Manfred Klett passed away peacefully on April 2, 2025, in the early hours of the dawning day on “his” beloved Dottenfelderhof, accompanied by his family. He was laid out in the old hall, where the funeral service took place on April 5.
Manfred Klett was the doyen of the biodynamic movement. He was a practitioner—initially in agriculture and in the development of the farm at Dottenfelderhof, then as head of the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum with the large annual Agriculture Conference and worldwide networking, and finally as a project developer, particularly in the Juchowo village project in Poland. At the same time, he travelled the world for decades as a speaker, lecturer, and discussion partner. He had the gift of finding words and images for the biodynamic impulse that opened up great worlds for his listeners. The biodynamic impulse appeared great because he presented it as a sustainable continuation of the epoch-spanning cultural impulse of agriculture—an impulse that means partnership with the Earth and nature. It was Manfred Klett’s destiny to encounter the magnitude of this development at decisive points in his life.
Manfred Klett was born in Tanganyika, today’s Tanzania, in Africa, at the foot of Kilimanjaro. He carried the vastness of the East African savannah in his soul all his life. He spent some of his school days at the Schule Schloss Salem on Lake Constance and, after the Second World War, at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, with a year-long student exchange in England. His studies at the Technical University of Stuttgart were cut short by an accident. It was during a one-year work stay in north-eastern Syria that he decided to become a farmer. His decision was made in the historic land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—a place of early agricultural development. After an apprenticeship, he studied agriculture at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, followed by a doctorate in soil science. He then spent a further four years researching the topic of ‘fertilization and food quality’ at the Institute for Biodynamic Farming.
In 1968, the Dottenfelderhof farming community was founded, followed shortly afterwards by the Dottenfelderhof School of Agriculture. Here, on the outskirts of Frankfurt, within sight of the modern power capital, we see the next significant turning point in the biography of Manfred Klett: the 180-hectare Dottenfelderhof, the large farming community of five families, and the School of Agriculture, which looks far into the future. After twenty years of biodynamic development work with his wife and five children, he took over the leadership of the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. This made the worldwide biodynamic movement his place of work. He travelled to many regions of the world, and people from over 40 countries took part in the major annual conferences on biodynamic agriculture at the Goetheanum. After fourteen years of work and a further eight years as a freelance contributor at the Goetheanum, he returned to the Dottenfelderhof and resumed a teaching post at the local School of Agriculture. In addition, he led the village project in Juchowo, Poland, for 21 years. It is an attempt to create a place in Eastern Europe where “forming the Earth” (Novalis) presents itself as a social task, and where “the social question” finds an answer in the formation of the Earth.
His extensive book Von der Agrartechnologie zur Landbaukunst (‘From Agricultural Technology to the Art of Farming’) was published in 2021 as the result of a lifetime of work, research, and teaching in biodynamics. “Agriculture as an art” is the aim expressed in the title of the book. And one may wonder: can this provide the solution to the challenges of climate change, soil erosion, and feeding the world? The answer may be yes, because art—agriculture as an art—means that each and every one of us, with our individual commitment, in our very special place, makes an irreplaceable contribution. Every farm, every place where work is carried out in the spirit of this book, is a representative of the Earth that is entrusted to us for cultivation.
We are now in the days of Manfred Klett’s farewell from Earth, at the beginning of the second century of the biodynamic impulse, with the question: what is to be done now? Today, we are faced with some difficult realities on the farms and in marketing. However, we also know the principles and basic ideas from anthroposophy, from which we can hope not to fail in the face of these realities. We could develop ourselves and agriculture from the future. In this way, we can not only solve the problems of agriculture and open its future, but also gain future impulses for the natural side of the world and the social shaping of human life. Manfred Klett calls on us to do this—in his book, through his life’s work, through his human greatness. We owe him a great deal and want to accompany him with deep gratitude on his path from the beloved Earth into the sphere world of cosmic existence.
