Manfred Klett with Harald Hoven, in California circa 1994
By Will Brinton (April 2025)
I have some distinct memories of Manfred. He came to America several times for biodynamic conferences, and on a few of those occasions, I shared the program with him. One was the 1994 BD conference in Oak View, California, and another in 1999 in Fair Oaks. An earlier event, also in California, took place in 1988. I also recall his visit to an Anthroposophical gathering in Ann Arbor in 1997, not long after the Society moved into its new headquarters. He and I shared the stage there for a memorable conversation.
At one of the California events—during the time the late Alan York was president—I had volunteered to serve as Manfred’s driver. I took him along for farm tours and later down the California coast toward Ojai. Alan had insisted I take the scenic route, so we cruised through Ventura, past Malibu Beach, and along the classic sights—an eye opener for him! It gave us time for some wide-ranging and engaging conversation.
Manfred’s theme focused on the farm as an organism and its rightful place within the community—together forming a greater whole. According to the BD Journal, his lecture was titled The Legacy of 20th Century Agriculture. He spoke with quiet, almost dogmatic intensity about the decline of small, mixed farms and how deeply that transformation had affected him in postwar Europe. He wasn’t merely nostalgic; he was mourning the loss of an entire way of life. In one of his talks, he stated plainly that the golden era of farming “mostly ended in Germany around 1957. Then herbicides were introduced in the 1960s, and everything fell apart.” For him, biodynamics offered a path—not backward, but forward—to redesign and reinvigorate what had been lost.In his online verbal biography, I found a passage closely echoing the thoughts he expressed both in California and Michigan:
“The church was still the center of the village, and farm sizes ranged from 7 hectares to maybe 20—if someone had that much, it was a lot. They were all still mixed farms: cattle in stables, pigs, chickens, arable farming—it was all part of self-contained, self-sustaining farm organisms.” (my translation)
In front of the large Anthroposophical audience in Ann Arbor in 1997—we gathered in a grand frescoed hall at the University of Michigan—he restated this vision in even stronger terms. He spoke about “the last traces of Western Christian farming culture.”
This was a tense theme he and I had previously mulled over. I had warned him that this language might be difficult in the American context—we’d already seen that in California. On stage in Ann Arbor, I recall saying, somewhat daringly but with affection, “Manfred, there you go again, with your wonderful European world of farms, villages, and a church in the center.” I don’t remember whether the audience was shocked, my friends who were there say they don’t remember. I felt torn—between my loyalty to America and our situation, which is mostly just raw material, and Manfred’s Europe, where one can build on existing cultural and physical structure, making it much easier. That’s what Steiner was doing when he gave the Agriculture Course—telling farmers to “add these measures to your existing operations.” I think it wasn’t really meant to be a movement in itself, but an add-on, a creative ferment for the entire socio-agricultural scene. Organic farming is a movement in itself.
Back in California, at one of these events, and after visiting farms and gardens, Manfred turned to me and said, “I don’t recognize anything.” I felt I knew exactly what he meant. I think the experience hit him hard. What he saw were many well-intentioned efforts: a CSA just beginning to add animals, small poultry operations, a few orchards, gardens—some importing ingredients even for their composts. As I recall, we saw no dairy farms. And around these scattered examples were vast commercial operations—no crop rotations, no field boundaries other than irrigation ditches, no barns, not even visible homes. It was all so foreign to him. He remained warm and gracious to us, about the work his biodynamic friends were doing. But I sensed that in his eyes, these were just “parts of a whole.” Harald Hoven tells me that at one of these events in California Manfred was shown a farm that used laser-leveling in its fields—Manfred was quite surprised as Harald tells it, but “Manfred wanted to see this”!
I’m an east coaster, but I have long wondered whether concentrating on his biodynamic trips to California was the right thing for Manfred’s vision and sensibility. In hindsight, New England—with its small villages, working organic farms, cafés, and cheesemakers—might have offered him something he could truly connect with. Something he might recognize. (Harald’s good records show that he visited Kimberton, PA, where there are two biodynamic farms, and the Zinniker farm in Wisconsin).
I have searched to see if Manfred never spoke or wrote directly about that American visits. On his detailed biographical sketch on BioDynWiki, he mentions all the countries he’s visited—but nothing stands out from North America. Maybe it will turn up. In one of his transcribed lectures online, he mentions, almost in passing: “In California they do digital agriculture,” which he defines as crops harvested in the Central Valley in the morning and flown to East Coast supermarkets for the next day. He also notes in another lecture: “In California they are feeding cattle processed chicken manure—a cheap source of nitrogen.” America is a challenge for future consideration!
One other time in between all this I was visiting Dornach and was invited to join Manfred and his wife for Kaffee und Kuchen at their small cottage on the corner of Hügelweg, where you could watch people on their way to the Goetheanum. I tend to steer conversations towards science and research—after all he has a Ph.D. from Hohenheim—and he shared an early report of his about Horn-Silica. It was a complex, three-year study on how BD 501 silica spray might mitigate the negative effects of low light and synthetic fertilization. This low-light part of the work is especially relevant for growing leafy greens out of season, which was becoming common then and even more so now in New England. Nitrate levels in winter greens under low light can be unusually high, and Vit-C very low, raising questions about their health value. He evaluated all these traits in probably what could be called a forerunner to nutrient-density, a concept that didn’t exist then.
In that study—funded by the Volkswagen Foundation—he used large shading panels to reduce sunlight stepwise over research plots with a rotation of potatoes, grains, and greens. Briefly, his results showed that compost, and especially BD 501 (most effective when paired with BD 500), helped offset both low light and synthetic overstimulation from chemical nitrogen. The silica handling enhanced physiological ripening—raising Vitamin C levels and reducing nitrate accumulation, for instance. That study taught agronomy, plant physiology, and Goethean inquiry all in one, in my opinion! It deeply inspired me-- if only we could show this type of intense quality research to those talking today seeming superficially about “nutrient-dense” foods.
I asked Manfred how he managed to complete such a study while finishing his doctorate and at the same time founding Dottenfelderhof under extreme difficulties. He laughed and said, “All of us wondered if anyone slept at night.”
It’s my sense that Manfred’s work points to something we still haven’t fully learned: that we must begin with the whole. Not with isolated practices, but with a vision of the integrated enterprise—where farming, community, and culture form the living organism, a fairly large one. I say this because I see the popularity of talking about biodynamic preparations (especially cow horns) and cosmic planting calendars (there are now two or more published in N. America). Manfred started Dottenfelderhof with five families on 40 acres; today, the community includes over 100 people. He taught that the legal and economic structures must be reworked—and reworked again—to serve the intention. Once you do this—my feeling—then do the details—tools, techniques, treatments—truly find their place.