Speaker 1: M ah, that's the how we're starting this episode. I needed.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, host Behind the Bastards, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: trying out new introduction techniques because I just got off
Speaker 1: of forty hours of plane flights. My guest today is
Speaker 1: Mr Miles Gray. Miles full disclosure is the show? This
Speaker 1: show is about? I call it, well, I call it
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards. I don't know what everyone else calls it.
Speaker 1: Do you also refer to it as behind the Bastards?
Speaker 1: That's a great name. I think we might have to,
Speaker 1: Sophie make a note of that one so we can
Speaker 1: steal it from Miles. So if you don't just make
Speaker 1: a note of it, get it tatted for posterity. Wait
Speaker 1: where were you? Where are you traveling for forty hours? Uh?
Speaker 1: Not just just a lot of layovers and you know
Speaker 1: it was only Europe, but you know you wind up
Speaker 1: getting stuck in airports here and there. I hear your brother. So, Miles,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about school rules? Uh? Fuck school, dude?
Speaker 1: You know I'm a cool yea fu school. You know
Speaker 1: that answer, Miles that you gave is going to turn
Speaker 1: out to be very appropriate for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: most of them unfortunate. Um, because I don't even you're
Speaker 1: talking about we are talking about a school today, and
Speaker 1: it is a It is definitely a Fox school, Um,
Speaker 1: but not in any kind of good way. In a
Speaker 1: horrible crimes were child molestation. Dark. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: bad way to introduce this episode. But there's no good
Speaker 1: way to introduce this episode. This isn't Behind the Fun Times.
Speaker 1: It's behind that. Behind the Fun Times is my other podcast.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine it? Actually we're very dark where you're
Speaker 1: hosting it and you're just doing like behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of like some of like the happiest like you know,
Speaker 1: pleasant moments in our history. Hey released one happy episode
Speaker 1: we did release well, he died at the end, but
Speaker 1: the work was good. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like I'd like
Speaker 1: to have an episode where Werner Herzog and I just
Speaker 1: talk about different puppets we think are cute. I think
Speaker 1: if I like the baby Yoder, I'd like to hug
Speaker 1: and caress him. I like that he really kept his
Speaker 1: vibe up in the Mandalorian. He keeps he's never anything
Speaker 1: but Werner Herzog, and that's that's all we ever want
Speaker 1: from him. Now, speaking of a German. This whole episode
Speaker 1: is set in Germany. It is now uh so yeah,
Speaker 1: uh schools miles, none of us, none of us is
Speaker 1: is I'm going to say, overwhelmingly happy with the school
Speaker 1: system in the United States. I think that's the same,
Speaker 1: especially our life. Educational system is meant as like a
Speaker 1: barrier to entry for a certain class, so out when
Speaker 1: you look at school like that, rather than like, hey,
Speaker 1: education is available at everyone puts a bit of that
Speaker 1: bad taste. I mean I literally just went to college
Speaker 1: because it was drilled in my head. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you can't get a job unless you go to college.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, that's why I spent twenty grand
Speaker 1: in debt, failing to get a degree, and then dropping
Speaker 1: out because they didn't want to spend another fifteen Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's problems involved with college or involved with
Speaker 1: education in general in this country, and that there have
Speaker 1: been for a long time. Um. I think most of
Speaker 1: what I still remember from my high school days is
Speaker 1: how to install Doom on a T I eight three
Speaker 1: calculate you could get oh yeah, dude, yeah, or Wolfenstein.
Speaker 1: It was one of the two. I forget exactly what Wolfenstein,
Speaker 1: but the best I could do is get that one
Speaker 1: thing that was called like drug wars or like the
Speaker 1: Mafia drug war, drug wars, which the ship you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: drug wars be like press one to deal heroin. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, here we go. But I don't know
Speaker 1: like algebra. Um so, and I never learned how to
Speaker 1: pay my taxes. Um shout out to my account. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's a cool guy. Now. My point here in
Speaker 1: this rambling introduction is that in the year of our
Speaker 1: Lord two thousand nineteen, we're not we're not great at
Speaker 1: educating the young. Uh. And this state of affairs is
Speaker 1: not new, and in fact, we we've been shitty at
Speaker 1: educating kids basically since we decided it was important to
Speaker 1: start educating kids. Um. And today, Miles, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about one of the boldest and most brilliant reformers in
Speaker 1: the history of education, a man whose ideas and intellectual
Speaker 1: courage were in some ways still way ahead of even
Speaker 1: our time. Have you ever heard of Paul Gheb Paul
Speaker 1: Gahb Geheb. But yeah, well, uh, paulus Gehb is actually
Speaker 1: the actual nagmebor. We're gonna call him Paul. This episode,
Speaker 1: because I don't truck with any of that police nonset.
Speaker 1: What kind of name is Paulus? Anyway? It's some infuriating
Speaker 1: German name. Those people stick extra use and s is
Speaker 1: on all sorts of ship. Wow, it sounds like someone
Speaker 1: who would be like the son of like Caesar, like
Speaker 1: a Roman. Yeah, a Roman leader would be Paulus. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess actually all of the US names came
Speaker 1: from Romans just fucking and conquering all over the place.
Speaker 1: And yeah, Paul Paulus is a Latin surname meaning small
Speaker 1: or humble. Well, he was a small, humble man. Uh,
Speaker 1: so we'll talk about him for a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: Paul was born on October eighteen seventy and Gisa on
Speaker 1: the Rhone Mountains in Germany. His father and grandfather were
Speaker 1: both pharmaceutical chemists, and his dad was also a botanist
Speaker 1: who specialized in mosses. So he grew up surrounded and
Speaker 1: influenced by people who lived lives of the mind. Now,
Speaker 1: some of Paul's earliest memories were following his father through
Speaker 1: the forest to look for where mosses. By age eight,
Speaker 1: Paul signed his letters Paul geheb student of natural sciences.
Speaker 1: So he's a he's a he's a knowledge lover miles
Speaker 1: because his dad was dragging to the force and like
Speaker 1: I pick up that grass over there and put in
Speaker 1: your pocket. Yeah. Well but he I think he liked it.
Speaker 1: I think his dad was good at in culcating a
Speaker 1: love of the natural world and you know, excitement and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Uh, So there's something was good at it.
Speaker 1: There's something like really when I when you said eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy and they were pharmaceutical chemists, I'm like, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a comedy. Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna guess most
Speaker 1: of what his dad is working with is like a
Speaker 1: mix of heroin and snail poison, and you can give
Speaker 1: it to little kids. Yeah, and eugit. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: little bit before they're doing much eugenics. I'll give that
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think Paul would
Speaker 1: have been down with that, but we'll tell you what
Speaker 1: he was down with a little later. Now, Paul graduated
Speaker 1: primary school and he went to the universities of Berlin
Speaker 1: and then Jenna for a total of ten years. He
Speaker 1: almost got a doctorate. He was a wonderful student who
Speaker 1: was renowned by his teachers for his sheer thirst for knowledge,
Speaker 1: he came to hold an almost religious belief in what
Speaker 1: he called the perfectly integrated human, a person whose mastery
Speaker 1: of humanism, science, philosophy, and physical activity would blend into
Speaker 1: one being of almost complete perfection. So this is his
Speaker 1: his his dreams of a chad. Yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: his version of like Enlightenment. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: quasi Buddhist. Yeah, the perfect man. You know that that
Speaker 1: that education can build a perfect person um. Now, in
Speaker 1: pursuit of achieving this end, he studied theology, philosophy, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic,
Speaker 1: anatomy and physiology, and the nascent science of psychiatry. He
Speaker 1: also got ordained as a pastor and studied religion. So
Speaker 1: that's that's cool. I'm said theology early, So am I
Speaker 1: Now everybody's ordained thanks to the Church of Life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too, That's what I mean. I mean, you know, Miles,
Speaker 1: if you want, there might still be room on the
Speaker 1: boat that where Billy and I are gonna go get
Speaker 1: trained to put bleach at people's asses so we can
Speaker 1: become reverend doctors. I'm I'm down for that. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, my strength is in scamming and motivational speaking.
Speaker 1: So if you know, if I can be of service
Speaker 1: to that greater vision, I would be more than honored
Speaker 1: to help. Well, uh, well, we'll keep your name on
Speaker 1: the on the shortlist for the ass bleaching trailer because
Speaker 1: I just see a lot of people out there who
Speaker 1: are really, really struggling, could use some kind of light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no better way to have light at the
Speaker 1: end of the tunnel than by bleaching your asshole. That
Speaker 1: literally light different. Yeah yeah, so uh. Paul spent some
Speaker 1: time as a preacher um, but he felt himself more
Speaker 1: strongly drawn to teach and mold young minds, so he
Speaker 1: started pursuing this doctorate and he got as far as
Speaker 1: working in his thesis. But in those days, there was
Speaker 1: a fee to take your doctor at exam marks, and
Speaker 1: rather than spend that money on reaching the apex of
Speaker 1: his ten year educational dreams, Paul Key he decided a
Speaker 1: wiser use would be to donate the money to a
Speaker 1: family he knew who faced financial collapse due to their
Speaker 1: alcoholic father. So yeah, Mr Preacher yeah, so far it
Speaker 1: seems pretty great right right now? Not sounding like a
Speaker 1: bastard to me. Yeah, like a man of God who
Speaker 1: really puts his money where his doctor it isn't. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he never became a doctor, and instead he decided that
Speaker 1: he was called upon to educate the poor children of
Speaker 1: Germany's great cities. In nineteen o two, he met up
Speaker 1: with a fellow named Herman Ltz, who was working towards
Speaker 1: much the same goal. Both men were part of a
Speaker 1: movement of educational reform in Germany focused around changing the
Speaker 1: authoritarian structure of German education at the time, which wouldn't
Speaker 1: have looked out of place in a movie about the
Speaker 1: Hitler youth set forty years later. So, like, German education
Speaker 1: is uh not focused on shall we say, treating children
Speaker 1: like complete human beings. Like, so, what does that look like?
Speaker 1: Just screaming corporal punishment. I don't think much screaming. I
Speaker 1: think more of that like quiet but very stern and
Speaker 1: unbending German discipline. Um, you know, they're not a shouty people.
Speaker 1: A lot of the time. I think it was more
Speaker 1: just sort of um, you know, everything was kind of
Speaker 1: military like it would it would have there would have
Speaker 1: been a quasi military feel to education. Talking up would
Speaker 1: not have been tolerated yet, very rigid, very uh, very
Speaker 1: shame based. I'm sure too. That was probably their great motivator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: shame based. And also everyone does the same thing and
Speaker 1: follows the same structure, so like whether you know we
Speaker 1: now know kids. You know, different kids learn different ways.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't put in any they would not like none
Speaker 1: of that bullshit. In German school all do the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, we do exploration time where we let
Speaker 1: the children just sort of do as they want to
Speaker 1: do to discover themselves. Children don't want things would be
Speaker 1: the German uh want things they don't want. Paul became
Speaker 1: part of what the was called sort of the back
Speaker 1: to nature movement and education UM. He worked with a
Speaker 1: number of experimental learning institutions and wind up co running
Speaker 1: what they called a school community in a place called
Speaker 1: Wickersdorf or Vickersdorf since it's German. Uh. The basic idea
Speaker 1: behind this place is that it was a democratic learning institution. Students,
Speaker 1: parents and teachers all elected representatives to vote on decisions
Speaker 1: about what curriculum to learn. And you know, how to
Speaker 1: handle different things, so it seems like a pretty cool idea.
Speaker 1: I'm worth trying. Yeah. Now, Paul's partner called this a
Speaker 1: self educating community, and for several years it flourished. Now,
Speaker 1: one major aspect of the Vickersdorf School was a focus
Speaker 1: on play, dance, music, and sports as all necessary in
Speaker 1: helping to craft well rounded people. So he didn't just
Speaker 1: you know, train kids to do whatever it is they
Speaker 1: were going to do as adults. You you, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone needed to learn how to dance, everybody needed to
Speaker 1: learn how to play an instrument, everybody needed to learn sports,
Speaker 1: like the you know, it's it's this kind of idea
Speaker 1: of the perfectly integrated man that that Paul's obsessed with.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of born out of this idea like
Speaker 1: if you know more things and you push yourself in
Speaker 1: as many different directions as possible, Like that's that's stretching
Speaker 1: yourself out for more growth or balance. Basically, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of the idea that reminds me like
Speaker 1: Dirk Navitski, the basketball player. He had a shooting coach
Speaker 1: that sort of had this same mentality that was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna work on your jump shot, but this summer
Speaker 1: you're learning how to play saxophone. You're gonna do You're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna canoe, and you're gonna start doing like pottery.
Speaker 1: Now that it's necessarily the same, but it's sort of
Speaker 1: more like, we're going to help improve your skills by
Speaker 1: creating new skills that you didn't have in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like how Karate Kid taught the karate
Speaker 1: kid how to do karate by teaching him how to
Speaker 1: clean how to karate. Yeah, well it's all karate. That's
Speaker 1: the that's the secret message of Karate Kid is that
Speaker 1: all of life is karate. Thank you. Shout out to
Speaker 1: Pat Morita, Mr. The only person who taught me any
Speaker 1: thing but how to install Wolfenstein on a T I
Speaker 1: A three. But also he also told you he did.
Speaker 1: He did teach me that too. It was weird that
Speaker 1: that karate class required a hundred and sixty dollar graphing calculator,
Speaker 1: but hey, everything's karate man, even that graphic. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the Vickersdorf School did very well for for years um
Speaker 1: but by personality conflicts between paulka Heb and his partner
Speaker 1: Winikin led to the breakup of the school. Paul resigned
Speaker 1: and decided it was time for him to start his
Speaker 1: own school. Now well he'd been at Vickersdorff, Paul had
Speaker 1: fallen in love with one of his employees, Edith Casseerer.
Speaker 1: She'd started as a kindergarten teacher, which was not a
Speaker 1: very common job for a woman at the time, particularly
Speaker 1: a woman of her social stature, so she was a
Speaker 1: bit of a boundary breaker. Edith's dad was a wealthy industrialist.
Speaker 1: The fact that she decided to devote her life to
Speaker 1: educating the children of the poor rather than marrying rich
Speaker 1: and increasing the family wealth was something of a slap
Speaker 1: in the face to her father Max initially, but while
Speaker 1: he opposed her marriage with Paul, by nineteen ten he'd
Speaker 1: been won over by Paul's charismatic enthusiasm for educational reform,
Speaker 1: and when his son in law decided to start a school,
Speaker 1: Max was only too happy to pour his own money
Speaker 1: into the project. So very happy story, so far, no way,
Speaker 1: any of this turns horrible, great great step great father
Speaker 1: in law. Supporting your dreams sounds like a dream, really
Speaker 1: sounds wonderful. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the oden Vale School
Speaker 1: was open for business. Now this is the school that
Speaker 1: that Paul created with his his dad in law's money.
Speaker 1: The Odenwald School was a massive evolution from the Vickersdorff School.
Speaker 1: Paul called it an educational laboratory and considered it a
Speaker 1: place for daring, bold experiments in educational reforms, which he
Speaker 1: hoped would spare all of Germany and then the world
Speaker 1: beyond what he called the sluggish, the sluggish organism of
Speaker 1: public education. Now, he believed the key to reforming public
Speaker 1: education was to recognize that the individual personality of the
Speaker 1: child could not be developed in isolation with Pew builds
Speaker 1: quietly taking information and taking in tests. Instead, what was
Speaker 1: needed was a living community of adults and children working
Speaker 1: together to develop each other. The odin Bold School was
Speaker 1: a democratic learning institution uh students and teachers had equal
Speaker 1: votes on the school council, and Paul Gieb's words quote,
Speaker 1: the authority of the teacher is replaced by the authority
Speaker 1: of those who together represent the idea of the school.
Speaker 1: This authority is heated by adults as much as by children.
Speaker 1: That's the that's theity this is based on. Now, it
Speaker 1: sounds like it could work. Now, Obviously the adults are,
Speaker 1: you know, the more experienced and mature individuals, and so
Speaker 1: they were seen as having the responsibility to guide their
Speaker 1: students towards knowledge, but they weren't in charge of them
Speaker 1: in the authoritarian way typical and most of the world
Speaker 1: at the time, as Paul said, to be governed is
Speaker 1: completely unknown in our school, for it as a community
Speaker 1: without superiors, a school without a director, stuff, a school
Speaker 1: disappears without I mean, it's funny when you started talking
Speaker 1: about this new school he made, I'm like, uh oh,
Speaker 1: he's starting to sound like he's getting a bit of
Speaker 1: a god complex here, where he's almost been like, nah,
Speaker 1: this is where the new ship is happening, and I'm
Speaker 1: completely changing everything and it's me yeah, you know, at
Speaker 1: least on paper. Uh, it sounds like it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mix of that, because like he's definitely saying the
Speaker 1: whole system needs to be torn down, and but he's
Speaker 1: also um saying that, like we as a learning community,
Speaker 1: you are going to figure out what works better, because
Speaker 1: that's the real way to to to to spur innovation. Now,
Speaker 1: I I've had a bunch of details on the organization
Speaker 1: of the olden Vulge School. In a nineteen two article
Speaker 1: by Henry Casseer, who was a nephew of Paul Geheb's
Speaker 1: who attended the olden Vulge school as a child, and
Speaker 1: here's what he said. He therefore introduced a new structure
Speaker 1: into the lesson plan, the Curse system. It's essential feature
Speaker 1: was that for a period of one month, each child
Speaker 1: had to choose courses in three subjects each time daily
Speaker 1: for eleven hours. This made it possible for the student
Speaker 1: to concentrate on intensive studies in limited fields. Other subjects
Speaker 1: were been taken up during subsequent periods. The emphysis and
Speaker 1: teaching was less on learning facts than upon learning to
Speaker 1: learn to work independently, to study and to understand. Another
Speaker 1: feature of the Curse system was that the children were
Speaker 1: to be gathered in study groups according to their level
Speaker 1: of maturity and knowledge, rather than according to age groups.
Speaker 1: Thus a child might find himself with older children and
Speaker 1: one subject for which he was gifted, but with the
Speaker 1: younger children and another subject where he had little previous schooling.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it sounds about
Speaker 1: right balanced, like people around your intellectual level and whatnot. Now,
Speaker 1: Paul was critical of gender segregation, which was very much
Speaker 1: common in German public schools at the time. The olden
Speaker 1: Vold School did not segregate students by gender. It was
Speaker 1: divided into families. Each family run by a teacher who
Speaker 1: helped guide the children. Families consisted of both boys and girls,
Speaker 1: because he believed it was critical to human development to
Speaker 1: have gender integration. Before his career as an educator, he'd
Speaker 1: been a militant crusader for women's emancipation. His forty four
Speaker 1: page application to the Imperial German government to start the
Speaker 1: oden Vall School had included thirty pages on the importance
Speaker 1: of gender integration. He wrote, co education means joyfully to
Speaker 1: affirm the polarity of the sexes in both theory and
Speaker 1: practice and attitude and living, to integrate pedagogically the rich
Speaker 1: sources of wealth it produces into all fields of life
Speaker 1: and culture, and to apply them fruitfully to the development
Speaker 1: of the child, which is pretty welk for nineteen ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I just I don't know. I know
Speaker 1: what this show is, yea, And what you said earlier,
Speaker 1: and now I'm might like now I'm starting to see
Speaker 1: the chess moves. Yeah you what what what what do
Speaker 1: you what do you mean by that? Well? You said
Speaker 1: you were alluding to some kind of abuse, And I
Speaker 1: just feel like in any sort of predatory situation, like
Speaker 1: a predator is looking for the most target rich environment,
Speaker 1: and and advocating for integration means many children of both genders.
Speaker 1: And I just I don't know, I'm just I just
Speaker 1: know there's a turn. I've done this showing up with you,
Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna start dry heaving and being disgusted
Speaker 1: because humanity is just a gigantic waste pile. Uh. But
Speaker 1: go on, I'm waiting with you. Put a put a
Speaker 1: pin in that target rich environment. Than we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that later. Uh. Yeah. So Paul, Paul's a reformer, uh,
Speaker 1: and he thinks that this is going to act as
Speaker 1: like a laboratory to help figure out the way schools
Speaker 1: in Germany should work in the future. And you know
Speaker 1: it's it's it's on paper. It seems like a noble
Speaker 1: pursuit here, like you can't really say, you know, objectively,
Speaker 1: I understand what this person is going for. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Paul School was as successful as it was revolutionary. Over
Speaker 1: its first years. It would educate men who came to
Speaker 1: be some of the finest artistic and philosophical minds in Germany. Klaussman,
Speaker 1: Thomas Man's son went to the Odenwald School. So did
Speaker 1: Hans Beth, winner of the nineteen sixty seven Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: for Physics. I could go on, but most of the
Speaker 1: famous alumni are German famous, so their names are not
Speaker 1: particularly well known to most listeners. Were trying a lot
Speaker 1: of famous German thinkers who came from here. I only
Speaker 1: wrote down the two, but there's a whole list of them,
Speaker 1: and they're all very German sounding. Um. Now. By the
Speaker 1: time the late nineteen twenties rolled around, the Odenwald School
Speaker 1: had developed an international reputation as one of the finest
Speaker 1: centers of learning and all of your bad yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Now. Paul wrote and spoke eloquently on the
Speaker 1: rights of children, and his speeches are filled with quotes
Speaker 1: like this. There is no greater miracle among the inexhaustible
Speaker 1: miracles of creation, which in the strictest sense is unlimited
Speaker 1: in its richness, than the miraculous fact that nature dispenses
Speaker 1: its seed every day with generous amplitude, and that not
Speaker 1: one of its fruits is exactly the equal of the other.
Speaker 1: The younger the child, the more we enjoy it because
Speaker 1: we rejoice in the wealth of individuality and originality. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that could go a couple of ways, couldn't it. Wait,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's the richness part. That's a great question, Miles.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the charitable undertaking of the is
Speaker 1: that you know, younger children haven't had their individuality beaten
Speaker 1: out of them as much by this this harsh German
Speaker 1: system that we that we live in designed to produce
Speaker 1: you know, soldiers and factory workers. And so it's a
Speaker 1: joy to spend time with with young children because you
Speaker 1: can really just cultivate their individuality and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So that that's one way you could take. It's weird
Speaker 1: because ones like yeah, before they're completely indoctrinated with like
Speaker 1: societal expectations, they still have that purity, that innocence. And
Speaker 1: also you can mold them too, like they're more pliable
Speaker 1: at this age, like they're they're they're malleable in terms
Speaker 1: of how they're looking at the world and things like that.
Speaker 1: I Mean, it's funny because the first part I get
Speaker 1: because a lot of people like, if you're into any
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual texts and things like that always refer to.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're a child, you're sort of at
Speaker 1: this level of consciousness where you can observe many things
Speaker 1: and still enjoy them because of your not being hit
Speaker 1: with all kinds of societal norms and things like that,
Speaker 1: or cultural patterns of thinking. So when I'm like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we should be more childlike at times, well we
Speaker 1: we we that is so far as we As we
Speaker 1: come to our first ad break, miles, everything seems great,
Speaker 1: Everything seems fine, Everything seems very healthy, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that that's how it will continue for the remainder of
Speaker 1: the twelve pages that I've written. Um, but you know what,
Speaker 1: what's also fine. You know what we'll save us smiles.
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this show. Oh fantastic.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards. And if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I hate more than fascism, it's finishing a
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Speaker 1: talking about Germany obviously in the nineteen twenties here, miles.
Speaker 1: And if we all know one thing about Germany and in
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties is then it turns into Germany
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, where we like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about Nazis, and that is the time that it
Speaker 1: is now. Um. Now, Paul de Heiba was not a
Speaker 1: fan of the Nazi Party as it rose to power
Speaker 1: in the late twenties and early thirties. Now, the Odenwald
Speaker 1: School was not a political instead tuition, but obviously it's
Speaker 1: focused on liberty, freethinking and gender integration did not jel
Speaker 1: well with fascism. Um. It also drew in harassment because
Speaker 1: the school's funder and Max Cassarra, was an assimilated Jew.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a number of of dangerous things going
Speaker 1: on with the Old Wale School. Uh. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from a right up I found in TNF
Speaker 1: about how the olden Wald School handled the rise of
Speaker 1: the Nazis. The first in a series of Nazi raids
Speaker 1: on the communist jew Odenwald School took place in March
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three and led to the purge of the faculty,
Speaker 1: the abolition of co educational residences, and the end of
Speaker 1: student self government. New Nazi teachers formed chapters of the
Speaker 1: Hitler Youth in League of German Girls, the Nazi educational
Speaker 1: leadership of HESSE, hoping to benefit from the school's fame
Speaker 1: forbade gheheb to close it in response to these measures
Speaker 1: because he pursued a dual strategy in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: On one hand, he promised cooperation, agreed to not see mandates,
Speaker 1: and repeatedly told the authorities that his school's goals were
Speaker 1: consistent with those of the New Germany. At the same time,
Speaker 1: because he privately condemned the Nazi regime and made plans
Speaker 1: to immigrate and take some of his pupils with him,
Speaker 1: he hastened the closure of the own Volge school by
Speaker 1: secretly encouraging parents to withdraw their children. With the help
Speaker 1: of a sympathetic official and the reich Ministry of the Interior,
Speaker 1: he closed the school and moved to Switzerland in March
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four. Max Casser believed that his son in
Speaker 1: law was not sufficiently accommodating towards the Nazis, and for
Speaker 1: months disapproved his plans to immigrate in Switzerland. He struggled
Speaker 1: at first, but by the end of the war, the
Speaker 1: Cold to Humanity, which is the school he started in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: was an acclaimed haven for young refugees from all over Europe. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a new more explicitly. Nazi school opened at the old
Speaker 1: Old Old Invulge School. During the war, however, its directors
Speaker 1: successfully protected some children of Jews and dissidents. That's a
Speaker 1: good story, right, sound great? Yeah, he does, we go
Speaker 1: along with the Nazis. His father in law, you said,
Speaker 1: who was the assimilated Jewish business person. He was telling him,
Speaker 1: you're not being Nazi enough. Yeah, that's actually really common.
Speaker 1: And I mean a lot of a lot of assimilated
Speaker 1: German Jews were like, just work along with them, it'll
Speaker 1: be k. I mean, it's like anything when you sort
Speaker 1: of internalized that sort of hatred to in order to
Speaker 1: survive and operate with society. But yeah, okay, that must
Speaker 1: have been weird. Yeah, it must have been. He has
Speaker 1: to leave the Germany, which, yeah, it wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: a friendly place for him. They started school in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: but the old and of Alge school continue to operate
Speaker 1: in Germany, and after the fall of Nazism it reopened
Speaker 1: under its original operating principles, run by a series of
Speaker 1: dedicated educators and some child rapists. Um yea, now yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah, uh so, I I don't know how
Speaker 1: to make this transition um, yeah, thank you. The the
Speaker 1: Old and Volge School was just filled with child molesters
Speaker 1: as an average day at Disney World. Um so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was as a result of like the fall of Nazism,
Speaker 1: like that when they restarted it up, or is this
Speaker 1: was this? This is even predates the Third Reich. A
Speaker 1: lot is into these miles. Now, none of this was
Speaker 1: known at the time, you know. What was known for
Speaker 1: decades was that after naziason fell, the Old Volge School
Speaker 1: continued to operate and be a very prestigious learning institution
Speaker 1: for children from all over Europe, um operating under enlightened
Speaker 1: principles of student self government and gender reintegration. That's the
Speaker 1: surface story. But in nineteen reports were first made public
Speaker 1: that Gerald Becker, who ran the school from nine nine
Speaker 1: eighty five, had been reported as a child molester by
Speaker 1: several of the kids in his care. Investigations into this
Speaker 1: were suspended because so much time had passed. At least
Speaker 1: that was the official justification. The reality of the situation
Speaker 1: is that with its high rate of prestigious alumni, the
Speaker 1: olden Volge School and its leader were connected people and
Speaker 1: everything was swept under the rug. Now Becker had first
Speaker 1: come to the school in the late nineteen sixties. Now,
Speaker 1: this was a time of increasing liberalism and openness in society. Becker,
Speaker 1: in the school's music teacher, a guy named Wolfgang, took
Speaker 1: horrific advantage of this. Both men lived in the same house,
Speaker 1: one at the top and one at the bottom floor,
Speaker 1: with their families of children living in between them. Since
Speaker 1: both men were pedophiles, this was essentially the perfect living
Speaker 1: in the situation for predators. They picked specific children to
Speaker 1: be in their families, who they then molested. Pupils recalled
Speaker 1: that they were regularly grouped in the morning and forced
Speaker 1: to masturbate their instructors in the afternoon. One of those children,
Speaker 1: Adrian Kay, later recalled this, back then, we children didn't
Speaker 1: even discuss the things we saw and experienced on an
Speaker 1: almost daily basis. It was a closed system. Another student recalled,
Speaker 1: I remember being woken up as a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: by Gerald Becker sucking my penis like a possessed man. So,
Speaker 1: oh my god, not great, not great, not great. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: the family thing, you were saying, that's part of that
Speaker 1: structured like a school structures. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that
Speaker 1: Geba instituted. Yet so the teacher. Okay, so it's a
Speaker 1: three story home where each teacher is on either side
Speaker 1: of the middle part, which is all of the students
Speaker 1: who are the quote unquote family, and the and the
Speaker 1: fucking teachers pick their family from the the pool of
Speaker 1: enrolled students and this way. So this but this comes
Speaker 1: out in the eighties, you said, or in the night
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and this comes out in the late nineties.
Speaker 1: Well it makes sense because for the longest time, we
Speaker 1: just had the we just were like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: we don't know how to We're not equipped to actually
Speaker 1: talk about assault against children. We'll just call it like
Speaker 1: stay away from that person or something's different about that fellow. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what what goes on here. Um
Speaker 1: although that I should say, that's what it seems like
Speaker 1: is going on here at first. Um. So, numerous people's
Speaker 1: reported abuse at the hands of Gerald Becker and his friend,
Speaker 1: the music teacher, but the teachers that, like kids, reported
Speaker 1: this too at the Old and Bold School tended to
Speaker 1: ignore are those reports. In one teacher, Barbara b was
Speaker 1: told by a student that Becker had molested them on
Speaker 1: the previous night and paid for the pleasure with a
Speaker 1: stereo and a pair of sneakers. Now this teacher reported
Speaker 1: this to Becker's successor, who was the new head of
Speaker 1: the school after him, but nothing was done. Becker was
Speaker 1: other than his child molestation um a a shining example
Speaker 1: of a dedicated educator UM and someone who was clearly
Speaker 1: uh respected in the field. When he wasn't molesting kids,
Speaker 1: he gave vivid speeches celebrating the enlightened beliefs of the
Speaker 1: Odenwald School. Former teacher Salmon and Sarry recalled whenever Gerald
Speaker 1: Becker gave a speech, he always said ours was the
Speaker 1: world's best school with the world's best teachers. Now, part
Speaker 1: of the why this was allowed to go on for
Speaker 1: so long were the deep connections Gerald Becker enjoyed to
Speaker 1: the German government. He was friend and colleague to a
Speaker 1: fellow named Helmett Becker, who was not related to him.
Speaker 1: But Helmett was the guy who first spearheaded the effort
Speaker 1: to reform the West German edgercational system after World War Two.
Speaker 1: He was the first director of the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 1: and a huge fan of the olden Volde School. Helmet
Speaker 1: described this in other independent schools as a kind of
Speaker 1: incubator within the public school system. He then added this
Speaker 1: applies in particular to boarding schools and which relaxed encounters
Speaker 1: between parents and pupils provides better protection for human sexuality.
Speaker 1: What what? Yeah? Well, did you notice something something word
Speaker 1: about that line? Say that again one more time, out
Speaker 1: loud in English. Yeah. He described the olden Volde School
Speaker 1: and other independent schools as an incubator within the public
Speaker 1: school system and added this applies in particular to boarding
Speaker 1: schools and which relaxed encounters between parents and pupils provides
Speaker 1: better protection for human sexuality, better protections for That's an
Speaker 1: odd thing to say, isn't it. Yeah, there's a number
Speaker 1: of quotes like that that are odd things to say
Speaker 1: and and kind of hard to figure out, Like uh
Speaker 1: uh at the time, people must have just had the
Speaker 1: same reaction you did, but there were no clear explanations
Speaker 1: why that could sound really fucking terrible or really smart.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's like Paul Gehee's
Speaker 1: line about enjoying little kids, where it's like that could
Speaker 1: mean a few things, and you probably give him the
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt. You think it's like an educator like, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way it's for some kind of malicious intent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little. Now, Gerald Becker hired Helmet to work at
Speaker 1: the ode involved School. Now, Helmet's godson was a student
Speaker 1: at the school, and within a few months of coming
Speaker 1: on board, helmets gods son reached out to his godfather
Speaker 1: to complain that principal Gerald Becker had climbed into his
Speaker 1: bed to try to have sex with him. Uh. You
Speaker 1: might expect this to have led to a gigantic ship show,
Speaker 1: since Helmet had the influence to demand just about anything
Speaker 1: he wanted from the school and the government. But instead
Speaker 1: of doing anything, Helmet recommended that Gerald's seek treatment for
Speaker 1: his child molesting problem. Gerald was sent off on what
Speaker 1: amounted to a medical vacation, then returned to the school
Speaker 1: and molested more children. Um, I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: that's pretty catholic A sounding exactly. I was saying, like,
Speaker 1: it's the same pattern of dealing with like I guess
Speaker 1: not of not dealing with it, where you're being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure this happened, but we don't even know
Speaker 1: what to do, so put him on time out? Like
Speaker 1: what what is what is a medical vacation in those days,
Speaker 1: like just to go to some kind of like yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he probably went to like, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of steam baths. And the reason he's protected is because
Speaker 1: of his like how respected he is within like the
Speaker 1: upper echelons of the government. He's respected, his school is respected.
Speaker 1: Helmet who reformed German education after World War Two is like,
Speaker 1: you know, his his name gets all tied up in
Speaker 1: the old Bulge School's reputation. So it's it's it's nobody's
Speaker 1: powerful's best interest for anything to get out about what's happened.
Speaker 1: What what what Gerald Becker is doing to these students. Um.
Speaker 1: So Gerald Becker got to die before he faced justice,
Speaker 1: which is what you always want to hear in a
Speaker 1: story like this. UM. Another person who died before facing
Speaker 1: justice was Walter Schaefer, who was Gerald's successor as head
Speaker 1: of the school and the man who probably worked hardest
Speaker 1: to cover up his crimes. Now, in the late nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: the German media completely ignored the revelations about one of
Speaker 1: the school's proudest institutions. Um. None of this really came
Speaker 1: out until two thousand seven, when a woman named Margarita
Speaker 1: Kaufman became the school's headmistress. She was the first person
Speaker 1: at the Old Valge School with any sort of influence
Speaker 1: who took the problem of child molestations seriously. In two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, she became aware of the mounting number of
Speaker 1: child molestation allegations, and she brought in a former judge,
Speaker 1: Bridget Tillman, to investigate. According to Dr Spiegel quote, Bridget
Speaker 1: Tilman and a lawyer published a report on the school,
Speaker 1: and they run up to the anniversary there no holds
Speaker 1: barred appraisal paints a frightening picture of widespread abuse at
Speaker 1: the Old Involge School. They identified more than a dozen perpetrators,
Speaker 1: more than seventy victims, incited seventeen witnesses alone who justified
Speaker 1: against the school's longtime principle, Gerald Becker. So in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen nineties you start getting these reports that Becker's
Speaker 1: molested some kids. And then in the mid oughts, the
Speaker 1: school's new headmistress convenes an investigation and they find that
Speaker 1: actually more than a dozen teachers at the school and
Speaker 1: staff members have been molesting kids. So the first they
Speaker 1: thought it was just the one. Yeah, they thought it
Speaker 1: was just Gerald and his The music and the music teacher,
Speaker 1: right right, right, yeah, And then in after the investigation,
Speaker 1: like oh it's there's there's Yeah, they start looking into
Speaker 1: it more. And the more they look into it, the
Speaker 1: more perpetrators they find, and the more victims they find.
Speaker 1: And is this like with talking to past pupils and
Speaker 1: things like that, And then did they discover that even
Speaker 1: currently at the time in the nineties, they're also dealing
Speaker 1: with like a large number of Oh yes, Yet the
Speaker 1: further back they go, the more allegations they start to find.
Speaker 1: But then they but they found twelve people that were
Speaker 1: currently working there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, I mean it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it also makes sense. I mean obviously it's a shift
Speaker 1: in like the culture too. But like when was there
Speaker 1: was there ever another woman directing the school prior to her?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think she was the first
Speaker 1: female headmistress in the school. Was she hired as some
Speaker 1: kind of reformer you think? Or she was just because
Speaker 1: she's a woman and a little like less interested in
Speaker 1: protecting male predators. Was like, something's wrong, I actually care
Speaker 1: about these kids. What the funk is this? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think she I don't know if it's because she was
Speaker 1: a woman, or just because she was a better person
Speaker 1: than the other teachers. But not to say that being
Speaker 1: a woman that makes you more interesting. But I think,
Speaker 1: like I think, no deviation from the pattern before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we take a strong stance here that that, you know,
Speaker 1: modern women can be child child molesters too. I just
Speaker 1: want to be clear about that. Oh yes, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that's been in past episodes too. Yeah, absolutely, um actually yeah,
Speaker 1: the Georgia Tan episodes. Um so uh yeah. So they
Speaker 1: started looking into this, and more they look into this,
Speaker 1: the more o involved teachers they find who had molested students,
Speaker 1: and the more students they find who had been molested. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: this story finally broke into the mainstream news in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, uh and a series of journalists from different
Speaker 1: papers and law enforcement agencies began to conduct wider ranging
Speaker 1: investigations into the Old Invulge School and what they found
Speaker 1: was fucking soul crushing miles. I'm gonna quote now from
Speaker 1: a two Irish Times article. Some eight teachers, including a
Speaker 1: former headmaster, have been a huge of sexually abusing at
Speaker 1: least thirty three former students. Now former students have told
Speaker 1: of torture. Rituals were older students, raped younger students and
Speaker 1: scalded their genitals. What I've heard completely goes beyond all imagining,
Speaker 1: said Miss Kaufman, head mistress of the school since two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. I just don't know how this kind of
Speaker 1: behavior carried on without teachers hearing cries of pain. In
Speaker 1: an interview with Desight newspaper, ms Coaufman said that the
Speaker 1: school operated in the past like a cult, with abusive
Speaker 1: allegations suppressed out of a misplaced off for the reforming
Speaker 1: pedagogical concepts of Gerald Becker, who was principal from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two to nineteen five. So that's the way this
Speaker 1: starts being spun in the two thousand's, which is that
Speaker 1: they're definitely trying to trace this problem back to uh
Speaker 1: Gerald Becker. Right. So that's the story as it comes in,
Speaker 1: is that this guy comes in because he's so respected, um,
Speaker 1: nobody notices his abuse, and he enables other people to
Speaker 1: commit abuse. And that's the where where the olden Volge
Speaker 1: School goes wrong starting in the nineteen seventies. That's that's
Speaker 1: the that's because of that guy, that one bad apple
Speaker 1: that spoiled the butch uh As reports came in, Becker
Speaker 1: was revealed as the ringleader for what can only be
Speaker 1: described as a gang of pedophile teachers. They wrapped themselves
Speaker 1: in the cloak of progressivism, emphasizing the olden Volge School's
Speaker 1: reputation for forward thinking, experimental teaching methods to hide abuse.
Speaker 1: Former students reported that teachers saw themselves as revolutionaries, fighting
Speaker 1: against dodgy ideas about education and prudishness and replacing them
Speaker 1: with the ideals of the sexual revolution. To this end,
Speaker 1: Becker and other teachers children showered, viewed child pornography while working,
Speaker 1: and regularly woke children up in the morning by masturbating them.
Speaker 1: So classic revolutionaries. Um yeah. So by the time all
Speaker 1: this came out, Gerald was old and sick, and he
Speaker 1: died before facing any justice. As already stated, his partner
Speaker 1: like a romantic partner. Hartmt. Von Hintig, was a prominent
Speaker 1: educational expert in Germany, and he said this at the time.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that these friendly gestures were never
Speaker 1: carried out against the will of the students. Friendly gestures, Yeah,
Speaker 1: surprise assault while you're sleeping as a friendly fucking I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say it depends on your friend group.
Speaker 1: The thing about this too is like it's also what
Speaker 1: you're what you're talking about is like a cult too,
Speaker 1: because you're saying precisely because other people were in awe
Speaker 1: of this fucking revolutionary approach to abusing kids or unquote
Speaker 1: unquote edgy cation or whatever you wanna call it, that
Speaker 1: that is what sort of uh like sort of enabled
Speaker 1: this culture of silence because like, well was it that
Speaker 1: they saw it and they were rationalizing like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's a revolutionary method, or it's like, well we're
Speaker 1: taking the good in the bad. It's like there's so
Speaker 1: much going on here, and we're we're going to dig
Speaker 1: into it a lot because there's like there's there's a
Speaker 1: fucking crazy amount going on, just like my wheels are.
Speaker 1: This has been one of the harder episodes to like
Speaker 1: structure because there's so much to get into. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna keep delving into this because it just
Speaker 1: there's layers upon layers. So further reporting by a website
Speaker 1: called The Local, which is a German paper, revealed that
Speaker 1: students at the Old and Bulge School were regularly applied
Speaker 1: with drugs and alcohol, and even used by teachers as
Speaker 1: sex slaves for whole weekends. I'm gonna quote from Dear
Speaker 1: Spiegel again. Eventually the permissiveness became almost total, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't the tormentors but the tormented who were made to
Speaker 1: feel guilty. The declared minimum objective was to be bisexual.
Speaker 1: If you didn't achieve that, you were a failure, says
Speaker 1: former people Gerald Are, who came to the school in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five and was first abused by his music
Speaker 1: teacher the following year. We knew one thing. Everything was
Speaker 1: permitted at any time, Gerald Are, at the alumnus who
Speaker 1: recalled Gerald beckerfilating him like a possessed man, says of
Speaker 1: his school days. So everything is permitted at any times.
Speaker 1: The the way these kids are raised to sort of
Speaker 1: expect things are going to work in the olden Balde school, right,
Speaker 1: so that it's almost like nine seven. But nothing was
Speaker 1: a surprise to It's like accepted. The culture of the
Speaker 1: school is ship's going to happen because that's just how
Speaker 1: things work at the Olden Vould. Yeah, And at first
Speaker 1: they think it just goes back to the early seventies,
Speaker 1: but as these stories come out, more people start to
Speaker 1: tell their own experiences. One of these people who related
Speaker 1: her experiences was German television presenter Emily Freed, who attended
Speaker 1: the olden Balde School starting in nineteen sixty nine. In
Speaker 1: a book published to mark the school's centenary, she recounts
Speaker 1: how a teacher coaxed her into playing strip poker in
Speaker 1: his apartment. She said he goaded her for being a prudish,
Speaker 1: petit bourgeoisie, white being girl, until she finally caved into
Speaker 1: the pressure, although she was embarrassed and suppressed her memory
Speaker 1: of the incident for decades. So if you don't funk us,
Speaker 1: you're bougie. You're bougie. Yeah, you're too prudish. And the
Speaker 1: whole like, was the bisexuality thing born out of like
Speaker 1: an actual philosophical I think, or it is purely like
Speaker 1: we want to be I don't know. We just want
Speaker 1: people to be as sexually elastic as possible. That's it.
Speaker 1: We want people to be sexually elastic. We want them
Speaker 1: all fucking uh. And like they wanted the students also
Speaker 1: fucking other students, because the more of that that was
Speaker 1: going on, the more it camouflaged the teachers predations on
Speaker 1: these kids. Oh my god, yeah, I mean it's fucking
Speaker 1: wild arc like yeah, yeah, you know what won't create
Speaker 1: a culture of child molestation? These goods and services. That
Speaker 1: these goods and services, that's right, Miles, I knew that.
Speaker 1: I love these. That's that's our only line for advertisers,
Speaker 1: and it's a good one. Products. We're back. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: about to get so depressing her. Um now, When the
Speaker 1: news of all of the rapes at the olden Volge
Speaker 1: school came out, Emily, who was just talking about being
Speaker 1: called bougie for not wanting to fund her teacher, wrote
Speaker 1: a column for a Frankfurt newspaper. In that column, she
Speaker 1: explained that for her, some of this was like her
Speaker 1: feelings of whe whether or not to report anything, or
Speaker 1: whether or not this was okay. Her like emotions on
Speaker 1: the matter were very muddled by the fact that the
Speaker 1: olden Volge school took like, you know, what you might
Speaker 1: call a healthy attitude towards sexual relationships between students. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't punish kids for starting relationships or whatever. These
Speaker 1: are teenagers or whatnot. They had like you could see
Speaker 1: how at the time someone would be like, oh, they're
Speaker 1: just trying like not to be as as sex negative
Speaker 1: as a school is if you don't know about all
Speaker 1: child molestation that's going on. Um. So she noted in
Speaker 1: her column, it was suggested to students that they respected principle,
Speaker 1: understood them very well, and that it was a sign
Speaker 1: of recognition to show mutual affection. We students were happy
Speaker 1: to be able to explore sexuality in an angst free climate.
Speaker 1: That some teachers use this freedom as a cover for
Speaker 1: their assaults as a scandal. So that's how Emily winds
Speaker 1: up even you know, as a victim of this, Emily
Speaker 1: winds up feeling like, well, the school was basically good
Speaker 1: and this climate was basically good. It was just some
Speaker 1: teachers taking advantage of the system. Um, which is you
Speaker 1: know kind of I think, um, I think as we'll
Speaker 1: see her trying to protect herself emotionally a little bit
Speaker 1: by by bye, because she you know, that's one of
Speaker 1: the confusing things about being molested in a situation like this.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the years of her the old and Vulgueool
Speaker 1: were very positive, had positive memories for a number of
Speaker 1: the kids who were victims there. So you've got to
Speaker 1: try to like build this up as like no and
Speaker 1: the basic system was good. There was just a few
Speaker 1: people who uh use the freedom to abuse other like
Speaker 1: abuse the freedom essentially. That that's the way this this
Speaker 1: young woman, or she's not a young woman anymore, but
Speaker 1: that's the way she kind of thinks back on her
Speaker 1: time in the school and I think tries to protect
Speaker 1: herself emotionally. But there's evidence that, like even between the
Speaker 1: students themselves, a lot of what happened at the Old
Speaker 1: in Vulgied School was profoundly abusive. There's at least one
Speaker 1: report of an adolescent girl who was molested by several
Speaker 1: of her classmates. Um. And it's worth noting here that
Speaker 1: while all these children were a definition victims, um, a
Speaker 1: number of them victimized each other too. So this is
Speaker 1: a very confusing and messy situation. Yeah, because the culture
Speaker 1: was just just a fucking free for all at every level,
Speaker 1: and there's just no it's a pure chaos. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is seen as like like ideologically important, revolutionary,
Speaker 1: Like that's really how the teachers frame it to the students.
Speaker 1: Um that like what's going on at the Old in
Speaker 1: Vulgied School is just too far ahead of mainstream morality
Speaker 1: for most people. That I understand, Like, where how would
Speaker 1: they extend that logic out? It's like, how is us
Speaker 1: assaulting each other making us better students are more balanced people? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's you know, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to convince people to do something terrible if the
Speaker 1: thing that they were already doing wasn't great, and like
Speaker 1: German sexual morays in the nineteen sixties and seventies, uh,
Speaker 1: weren't the healthiest that humans have ever developed. Um, just
Speaker 1: like American sexual mores at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're very repressive, they're very like based on shame
Speaker 1: and guilt, and that's not healthy. So you can get
Speaker 1: people to buy into something that's even worse if the
Speaker 1: thing that they grew up doing is also fucked up
Speaker 1: right or to them it's like, yeah, this definitely is
Speaker 1: an optimal I guess, yeah, what's the harm in trying
Speaker 1: the complete other side of the spectrum? Exactly? Um. One
Speaker 1: people at the school at the time later recalled we
Speaker 1: were taught that we were different from everyone else, and
Speaker 1: what child, what person can remain unmoved by the sense
Speaker 1: of constantly being marveled at. We were real daredevils in
Speaker 1: our own paradise behind Golden Gates. So fucking confusing here.
Speaker 1: Even at the time, it was not paradise for all
Speaker 1: of those kids. Adam Kerfer, a former student at Oldenwald,
Speaker 1: called the school hell and described regular forced showers with
Speaker 1: his teachers. He claimed his music teacher, who was the
Speaker 1: head of his family, regularly pimped him and other boys
Speaker 1: out to friends on school trips. So you get this
Speaker 1: mix of students who like later on recognize, yeah, we
Speaker 1: were abused, but it was also a really good time.
Speaker 1: And these students who have consistently been like, no, this
Speaker 1: was a nightmare from the beginning. So really different recollections
Speaker 1: from different kids. Yeah, if it's just sort of subconsciously
Speaker 1: like anything, like you know, that cycle of abuse just continues.
Speaker 1: Other people like if the ones that do continue were
Speaker 1: just resigned to the fact that that was you know,
Speaker 1: that what that's what was their reality going forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's what's going on here. So once
Speaker 1: all of this broke in two thousand and ten, the
Speaker 1: school board resigned under mass outrage that they had chosen
Speaker 1: to investigate the matter internally back in when the first
Speaker 1: reports on Becker came out rather than report all that
Speaker 1: mass child rape to the police. Head Mistress Kaufman thought
Speaker 1: this line of reasoning was bullshit. She blamed the cover
Speaker 1: up on what she called mafia structures with the powerful
Speaker 1: friends that gerald Becker had accumulated, including heads of state
Speaker 1: and newspaper publishers. Uh yeah, there's like a let's see.
Speaker 1: One of the like articles I read on this in
Speaker 1: Women's Studies Quarterly describes it as a like institutional protection
Speaker 1: because the olden Volge School is seen as like such
Speaker 1: a key aspect of like the educational reform movement in Germany.
Speaker 1: So like, because these people are proud of the educational
Speaker 1: reform since the Nazis, they can't discard the oden Volged
Speaker 1: school because it's kind of at the forefront of that,
Speaker 1: even though it's very clear that like really fucked up
Speaker 1: ships going on there. So that's part of why this
Speaker 1: all gets uped under the rug now the h The
Speaker 1: author of that article um Pito Sexuality and especially German
Speaker 1: History and Women Studies Quarterly, suggests that a lot of
Speaker 1: the explanation for why all this molestation happened at Oldenvald
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties is tied into the sexual
Speaker 1: revolution and the intellectual climate of the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: particularly in Germany. The author credits the concept of pedagogical eros,
Speaker 1: which was first cooked up by a guy named Gustav Weinken,
Speaker 1: who was Paul Geheb's old partner at the school he
Speaker 1: helped run before founding Odenwald. Now, the term pedagogical eros
Speaker 1: referred initially to homosexual erotic attraction between a pupil and
Speaker 1: a teacher. Vinikin didn't see this as a bad thing.
Speaker 1: He was very influenced by Platonic Greek attitudes towards teacher
Speaker 1: student relationships, which were often erotic and sexual. And we
Speaker 1: can look back in time and say like, we're profoundly
Speaker 1: abusive as well. Um, but he's looking at this stuff,
Speaker 1: is like, oh, this is the way teaching ought to be.
Speaker 1: This is Paul Geheb's old partner in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: I was looking back and like, hey man, they had
Speaker 1: some good ideas. Yeah. I don't know why, kids, I
Speaker 1: don't know why we're I don't know why we're disrespecting
Speaker 1: our history or some ship. Yeah, is that really just
Speaker 1: oh my god? Heros that's like, yeah, it's so weird
Speaker 1: though too, Like the language and the vocabulary these people
Speaker 1: create to not what they're doing what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to have that language around it, otherwise people
Speaker 1: will realize, well, you're just you're just talking about fucking kids, dude.
Speaker 1: Right If if they were up front, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I just abused the kids sexually. That that
Speaker 1: they wrapped themselves in ideology to get away with this
Speaker 1: sort of It's like, right, I guess that's the hallmark
Speaker 1: of any fucked up movement. Yeah, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: that the Catholic priest did. It's just a different ideology,
Speaker 1: but it's it's the same thing. Um. So you have
Speaker 1: these very old ideas about like Greek you know, pedagogical
Speaker 1: eros and stuff, um, and you have these things kind
Speaker 1: of merging very modern ideas of the sexual revolution because
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and seventies is a time when people
Speaker 1: are increasingly in the West lifting taboos against sex um,
Speaker 1: which is good. But when you mix it with with
Speaker 1: these child molesty desires and some of these like old
Speaker 1: bad ideas, you get this very toxic slurry um that results.
Speaker 1: And it's it's a very complicated thing that happens, but
Speaker 1: it's not just at the Odenwald School. And this is
Speaker 1: where we start talking about what was happening in the
Speaker 1: rest of Germany at the time, because there was actually
Speaker 1: a very weird and virulent strain of pro child fucking
Speaker 1: ideology that ran rampant among the German intellectual community in
Speaker 1: the first decades after World War Two. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the kinder Latin movement? Uh, that sounds familiar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a it's it's a fairly prominent thing.
Speaker 1: It's started in the nineteen seventies as a reaction to
Speaker 1: the unspeakable horrors of Nazism. The basic goal of the
Speaker 1: movement was to raise children to be more obedient, disobedient
Speaker 1: to adults. So people think at like what happens in
Speaker 1: the Nazis, and they're like, oh, we shouldn't like this
Speaker 1: culture of obedience that we've inculcated in Germany has horrible consequences.
Speaker 1: So we need to inculcate a culture of disobedience now
Speaker 1: within our students, which makes sense, right, You can see
Speaker 1: the logical through line there. Absolutely see why you would
Speaker 1: come to that conclusion. Now In previous eras German child
Speaker 1: rearing had placed a strong emphasis on obedience above all else.
Speaker 1: The idea was that raising children in Germany had to
Speaker 1: completely change in order to avoid a repeat of the
Speaker 1: horrors of the thirties and forties. So this all came
Speaker 1: from a good place, but it didn't stay in a
Speaker 1: good place. And I'm gonna quote again from that Women
Speaker 1: Studies Quarterly article. Within the anti authoritarian kinder Lattan movement,
Speaker 1: which was closely associated with the early phage of the
Speaker 1: New Women's Movement, great significance was assigned to the idea
Speaker 1: of liberating child sexuality. This was linked to a vision
Speaker 1: reaching back specifically to Wilhelm Reich, who held that liberation
Speaker 1: of child sexuality would lead to the liberation of human beings.
Speaker 1: The idea fitted with a politicization of desire in the
Speaker 1: context of the nineteen sixty movements, and can be seen
Speaker 1: analogously as a politicization of childhood's sexuality. The proclamation of
Speaker 1: their liberation was expected to contribute to their childhood happiness.
Speaker 1: A number of texts from the West German anti authoritary
Speaker 1: and educational milieu did not distinguish between childhood and early
Speaker 1: adult sexuality, but sought to flatten sexual distinctions within the
Speaker 1: generations m HM. Now Wilhelm Reich is the guy who
Speaker 1: coined the term sexual revolution um. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on here. It seems like what you've got
Speaker 1: is this very well meaning movement that comes out as
Speaker 1: a as an understandable reaction to the horrible crimes of
Speaker 1: the Nazi era. But you also have all these people
Speaker 1: who just want to fund kids and see this as
Speaker 1: an opportunity like, well, I can slide a little bit
Speaker 1: of my ideology in here, these are the things I believe,
Speaker 1: and I can cloak it as something more than just
Speaker 1: me being horny for little kids. Right, I'm changing I'm
Speaker 1: changing attitudes. I'm saving a future generation of Germans so
Speaker 1: that you know, nothing terrible happens. Well, also completely taking
Speaker 1: advantage of that sentiment for yeah, so um yeah. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to say, like the whole kinder lat
Speaker 1: movement was not about child molestation. There were actually a
Speaker 1: lot of very important developments and educational and child rearing
Speaker 1: policy that can be traced back to it. But you
Speaker 1: also had a funkload of pedophiles with inrovement who used
Speaker 1: the opening up of society is a chance to pray
Speaker 1: on little kids. Quote. Within the circles of these movements,
Speaker 1: the alternative milieu and the advansipatory sexology of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: Texan documents on child sexuality lacked perspective that reinforced a
Speaker 1: child's right and ability to say no to sexual contact conduct.
Speaker 1: So this is part of how Yeah, so these these
Speaker 1: these teachers who are trying to basically stick uh and
Speaker 1: thinkers who were trying to basically like mainstream child molestation
Speaker 1: by hijacking the kinder lad movement. They're noting the importance
Speaker 1: of emancipating children's sexuality, but they're not writing anything about
Speaker 1: the importance of consent. That doesn't The assumption then is
Speaker 1: that kids want this kind end of contact that way,
Speaker 1: and people like went with that because I mean, like
Speaker 1: if you're a really a whole lot of them, did, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, disobedience is purely built on agency. That's because
Speaker 1: this isn't this isn't a real like, this chunk of
Speaker 1: the movement isn't real. There's no ideology. Sure, but I
Speaker 1: guess like even if you were hearing this out loud
Speaker 1: and you're like, this is fucking terrible, can I like
Speaker 1: limb because if if they had to explain themselves, they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I got caught. You know, it's this matter of it's
Speaker 1: this matter of Once the weight of cultural forces behind change,
Speaker 1: most people are are cowards, you know, whether that cultural
Speaker 1: change is like the switch to Nazism or the switch
Speaker 1: to childhood sexual liberation. An awful lot of people are
Speaker 1: just going to kind of go along with it if
Speaker 1: it seems like what everyone else is doing. That's that's
Speaker 1: what is happening here. Now, this is all very complicated
Speaker 1: to talk about, especially since some of what happened in
Speaker 1: the Kindred Laton movement has its roots in the struggle
Speaker 1: for gay rights. See in the sixties and seventies in Germany,
Speaker 1: the age of consent for heterosexual sex was eighteen, but
Speaker 1: the age of consent for homosexual male sex was twenty one,
Speaker 1: which is obviously unjust. Um So there was a campaign
Speaker 1: to lower the age of consent for homosexual male sex
Speaker 1: down to eighteen. And there's nothing wrong with that, obviously.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna have the age of consent be eighteen,
Speaker 1: it should be eighteen for everybody. Nobody's I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody's gonna have a problem with that, But you can
Speaker 1: see how the general air of discussion around a lot
Speaker 1: of the left at that time would have been focused
Speaker 1: on lowering age of consents and how that brought cover
Speaker 1: to people who wanted the age of consent to be
Speaker 1: way lower than so just like the same way you
Speaker 1: have white supremacists like sort of taking advantage of this
Speaker 1: disruption in the economy and people giving like sort of
Speaker 1: these straw man arguments about well, it's this other group,
Speaker 1: and then people would darker purposes go yeah, yeah, right
Speaker 1: right right, also white people. It's it's like white supremacists
Speaker 1: seeing that like everyone's talking about uh, you know, nationalized
Speaker 1: healthcare and are like, yeah, we do need more socialism,
Speaker 1: but it's got to be a socialism that ex ludes
Speaker 1: people who aren't part of the racial community, like a
Speaker 1: national sort of social tim like yeah, this happens in
Speaker 1: every sphere of life where this is. Or their different
Speaker 1: laws for gay sex between women, I've noticed how you
Speaker 1: made that distinction. They I don't think they really thought
Speaker 1: about it, of course, Like like that's one of those
Speaker 1: things like sometimes it was kind of easier to be
Speaker 1: a gay woman than a gay man, just because nobody
Speaker 1: really thought about it as much. It was like wasn't
Speaker 1: even discussed like really to the like like it was
Speaker 1: taboo really to talk about gay mail sex. And I
Speaker 1: think sometimes gay women kind of slid under the radar
Speaker 1: because people just assumed it didn't exist. One of the
Speaker 1: unintended benefits of toxic patriarchy. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: this is all very complicated to talk about. I I
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit wrong about what I'm saying about, like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, lesbian sex and this only read into so
Speaker 1: much here. Well, yeah, it was weird. Even the government
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, there was a distinction to even codify that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I found a very good article about all this on
Speaker 1: Der Spiegel called the Sexual Revolution in Children How the
Speaker 1: Left went too far um and it points out that
Speaker 1: Klaus Reiner Wool, the publisher of a popular leftist magazine
Speaker 1: at the time in Germany, wrote open calls for sex
Speaker 1: with miners while molesting his own daughters. It also goes
Speaker 1: into horrific detail about how some experiments and communal living
Speaker 1: during this period went very very badly. Quote, in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen sixty seven, three women and four men
Speaker 1: moved into an apartment and an old building on who
Speaker 1: Gee brek Strasa together with two small children, a three
Speaker 1: year old girl, Grisha and a four year old boy Nessim.
Speaker 1: For the residents, the cohabitation experiment was an attempt to
Speaker 1: overcome all bourgeoisie constraints, which included everything from separate bank
Speaker 1: accounts and closed bathroom doors to fidelity within couples and
Speaker 1: the development of feelings of shame. The two children were
Speaker 1: raised by the group, which often meant that no one
Speaker 1: paid much attention to them. Because the adults had made
Speaker 1: it their goal to not just tolerate, but in fact
Speaker 1: a firm child sexuality, they were not satisfied to simply
Speaker 1: act as passive observer. Now the article goes on into
Speaker 1: some uncomfortable to tail about what happened with that, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to quote the stuff about the sex
Speaker 1: acts that followed because it's gross. Um. But there's this
Speaker 1: there's this complicated era where you have like, you know,
Speaker 1: kids are going to experiment and like grab things, right um.
Speaker 1: And because everyone's going around newd all the time, kids
Speaker 1: will grab adults, and adults will feel that it's like
Speaker 1: counter revolutionary basically to stop this, and so some of
Speaker 1: the molestation happens that way too, But it's very, very
Speaker 1: complicated and weird what goes on in German kind of
Speaker 1: leftist revolutionary circles at this time. And this was yet
Speaker 1: just sort of again to push back against all these
Speaker 1: social constructs and say, what if we take all take
Speaker 1: them all down and there are no rules to the
Speaker 1: point that we're veering into like just the darkest kind
Speaker 1: of ship. That's exactly what happens. And you know, there
Speaker 1: was a stigma against me king a fuss about it
Speaker 1: if you thought what was going on was unhealthy, because
Speaker 1: doing so would would make you seem counter revolutionary. Um,
Speaker 1: one trude, you're being exactly yeah, One teacher later called quote.
Speaker 1: I found it incredibly difficult to take a stance. I
Speaker 1: felt that what we were trying to do was fundamentally correct,
Speaker 1: but when it came to this issue fucking kids, I
Speaker 1: thought this is crazy, It just isn't right. But then
Speaker 1: I felt ashamed of thinking that way. I think many
Speaker 1: were in the same position, and you can see you
Speaker 1: you stick that same reasoning to people who kind of
Speaker 1: went along with the Nazi re shames crimes, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it speaks for millions of Germans in that period. Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really ironic to me that a movement that started
Speaker 1: as an anti authoritarian response to fascism ended with people
Speaker 1: sitting by and watching other kinds of horrific crimes occur
Speaker 1: because they were still too scared to go. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of lessons about human nature in here, and none
Speaker 1: of them are positive. Yeah, seriously, Yeah, it's yeah. The
Speaker 1: the x us as of the kinder Lattan movement are
Speaker 1: i think, like evidence of how deeply toxic group think
Speaker 1: can be, regardless of what side it comes from, and
Speaker 1: how vulnerable times of social change and exploration are to
Speaker 1: the whims of hidden predators. You know, it's any time,
Speaker 1: you know, like now we're changes in the air, you
Speaker 1: have to be very fucking careful because changes always is
Speaker 1: especially necessary and society as unhealthy as our own, but
Speaker 1: it also provides cover to the worst kinds of human beings.
Speaker 1: And also like the sort of naivety to think you
Speaker 1: could completely just one eighty like an entire nation's culture
Speaker 1: within a generation, and absurd like it's centuries and centuries
Speaker 1: of norms and traditions that give you that, and to
Speaker 1: be like, well, all right, if we do this and
Speaker 1: kids just like we make them all rebellious and like,
Speaker 1: you know, our kids just need to be more punk rock,
Speaker 1: Like that's not the solution, and to think that again,
Speaker 1: but I think also it was also that wasn't really
Speaker 1: the point for lot of people. The point was to
Speaker 1: create this environment in which this kind of behavior could
Speaker 1: be seen as like not necessarily because it's in the
Speaker 1: name of revolution and evolution. And this is where the
Speaker 1: episode gets more confusing again because if you you know,
Speaker 1: it makes sense if you look at it the way
Speaker 1: that like it's started to look right now, which is
Speaker 1: that like, okay, l sixties, early seventies, you have this
Speaker 1: movement in Germany for educational reform in a new way
Speaker 1: of looking at like how children are raised, and child
Speaker 1: molesters used this as cover to to to you know,
Speaker 1: essentially abuse kids. Um and this guy, Gerald Becker, winds
Speaker 1: up in charge of the Old and Alge School, influenced
Speaker 1: by these ideas in and inculcates a culture of child
Speaker 1: ripe within the school. Right makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: goes inline with German historical trends at the time, except
Speaker 1: for one problem. Gerald Becker and the sexual revolution of
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies is not when the Old Involge
Speaker 1: School started becoming a haven for child rape. It started
Speaker 1: it with the person we started talking about at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, Paul Geheb. For a very long time,
Speaker 1: Paul was viewed as something as a hero, both within
Speaker 1: the field of education and within Germany. Albert Einstein called
Speaker 1: him one of the few upright men who maintained the
Speaker 1: honor of Germany during the horrible Nazi era. The school
Speaker 1: he established in Switzerland during a war became a haven
Speaker 1: for child refugees and orphansive Nazism's mad dashed through Europe.
Speaker 1: But Paul was not the man he seemed to be,
Speaker 1: and the Old Vald School's history of child abuse went
Speaker 1: back much further than the late sixties. In fact, it
Speaker 1: goes all the way to the beginning. None of this
Speaker 1: came into light until late in two thousand ten, when
Speaker 1: Der Spiegel conducted a deep investigation into the school. Now
Speaker 1: by this point, other investigators had revealed the sweeping history
Speaker 1: of sexual assault from the sixties up until the early nineties.
Speaker 1: At least Adrian Kerfort, the chairman of a group formed
Speaker 1: by children molested by Old Vold teachers estimated at this
Speaker 1: point that between five hundred and nine hundred children had
Speaker 1: been victimized, but most people still believed that Paul Geheb
Speaker 1: and his beloved legacy as a reformer were clean. All
Speaker 1: of that was blasted away by the investigation of an
Speaker 1: educationalist named Christie Stark. Stark basically gains access to the
Speaker 1: archives at the old involved school and starts like reading
Speaker 1: through all of these letters that had been sent from parents,
Speaker 1: to teachers and from to school administrators, starting from the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the school, and a lot of what
Speaker 1: she finds is deeply fucked up. Uh And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from that, dear Schpiegle right up. On
Speaker 1: September four, a mother wrote to Gaheb's wife, Edith, who
Speaker 1: had built up to school with him. This mother, e
Speaker 1: m described in detail her twelve year old sons allegations
Speaker 1: that he had been abused by a teacher. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the first such claim. Three weeks earlier, a father had
Speaker 1: taken his daughter out of the school on the grounds
Speaker 1: that she had been very disturbed by the nocturnal visits
Speaker 1: by adults that she had witnessed educationalist Crystal Stark says
Speaker 1: that the school received a number of such letters from concerned,
Speaker 1: shocked parents over the years, with some pointing the finger
Speaker 1: at older pupils and others at the teachers. So, after
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of pains making research, Stark writes a
Speaker 1: dissertation on all this. Now. Prior to her research, the
Speaker 1: understanding was that most of the children who had been
Speaker 1: abused at Oldenvald were boys, but she found vastly more
Speaker 1: complaints from parents about suspected or confirmed sexual relations with
Speaker 1: between their daughters and school staff. Some of these parents
Speaker 1: presented love letters that their daughters had received from teachers
Speaker 1: during summer vacation, and shockingly, these early nine parents were
Speaker 1: generally too scared to a complain, which is probably why
Speaker 1: the behavior flew under the radar. One mother even promised
Speaker 1: the school directly that she had no intent of causing
Speaker 1: a scandal that would put the school in an unfavorable light.
Speaker 1: Even in the days of Gheb, the Oldenvald School's reputation
Speaker 1: as a bastion of bold experimentation and scholarship protected it
Speaker 1: from harm. So now I'm gonna quote again from that
Speaker 1: dear Spiegel article on February nineteen thirty one, he wrote
Speaker 1: to a female pupil who had asked for his help.
Speaker 1: He had sent the seventeen year old girl to a
Speaker 1: friend of his in London, a fellow teacher who was
Speaker 1: supposed to improve her English, but whom she said molested her.
Speaker 1: Geh Heeb defended his colleague vehemently. He bravely treads new
Speaker 1: ground in the realm of sexuality in particular, and it's
Speaker 1: discovered new successful methods that are of course extremely infuriating
Speaker 1: for a high society. And it's hypocritical sexual morality. So
Speaker 1: this is how, this is how he argues to an
Speaker 1: abused child. Yeah that she wasn't in fact abused now
Speaker 1: he uh. I just like also, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: get it because history moves at a very its own pace,
Speaker 1: and especially things from this era. We don't have the
Speaker 1: same speed at which information travels. But it's wild that
Speaker 1: it's like they're like, oh yeah, back in like this
Speaker 1: has been going on for a century. Yeah yeah. So
Speaker 1: when that girl you know wrote him this article complaining
Speaker 1: about being molested, heb advised her not to make a fuss, uh,
Speaker 1: and he wrote, it's natural that stupid little girls immediately
Speaker 1: feel sexually threatened, call him a pig, and maybe even
Speaker 1: call for the police to get involved. She's she's dumb
Speaker 1: for yeah now. And this happens all the time with women,
Speaker 1: you guys know, you know, you've seen it a hundred times.
Speaker 1: It's like the sentiment of it all the Also, like
Speaker 1: the shame part two is like very interesting because I know,
Speaker 1: you know, with the Germans and the Japanese, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: forming the axis back then in World War Two, like
Speaker 1: the sort of similarities in culture to like, you know,
Speaker 1: even in Japanese culture, you wouldn't you would maybe be
Speaker 1: a little hesitant to call something out, not necessarily to
Speaker 1: this scale, but in general because you don't want to
Speaker 1: be seen as the person who's trying to disrupt something
Speaker 1: or malign a group or something like that. And it's
Speaker 1: a very powerful force to just sort of maintain the
Speaker 1: status quo because you know, obviously Americans too, it were
Speaker 1: on the difference on the other side of the spectrum
Speaker 1: to aggressively probably probably toxic degree where it's like we'll
Speaker 1: fucking scream about everything and anything, and sometimes about ship
Speaker 1: that really isn't even bad, just because we want to
Speaker 1: be able to scream about something. But when you see
Speaker 1: even this, like this mother was like, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the evidence in front of me, Yet the thing that
Speaker 1: is preventing me isn't that I don't I'm not. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not that I'm mistaking what is actually happening here objectively,
Speaker 1: It's that I don't want to be seen as a
Speaker 1: bolt rocker. Yeah. And it it gets even more fucked
Speaker 1: up than that because you know, we talked a lot
Speaker 1: about what Paul did during the Nazi era and how
Speaker 1: like he resisted the Nazis and he you know, his
Speaker 1: his school helped protect kids, and that's all true, but
Speaker 1: the Nazi era also provided Paul with a shield for
Speaker 1: a lot of his abuse. So that girl who got
Speaker 1: molested that he wrote this letter to her father was
Speaker 1: a lawyer and he pulled her out of school, but
Speaker 1: he didn't feel comfortable suing or pressing charges because he
Speaker 1: was a Jewish person and his daughter was also jew. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this suggests that Paul Geheb, who bravely stood up
Speaker 1: to the Nazis, may have purposefully reached out so like
Speaker 1: this this Jewish lawyer, he's not a wealthy lawyer, um,
Speaker 1: and his daughter was only able to afford membership in
Speaker 1: the Old Old School because Paul Geheb had authored her
Speaker 1: a scholarship, which suggests perhaps that Paul Geheb may have
Speaker 1: purposefully reached out to members of vulnerable groups in order
Speaker 1: to extend scholarships, knowing that their marginalization would make them
Speaker 1: less likely to retaliate against him in the school. It's
Speaker 1: like classic predator behavior. I mean, if nobody's gonna listen
Speaker 1: to this Jew talk about our it's like and also
Speaker 1: the government doesn't care about them, so they're a low poward.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing like with the amount of sexual
Speaker 1: abusers that will teach on reservations too, and because of
Speaker 1: like tribal laws are like well I can just sunk
Speaker 1: off the rez and then it's a different system of
Speaker 1: law and I can skirt it and continue to prey
Speaker 1: upon vulnerable groups. M It's like, I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: it's not that it's it's just I was gonna say
Speaker 1: it's it's not fascinating because it's so dark, but to
Speaker 1: under to know that it's the exact same process that
Speaker 1: goes into it. Whether it's like if they're priests who
Speaker 1: we're going after, children who may be like, uh, like
Speaker 1: hearing impaired or deaf or like whatever, because they know
Speaker 1: those children speak less to their parents and are less
Speaker 1: likely to talk to their parents about what happens. Because
Speaker 1: of that, they're targeted. And now to see in this one,
Speaker 1: he's taking advantage of the anti semitism of the time
Speaker 1: to also find additional cover two in this What do
Speaker 1: you think that was as intentional as it was or
Speaker 1: this is an example or was he also maybe like
Speaker 1: giving scholarships to students who were from those groups too,
Speaker 1: like they're like, yeah, you may be marginalized, but also
Speaker 1: you can come to this school for free or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: I think he was doing that, and I think it
Speaker 1: made it look like it was a very progressive school
Speaker 1: and he was protecting these kids. But I also think
Speaker 1: he took advantage of that status yea, of the fact
Speaker 1: that they had less protections. Yeah. Now, klass Man is
Speaker 1: probably the most internationally renowned alumni of the Owen Volt School.
Speaker 1: Thomas Man's kid and dear Spegel reporting suggests that he
Speaker 1: too was a victim of Paul Gaeheed. Man published a
Speaker 1: book called The Old Man, which is a story about
Speaker 1: a school principle who praised on young girls at his school.
Speaker 1: In the book, he wrote this, after dinner, the principle
Speaker 1: lies down on a sofa and listens to the sounds
Speaker 1: of playing and singing children. A girl comes in, the
Speaker 1: principle speaks to and then becomes intimate with her. Mom wrote,
Speaker 1: he began stroking the girl. He even laid his head,
Speaker 1: his white, unimaginably old head with its fond mouth, into
Speaker 1: her lap. The text goes onto report about urgent, greedy
Speaker 1: caresses and of another girl whom, looking her straight in
Speaker 1: the eye, he threw himself at and kissed. Now. This
Speaker 1: is argued by Der Spiegel as a portrait of Paul
Speaker 1: Gaheed basically like Klaus Moan saw this legendary reformer molesting
Speaker 1: girls at school and couldn't say anything directly about it,
Speaker 1: but put it in one of his books after he
Speaker 1: got out of the school. He was a famous writer. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And in fact, when the book was published, Gheheed complained
Speaker 1: to Thomas Man because he believed that the story would
Speaker 1: inflict damage on the old involved school. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: yeah now. The document Start poured through included a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen letter written to Paul Geheed by one of his
Speaker 1: young students. The author writes that she depended on him
Speaker 1: and had a right to a ring, perhaps due to
Speaker 1: all that had happened. She felt that this would make
Speaker 1: her safe, or at least safer. Now, the wording of
Speaker 1: this letter from a student to Paul Geheb doesn't make
Speaker 1: it entirely clear what happens, but it sounds like Paul
Speaker 1: got a teenager pregnant. Like that's what this letter sounds like.
Speaker 1: You've got this like young girl writing to this teacher
Speaker 1: saying that like she depends on him and she should
Speaker 1: give her a ring because of what he did to her, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe made her get an abortion? An abortion. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to say. Yeah. Now, we do know that the
Speaker 1: school's tenth anniversary celebration in nineteen twenty was canceled because
Speaker 1: a female teacher committed suicide. We now know that this
Speaker 1: woman had a relationship with Geheb as well, and it's
Speaker 1: unclear what drove her to suicide, but I think it's
Speaker 1: we can safely assume it was something very shady um
Speaker 1: and probably had to do with all of this and suicide.
Speaker 1: I don't know that now I've got my wasn't suicide? Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly hard to say. In nineteen thirty, at the school's
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary, Paul had some of the girls students pose
Speaker 1: naked for a photographer. He was then given an album
Speaker 1: of the photos, which biographer Martin Knoff described in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six as particularly risk a semi ironic, semi serious,
Speaker 1: and unthinkable in the present day. Um so naff who again,
Speaker 1: like Paul's this educational titans this, this is a very
Speaker 1: positive biography, and nobody at the time until thou and
Speaker 1: six expects this is evidence that paula was molesting anybody.
Speaker 1: But within the context of this additional evidence like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: of course he made himself a porn calendar of his students.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I think. I mean, wow, you're really a
Speaker 1: little bastard. Yeah yeah, I might with him. I'm just
Speaker 1: like gobsmacked at how out in the open it was.
Speaker 1: But it just sort of taking advantage of the perfect
Speaker 1: societal climate where it gave enough cover to do something
Speaker 1: so overt, and also just sort of where we were
Speaker 1: as a as a world global culture of like how
Speaker 1: we viewed these things. And it's just I on some level,
Speaker 1: were there also people who were in positions of power
Speaker 1: wrapped up in this or it was purely based off
Speaker 1: of this sort of like intellectual appeal or the way
Speaker 1: he was spinning it that was giving him this cover.
Speaker 1: I mean it's both. You know, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of famous alumni from the school, a lot of rich
Speaker 1: and powerful people send their kids there. Um. It's it's
Speaker 1: viewed with a lot of prestige. You know, it's respected
Speaker 1: enough that the Nazis aren't willing to shut it down.
Speaker 1: They just want to like take control of it because
Speaker 1: it's this internationally recognized institution. Um. And it's it's hum.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's clear now that the Old Invulged
Speaker 1: School was from the beginning it's more of a palace
Speaker 1: to sexual abuse than an institution of learning. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things you read at the top
Speaker 1: of this all of these famous attributes about how the
Speaker 1: school was organized, the division of children and students into families,
Speaker 1: the rural location of the of the of the campus,
Speaker 1: the focus on the equality of children and adults, and
Speaker 1: like at the start of the story, before you know
Speaker 1: any of this, that seems like a really high minded rhetoric. Um.
Speaker 1: And once you have all of the context, it seems
Speaker 1: like a perfect way to construct a society in which
Speaker 1: you can abuse children incredibly effectively. Um and in retrospect,
Speaker 1: the signs are all over the school. Dr Henry Cassier,
Speaker 1: Gheb's nephew and a student at the Old Invulged School,
Speaker 1: wrote a praiseful article about Paul and his educational methods
Speaker 1: and the Unesco Courier in the early nineteen sixties, and
Speaker 1: it includes a quote that I think is really telling.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if Cassier was an abuser or
Speaker 1: an abuse victim. He went to the school. He very
Speaker 1: well may have been abused. He very well may have
Speaker 1: been both. It's hard to say, but this quote is
Speaker 1: really telling him me. Among his friends, Paulus Paul gehebe
Speaker 1: counted men like Romain Rowland, Gandhi teg Are, Albert Schweitzer, Einstein,
Speaker 1: men who put their stamp on the age. What did
Speaker 1: all these men have in common? To answer, in the
Speaker 1: words of Tagore, they were all travelers whose eternal journey
Speaker 1: is towards the future. Climbing barriers, crossing mountains through the
Speaker 1: gaping century. They strode out into the unknown, into the unseen,
Speaker 1: and their blood the trumpets sounded beyond all borders, go beyond.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yeah, yeah, so is that I mean,
Speaker 1: were these people hanging around each other to a lot?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah? So is this like, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: the O G. Epstein kind of circle of influential person
Speaker 1: who I mean, is there a dimension of this where
Speaker 1: he may have been trafficking to or or people knew
Speaker 1: like if you hang around paulas there's you know, a
Speaker 1: chance that there are going to be children around Paulice
Speaker 1: is kind of an Epstein like figure. Um, he's this
Speaker 1: guy who we there's definitely allegations that later on, you
Speaker 1: know that like Becker and people who are in the
Speaker 1: school later on pimped out kids. And I think it
Speaker 1: would be foolish to assume that Paul wasn't doing the
Speaker 1: same thing. Um, And I think you have to look
Speaker 1: at his association with guys like Einstein and wonder the fuck? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: what did you get up to? It seemed like all
Speaker 1: those people right would see themselves in the work that
Speaker 1: they're doing is so massively important. Right, And even as
Speaker 1: that quote was like going beyond barriers, going past whatever,
Speaker 1: going past what is legal in the name of exploration,
Speaker 1: or this like and I'm it's in service of my
Speaker 1: genius or something. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's really complicated, it's
Speaker 1: really a messy, and like, you know, it makes me
Speaker 1: think back to like how we now know that um,
Speaker 1: what's his name? Um? Uh, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates too,
Speaker 1: But Stephen Hawking was when visited Epstein's and like was
Speaker 1: on his plane and so yes it was Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: You've got all these all these people who are are
Speaker 1: treated in society as mental titans, many of them with
Speaker 1: solid justification to be treated that way. Um, but also
Speaker 1: this this intense need to kind of elevate themselves above society. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know that's not always a bad thing, because
Speaker 1: society is fucked up, but I think it leads some
Speaker 1: people to justify things that are horrific because it's just
Speaker 1: the thing that they happen to want. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like the fact that Einstein comes into
Speaker 1: the story obliquely. I've heard no allegations that he was
Speaker 1: ever did anything. But also like how would we have
Speaker 1: known all Betty's Yeah, well I'm sure too. Even then,
Speaker 1: like for someone like Einstein, whose name even rings even
Speaker 1: louder than gehbs, Like there must have been even more pressure, Like, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not about to say something about Albert Einstein or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I guess that is that thing, right at a
Speaker 1: certain level, maybe just having the world. No, you might
Speaker 1: be the smartest person or the greatest this or the wealthiest,
Speaker 1: that just isn't enough that you have to go No,
Speaker 1: I need to further demonstrate my superiority by saying that
Speaker 1: norms and the laws of mortals just do not apply
Speaker 1: to me at all, because I'm in this position too.
Speaker 1: Like if that's sort of further is that because at
Speaker 1: a certain point, if your ego is wrapped up in
Speaker 1: your sense of self of being the sort of deity,
Speaker 1: then yeah, like why would you even ever think you could?
Speaker 1: You need to abide by the rules for the normal
Speaker 1: the mortals. Ye oh b story, yeah yeah, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: This has made me want to start at school and
Speaker 1: if anything, we just it's what to protect. No, you
Speaker 1: have to protect the kids. You just you don't to
Speaker 1: stop all this from happening, You just build a big
Speaker 1: walled compound and you put all the kids in there,
Speaker 1: and then you shoot anyone who tries to enter. Mm
Speaker 1: hmmmmmmmmmm it's like like like a prison but without doors.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm mmm interesting. Yeah, you know, I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to your Ted talk. Mm hmm. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: say the least. Yeah, yeah, yes, my Ted talk unlocking
Speaker 1: children in a cage to protect them from child molesters.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, at this point people would be like,
Speaker 1: I mean there was there was something about that talk.
Speaker 1: I really got something from that. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: where you how are you feeling at the end of this,
Speaker 1: Miles inspired. No, it's just like it's you know, this
Speaker 1: has been the abuse of children and the weak is
Speaker 1: a theme that will always echo into eternity in both directions,
Speaker 1: in the past and the future. And it's like, no
Speaker 1: matter how far back you you go, or what or whatever,
Speaker 1: when you look at the details, the same types of
Speaker 1: people and personalities create these very similar outcomes. It's just
Speaker 1: that every fifty years it has a new version or
Speaker 1: a new way of it happening, or a new uh
Speaker 1: look and feel to it. Where this But like again,
Speaker 1: when when we talk about every time, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like this, it's like this. It could be about
Speaker 1: Jerry Sandusky, it could be about Paul Nasser, it could
Speaker 1: be about uh, Jeffrey Epstein, it's like that and anything.
Speaker 1: It's just the same thing over and over. And I think,
Speaker 1: I guess the benefit is, like, the more we're able
Speaker 1: to look at these things like this and be see
Speaker 1: these patterns objectively in these sort of tactics, is you know,
Speaker 1: the way we can someone somewhat maybe trying to you know,
Speaker 1: reduce the incidences. But and I think it's important to
Speaker 1: see this within the context of both like the left
Speaker 1: and the right, or I guess it might be more
Speaker 1: useful to be what as conservative versus progressive, and a
Speaker 1: conservative institution, a culture of child molestation or of just
Speaker 1: abuse in general grows up among like, um, these ideas
Speaker 1: of entrenched authority and hierarchy, and in respect for like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to like you don't want to shame
Speaker 1: the church. You don't want to shame yourself because what
Speaker 1: happened to you as a crime for you too, so
Speaker 1: like you know you'll be judged for doing it. Whereas
Speaker 1: kind of on the more progressive end of things, um,
Speaker 1: it's no, no, no, we're we're liberating ourselves. This is
Speaker 1: a positive moment. And if you if you don't feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with this, then your counter revolutionary, your bougie, you're
Speaker 1: you're too conservative and you should be ashamed of that.
Speaker 1: But it's like so it's it's the structure is different
Speaker 1: depending on sort of whether it's a progressive or a
Speaker 1: conservative movement that the abuse is hiding in, but they're
Speaker 1: both equally uh prone to to to fostering predators, because
Speaker 1: that's how predators work, right A. Speaking of predators, Bastard's
Speaker 1: mm hmm, you work. You're gonna plug your Twitter or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll plug my Twitter. I'll also plug my new podcast,
Speaker 1: uh with one of your listeners favorite guests, Sophia Alexandra
Speaker 1: Her and I have a new podcast called four twenty
Speaker 1: Day Fiance where we talk about the t l C
Speaker 1: show ninety Day Fiance in in elevated way by where high.
Speaker 1: But that is the new show, and I employ your
Speaker 1: listeners if you like hearing us talk about much lighter topics. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a great show. Other than that, Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: Miles of Gray and every day actually twice a day
Speaker 1: now on the daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien. Well, talk
Speaker 1: zeit Geist yourself up with Jack and Miles. Check out
Speaker 1: the four into twenty day Fiance. Find us on the
Speaker 1: website Internet dot com at Behind the Bastards dot com
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at at Bastards Pod. Also Instagram find
Speaker 1: me at I Right Okay, on Twitter and find uh.
Speaker 1: There's really no good joke to tie into this episode
Speaker 1: about the mass rape of children, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to end the episode on that note. That's very responsible
Speaker 1: of you. Thank you. Have a have a good day, everybody.
Speaker 1: I don't think too much about this stuff afterwards, but
Speaker 1: you will. Yeah,