Attending the First Organic Agriculture Course: Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course at Koberwitz, 1924
John Paull
Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course held at Koberwitz (now Kobierzyce, Poland) in 1924
was arguably the world’s first organic agriculture course - although the terms ‘biodynamic
agriculture’ and ‘organic farming’ appeared in the decades that followed. Ehrenfried
Pfeiffer and others have stated that there were about 60 attendees at the course, while
Rudolf Steiner and others have stated that there were about, or more than, 100 attendees.
The present study examines the original attendance records to reveal that there were 111
attendees. There were 30 women and 81 men. They came from six countries: Germany
(N=61); Poland (N=30); Austria (N=9); Switzerland (N=7); France (N=2); and Sweden
(N=2). Of the 60% of enrolees who declared a profession, 38 could be described as
‘agricultural’ and of these 20 described themselves as farmers. There were additionally
nine priests, four medical doctors, three teachers, two artists and two engineers. Four of the
Keyserlingk host-family (Alex, Carl, Johanna and Wolfgang) attended the course, as did
Dr. Lili Kolisko, Dr. Elisabeth Vreede, and Guenther Wachsmuth. Dr. Ehrenfried Pfeiffer
and George Adams Kaufmann gained prominence later in biodynamics but were not at the
course. The Agricultural Research Circle was an immediate outcome of the Course and this
led to Pfeiffer’s book Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening in 1938.