Fried Geuter

Fried Geuter, born 1894 (day and month unknown) in Darmstadt Germany and died on 14 February 1960 in Ravenswood United Kingdom, was a pioneer of anthroposophical Special Needs education, the co-founder of Sunfield Children's Home and founder of the Ravenswood Village Settlement near Crowthorne in Berkshire.

Fried Geuter was born to a German father and English mother, a Frankfurt merchant family with international connections that acquainted him with England and its culture from an early age. Beyond this, nothing is known of his childhood and youth until he began studying for a career in commerce, but was at once called up for military service in World War I. Although in his youth – after he had caused a friend to lose an eye through playing around with a gun – he had sworn never to carry one again, he knew he had to do military service. In 1918 he met and married Maria, a nursing sister based at the garrison in Meschede where he was stationed. The couple later had a son and two daughters.

It was in that same year that he met Herbert Hahn, also in Meschede where Hahn was engaged as translator in the garrison and had a small group that would gather to read fundamental works of Rudolf Steiner in his army hut. They got into a conversation on Christmas Eve that lasted all night – one so lively that Hahn reports that they went to the early morning service refreshed, though the candles had burnt down long before. It appears that conversations like this were part of Fried’s make-up, as if he were possessed by the “Genius of Conversation”.

Together the friends of Hahn’s circle began also to study the texts on Social threefolding that were being sent out from Stuttgart, hearing names like Emil Molt, Professor Wilhelm von Blume or Carl Unger for the first time. Immediately after the war, Herbert Hahn and Fried Geuter began to take on work in Stuttgart for the movement and soon afterwards Fried was engaged for the business venture “Kommenden Tag”.

In 1920 he toured from one city to the other in Germany, organising lecture tours for Walter Johannes Stein and Herbert Hahn when, after a short but severe illness he suddenly came to the realisation that he wanted to become an educator for Special Needs. The decision changed the course of his further life, he moved to the Sonnenhof in Arlesheim, Switzerland and worked under the guidance of Ita Wegman, who inspired him with her insights into the needs and methods adopted in caring and educating children with mental handicap. He worked there until 1929 when, encouraged by Ita Wegman, he moved to England to help establish the Special Needs work there.

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