Obituary Dr. Wolfgang Feuerstack (16.05.1929 – 21.08.2020)
Wolfgang Feuerstack, the founder of the Weckelweiler Gemeinschaften, was a member of the executive council of the Association of Anthroposophic Institutions for Curative Education and Social Therapy (Verband anthroposophischer Einrichtungen für Heilpädagogik und Sozialtherapie e.V.) from 1986–94, and as such was for many years a member of the Section Circle of the International Conference for Curative Education and Social Therapy at the Goetheanum, of which I was secretary during those years. I was able to work with Wolfgang Feuerstack in the years 1988–94 in various committees of our curative education and social therapy movement. In his discreet, profound and warm-hearted manner he enriched the meetings and gave social therapy the weight it deserved.
With his examination of the essential elements analysis of social therapeutic communities, which we were able to publish under the title ‘Healing Powers of the Community’ (Heilende Kräfte der Gemeinschaft) at the Verlag am Goetheanum, he developed an original approach to an encounter of beings with one’s own place of life that emerged from the biographical review. I have found the fruitfulness of this ‘method’ extremely helpful in accompanying some crisis situations of institutions. His lectures, in which he worked with the polar view of biographies, were very impressive. For example, he contrasted the life of the German politician Uwe Barschel with that of a resident of Weckelweiler and was thus able to shed much deeper light on both fates. Also unforgettable is his portrayal of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, sentenced to death and blindfolded and tied to a pole, which turned out to be a fake execution and in which a last-minute pardon led to an epileptic attack.
Later, Wolfgang Feuerstack retired from active work to care for his seriously ill wife.
Wolfgang Feuerstack was a person from whom one was allowed to feel seen in his being in a healing way. Thankfully accompanying him in spirit into the afterlife, we remember his being.
Johannes Denger
Curative teacher, Waldorf teacher, author,
from 1988–95 Secretary of the International Conference for Curative Education and Social Therapy at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland