18 minute read
Deeds That Matter
The Innovative Work of Elise Casper, Dietrich Asten, and Bill Bottum
by Christopher Schaefer
It is a blessing of aging that you naturally reflect on the people whom you have met in your life and their contributions to your own becoming as well as to how their lives and deeds have affected the world. I wish to remember and briefly describe the life and work of three individuals who were committed students of Rudolf Steiner, and who, I believe, had a significant impact on American life, in particular in the realm of money and business. That they are not well known in public life is not surprising as they focused their efforts on how to bring spirit into matter, how to transform the egotism and self-seeking so prevalent in a market-oriented capitalistic system into a true service orientation. They are also not often remembered in the circle of people connected to Waldorf education and anthroposophy as they were innovators in business life, initiators in the realm of the will and not directly in the area of cultural renewal.
Elise Casper (1919-97) overcame the egotism often associated with wealth by fostering community responsibility in the allocation of gift funds through the creation of the Mid-States Shared Gifting Group.
Dietrich Asten (1922-84), a successful businessman and part owner of the Asten-Hill Company, used his personal wealth selflessly and often anonymously to support the work of anthroposophy in its many practical applications: Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, adult education, the Christian Community, eurythmy and the healing arts, as well as supporting the Anthroposophical Society itself. In addition he transformed his company into a model employer committed to high levels of integrity, and initiated a conscious development process for all of its work groups and employees.
The third person, Bill Bottum (1927-2005), president and CEO of Townsend and Bottum, was engaged in a life-long search for how best to apply the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount (the Beatitudes) to business life. This he did through finding a way to neutralize private ownership of his company through a capital trust form, by introducing a non-sectarian form of mission and value orientation embodying the universal lessons of the Beatitudes into his company, and by a program of individual and group development that helped the company to work successfully in a variety of foreign cultures as well as integrating a multi-lingual and multi-cultural workforce.
Elise Casper: 1919-1997
Elise Casper was born into an old Milwaukee family, a child of privilege, with family ties to the Milwaukee brewing industry and to the Steinmeyer Grocery chain. She was a strong and intelligent woman who received an excellent education and with her family supported the growing cultural life of the city on the lake, with its symphony and two large museums. As a young child she used to say, “Elise do,” manifesting her strong and independent will, which she used to establish Elise’s Personalized Social Services, a very successful wedding planning and catering business in the 1950s.
Elise found her way to anthroposophy through her long-time friend Paul Riesen. She noted that much of Rudolf Steiner’s work agreed with her thinking, which from my experience was practical, deep, and probing.
In 1943 she had a son, Tim, who had artistic talent and as he grew she would take him to Europe on artistic and cultural tours. While on a trip to France in 1964 he was tragically killed in an automobile crash and she was severely injured, leading her to a deep inner and outer crisis. She found some consolation and support from Gerhard Klockenberg, a Christian Community priest, in France. After recuperating from the accident she sold her business and returned to Europe where she developed a keen interest in questions of money and how to renew society, being strongly drawn to the threefold social order movement. She even moved to Achberg, an experimental social community on the Lake of Constance, promoting the “Third Way” between capitalism and socialism.
In the late 1960s and 1970s she split her time between Paris and Milwaukee. She also began living with the question of how she could best support anthroposophical work in the Mid-West. So, having some funds and being practical she created the Anthroposophical Foundation of the Mid-West in 1976, wishing to apply aspects of Steiner’s “Fundamental Social Law” to a renewal of cultural life. I remember sitting with her on a grey autumn afternoon of that same year at the Centre for Social Development at Emerson College discussing the question of how she could best integrate Steiner’s social insights and principles to life in the Mid-West and how she could further the work of anthroposophy in her region of the country. Could money be worked with in a new way, she asked; and so upon returning to the U.S. permanently in 1980 she started the Mid-West Economic Group to work together with the Foundation she had previously created.
This new group, consisting of diverse members, including myself for a time, was first of all a study group and it also helped Elise to allocate gift funds from the foundation. It was in this circle of people, which included Gordon Edwards, Deborah Kahn, Candyce Sweda, and Michael Dobson, and later, Donald Melcer and Bill Manning, that the idea of the Shared Gifting Group applicants allocating gift funds amongst themselves was first discussed and elaborated. Elise would ask, “How do I give money away in such a way that it is not directly connected to me, giving me power and creating an unequal relationship between donor and recipient?” This question became the basis of practicing fund-sharing in which the different initiatives applying for grant money would see themselves as having a proportional claim on the money to be divided or donated. Each applicant could then gift back part of their claim on the total amount to others based on their common understanding of the urgency of the need. This meant having a clear picture of what was happening within each initiative so that the group as a whole could allocate funds by common agreement.
Fund sharing was first practiced by the Shared Gifting Group in 1984, with members participating in the allocation of $25,000. Often Gordon Edwards and Michael Dobson chaired these meetings, which went from one-day meetings to a whole weekend over the years. Participants felt truly uplifted by the process and a series of guidelines and procedures were developed to aid the shared gifting process. After Elise’s death in 1997, the Rudolf Steiner Foundation became the trustee of her estate and since that time over five million dollars has been granted
to support the work of anthroposophy in the Mid-West, with the largest share going to the Waldorf schools of the region. As Candace Sweda, a long-time participant in the fund-sharing process remarked, “It is humbling to work from our needs into the needs of the whole region. How do we balance interests? This is where creativity comes in. Working on common problems is a source of inspiration… In the Fund Sharing Group a loyalty and love of the individuals and their institutions has been built up.”
Elise Casper was a social scientist in her deeds, looking for ways to free money from her will in order to make it more productive for the community. Christopher Mann, a colleague in supporting anthroposophy in the Mid-West, stated, “I admired Elise’s ability to give up control over the use of her funds in her interest to build community. This overcomes the egotistical tendency in America where there are high ideals, which often give way to manipulative practice. It is a huge deed for an individual to give up control over how their money will be used. It is an act which releases power.” (1)
I honor Elise for this important work, setting a spiritual precedent for the selfless use of money, by giving up control over its use in her lifetime and encouraging a social process of gift money allocation.
Dietrich Asten: 1922-1984
Dietrich was a sensitive and highly disciplined person who valued order and punctuality as well as loyalty. He would be pleased if you called him at exactly the time agreed upon, not later or earlier, a particularly German trait. Dietrich was indeed German, although born in Eupen, Belgium in 1922. His father was a highly educated businessman with an interest in Eastern philosophy and his mother, an aspiring artist, joined the Anthroposophical Society in her late twenties.
As a young man Dietrich experienced the horror of World War II as a young German soldier on the Russian front. I think this experience marked him for the rest of his life with a certain gravity, an awareness of the evils which human beings can inflict on each other, motivating him to do the good in an unusually selfless manner.
His artistic nature found expression in playing the piano and the harpsichord. It was a delight to see him deeply absorbed in classical music, which granted him much joy within a demanding life.
After the war Dietrich worked in his father’s factory, which provided textiles and felts for the paper industry. He joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1949 in Brussels, and married, soon having two children, Peter and Sylvia. He then moved to the US, at his father’s request, to work in a fledgling new branch of the company, located just outside of Philadelphia.
The company, then known as the Asten Manufacturing Company, then Asten-Hill and still later Asten-Johnson, thrived, diversifying into wet and dryer felts. In time, Dietrich, an engineer by training, became its CEO and Board Chair and the company grew to be the third largest supplier of felts to the paper industry in North America.
As the company grew and became more profitable Dietrich began a long-term effort to provide financial support to both the Anthroposophical Society and its many practical works. This work was personal and often hidden from public view, as he did not want to receive any credit for the support he was providing. He initially engaged in his philanthropic work through his personal connections to the pioneers of Waldorf education, curative education, Waldorf teacher training, the arts and the Christian Community, relying on his shrewd assessment of people and their capacities.
He lived a modest life and shared his wealth generously, and his philanthropic work was truly extensive. I remember one personal incident when my wife and I moved from England to the U.S. in 1981, to work at the Waldorf Institute in Detroit. Upon asking Werner Glas where our small salary was to come from, he said rather blithely, “Oh, Dietrich, although he was hoping you would move to the Philadelphia area to start a business consultancy institute.” It is rather easy to take financial support for granted and yet if you think of the 1960s and 1970s when Waldorf education was expanding rapidly, the need for financial support was great and there were not many people to help. Dietrich, along with a few other individuals, made a huge difference to the expansion and success of anthroposophical work in the United States. After his death in 1984, his philanthropic work was carried on by the Rudolf Steiner Charitable Trust.
Dietrich was also the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in the United States from 1962- 74 as well as a Class Holder in the School of Spiritual Science. It was in the 1970s that he met and married his second wife Erika, and together they created a gracious home and social center in Valley Forge as well as shaping and guiding anthroposophical life in the Kimberton area.
As Dietrich became both the CEO and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Asten-Hill Company in 1977, he was able to bring into his company something of his own morality and spiritual striving. Through working with Coenraad van Houten of the Netherlands Pedagogical Institute (NPI), he and his top management team gave the company a mission statement and a set of goals founded on service and integrity, a flexible de-centralized work structure, and an emphasis on teamwork. Dietrich also approved of a personal development and assessment process that was many years ahead of industry practice and helped to institute a profit sharing plan for employees. He also changed how he himself led and managed the company, moving from a strong hands-on orientation to coaching and advising his management teams. I remember visiting the company in the early 1980s and watching as Dietrich attended meetings, saying very little, mainly asking questions of his division and department heads, and adopting a much stronger goal and process orientation with his managers, thereby enhancing their independence and sense of responsibility.
Dietrich died in a dramatic fashion at an Anthroposophical Society conference in Spring Valley, New York, in 1984. Having just completed a lecture on Sacramental and Spiritual Communion and while observing a eurythmy presentation called “The Question of Destiny” he had a heart attack. It was a very sudden transition but one that I felt was somehow in keeping with his nature and spiritual striving and intention. He had done his work and it was time to go. He had helped countless initiatives and individuals financially, had served the Anthroposophical Society selflessly, and had turned his company into a model organization balancing service, integrity, profitability, and employee development. (2)
Bill Bottum : 1927-2005
I met Bill for the first time in 1981 when he was the CEO of Townsend and Bottum, a large construction firm which was building power plants around the world. He had on his usual blue suit and white shirt and tie and greeted me warmly with shining eyes and a warm smile.
“Call me Bill,” he said, as he invariably greeted everyone, and then proceeded to ask me about myself and my interests. He had about him the engaging openness, good humor and modesty of many Mid-Westerners, combined with a deep moral and spiritual awareness.
When Bill was just finishing college his brother asked him to teach Sunday school. Bill said, “But I don’t know anything about Christianity,” and his brother said, “Well, find out.” So he did and soon focused on the Sermon on the Mount, Christ’s first teaching to his disciples, as the distillation of Christian values and practices. The Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes, were to become the central focus of his inner life.
After graduating from college he joined his father’s construction company and he wrestled with whether he should become a minister or a businessman? Then one night he had a vivid dream in which he was told that he could apply Christ’s teachings in business life. This he was to do in a remarkable and creative way. He put together his reflections and experiences on working with the Sermon on the Mount in a short book called "Within Your Reach", which he was to edit and re-edit for the rest of his life. He also practiced and meditated on the Beatitudes on a daily basis for over fifty years and so turned them into a way of leading his life and of transforming his company.
Bill was continuously busy in looking for approaches and concepts that would allow him to integrate the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount into business life. Upon hearing about Robert Greenleaf’s work on Servant Leadership he sought him out and visited him a number of times in a Quaker retirement home outside of Philadelphia. Greenleaf had been a consultant to MIT in the turbulent sixties and had realized that many students were reading Herman Hesse’s "Journey to the East". In this story, Leo has been the porter and cook for an expedition of Europeans looking for spiritual enlightenment. He disappears one day; and much later, the remnants of the group find their way to a spiritual retreat and monastery in the Himalayas only to discover that Leo is the master and teacher of this order. Greenleaf, out of his experience in business life, then wrote an influential essay called “The Servant as Leader,” which Bill embraced, as it articulated his own view and practice on leadership, service, and integrity. He was later to become a Board member and promoter of the Robert Greenleaf Center on Servant Leadership in Indianapolis and a keen supporter of this philosophy of leadership within his company and the broader business community. (3)
Perhaps the most far-reaching of Bill’s innovations was his solution to the question of the private ownership of capital and of business. He had inherited his father’s company as a family-held business. Through his study of Steiner’s work, in particular, "Toward Social Renewal", and "World Economy", Bill recognized the need to transform the privately held company into a legal form in which employees, customers, and the broader society had a stake and benefitted. He began a long search, examining cooperatives, employee owned stock companies, the Scott Bader Commonwealth, and the John Lewis Partnership in England. His answer was to transform Townsend and Bottum into a capital trust, a non-stock, for-profit company, owned by employees and representatives of customers and society, and governed by a Board which had the task of seeing that the company was dedicated to its mission and values. As Bill said,
In addition to his focus on servant leadership and finding a capital trust form for neutralizing the private ownership of his company Bill transformed other aspects of T&B. These steps included:
• Articulating a mission and values for the company emphasizing absolute integrity and service so that all of the company’s stakeholders—employees, customers, and suppliers—had a high level of trust in the company and its leadership.
• Instituting profit sharing so that 25 percent of net profits, before taxes, was set aside for profit sharing and employee bonuses.
• Committing to a process of training and development in order that all employees and suppliers learned more about themselves through a life-styles inventory program as well as extensive group process training, and
• Transforming the company’s culture and structure to multi-level cross-disciplinary work groups whose problem-solving focus and social skills enhanced effectiveness and profitability.
Bill’s goals were clearly idealistic, creating and developing a business organization that acted out of a commitment to spiritual values and teachings. He and his co-workers saw Townsend and Bottum “as an experiment which conceived the business world as a huge laboratory in which to try to live out the pattern of the Beatitudes,” in order to overcome the egotism and self-serving nature of the modern age. Even though T&B merged with a larger company in 1997, Bill and his coworkers’ effort led to a community of committed co-workers who met annually for many years to honor Bill and the moral and spiritual legacy of T&B.
Elise, Dietrich, and Bill stand in a long line of economic and social reformers seeking to transform economic life into a realm of cooperative activity serving the value of sisterhood and brotherhood. This they did in their private life as well as in the institutions they initiated and led. To bring about fundamental reform in the realm of economic activity requires courage, integrity, insight, and a long and persistent will. They drew on their own life experiences, on the many penetrating economic and social insights of Rudolf Steiner, and on their own deep commitment to Christ’s teachings to successfully demonstrate economic and moral alternatives to the competitive, self-serving laws of the market. Having done so, they make such economic reforms easier for future generations; to do something new and socially productive requires more effort and sacrifice than following established patterns. These three pioneers of the will established prototypes for the future of a healthier, Christ-imbued, economic life that acknowledges the truth of the social law of mutuality.
Martin Luther King stated this law in the following manner in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963:
It has been a blessing of my destiny to have known and worked with Elise, Dietrich, and Bill.
Christopher Schaefer PhD (christopherschaefer7@gmail.com), Great Barrington, MA, is co-director of the Hawthorne Valley Center for Social Research.
1 All quotes and much information is drawn from Freya Secrest, "Shared Gifting : From Commitment to Practice, Graduation Essay", Waldorf School Administration and Community Development Program, 2000. Available from Christopher Schaefer, Freya Secrest, and Mary Christenson.
2 Forschungstelle Kulturimpuls, "Dietrich von Asten", 1990, Dornach, Switzerland. Dietrich also wrote two longer essays, "America’s Way" and "Sacramental and Spiritual Communion", both published by Floris Books.
3 Robert Greenleaf, "The Servant as Leader", Robert Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, 1970.
4 This and following references from "About Bill Bottum: Within Your Reach", http:// billbottum.wordpress.com
