The School That Raped Everbody

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M ah, that's the how we're starting this episode. I needed.
I'm Robert Evans, host Behind the Bastards, and I'm I'm
trying out new introduction techniques because I just got off
of forty hours of plane flights. My guest today is
Mr Miles Gray. Miles full disclosure is the show? This

(00:24):
show is about? I call it, well, I call it
behind the Bastards. I don't know what everyone else calls it.
Do you also refer to it as behind the Bastards?
That's a great name. I think we might have to,
Sophie make a note of that one so we can
steal it from Miles. So if you don't just make
a note of it, get it tatted for posterity. Wait

(00:44):
where were you? Where are you traveling for forty hours? Uh?
Not just just a lot of layovers and you know
it was only Europe, but you know you wind up
getting stuck in airports here and there. I hear your brother. So, Miles,
how do you feel about school rules? Uh? Fuck school, dude?
You know I'm a cool yea fu school. You know

(01:06):
that answer, Miles that you gave is going to turn
out to be very appropriate for a couple of reasons,
most of them unfortunate. Um, because I don't even you're
talking about we are talking about a school today, and
it is a It is definitely a Fox school, Um,
but not in any kind of good way. In a

(01:30):
horrible crimes were child molestation. Dark. Yeah, this is a
bad way to introduce this episode. But there's no good
way to introduce this episode. This isn't Behind the Fun Times.
It's behind that. Behind the Fun Times is my other podcast.
Could you imagine it? Actually we're very dark where you're

(01:52):
hosting it and you're just doing like behind the scenes
of like some of like the happiest like you know,
pleasant moments in our history. Hey released one happy episode
we did release well, he died at the end, but
the work was good. Yeah. Yeah, I'd like I'd like
to have an episode where Werner Herzog and I just

(02:12):
talk about different puppets we think are cute. I think
if I like the baby Yoder, I'd like to hug
and caress him. I like that he really kept his
vibe up in the Mandalorian. He keeps he's never anything
but Werner Herzog, and that's that's all we ever want

(02:33):
from him. Now, speaking of a German. This whole episode
is set in Germany. It is now uh so yeah,
uh schools miles, none of us, none of us is
is I'm going to say, overwhelmingly happy with the school
system in the United States. I think that's the same,
especially our life. Educational system is meant as like a

(02:56):
barrier to entry for a certain class, so out when
you look at school like that, rather than like, hey,
education is available at everyone puts a bit of that
bad taste. I mean I literally just went to college
because it was drilled in my head. It's like, well,
you can't get a job unless you go to college.
I was like, yeah, that's why I spent twenty grand
in debt, failing to get a degree, and then dropping

(03:18):
out because they didn't want to spend another fifteen Yeah.
So yeah, there's problems involved with college or involved with
education in general in this country, and that there have
been for a long time. Um. I think most of
what I still remember from my high school days is
how to install Doom on a T I eight three
calculate you could get oh yeah, dude, yeah, or Wolfenstein.

(03:41):
It was one of the two. I forget exactly what Wolfenstein,
but the best I could do is get that one
thing that was called like drug wars or like the
Mafia drug war, drug wars, which the ship you know, yeah,
drug wars be like press one to deal heroin. And
I'm like, yeah, here we go. But I don't know
like algebra. Um so, and I never learned how to

(04:02):
pay my taxes. Um shout out to my account. Um. Yeah,
he's he's a cool guy. Now. My point here in
this rambling introduction is that in the year of our
Lord two thousand nineteen, we're not we're not great at
educating the young. Uh. And this state of affairs is
not new, and in fact, we we've been shitty at

(04:24):
educating kids basically since we decided it was important to
start educating kids. Um. And today, Miles, we're gonna talk
about one of the boldest and most brilliant reformers in
the history of education, a man whose ideas and intellectual
courage were in some ways still way ahead of even
our time. Have you ever heard of Paul Gheb Paul

(04:47):
Gahb Geheb. But yeah, well, uh, paulus Gehb is actually
the actual nagmebor. We're gonna call him Paul. This episode,
because I don't truck with any of that police nonset.
What kind of name is Paulus? Anyway? It's some infuriating
German name. Those people stick extra use and s is

(05:07):
on all sorts of ship. Wow, it sounds like someone
who would be like the son of like Caesar, like
a Roman. Yeah, a Roman leader would be Paulus. Well,
I'm gonna guess actually all of the US names came
from Romans just fucking and conquering all over the place.
And yeah, Paul Paulus is a Latin surname meaning small

(05:29):
or humble. Well, he was a small, humble man. Uh,
so we'll talk about him for a little bit. Uh.
Paul was born on October eighteen seventy and Gisa on
the Rhone Mountains in Germany. His father and grandfather were
both pharmaceutical chemists, and his dad was also a botanist
who specialized in mosses. So he grew up surrounded and

(05:52):
influenced by people who lived lives of the mind. Now,
some of Paul's earliest memories were following his father through
the forest to look for where mosses. By age eight,
Paul signed his letters Paul geheb student of natural sciences.
So he's a he's a he's a knowledge lover miles
because his dad was dragging to the force and like
I pick up that grass over there and put in

(06:13):
your pocket. Yeah. Well but he I think he liked it.
I think his dad was good at in culcating a
love of the natural world and you know, excitement and
all that stuff. Uh, So there's something was good at it.
There's something like really when I when you said eighteen
seventy and they were pharmaceutical chemists, I'm like, that sounds
like a comedy. Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna guess most

(06:34):
of what his dad is working with is like a
mix of heroin and snail poison, and you can give
it to little kids. Yeah, and eugit. Now, there's a
little bit before they're doing much eugenics. I'll give that
to them. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think Paul would
have been down with that, but we'll tell you what
he was down with a little later. Now, Paul graduated
primary school and he went to the universities of Berlin

(06:57):
and then Jenna for a total of ten years. He
almost got a doctorate. He was a wonderful student who
was renowned by his teachers for his sheer thirst for knowledge,
he came to hold an almost religious belief in what
he called the perfectly integrated human, a person whose mastery
of humanism, science, philosophy, and physical activity would blend into
one being of almost complete perfection. So this is his

(07:21):
his his dreams of a chad. Yeah, I think it's
his version of like Enlightenment. It's kind of like a
quasi Buddhist. Yeah, the perfect man. You know that that
that education can build a perfect person um. Now, in
pursuit of achieving this end, he studied theology, philosophy, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic,
anatomy and physiology, and the nascent science of psychiatry. He

(07:44):
also got ordained as a pastor and studied religion. So
that's that's cool. I'm said theology early, So am I
Now everybody's ordained thanks to the Church of Life. Yeah,
me too, That's what I mean. I mean, you know, Miles,
if you want, there might still be room on the
boat that where Billy and I are gonna go get
trained to put bleach at people's asses so we can

(08:06):
become reverend doctors. I'm I'm down for that. I mean, honestly,
you know, my strength is in scamming and motivational speaking.
So if you know, if I can be of service
to that greater vision, I would be more than honored
to help. Well, uh, well, we'll keep your name on
the on the shortlist for the ass bleaching trailer because
I just see a lot of people out there who

(08:26):
are really, really struggling, could use some kind of light
at the end of the tunnel. And you know, there's
no there's no better way to have light at the
end of the tunnel than by bleaching your asshole. That
literally light different. Yeah yeah, so uh. Paul spent some
time as a preacher um, but he felt himself more
strongly drawn to teach and mold young minds, so he

(08:50):
started pursuing this doctorate and he got as far as
working in his thesis. But in those days, there was
a fee to take your doctor at exam marks, and
rather than spend that money on reaching the apex of
his ten year educational dreams, Paul Key he decided a
wiser use would be to donate the money to a
family he knew who faced financial collapse due to their
alcoholic father. So yeah, Mr Preacher yeah, so far it

(09:14):
seems pretty great right right now? Not sounding like a
bastard to me. Yeah, like a man of God who
really puts his money where his doctor it isn't. Um. Yeah,
he never became a doctor, and instead he decided that
he was called upon to educate the poor children of
Germany's great cities. In nineteen o two, he met up
with a fellow named Herman Ltz, who was working towards

(09:37):
much the same goal. Both men were part of a
movement of educational reform in Germany focused around changing the
authoritarian structure of German education at the time, which wouldn't
have looked out of place in a movie about the
Hitler youth set forty years later. So, like, German education
is uh not focused on shall we say, treating children
like complete human beings. Like, so, what does that look like?

(09:58):
Just screaming corporal punishment. I don't think much screaming. I
think more of that like quiet but very stern and
unbending German discipline. Um, you know, they're not a shouty people.
A lot of the time. I think it was more
just sort of um, you know, everything was kind of
military like it would it would have there would have
been a quasi military feel to education. Talking up would

(10:21):
not have been tolerated yet, very rigid, very uh, very
shame based. I'm sure too. That was probably their great motivator. Yeah,
shame based. And also everyone does the same thing and
follows the same structure, so like whether you know we
now know kids. You know, different kids learn different ways.
They wouldn't put in any they would not like none
of that bullshit. In German school all do the same thing.

(10:44):
They're like, yeah, we do exploration time where we let
the children just sort of do as they want to
do to discover themselves. Children don't want things would be
the German uh want things they don't want. Paul became
part of what the was called sort of the back
to nature movement and education UM. He worked with a

(11:06):
number of experimental learning institutions and wind up co running
what they called a school community in a place called
Wickersdorf or Vickersdorf since it's German. Uh. The basic idea
behind this place is that it was a democratic learning institution. Students,
parents and teachers all elected representatives to vote on decisions
about what curriculum to learn. And you know, how to
handle different things, so it seems like a pretty cool idea.

(11:30):
I'm worth trying. Yeah. Now, Paul's partner called this a
self educating community, and for several years it flourished. Now,
one major aspect of the Vickersdorf School was a focus
on play, dance, music, and sports as all necessary in
helping to craft well rounded people. So he didn't just
you know, train kids to do whatever it is they
were going to do as adults. You you, you know,

(11:51):
everyone needed to learn how to dance, everybody needed to
learn how to play an instrument, everybody needed to learn sports,
like the you know, it's it's this kind of idea
of the perfectly integrated man that that Paul's obsessed with.
Is that kind of born out of this idea like
if you know more things and you push yourself in
as many different directions as possible, Like that's that's stretching
yourself out for more growth or balance. Basically, Yeah, I

(12:14):
think that's kind of the idea that reminds me like
Dirk Navitski, the basketball player. He had a shooting coach
that sort of had this same mentality that was like,
we're gonna work on your jump shot, but this summer
you're learning how to play saxophone. You're gonna do You're
gonna you're gonna canoe, and you're gonna start doing like pottery.
Now that it's necessarily the same, but it's sort of

(12:34):
more like, we're going to help improve your skills by
creating new skills that you didn't have in general. Yeah,
it's kind of like how Karate Kid taught the karate
kid how to do karate by teaching him how to
clean how to karate. Yeah, well it's all karate. That's
the that's the secret message of Karate Kid is that
all of life is karate. Thank you. Shout out to

(12:55):
Pat Morita, Mr. The only person who taught me any
thing but how to install Wolfenstein on a T I
A three. But also he also told you he did.
He did teach me that too. It was weird that
that karate class required a hundred and sixty dollar graphing calculator,
but hey, everything's karate man, even that graphic. Yeah. So

(13:18):
the Vickersdorf School did very well for for years um
but by personality conflicts between paulka Heb and his partner
Winikin led to the breakup of the school. Paul resigned
and decided it was time for him to start his
own school. Now well he'd been at Vickersdorff, Paul had
fallen in love with one of his employees, Edith Casseerer.
She'd started as a kindergarten teacher, which was not a

(13:39):
very common job for a woman at the time, particularly
a woman of her social stature, so she was a
bit of a boundary breaker. Edith's dad was a wealthy industrialist.
The fact that she decided to devote her life to
educating the children of the poor rather than marrying rich
and increasing the family wealth was something of a slap
in the face to her father Max initially, but while
he opposed her marriage with Paul, by nineteen ten he'd

(14:01):
been won over by Paul's charismatic enthusiasm for educational reform,
and when his son in law decided to start a school,
Max was only too happy to pour his own money
into the project. So very happy story, so far, no way,
any of this turns horrible, great great step great father
in law. Supporting your dreams sounds like a dream, really

(14:22):
sounds wonderful. Yeah. In nineteen ten, the oden Vale School
was open for business. Now this is the school that
that Paul created with his his dad in law's money.
The Odenwald School was a massive evolution from the Vickersdorff School.
Paul called it an educational laboratory and considered it a
place for daring, bold experiments in educational reforms, which he

(14:43):
hoped would spare all of Germany and then the world
beyond what he called the sluggish, the sluggish organism of
public education. Now, he believed the key to reforming public
education was to recognize that the individual personality of the
child could not be developed in isolation with Pew builds
quietly taking information and taking in tests. Instead, what was

(15:03):
needed was a living community of adults and children working
together to develop each other. The odin Bold School was
a democratic learning institution uh students and teachers had equal
votes on the school council, and Paul Gieb's words quote,
the authority of the teacher is replaced by the authority
of those who together represent the idea of the school.
This authority is heated by adults as much as by children.

(15:26):
That's the that's theity this is based on. Now, it
sounds like it could work. Now, Obviously the adults are,
you know, the more experienced and mature individuals, and so
they were seen as having the responsibility to guide their
students towards knowledge, but they weren't in charge of them
in the authoritarian way typical and most of the world
at the time, as Paul said, to be governed is

(15:46):
completely unknown in our school, for it as a community
without superiors, a school without a director, stuff, a school
disappears without I mean, it's funny when you started talking
about this new school he made, I'm like, uh oh,
he's starting to sound like he's getting a bit of
a god complex here, where he's almost been like, nah,

(16:06):
this is where the new ship is happening, and I'm
completely changing everything and it's me yeah, you know, at
least on paper. Uh, it sounds like it's kind of
a mix of that, because like he's definitely saying the
whole system needs to be torn down, and but he's
also um saying that, like we as a learning community,
you are going to figure out what works better, because
that's the real way to to to to spur innovation. Now,

(16:29):
I I've had a bunch of details on the organization
of the olden Vulge School. In a nineteen two article
by Henry Casseer, who was a nephew of Paul Geheb's
who attended the olden Vulge school as a child, and
here's what he said. He therefore introduced a new structure
into the lesson plan, the Curse system. It's essential feature
was that for a period of one month, each child

(16:50):
had to choose courses in three subjects each time daily
for eleven hours. This made it possible for the student
to concentrate on intensive studies in limited fields. Other subjects
were been taken up during subsequent periods. The emphysis and
teaching was less on learning facts than upon learning to
learn to work independently, to study and to understand. Another
feature of the Curse system was that the children were

(17:10):
to be gathered in study groups according to their level
of maturity and knowledge, rather than according to age groups.
Thus a child might find himself with older children and
one subject for which he was gifted, but with the
younger children and another subject where he had little previous schooling.
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it sounds about
right balanced, like people around your intellectual level and whatnot. Now,

(17:31):
Paul was critical of gender segregation, which was very much
common in German public schools at the time. The olden
Vold School did not segregate students by gender. It was
divided into families. Each family run by a teacher who
helped guide the children. Families consisted of both boys and girls,
because he believed it was critical to human development to
have gender integration. Before his career as an educator, he'd

(17:53):
been a militant crusader for women's emancipation. His forty four
page application to the Imperial German government to start the
oden Vall School had included thirty pages on the importance
of gender integration. He wrote, co education means joyfully to
affirm the polarity of the sexes in both theory and
practice and attitude and living, to integrate pedagogically the rich
sources of wealth it produces into all fields of life

(18:15):
and culture, and to apply them fruitfully to the development
of the child, which is pretty welk for nineteen ten. Yeah,
I mean, yeah, I just I don't know. I know
what this show is, yea, And what you said earlier,
and now I'm might like now I'm starting to see
the chess moves. Yeah you what what what what do

(18:35):
you what do you mean by that? Well? You said
you were alluding to some kind of abuse, And I
just feel like in any sort of predatory situation, like
a predator is looking for the most target rich environment,
and and advocating for integration means many children of both genders.

(18:59):
And I just I don't know, I'm just I just
know there's a turn. I've done this showing up with you,
and then I'm gonna start dry heaving and being disgusted
because humanity is just a gigantic waste pile. Uh. But
go on, I'm waiting with you. Put a put a
pin in that target rich environment. Than we'll come back
to that later. Uh. Yeah. So Paul, Paul's a reformer, uh,

(19:21):
and he thinks that this is going to act as
like a laboratory to help figure out the way schools
in Germany should work in the future. And you know
it's it's it's on paper. It seems like a noble
pursuit here, like you can't really say, you know, objectively,
I understand what this person is going for. Yeah. Now,
Paul School was as successful as it was revolutionary. Over

(19:41):
its first years. It would educate men who came to
be some of the finest artistic and philosophical minds in Germany. Klaussman,
Thomas Man's son went to the Odenwald School. So did
Hans Beth, winner of the nineteen sixty seven Nobel Prize
for Physics. I could go on, but most of the
famous alumni are German famous, so their names are not
particularly well known to most listeners. Were trying a lot
of famous German thinkers who came from here. I only

(20:04):
wrote down the two, but there's a whole list of them,
and they're all very German sounding. Um. Now. By the
time the late nineteen twenties rolled around, the Odenwald School
had developed an international reputation as one of the finest
centers of learning and all of your bad yeah yeah, yeah,
pretty cool. Now. Paul wrote and spoke eloquently on the

(20:26):
rights of children, and his speeches are filled with quotes
like this. There is no greater miracle among the inexhaustible
miracles of creation, which in the strictest sense is unlimited
in its richness, than the miraculous fact that nature dispenses
its seed every day with generous amplitude, and that not
one of its fruits is exactly the equal of the other.
The younger the child, the more we enjoy it because
we rejoice in the wealth of individuality and originality. What. Yeah,

(20:51):
that could go a couple of ways, couldn't it. Wait,
I don't know what's the richness part. That's a great question, Miles.
I mean, you know, the charitable undertaking of the is
that you know, younger children haven't had their individuality beaten
out of them as much by this this harsh German
system that we that we live in designed to produce
you know, soldiers and factory workers. And so it's a
joy to spend time with with young children because you

(21:13):
can really just cultivate their individuality and all that stuff.
So that that's one way you could take. It's weird
because ones like yeah, before they're completely indoctrinated with like
societal expectations, they still have that purity, that innocence. And
also you can mold them too, like they're more pliable
at this age, like they're they're they're malleable in terms

(21:34):
of how they're looking at the world and things like that.
I Mean, it's funny because the first part I get
because a lot of people like, if you're into any
kind of spiritual texts and things like that always refer to.
You know, when you're a child, you're sort of at
this level of consciousness where you can observe many things
and still enjoy them because of your not being hit
with all kinds of societal norms and things like that,

(21:55):
or cultural patterns of thinking. So when I'm like, okay, yeah,
like we should be more childlike at times, well we
we we that is so far as we As we
come to our first ad break, miles, everything seems great,
Everything seems fine, Everything seems very healthy, and I'm sure
that that's how it will continue for the remainder of
the twelve pages that I've written. Um, but you know what,

(22:21):
what's also fine. You know what we'll save us smiles.
The products and services that support this show. Oh fantastic.
I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards. And if there's
one thing I hate more than fascism, it's finishing a
long work day and realizing I have no food left.
It happened to me the other day after writing a
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dot com slash bTB nine and use promo code bt
B nine. Check it out. We're back now. Uh. We're
talking about Germany obviously in the nineteen twenties here, miles.
And if we all know one thing about Germany and in
in the nineteen twenties is then it turns into Germany
in the nineteen thirties, where we like we're gonna be

(23:47):
talking about Nazis, and that is the time that it
is now. Um. Now, Paul de Heiba was not a
fan of the Nazi Party as it rose to power
in the late twenties and early thirties. Now, the Odenwald
School was not a political instead tuition, but obviously it's
focused on liberty, freethinking and gender integration did not jel
well with fascism. Um. It also drew in harassment because

(24:09):
the school's funder and Max Cassarra, was an assimilated Jew.
So there's there's a number of of dangerous things going
on with the Old Wale School. Uh. And I'm gonna
quote now from a right up I found in TNF
about how the olden Wald School handled the rise of
the Nazis. The first in a series of Nazi raids
on the communist jew Odenwald School took place in March

(24:31):
nineteen thirty three and led to the purge of the faculty,
the abolition of co educational residences, and the end of
student self government. New Nazi teachers formed chapters of the
Hitler Youth in League of German Girls, the Nazi educational
leadership of HESSE, hoping to benefit from the school's fame
forbade gheheb to close it in response to these measures
because he pursued a dual strategy in nineteen thirty three.

(24:51):
On one hand, he promised cooperation, agreed to not see mandates,
and repeatedly told the authorities that his school's goals were
consistent with those of the New Germany. At the same time,
because he privately condemned the Nazi regime and made plans
to immigrate and take some of his pupils with him,
he hastened the closure of the own Volge school by
secretly encouraging parents to withdraw their children. With the help
of a sympathetic official and the reich Ministry of the Interior,

(25:12):
he closed the school and moved to Switzerland in March
nineteen thirty four. Max Casser believed that his son in
law was not sufficiently accommodating towards the Nazis, and for
months disapproved his plans to immigrate in Switzerland. He struggled
at first, but by the end of the war, the
Cold to Humanity, which is the school he started in Switzerland,
was an acclaimed haven for young refugees from all over Europe. Meanwhile,

(25:32):
a new more explicitly. Nazi school opened at the old
Old Old Invulge School. During the war, however, its directors
successfully protected some children of Jews and dissidents. That's a
good story, right, sound great? Yeah, he does, we go
along with the Nazis. His father in law, you said,
who was the assimilated Jewish business person. He was telling him,
you're not being Nazi enough. Yeah, that's actually really common.

(25:54):
And I mean a lot of a lot of assimilated
German Jews were like, just work along with them, it'll
be k. I mean, it's like anything when you sort
of internalized that sort of hatred to in order to
survive and operate with society. But yeah, okay, that must
have been weird. Yeah, it must have been. He has
to leave the Germany, which, yeah, it wouldn't have been

(26:15):
a friendly place for him. They started school in Switzerland,
but the old and of Alge school continue to operate
in Germany, and after the fall of Nazism it reopened
under its original operating principles, run by a series of
dedicated educators and some child rapists. Um yea, now yeah,
yeah yeah, yeah, uh so, I I don't know how

(26:36):
to make this transition um, yeah, thank you. The the
Old and Volge School was just filled with child molesters
as an average day at Disney World. Um so yeah, yeah,
this was as a result of like the fall of Nazism,
like that when they restarted it up, or is this
was this? This is even predates the Third Reich. A

(26:59):
lot is into these miles. Now, none of this was
known at the time, you know. What was known for
decades was that after naziason fell, the Old Volge School
continued to operate and be a very prestigious learning institution
for children from all over Europe, um operating under enlightened
principles of student self government and gender reintegration. That's the
surface story. But in nineteen reports were first made public

(27:24):
that Gerald Becker, who ran the school from nine nine
eighty five, had been reported as a child molester by
several of the kids in his care. Investigations into this
were suspended because so much time had passed. At least
that was the official justification. The reality of the situation
is that with its high rate of prestigious alumni, the
olden Volge School and its leader were connected people and

(27:45):
everything was swept under the rug. Now Becker had first
come to the school in the late nineteen sixties. Now,
this was a time of increasing liberalism and openness in society. Becker,
in the school's music teacher, a guy named Wolfgang, took
horrific advantage of this. Both men lived in the same house,
one at the top and one at the bottom floor,
with their families of children living in between them. Since

(28:07):
both men were pedophiles, this was essentially the perfect living
in the situation for predators. They picked specific children to
be in their families, who they then molested. Pupils recalled
that they were regularly grouped in the morning and forced
to masturbate their instructors in the afternoon. One of those children,
Adrian Kay, later recalled this, back then, we children didn't
even discuss the things we saw and experienced on an

(28:27):
almost daily basis. It was a closed system. Another student recalled,
I remember being woken up as a thirteen year old
by Gerald Becker sucking my penis like a possessed man. So,
oh my god, not great, not great, not great. Yeah. Wait,
the family thing, you were saying, that's part of that

(28:47):
structured like a school structures. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that
Geba instituted. Yet so the teacher. Okay, so it's a
three story home where each teacher is on either side
of the middle part, which is all of the students
who are the quote unquote family, and the and the

(29:08):
fucking teachers pick their family from the the pool of
enrolled students and this way. So this but this comes
out in the eighties, you said, or in the night
in the nineties, and this comes out in the late nineties.
Well it makes sense because for the longest time, we
just had the we just were like, I don't know, man,

(29:29):
we don't know how to We're not equipped to actually
talk about assault against children. We'll just call it like
stay away from that person or something's different about that fellow. Yeah. Yeah,
And that's kind of what what goes on here. Um
although that I should say, that's what it seems like
is going on here at first. Um. So, numerous people's

(29:51):
reported abuse at the hands of Gerald Becker and his friend,
the music teacher, but the teachers that, like kids, reported
this too at the Old and Bold School tended to
ignore are those reports. In one teacher, Barbara b was
told by a student that Becker had molested them on
the previous night and paid for the pleasure with a
stereo and a pair of sneakers. Now this teacher reported

(30:11):
this to Becker's successor, who was the new head of
the school after him, but nothing was done. Becker was
other than his child molestation um a a shining example
of a dedicated educator UM and someone who was clearly
uh respected in the field. When he wasn't molesting kids,

(30:33):
he gave vivid speeches celebrating the enlightened beliefs of the
Odenwald School. Former teacher Salmon and Sarry recalled whenever Gerald
Becker gave a speech, he always said ours was the
world's best school with the world's best teachers. Now, part
of the why this was allowed to go on for
so long were the deep connections Gerald Becker enjoyed to
the German government. He was friend and colleague to a
fellow named Helmett Becker, who was not related to him.

(30:56):
But Helmett was the guy who first spearheaded the effort
to reform the West German edgercational system after World War Two.
He was the first director of the Max Planck Institute
and a huge fan of the olden Volde School. Helmet
described this in other independent schools as a kind of
incubator within the public school system. He then added this
applies in particular to boarding schools and which relaxed encounters

(31:17):
between parents and pupils provides better protection for human sexuality.
What what? Yeah? Well, did you notice something something word
about that line? Say that again one more time, out
loud in English. Yeah. He described the olden Volde School
and other independent schools as an incubator within the public
school system and added this applies in particular to boarding

(31:38):
schools and which relaxed encounters between parents and pupils provides
better protection for human sexuality, better protections for That's an
odd thing to say, isn't it. Yeah, there's a number
of quotes like that that are odd things to say
and and kind of hard to figure out, Like uh
uh at the time, people must have just had the

(32:02):
same reaction you did, but there were no clear explanations
why that could sound really fucking terrible or really smart.
I don't know. Yeah, it's like it's like Paul Gehee's
line about enjoying little kids, where it's like that could
mean a few things, and you probably give him the
benefit of the doubt. You think it's like an educator like, well,
there's no way it's for some kind of malicious intent. Yeah,

(32:25):
a little. Now, Gerald Becker hired Helmet to work at
the ode involved School. Now, Helmet's godson was a student
at the school, and within a few months of coming
on board, helmets gods son reached out to his godfather
to complain that principal Gerald Becker had climbed into his
bed to try to have sex with him. Uh. You
might expect this to have led to a gigantic ship show,

(32:46):
since Helmet had the influence to demand just about anything
he wanted from the school and the government. But instead
of doing anything, Helmet recommended that Gerald's seek treatment for
his child molesting problem. Gerald was sent off on what
amounted to a medical vacation, then returned to the school
and molested more children. Um, I mean, it's just it's

(33:06):
that's pretty catholic A sounding exactly. I was saying, like,
it's the same pattern of dealing with like I guess
not of not dealing with it, where you're being like, Okay,
we're pretty sure this happened, but we don't even know
what to do, so put him on time out? Like
what what is what is a medical vacation in those days,
like just to go to some kind of like yeah,

(33:28):
I think he probably went to like, yeah, a lot
of steam baths. And the reason he's protected is because
of his like how respected he is within like the
upper echelons of the government. He's respected, his school is respected.
Helmet who reformed German education after World War Two is like,

(33:50):
you know, his his name gets all tied up in
the old Bulge School's reputation. So it's it's it's nobody's
powerful's best interest for anything to get out about what's happened.
What what what Gerald Becker is doing to these students. Um.
So Gerald Becker got to die before he faced justice,
which is what you always want to hear in a
story like this. UM. Another person who died before facing

(34:13):
justice was Walter Schaefer, who was Gerald's successor as head
of the school and the man who probably worked hardest
to cover up his crimes. Now, in the late nineteen nineties,
the German media completely ignored the revelations about one of
the school's proudest institutions. Um. None of this really came
out until two thousand seven, when a woman named Margarita
Kaufman became the school's headmistress. She was the first person

(34:35):
at the Old Valge School with any sort of influence
who took the problem of child molestations seriously. In two
thousand ten, she became aware of the mounting number of
child molestation allegations, and she brought in a former judge,
Bridget Tillman, to investigate. According to Dr Spiegel quote, Bridget
Tilman and a lawyer published a report on the school,
and they run up to the anniversary there no holds

(34:55):
barred appraisal paints a frightening picture of widespread abuse at
the Old Involge School. They identified more than a dozen perpetrators,
more than seventy victims, incited seventeen witnesses alone who justified
against the school's longtime principle, Gerald Becker. So in the
late nineteen nineties you start getting these reports that Becker's
molested some kids. And then in the mid oughts, the
school's new headmistress convenes an investigation and they find that

(35:18):
actually more than a dozen teachers at the school and
staff members have been molesting kids. So the first they
thought it was just the one. Yeah, they thought it
was just Gerald and his The music and the music teacher,
right right, right, yeah, And then in after the investigation,
like oh it's there's there's Yeah, they start looking into
it more. And the more they look into it, the

(35:38):
more perpetrators they find, and the more victims they find.
And is this like with talking to past pupils and
things like that, And then did they discover that even
currently at the time in the nineties, they're also dealing
with like a large number of Oh yes, Yet the
further back they go, the more allegations they start to find.
But then they but they found twelve people that were

(35:58):
currently working there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, I mean it's yeah,
it also makes sense. I mean obviously it's a shift
in like the culture too. But like when was there
was there ever another woman directing the school prior to her?
I don't think so. I think she was the first
female headmistress in the school. Was she hired as some

(36:19):
kind of reformer you think? Or she was just because
she's a woman and a little like less interested in
protecting male predators. Was like, something's wrong, I actually care
about these kids. What the funk is this? Yeah? I
think she I don't know if it's because she was
a woman, or just because she was a better person
than the other teachers. But not to say that being
a woman that makes you more interesting. But I think,
like I think, no deviation from the pattern before. Yeah,

(36:42):
we we take a strong stance here that that, you know,
modern women can be child child molesters too. I just
want to be clear about that. Oh yes, I'm sure
that's been in past episodes too. Yeah, absolutely, um actually yeah,
the Georgia Tan episodes. Um so uh yeah. So they
started looking into this, and more they look into this,
the more o involved teachers they find who had molested students,

(37:04):
and the more students they find who had been molested. Uh. Now,
this story finally broke into the mainstream news in two
thousand ten, uh and a series of journalists from different
papers and law enforcement agencies began to conduct wider ranging
investigations into the Old Invulge School and what they found
was fucking soul crushing miles. I'm gonna quote now from
a two Irish Times article. Some eight teachers, including a

(37:27):
former headmaster, have been a huge of sexually abusing at
least thirty three former students. Now former students have told
of torture. Rituals were older students, raped younger students and
scalded their genitals. What I've heard completely goes beyond all imagining,
said Miss Kaufman, head mistress of the school since two
thousand seven. I just don't know how this kind of
behavior carried on without teachers hearing cries of pain. In

(37:48):
an interview with Desight newspaper, ms Coaufman said that the
school operated in the past like a cult, with abusive
allegations suppressed out of a misplaced off for the reforming
pedagogical concepts of Gerald Becker, who was principal from nineteen
seventy two to nineteen five. So that's the way this
starts being spun in the two thousand's, which is that
they're definitely trying to trace this problem back to uh

(38:11):
Gerald Becker. Right. So that's the story as it comes in,
is that this guy comes in because he's so respected, um,
nobody notices his abuse, and he enables other people to
commit abuse. And that's the where where the olden Volge
School goes wrong starting in the nineteen seventies. That's that's
the that's because of that guy, that one bad apple

(38:31):
that spoiled the butch uh As reports came in, Becker
was revealed as the ringleader for what can only be
described as a gang of pedophile teachers. They wrapped themselves
in the cloak of progressivism, emphasizing the olden Volge School's
reputation for forward thinking, experimental teaching methods to hide abuse.
Former students reported that teachers saw themselves as revolutionaries, fighting

(38:52):
against dodgy ideas about education and prudishness and replacing them
with the ideals of the sexual revolution. To this end,
Becker and other teachers children showered, viewed child pornography while working,
and regularly woke children up in the morning by masturbating them.
So classic revolutionaries. Um yeah. So by the time all
this came out, Gerald was old and sick, and he

(39:14):
died before facing any justice. As already stated, his partner
like a romantic partner. Hartmt. Von Hintig, was a prominent
educational expert in Germany, and he said this at the time.
I have no doubt that these friendly gestures were never
carried out against the will of the students. Friendly gestures, Yeah,

(39:35):
surprise assault while you're sleeping as a friendly fucking I don't.
I mean, I would say it depends on your friend group.
The thing about this too is like it's also what
you're what you're talking about is like a cult too,
because you're saying precisely because other people were in awe
of this fucking revolutionary approach to abusing kids or unquote

(39:59):
unquote edgy cation or whatever you wanna call it, that
that is what sort of uh like sort of enabled
this culture of silence because like, well was it that
they saw it and they were rationalizing like, well, I
guess that's a revolutionary method, or it's like, well we're
taking the good in the bad. It's like there's so
much going on here, and we're we're going to dig

(40:20):
into it a lot because there's like there's there's a
fucking crazy amount going on, just like my wheels are.
This has been one of the harder episodes to like
structure because there's so much to get into. But yeah,
we're we're gonna keep delving into this because it just
there's layers upon layers. So further reporting by a website
called The Local, which is a German paper, revealed that
students at the Old and Bulge School were regularly applied

(40:43):
with drugs and alcohol, and even used by teachers as
sex slaves for whole weekends. I'm gonna quote from Dear
Spiegel again. Eventually the permissiveness became almost total, and it
wasn't the tormentors but the tormented who were made to
feel guilty. The declared minimum objective was to be bisexual.
If you didn't achieve that, you were a failure, says
former people Gerald Are, who came to the school in
nineteen seventy five and was first abused by his music

(41:04):
teacher the following year. We knew one thing. Everything was
permitted at any time, Gerald Are, at the alumnus who
recalled Gerald beckerfilating him like a possessed man, says of
his school days. So everything is permitted at any times.
The the way these kids are raised to sort of
expect things are going to work in the olden Balde school, right,
so that it's almost like nine seven. But nothing was

(41:25):
a surprise to It's like accepted. The culture of the
school is ship's going to happen because that's just how
things work at the Olden Vould. Yeah, And at first
they think it just goes back to the early seventies,
but as these stories come out, more people start to
tell their own experiences. One of these people who related
her experiences was German television presenter Emily Freed, who attended

(41:47):
the olden Balde School starting in nineteen sixty nine. In
a book published to mark the school's centenary, she recounts
how a teacher coaxed her into playing strip poker in
his apartment. She said he goaded her for being a prudish,
petit bourgeoisie, white being girl, until she finally caved into
the pressure, although she was embarrassed and suppressed her memory
of the incident for decades. So if you don't funk us,

(42:09):
you're bougie. You're bougie. Yeah, you're too prudish. And the
whole like, was the bisexuality thing born out of like
an actual philosophical I think, or it is purely like
we want to be I don't know. We just want
people to be as sexually elastic as possible. That's it.

(42:30):
We want people to be sexually elastic. We want them
all fucking uh. And like they wanted the students also
fucking other students, because the more of that that was
going on, the more it camouflaged the teachers predations on
these kids. Oh my god, yeah, I mean it's fucking
wild arc like yeah, yeah, you know what won't create

(42:52):
a culture of child molestation? These goods and services. That
these goods and services, that's right, Miles, I knew that.
I love these. That's that's our only line for advertisers,
and it's a good one. Products. We're back. Yeah, it's

(43:15):
about to get so depressing her. Um now, When the
news of all of the rapes at the olden Volge
school came out, Emily, who was just talking about being
called bougie for not wanting to fund her teacher, wrote
a column for a Frankfurt newspaper. In that column, she
explained that for her, some of this was like her
feelings of whe whether or not to report anything, or

(43:36):
whether or not this was okay. Her like emotions on
the matter were very muddled by the fact that the
olden Volge school took like, you know, what you might
call a healthy attitude towards sexual relationships between students. You know,
they didn't punish kids for starting relationships or whatever. These
are teenagers or whatnot. They had like you could see
how at the time someone would be like, oh, they're
just trying like not to be as as sex negative

(43:58):
as a school is if you don't know about all
child molestation that's going on. Um. So she noted in
her column, it was suggested to students that they respected principle,
understood them very well, and that it was a sign
of recognition to show mutual affection. We students were happy
to be able to explore sexuality in an angst free climate.
That some teachers use this freedom as a cover for
their assaults as a scandal. So that's how Emily winds

(44:20):
up even you know, as a victim of this, Emily
winds up feeling like, well, the school was basically good
and this climate was basically good. It was just some
teachers taking advantage of the system. Um, which is you
know kind of I think, um, I think as we'll
see her trying to protect herself emotionally a little bit
by by bye, because she you know, that's one of

(44:41):
the confusing things about being molested in a situation like this.
I'm sure the years of her the old and Vulgueool
were very positive, had positive memories for a number of
the kids who were victims there. So you've got to
try to like build this up as like no and
the basic system was good. There was just a few
people who uh use the freedom to abuse other like

(45:03):
abuse the freedom essentially. That that's the way this this
young woman, or she's not a young woman anymore, but
that's the way she kind of thinks back on her
time in the school and I think tries to protect
herself emotionally. But there's evidence that, like even between the
students themselves, a lot of what happened at the Old
in Vulgied School was profoundly abusive. There's at least one
report of an adolescent girl who was molested by several

(45:25):
of her classmates. Um. And it's worth noting here that
while all these children were a definition victims, um, a
number of them victimized each other too. So this is
a very confusing and messy situation. Yeah, because the culture
was just just a fucking free for all at every level,
and there's just no it's a pure chaos. Yeah. Yeah,

(45:48):
And this is seen as like like ideologically important, revolutionary,
Like that's really how the teachers frame it to the students.
Um that like what's going on at the Old in
Vulgied School is just too far ahead of mainstream morality
for most people. That I understand, Like, where how would
they extend that logic out? It's like, how is us
assaulting each other making us better students are more balanced people? Yeah,

(46:13):
I think it's I think it's you know, it's very
easy to convince people to do something terrible if the
thing that they were already doing wasn't great, and like
German sexual morays in the nineteen sixties and seventies, uh,
weren't the healthiest that humans have ever developed. Um, just
like American sexual mores at the same time, you know,
they're they're very repressive, they're very like based on shame

(46:36):
and guilt, and that's not healthy. So you can get
people to buy into something that's even worse if the
thing that they grew up doing is also fucked up
right or to them it's like, yeah, this definitely is
an optimal I guess, yeah, what's the harm in trying
the complete other side of the spectrum? Exactly? Um. One
people at the school at the time later recalled we
were taught that we were different from everyone else, and

(46:57):
what child, what person can remain unmoved by the sense
of constantly being marveled at. We were real daredevils in
our own paradise behind Golden Gates. So fucking confusing here.
Even at the time, it was not paradise for all
of those kids. Adam Kerfer, a former student at Oldenwald,
called the school hell and described regular forced showers with

(47:19):
his teachers. He claimed his music teacher, who was the
head of his family, regularly pimped him and other boys
out to friends on school trips. So you get this
mix of students who like later on recognize, yeah, we
were abused, but it was also a really good time.
And these students who have consistently been like, no, this
was a nightmare from the beginning. So really different recollections

(47:39):
from different kids. Yeah, if it's just sort of subconsciously
like anything, like you know, that cycle of abuse just continues.
Other people like if the ones that do continue were
just resigned to the fact that that was you know,
that what that's what was their reality going forward. Yeah,
I think that's that's what's going on here. So once
all of this broke in two thousand and ten, the

(48:02):
school board resigned under mass outrage that they had chosen
to investigate the matter internally back in when the first
reports on Becker came out rather than report all that
mass child rape to the police. Head Mistress Kaufman thought
this line of reasoning was bullshit. She blamed the cover
up on what she called mafia structures with the powerful
friends that gerald Becker had accumulated, including heads of state

(48:23):
and newspaper publishers. Uh yeah, there's like a let's see.
One of the like articles I read on this in
Women's Studies Quarterly describes it as a like institutional protection
because the olden Volge School is seen as like such
a key aspect of like the educational reform movement in Germany.

(48:46):
So like, because these people are proud of the educational
reform since the Nazis, they can't discard the oden Volged
school because it's kind of at the forefront of that,
even though it's very clear that like really fucked up
ships going on there. So that's part of why this
all gets uped under the rug now the h The
author of that article um Pito Sexuality and especially German

(49:08):
History and Women Studies Quarterly, suggests that a lot of
the explanation for why all this molestation happened at Oldenvald
in the seventies and eighties is tied into the sexual
revolution and the intellectual climate of the nineteen sixties and seventies,
particularly in Germany. The author credits the concept of pedagogical eros,
which was first cooked up by a guy named Gustav Weinken,

(49:29):
who was Paul Geheb's old partner at the school he
helped run before founding Odenwald. Now, the term pedagogical eros
referred initially to homosexual erotic attraction between a pupil and
a teacher. Vinikin didn't see this as a bad thing.
He was very influenced by Platonic Greek attitudes towards teacher
student relationships, which were often erotic and sexual. And we

(49:49):
can look back in time and say like, we're profoundly
abusive as well. Um, but he's looking at this stuff,
is like, oh, this is the way teaching ought to be.
This is Paul Geheb's old partner in the early nineteen hundreds.
I was looking back and like, hey man, they had
some good ideas. Yeah. I don't know why, kids, I
don't know why we're I don't know why we're disrespecting

(50:10):
our history or some ship. Yeah, is that really just
oh my god? Heros that's like, yeah, it's so weird
though too, Like the language and the vocabulary these people
create to not what they're doing what it is. Yeah,
you have to have that language around it, otherwise people

(50:31):
will realize, well, you're just you're just talking about fucking kids, dude.
Right If if they were up front, it's like, yeah,
and then I just abused the kids sexually. That that
they wrapped themselves in ideology to get away with this
sort of It's like, right, I guess that's the hallmark
of any fucked up movement. Yeah, it's the same thing
that the Catholic priest did. It's just a different ideology,
but it's it's the same thing. Um. So you have

(50:53):
these very old ideas about like Greek you know, pedagogical
eros and stuff, um, and you have these things kind
of merging very modern ideas of the sexual revolution because
the nineteen sixties and seventies is a time when people
are increasingly in the West lifting taboos against sex um,
which is good. But when you mix it with with
these child molesty desires and some of these like old

(51:15):
bad ideas, you get this very toxic slurry um that results.
And it's it's a very complicated thing that happens, but
it's not just at the Odenwald School. And this is
where we start talking about what was happening in the
rest of Germany at the time, because there was actually
a very weird and virulent strain of pro child fucking
ideology that ran rampant among the German intellectual community in

(51:38):
the first decades after World War Two. Have you ever
heard of the kinder Latin movement? Uh, that sounds familiar. Yeah,
it's it's not a it's it's a fairly prominent thing.
It's started in the nineteen seventies as a reaction to
the unspeakable horrors of Nazism. The basic goal of the
movement was to raise children to be more obedient, disobedient

(51:59):
to adults. So people think at like what happens in
the Nazis, and they're like, oh, we shouldn't like this
culture of obedience that we've inculcated in Germany has horrible consequences.
So we need to inculcate a culture of disobedience now
within our students, which makes sense, right, You can see
the logical through line there. Absolutely see why you would
come to that conclusion. Now In previous eras German child

(52:19):
rearing had placed a strong emphasis on obedience above all else.
The idea was that raising children in Germany had to
completely change in order to avoid a repeat of the
horrors of the thirties and forties. So this all came
from a good place, but it didn't stay in a
good place. And I'm gonna quote again from that Women
Studies Quarterly article. Within the anti authoritarian kinder Lattan movement,
which was closely associated with the early phage of the

(52:41):
New Women's Movement, great significance was assigned to the idea
of liberating child sexuality. This was linked to a vision
reaching back specifically to Wilhelm Reich, who held that liberation
of child sexuality would lead to the liberation of human beings.
The idea fitted with a politicization of desire in the
context of the nineteen sixty movements, and can be seen
analogously as a politicization of childhood's sexuality. The proclamation of

(53:04):
their liberation was expected to contribute to their childhood happiness.
A number of texts from the West German anti authoritary
and educational milieu did not distinguish between childhood and early
adult sexuality, but sought to flatten sexual distinctions within the
generations m HM. Now Wilhelm Reich is the guy who
coined the term sexual revolution um. And so there's a

(53:26):
lot going on here. It seems like what you've got
is this very well meaning movement that comes out as
a as an understandable reaction to the horrible crimes of
the Nazi era. But you also have all these people
who just want to fund kids and see this as
an opportunity like, well, I can slide a little bit
of my ideology in here, these are the things I believe,
and I can cloak it as something more than just

(53:47):
me being horny for little kids. Right, I'm changing I'm
changing attitudes. I'm saving a future generation of Germans so
that you know, nothing terrible happens. Well, also completely taking
advantage of that sentiment for yeah, so um yeah. And
I don't want to say, like the whole kinder lat
movement was not about child molestation. There were actually a

(54:09):
lot of very important developments and educational and child rearing
policy that can be traced back to it. But you
also had a funkload of pedophiles with inrovement who used
the opening up of society is a chance to pray
on little kids. Quote. Within the circles of these movements,
the alternative milieu and the advansipatory sexology of the nineteen seventies,
Texan documents on child sexuality lacked perspective that reinforced a

(54:30):
child's right and ability to say no to sexual contact conduct.
So this is part of how Yeah, so these these
these teachers who are trying to basically stick uh and
thinkers who were trying to basically like mainstream child molestation
by hijacking the kinder lad movement. They're noting the importance

(54:50):
of emancipating children's sexuality, but they're not writing anything about
the importance of consent. That doesn't The assumption then is
that kids want this kind end of contact that way,
and people like went with that because I mean, like
if you're a really a whole lot of them, did, man,
I mean, disobedience is purely built on agency. That's because
this isn't this isn't a real like, this chunk of

(55:13):
the movement isn't real. There's no ideology. Sure, but I
guess like even if you were hearing this out loud
and you're like, this is fucking terrible, can I like
limb because if if they had to explain themselves, they're like, Okay,
I got caught. You know, it's this matter of it's
this matter of Once the weight of cultural forces behind change,
most people are are cowards, you know, whether that cultural

(55:35):
change is like the switch to Nazism or the switch
to childhood sexual liberation. An awful lot of people are
just going to kind of go along with it if
it seems like what everyone else is doing. That's that's
what is happening here. Now, this is all very complicated
to talk about, especially since some of what happened in
the Kindred Laton movement has its roots in the struggle

(55:56):
for gay rights. See in the sixties and seventies in Germany,
the age of consent for heterosexual sex was eighteen, but
the age of consent for homosexual male sex was twenty one,
which is obviously unjust. Um So there was a campaign
to lower the age of consent for homosexual male sex
down to eighteen. And there's nothing wrong with that, obviously.
If you're gonna have the age of consent be eighteen,

(56:17):
it should be eighteen for everybody. Nobody's I don't think
anybody's gonna have a problem with that, But you can
see how the general air of discussion around a lot
of the left at that time would have been focused
on lowering age of consents and how that brought cover
to people who wanted the age of consent to be
way lower than so just like the same way you
have white supremacists like sort of taking advantage of this

(56:39):
disruption in the economy and people giving like sort of
these straw man arguments about well, it's this other group,
and then people would darker purposes go yeah, yeah, right
right right, also white people. It's it's like white supremacists
seeing that like everyone's talking about uh, you know, nationalized
healthcare and are like, yeah, we do need more socialism,
but it's got to be a socialism that ex ludes

(57:00):
people who aren't part of the racial community, like a
national sort of social tim like yeah, this happens in
every sphere of life where this is. Or their different
laws for gay sex between women, I've noticed how you
made that distinction. They I don't think they really thought
about it, of course, Like like that's one of those
things like sometimes it was kind of easier to be

(57:22):
a gay woman than a gay man, just because nobody
really thought about it as much. It was like wasn't
even discussed like really to the like like it was
taboo really to talk about gay mail sex. And I
think sometimes gay women kind of slid under the radar
because people just assumed it didn't exist. One of the
unintended benefits of toxic patriarchy. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, again,

(57:43):
this is all very complicated to talk about. I I
maybe a little bit wrong about what I'm saying about, like, uh,
you know, lesbian sex and this only read into so
much here. Well, yeah, it was weird. Even the government
was like, yeah, there was a distinction to even codify that. Yeah. Now,
I found a very good article about all this on

(58:03):
Der Spiegel called the Sexual Revolution in Children How the
Left went too far um and it points out that
Klaus Reiner Wool, the publisher of a popular leftist magazine
at the time in Germany, wrote open calls for sex
with miners while molesting his own daughters. It also goes
into horrific detail about how some experiments and communal living
during this period went very very badly. Quote, in the

(58:25):
summer of nineteen sixty seven, three women and four men
moved into an apartment and an old building on who
Gee brek Strasa together with two small children, a three
year old girl, Grisha and a four year old boy Nessim.
For the residents, the cohabitation experiment was an attempt to
overcome all bourgeoisie constraints, which included everything from separate bank
accounts and closed bathroom doors to fidelity within couples and

(58:46):
the development of feelings of shame. The two children were
raised by the group, which often meant that no one
paid much attention to them. Because the adults had made
it their goal to not just tolerate, but in fact
a firm child sexuality, they were not satisfied to simply
act as passive observer. Now the article goes on into
some uncomfortable to tail about what happened with that, and
I'm not going to quote the stuff about the sex

(59:07):
acts that followed because it's gross. Um. But there's this
there's this complicated era where you have like, you know,
kids are going to experiment and like grab things, right um.
And because everyone's going around newd all the time, kids
will grab adults, and adults will feel that it's like
counter revolutionary basically to stop this, and so some of

(59:28):
the molestation happens that way too, But it's very, very
complicated and weird what goes on in German kind of
leftist revolutionary circles at this time. And this was yet
just sort of again to push back against all these
social constructs and say, what if we take all take
them all down and there are no rules to the

(59:52):
point that we're veering into like just the darkest kind
of ship. That's exactly what happens. And you know, there
was a stigma against me king a fuss about it
if you thought what was going on was unhealthy, because
doing so would would make you seem counter revolutionary. Um,
one trude, you're being exactly yeah, One teacher later called quote.

(01:00:12):
I found it incredibly difficult to take a stance. I
felt that what we were trying to do was fundamentally correct,
but when it came to this issue fucking kids, I
thought this is crazy, It just isn't right. But then
I felt ashamed of thinking that way. I think many
were in the same position, and you can see you
you stick that same reasoning to people who kind of
went along with the Nazi re shames crimes, and I'm

(01:00:34):
sure it speaks for millions of Germans in that period. Um, so, yeah,
it's really ironic to me that a movement that started
as an anti authoritarian response to fascism ended with people
sitting by and watching other kinds of horrific crimes occur
because they were still too scared to go. There's a
lot of lessons about human nature in here, and none
of them are positive. Yeah, seriously, Yeah, it's yeah. The

(01:00:59):
the x us as of the kinder Lattan movement are
i think, like evidence of how deeply toxic group think
can be, regardless of what side it comes from, and
how vulnerable times of social change and exploration are to
the whims of hidden predators. You know, it's any time,
you know, like now we're changes in the air, you
have to be very fucking careful because changes always is

(01:01:20):
especially necessary and society as unhealthy as our own, but
it also provides cover to the worst kinds of human beings.
And also like the sort of naivety to think you
could completely just one eighty like an entire nation's culture
within a generation, and absurd like it's centuries and centuries

(01:01:42):
of norms and traditions that give you that, and to
be like, well, all right, if we do this and
kids just like we make them all rebellious and like,
you know, our kids just need to be more punk rock,
Like that's not the solution, and to think that again,
but I think also it was also that wasn't really
the point for lot of people. The point was to
create this environment in which this kind of behavior could

(01:02:04):
be seen as like not necessarily because it's in the
name of revolution and evolution. And this is where the
episode gets more confusing again because if you you know,
it makes sense if you look at it the way
that like it's started to look right now, which is
that like, okay, l sixties, early seventies, you have this
movement in Germany for educational reform in a new way

(01:02:25):
of looking at like how children are raised, and child
molesters used this as cover to to to you know,
essentially abuse kids. Um and this guy, Gerald Becker, winds
up in charge of the Old and Alge School, influenced
by these ideas in and inculcates a culture of child
ripe within the school. Right makes a lot of sense,

(01:02:46):
goes inline with German historical trends at the time, except
for one problem. Gerald Becker and the sexual revolution of
the sixties and seventies is not when the Old Involge
School started becoming a haven for child rape. It started
it with the person we started talking about at the
beginning of this episode, Paul Geheb. For a very long time,

(01:03:08):
Paul was viewed as something as a hero, both within
the field of education and within Germany. Albert Einstein called
him one of the few upright men who maintained the
honor of Germany during the horrible Nazi era. The school
he established in Switzerland during a war became a haven
for child refugees and orphansive Nazism's mad dashed through Europe.
But Paul was not the man he seemed to be,

(01:03:28):
and the Old Vald School's history of child abuse went
back much further than the late sixties. In fact, it
goes all the way to the beginning. None of this
came into light until late in two thousand ten, when
Der Spiegel conducted a deep investigation into the school. Now
by this point, other investigators had revealed the sweeping history
of sexual assault from the sixties up until the early nineties.
At least Adrian Kerfort, the chairman of a group formed

(01:03:50):
by children molested by Old Vold teachers estimated at this
point that between five hundred and nine hundred children had
been victimized, but most people still believed that Paul Geheb
and his beloved legacy as a reformer were clean. All
of that was blasted away by the investigation of an
educationalist named Christie Stark. Stark basically gains access to the

(01:04:11):
archives at the old involved school and starts like reading
through all of these letters that had been sent from parents,
to teachers and from to school administrators, starting from the
very beginning of the school, and a lot of what
she finds is deeply fucked up. Uh And I'm gonna
I'm gonna quote from that, dear Schpiegle right up. On
September four, a mother wrote to Gaheb's wife, Edith, who

(01:04:32):
had built up to school with him. This mother, e
m described in detail her twelve year old sons allegations
that he had been abused by a teacher. It wasn't
the first such claim. Three weeks earlier, a father had
taken his daughter out of the school on the grounds
that she had been very disturbed by the nocturnal visits
by adults that she had witnessed educationalist Crystal Stark says
that the school received a number of such letters from concerned,

(01:04:52):
shocked parents over the years, with some pointing the finger
at older pupils and others at the teachers. So, after
hundreds of hours of pains making research, Stark writes a
dissertation on all this. Now. Prior to her research, the
understanding was that most of the children who had been
abused at Oldenvald were boys, but she found vastly more
complaints from parents about suspected or confirmed sexual relations with

(01:05:12):
between their daughters and school staff. Some of these parents
presented love letters that their daughters had received from teachers
during summer vacation, and shockingly, these early nine parents were
generally too scared to a complain, which is probably why
the behavior flew under the radar. One mother even promised
the school directly that she had no intent of causing
a scandal that would put the school in an unfavorable light.

(01:05:34):
Even in the days of Gheb, the Oldenvald School's reputation
as a bastion of bold experimentation and scholarship protected it
from harm. So now I'm gonna quote again from that
dear Spiegel article on February nineteen thirty one, he wrote
to a female pupil who had asked for his help.
He had sent the seventeen year old girl to a
friend of his in London, a fellow teacher who was

(01:05:54):
supposed to improve her English, but whom she said molested her.
Geh Heeb defended his colleague vehemently. He bravely treads new
ground in the realm of sexuality in particular, and it's
discovered new successful methods that are of course extremely infuriating
for a high society. And it's hypocritical sexual morality. So
this is how, this is how he argues to an
abused child. Yeah that she wasn't in fact abused now

(01:06:16):
he uh. I just like also, I mean, I I
get it because history moves at a very its own pace,
and especially things from this era. We don't have the
same speed at which information travels. But it's wild that
it's like they're like, oh yeah, back in like this
has been going on for a century. Yeah yeah. So

(01:06:42):
when that girl you know wrote him this article complaining
about being molested, heb advised her not to make a fuss, uh,
and he wrote, it's natural that stupid little girls immediately
feel sexually threatened, call him a pig, and maybe even
call for the police to get involved. She's she's dumb
for yeah now. And this happens all the time with women,
you guys know, you know, you've seen it a hundred times.

(01:07:04):
It's like the sentiment of it all the Also, like
the shame part two is like very interesting because I know,
you know, with the Germans and the Japanese, uh, you know,
forming the axis back then in World War Two, like
the sort of similarities in culture to like, you know,
even in Japanese culture, you wouldn't you would maybe be
a little hesitant to call something out, not necessarily to

(01:07:27):
this scale, but in general because you don't want to
be seen as the person who's trying to disrupt something
or malign a group or something like that. And it's
a very powerful force to just sort of maintain the
status quo because you know, obviously Americans too, it were
on the difference on the other side of the spectrum
to aggressively probably probably toxic degree where it's like we'll

(01:07:48):
fucking scream about everything and anything, and sometimes about ship
that really isn't even bad, just because we want to
be able to scream about something. But when you see
even this, like this mother was like, I'm looking at
the evidence in front of me, Yet the thing that
is preventing me isn't that I don't I'm not. Uh,
it's not that I'm mistaking what is actually happening here objectively,

(01:08:09):
It's that I don't want to be seen as a
bolt rocker. Yeah. And it it gets even more fucked
up than that because you know, we talked a lot
about what Paul did during the Nazi era and how
like he resisted the Nazis and he you know, his
his school helped protect kids, and that's all true, but
the Nazi era also provided Paul with a shield for

(01:08:31):
a lot of his abuse. So that girl who got
molested that he wrote this letter to her father was
a lawyer and he pulled her out of school, but
he didn't feel comfortable suing or pressing charges because he
was a Jewish person and his daughter was also jew. Yeah.
So this suggests that Paul Geheb, who bravely stood up

(01:08:52):
to the Nazis, may have purposefully reached out so like
this this Jewish lawyer, he's not a wealthy lawyer, um,
and his daughter was only able to afford membership in
the Old Old School because Paul Geheb had authored her
a scholarship, which suggests perhaps that Paul Geheb may have
purposefully reached out to members of vulnerable groups in order

(01:09:12):
to extend scholarships, knowing that their marginalization would make them
less likely to retaliate against him in the school. It's
like classic predator behavior. I mean, if nobody's gonna listen
to this Jew talk about our it's like and also
the government doesn't care about them, so they're a low poward.
It's the same thing like with the amount of sexual
abusers that will teach on reservations too, and because of

(01:09:34):
like tribal laws are like well I can just sunk
off the rez and then it's a different system of
law and I can skirt it and continue to prey
upon vulnerable groups. M It's like, I mean, it doesn't
it's not that it's it's just I was gonna say
it's it's not fascinating because it's so dark, but to
under to know that it's the exact same process that

(01:09:57):
goes into it. Whether it's like if they're priests who
we're going after, children who may be like, uh, like
hearing impaired or deaf or like whatever, because they know
those children speak less to their parents and are less
likely to talk to their parents about what happens. Because
of that, they're targeted. And now to see in this one,
he's taking advantage of the anti semitism of the time

(01:10:19):
to also find additional cover two in this What do
you think that was as intentional as it was or
this is an example or was he also maybe like
giving scholarships to students who were from those groups too,
like they're like, yeah, you may be marginalized, but also
you can come to this school for free or whatever. Well,
I think he was doing that, and I think it

(01:10:40):
made it look like it was a very progressive school
and he was protecting these kids. But I also think
he took advantage of that status yea, of the fact
that they had less protections. Yeah. Now, klass Man is
probably the most internationally renowned alumni of the Owen Volt School.
Thomas Man's kid and dear Spegel reporting suggests that he

(01:11:01):
too was a victim of Paul Gaeheed. Man published a
book called The Old Man, which is a story about
a school principle who praised on young girls at his school.
In the book, he wrote this, after dinner, the principle
lies down on a sofa and listens to the sounds
of playing and singing children. A girl comes in, the
principle speaks to and then becomes intimate with her. Mom wrote,

(01:11:22):
he began stroking the girl. He even laid his head,
his white, unimaginably old head with its fond mouth, into
her lap. The text goes onto report about urgent, greedy
caresses and of another girl whom, looking her straight in
the eye, he threw himself at and kissed. Now. This
is argued by Der Spiegel as a portrait of Paul
Gaheed basically like Klaus Moan saw this legendary reformer molesting

(01:11:45):
girls at school and couldn't say anything directly about it,
but put it in one of his books after he
got out of the school. He was a famous writer. Yeah. Um.
And in fact, when the book was published, Gheheed complained
to Thomas Man because he believed that the story would
inflict damage on the old involved school. Um. So that's

(01:12:06):
yeah now. The document Start poured through included a nineteen
eighteen letter written to Paul Geheed by one of his
young students. The author writes that she depended on him
and had a right to a ring, perhaps due to
all that had happened. She felt that this would make
her safe, or at least safer. Now, the wording of
this letter from a student to Paul Geheb doesn't make
it entirely clear what happens, but it sounds like Paul

(01:12:28):
got a teenager pregnant. Like that's what this letter sounds like.
You've got this like young girl writing to this teacher
saying that like she depends on him and she should
give her a ring because of what he did to her, Like, yeah,
maybe made her get an abortion? An abortion. It's very
hard to say. Yeah. Now, we do know that the
school's tenth anniversary celebration in nineteen twenty was canceled because

(01:12:49):
a female teacher committed suicide. We now know that this
woman had a relationship with Geheb as well, and it's
unclear what drove her to suicide, but I think it's
we can safely assume it was something very shady um
and probably had to do with all of this and suicide.
I don't know that now I've got my wasn't suicide? Yeah,
exactly hard to say. In nineteen thirty, at the school's

(01:13:12):
twentieth anniversary, Paul had some of the girls students pose
naked for a photographer. He was then given an album
of the photos, which biographer Martin Knoff described in two
thousand and six as particularly risk a semi ironic, semi serious,
and unthinkable in the present day. Um so naff who again,
like Paul's this educational titans this, this is a very

(01:13:33):
positive biography, and nobody at the time until thou and
six expects this is evidence that paula was molesting anybody.
But within the context of this additional evidence like oh yeah,
of course he made himself a porn calendar of his students.
Yeah yeah, I think. I mean, wow, you're really a

(01:13:55):
little bastard. Yeah yeah, I might with him. I'm just
like gobsmacked at how out in the open it was.
But it just sort of taking advantage of the perfect
societal climate where it gave enough cover to do something
so overt, and also just sort of where we were

(01:14:18):
as a as a world global culture of like how
we viewed these things. And it's just I on some level,
were there also people who were in positions of power
wrapped up in this or it was purely based off
of this sort of like intellectual appeal or the way
he was spinning it that was giving him this cover.

(01:14:40):
I mean it's both. You know, you have a lot
of famous alumni from the school, a lot of rich
and powerful people send their kids there. Um. It's it's
viewed with a lot of prestige. You know, it's respected
enough that the Nazis aren't willing to shut it down.
They just want to like take control of it because
it's this internationally recognized institution. Um. And it's it's hum.
I think it's it's clear now that the Old Invulged

(01:15:03):
School was from the beginning it's more of a palace
to sexual abuse than an institution of learning. Um. And
it's one of those things you read at the top
of this all of these famous attributes about how the
school was organized, the division of children and students into families,
the rural location of the of the of the campus,
the focus on the equality of children and adults, and
like at the start of the story, before you know

(01:15:24):
any of this, that seems like a really high minded rhetoric. Um.
And once you have all of the context, it seems
like a perfect way to construct a society in which
you can abuse children incredibly effectively. Um and in retrospect,
the signs are all over the school. Dr Henry Cassier,

(01:15:45):
Gheb's nephew and a student at the Old Invulged School,
wrote a praiseful article about Paul and his educational methods
and the Unesco Courier in the early nineteen sixties, and
it includes a quote that I think is really telling.
And I don't know if Cassier was an abuser or
an abuse victim. He went to the school. He very
well may have been abused. He very well may have
been both. It's hard to say, but this quote is

(01:16:07):
really telling him me. Among his friends, Paulus Paul gehebe
counted men like Romain Rowland, Gandhi teg Are, Albert Schweitzer, Einstein,
men who put their stamp on the age. What did
all these men have in common? To answer, in the
words of Tagore, they were all travelers whose eternal journey
is towards the future. Climbing barriers, crossing mountains through the
gaping century. They strode out into the unknown, into the unseen,

(01:16:30):
and their blood the trumpets sounded beyond all borders, go beyond.
Oh my god, Yeah, yeah, so is that I mean,
were these people hanging around each other to a lot?
Oh yeah? So is this like, you know, I guess
the O G. Epstein kind of circle of influential person

(01:16:54):
who I mean, is there a dimension of this where
he may have been trafficking to or or people knew
like if you hang around paulas there's you know, a
chance that there are going to be children around Paulice
is kind of an Epstein like figure. Um, he's this
guy who we there's definitely allegations that later on, you

(01:17:17):
know that like Becker and people who are in the
school later on pimped out kids. And I think it
would be foolish to assume that Paul wasn't doing the
same thing. Um, And I think you have to look
at his association with guys like Einstein and wonder the fuck? Yeah, right,
what did you get up to? It seemed like all

(01:17:37):
those people right would see themselves in the work that
they're doing is so massively important. Right, And even as
that quote was like going beyond barriers, going past whatever,
going past what is legal in the name of exploration,
or this like and I'm it's in service of my
genius or something. Yeah. Yeah, man, it's really complicated, it's

(01:18:00):
really a messy, and like, you know, it makes me
think back to like how we now know that um,
what's his name? Um? Uh, Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates too,
But Stephen Hawking was when visited Epstein's and like was
on his plane and so yes it was Bill Gates.
You've got all these all these people who are are

(01:18:20):
treated in society as mental titans, many of them with
solid justification to be treated that way. Um, but also
this this intense need to kind of elevate themselves above society. Um.
And you know that's not always a bad thing, because
society is fucked up, but I think it leads some

(01:18:41):
people to justify things that are horrific because it's just
the thing that they happen to want. Um. And yeah,
I don't know, like the fact that Einstein comes into
the story obliquely. I've heard no allegations that he was
ever did anything. But also like how would we have
known all Betty's Yeah, well I'm sure too. Even then,
like for someone like Einstein, whose name even rings even

(01:19:05):
louder than gehbs, Like there must have been even more pressure, Like, dude,
I'm not about to say something about Albert Einstein or whatever.
And I guess that is that thing, right at a
certain level, maybe just having the world. No, you might
be the smartest person or the greatest this or the wealthiest,
that just isn't enough that you have to go No,

(01:19:27):
I need to further demonstrate my superiority by saying that
norms and the laws of mortals just do not apply
to me at all, because I'm in this position too.
Like if that's sort of further is that because at
a certain point, if your ego is wrapped up in
your sense of self of being the sort of deity,
then yeah, like why would you even ever think you could?

(01:19:49):
You need to abide by the rules for the normal
the mortals. Ye oh b story, yeah yeah, yeah, thanks.
This has made me want to start at school and
if anything, we just it's what to protect. No, you

(01:20:14):
have to protect the kids. You just you don't to
stop all this from happening, You just build a big
walled compound and you put all the kids in there,
and then you shoot anyone who tries to enter. Mm
hmmmmmmmmmm it's like like like a prison but without doors.
Mm hmmm mmm interesting. Yeah, you know, I'm looking forward

(01:20:37):
to your Ted talk. Mm hmm. It'll be interesting to
say the least. Yeah, yeah, yes, my Ted talk unlocking
children in a cage to protect them from child molesters.
I mean, honestly, at this point people would be like,
I mean there was there was something about that talk.
I really got something from that. Um, I don't know
where you how are you feeling at the end of this,

(01:20:58):
Miles inspired. No, it's just like it's you know, this
has been the abuse of children and the weak is
a theme that will always echo into eternity in both directions,
in the past and the future. And it's like, no
matter how far back you you go, or what or whatever,

(01:21:21):
when you look at the details, the same types of
people and personalities create these very similar outcomes. It's just
that every fifty years it has a new version or
a new way of it happening, or a new uh
look and feel to it. Where this But like again,

(01:21:41):
when when we talk about every time, it's like, oh,
it's like this, it's like this. It could be about
Jerry Sandusky, it could be about Paul Nasser, it could
be about uh, Jeffrey Epstein, it's like that and anything.
It's just the same thing over and over. And I think,
I guess the benefit is, like, the more we're able
to look at these things like this and be see
these patterns objectively in these sort of tactics, is you know,

(01:22:05):
the way we can someone somewhat maybe trying to you know,
reduce the incidences. But and I think it's important to
see this within the context of both like the left
and the right, or I guess it might be more
useful to be what as conservative versus progressive, and a
conservative institution, a culture of child molestation or of just
abuse in general grows up among like, um, these ideas

(01:22:28):
of entrenched authority and hierarchy, and in respect for like,
we don't want to like you don't want to shame
the church. You don't want to shame yourself because what
happened to you as a crime for you too, so
like you know you'll be judged for doing it. Whereas
kind of on the more progressive end of things, um,
it's no, no, no, we're we're liberating ourselves. This is

(01:22:48):
a positive moment. And if you if you don't feel
comfortable with this, then your counter revolutionary, your bougie, you're
you're too conservative and you should be ashamed of that.
But it's like so it's it's the structure is different
depending on sort of whether it's a progressive or a
conservative movement that the abuse is hiding in, but they're

(01:23:09):
both equally uh prone to to to fostering predators, because
that's how predators work, right A. Speaking of predators, Bastard's
mm hmm, you work. You're gonna plug your Twitter or something. Yeah,
I'll plug my Twitter. I'll also plug my new podcast,

(01:23:33):
uh with one of your listeners favorite guests, Sophia Alexandra
Her and I have a new podcast called four twenty
Day Fiance where we talk about the t l C
show ninety Day Fiance in in elevated way by where high.
But that is the new show, and I employ your

(01:23:54):
listeners if you like hearing us talk about much lighter topics. Uh,
that's a great show. Other than that, Twitter and Instagram,
Miles of Gray and every day actually twice a day
now on the daily Zeitgeist with Jack O'Brien. Well, talk

(01:24:14):
zeit Geist yourself up with Jack and Miles. Check out
the four into twenty day Fiance. Find us on the
website Internet dot com at Behind the Bastards dot com
and on Twitter at at Bastards Pod. Also Instagram find
me at I Right Okay, on Twitter and find uh.

(01:24:36):
There's really no good joke to tie into this episode
about the mass rape of children, so I'm just going
to end the episode on that note. That's very responsible
of you. Thank you. Have a have a good day, everybody.
I don't think too much about this stuff afterwards, but
you will. Yeah,

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