honor his body of work on earth by celebrating this WORKER in the garden of the world.

The Fellowship is an intentional, intergenerational community for the care of the elderly. We see a true servant of the time spirit in his work on eldercare in community that he pioneered well before anyone even saw the issue. In the same way that we rolled our eyes abut BD preparations (stuffing cow manure into horns and burying them) years ago and now all are interested, the idea of intergenerational community and the joy of aging, the idea of death as a part of life or a new birth, are all such a reality when you look at this life.