Werner Erhard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
Werner Erhard
Born September 5, 1935 (1935-09-05) (age 72)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
United States
Occupation Retired[1]
Spouse Patricia Fry, September 26, 1953 - 1960 (divorced)
Ellen Erhard (June Bryde), March 29, 1960 - November 1983 (divorced)
Children 7
Website
wernererhard.com

Werner Hans Erhard[2]:7 (born John Paul Rosenberg) authored transformational models and applications oriented towards individuals, groups, and organizations.[3]

The general public associates his name primarily with the programs he created:

  • the "est Training" (1971 – 1983)
  • the “Forum” (1984 – 1991)

Erhard's programs were offered to the public through the organizations:

In 1991, about the time of his retirement from WEA, Erhard sold his then-existing intellectual properties to the group that formed Landmark Education. He then left the United States.

Erhard, along with John Denver, Robert W. Fuller, and others, founded The Hunger Project in 1977.

Contents

[edit] Early life (1935-1971)

John Paul Rosenberg graduated from Norristown High School, Norristown, Pennsylvania, in June 1953, along with his future wife Patricia Fry.[2]:30 Rosenberg married Patricia Fry on 26 September 1953[4]:4 and they had four[2]:51 children together. He then abandoned his first wife and children in Philadelphia (1960) and traveled west with June Bryde.[4]:4 He changed his name to "Werner Hans Erhard". Rosenberg chose his new names from Esquire magazine-articles he read about the then-West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard and the philosopher and physicist Werner Heisenberg.[2]:57-58 June Bryde changed her name to "Ellen Virginia Erhard". The newly-renamed Erhards moved to St. Louis.

The next year (1961), Erhard sold correspondence courses in the Midwest, then drove to California to seek a better territory, getting assigned to Spokane, Washington.[2]:85 After a few months, he took a job with Encyclopædia Britannica's "Great Books" program, and soon gained promotion to a position of area training-manager. In January 1962 Erhard switched to the Parent's Magazine Cultural Institute, a child-development materials division of Parents Magazine.[2]:112 In the late summer of 1962 he won promotion to the position of territorial manager for California, Nevada, and Arizona, and moved to San Francisco; and in the spring of 1963 to Los Angeles.[2]:82-106 In January 1964, "Parents" promoted Erhard and transferred him to Arlington, Virginia as a southeast manager.[2]:94 In August 1964, Erhard resigned his position in Arlington over a dispute with the company president and returned to his previous position in San Francisco.[2]:107-114 Erhard and his second wife moved into an apartment in Sausalito and had a second daughter, Adair, on December 27, 1964. Erhard began a close friendship with Alan Watts[5]. In the next few years, Erhard brought on-staff at "Parents" many people who would become important in est, including Elaine Cronin, Gonneke Spits and Laurel Scheaf. In 1967 Erhard was promoted to vice president.[6]

[edit] Early influences

In California in the 1960s Erhard engaged in a wide variety of spiritual, New Age and transformative activities.

Tipton wrote: 'Erhard calls Zen Buddhism the “essential” one of all the disciplines that he has studied. [7] and 'Various observers of est have traced its ideas to Zen, Vedanta, and Christian Perfectionism; behaviorist determinism, Freud, Maslow, Rogers, and Perls; Korzybski's General Semantics, Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, and the self-image psychology of Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics. Its methods have been traced to hypnosis, autosuggestion, revivalism, psychodrama, encounter, Gestalt therapy and behavior modification; Subud and yoga; military, monastic, and penal institutions, sales and business motivation courses. [8]

Bartley noted in his biography of Erhard that in addition to Zen Buddhism, Dale Carnegie courses, Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics, Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy, Abraham Maslow's transpersonal psychology, Scientology, and Subud, were among other psychological and spiritual influences [9].

In 1963 Erhard took part in Esalen seminars, becoming involved with encounter groups.[10] In 1967 he completed a Dale Carnegie course in sales and further courses in Gestalt therapy and in transactional analysis.[11]

[edit] Zen

In William Bartley's biography, Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, the Founding of est (1978), Erhard describes these explorations. Bartley quotes Erhard as acknowledging Zen as the essential contribution that "created the space for" est.[12] Bartley details Erhard's connections with Zen beginning with his extensive studies with Alan Watts in the mid 1960s.[13] Bartley quotes Erhard as acknowledging:

Of all the disciplines that I studied, practiced, learned, Zen was the essential one. It was not so much an influence on me, rather it created space. It allowed those things that were there to be there. It gave some form to my experience. And it built up in me the critical mass from which was kindled the experience that produced est.[14]

[edit] Scientology

William Bartley, in his biography of Werner Erhard, wrote:

“When I asked Werner to sum up the differences between est and Scientology, he reflected for a moment. '...The essential difference between est and Scientology is twofold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. Est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival..
The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself.
I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.'[15]

[edit] The era of the est training (1971 - 1984)

Erhard reported having experienced a revelation while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on U.S. Route 101 in Marin County, California in 1971. He started to see the world as perfect "the way it is" and reported an insight that his attempts to change or modify either his physical circumstances or his mental outlook had their basis in a conception of the world (that it should differ from "the way it is") that precluded or at least limited one's experiential and creative appreciation of it. Erhard, who had become an instructor of Mind Dynamics[16] [17][18] put together an intensive two–weekend course he called "est".

Erhard constructed the est course in such a way as to attempt to bring its students into a conceptual place where they could experience a realization similar to his own "Highway-101 revelation". The lengthy course (consisting sometimes of 18–hour days) became controversial and (to many people who went through the seminar) exciting.

Michael Zimmerman, Philosophy Professor at Tulane University:

He (Erhard) had no particular formal training in anything, but he understood things as well as anyone I’d ever seen. And I’ve been around a lot of smart people in academia. This is an extraordinary intellect I saw at work here, and a difficult personality. Werner would be the first to admit that he learned a lot from other people. He has debts to other thinkers, to various religious traditions. When I teach my class on Heidegger, for example, I start out with referring to the influences on Heidegger’s thought: Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard – so many thinkers. So Werner, I think, has to be conceived in that way. He’s a kind of artist, a thinker, an inventor, who has big debts to others, borrowed from others, but then put the whole thing together in a way that no one else had ever done.[19]

[edit] Werner Erhard and Associates (1981 - 1991) and "the Forum"

Werner Erhard conducting a seminar
Werner Erhard conducting a seminar

In the 1980s, Erhard worked with Fernando Flores [20] — philosopher, senator [21] of Chile and businessman — on aspects of language, setting up sets of practices which make a distinction between, on the one hand "speaking that describes being" with, on the other hand, "speaking that brings forth being". These seminars culminated in Erhard's announcement in 1984 of the retirement of the est-training, after the participation of 750,000 "graduates", and its replacement by a new program called "the Forum", inaugurated in January 1985.

Erhard intended this new "work" to acquire more mainstream respectability and to appeal to business and management markets. What est had called "space" or the "space of being" now became "the domain of possibility" or the "possibility of being for human beings". Where part of est's "Day 4" had included a "three-circle talk" on "being, doing, and having", the Forum now featured three distinctions of the domains of "possibility, presence, and representation"[22]

On February 1, 1991[citation needed], some of the employees of Werner Erhard and Associates purchased the assets of WE&A, licensed the right to use its intellectual property and assumed some of its liabilities, paying $3 million and committing to remitting up to $15 million over the following 18 years in licencing fees.[23] Shortly afterwards the new owners established Landmark Education.[24] Presentations that evolved from the "Forum" developed by Werner Erhard and Associates continue to take place today in major cities in the USA and worldwide as the "Landmark Forum" under the auspices of Landmark Education.

[edit] 1991 - present

Since his retirement in 1991, Erhard has kept a low profile, except for a few public appearances. In recent years he has worked in the area of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland with author Peter Block.[25]

On December 8, 1993, Erhard appeared on Larry King Live in an episode titled "Whatever Happened to Werner Erhard?" via satellite from Moscow in Russia.

Werner Erhard attended an event on May 11, 2004 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, entitled "From Thought to Action: Growing Leaders in a Changing World". The event took place in honor of a friend, Warren Bennis, who had taken Erhard Seminars Training and then consulted for Werner Erhard and Associates.

As of 2001, Erhard reportedly lived at least part time with Gonneke Spits in Georgetown, Cayman Islands[26][27]

In 2006, Erhard appeared in the Robyn Symon documentary: Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard.[19]

[edit] Awards and acknowledgments

  • The Gandhi Humanitarian Award [28], 1988, Gandhi Memorial International Foundation.
  • "Humanitarian Of The Year", 2003, Youth At Risk, Roosevelt Hotel, New York City[29]. Erhard founded the Breakthrough Foundation, which later became Youth At Risk.
  • Excellerated Business Schools, which offers "transformational, entrepreneurial education", lists "Werner Erhard" in the category of "Other Teachers, Masters and Mentors" on its "Acknowledgments" page.[30]

[edit] Controversies

 This article or section is written like an advertisement.
Please help rewrite this article from a neutral point of view.
Mark blatant advertising which would require a fundamental rewrite in order to become encyclopedic for speedy deletion, using {{db-spam}}. (May 2008)

In the 1970s, the self-help program called est (Erhard Seminars Training) assisted hundreds of thousands of people to gain control of their lives. The media however focused on snippets of what they heard about the methods of the program and completely ignored the results.[31] Warren Bennis in Leaders, Strategies for Taking Charge said, “Werner Erhard’s popular est seminars received so much attention, it was inevitable that some of [the attention] would be vituperative and sometimes unfounded.”[32]

[edit] Scientology

The Church of Scientology included "ERHARD, WERNER"[33] on a list of "suppressive persons" and "fair game" (enemies) [34] dating from 1973.[35]

Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg called in to Larry King Live when Scientology President Heber Jentzsch appeared on the show on December 20, 1993.[36] During the call, as "3rd Caller", Rosenberg identified himself and alleged that Jentzsch had utilized the Church of Scientology to threaten Erhard.[37]

[edit] 60 Minutes broadcast and subsequent follow-ups

In a book critical of Erhard, Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile , Steven Pressman recounts how participants in a CBS television 60 Minutes program in March 1991 made allegations of incest and abuse against Werner Erhard.[4]. Erhard filed and then withdrew a lawsuit alleging "false, misleading and defamatory statements" on the part of CBS[4]:257-258 "The “60 Minutes” segment was filled with so many factual discrepancies that the transcript was made unavailable with this disclaimer: 'This segment has been deleted at the request of CBS News for legal or copyright reasons.'" Also, after the "60 Minutes" segment aired, his daughter Celeste Erhard confessed that she had been offered a half-million dollar share in a pending book contract in exchange for the allegations. [38]

Celeste Erhard filed an unsuccessful $2 million lawsuit against the paper and the reporter, saying she "was defrauded and her privacy was invaded during interviews.... She stated on the record that the articles and her appearance on CBS television's “60 Minutes” were to get publicity for a book.".[39]

Charlotte Faltermayer in “The Best of est?” in Time Magazine, March 16, 1998;[40] reports that Celeste Erhard's allegations of incest were recanted.

[edit] Court rulings

In 1992 a court ruled that "The Forum" had not caused any “mental injuries” to Stephanie Ney; though it entered a default judgement of $380,000 against Werner Erhard — in absentia.[4]:262

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found Erhard did not have grounds for changing a previous tax decision February 8, 1995, in the case "Werner H. Erhard v. Commissioner Internal Revenue Service.[41]

In September 1996, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) settled for $200,000 in a damage suit Werner Erhard brought against the IRS for false statements IRS spokesmen made to the press about his tax information. [42] [43]

[edit] Related organizations

[edit] The Hunger Project

Along with John Denver and Oberlin College President Robert W. Fuller, Erhard co-founded The Hunger Project. In 1977 Werner Erhard authored the Hunger Project Source Document, subtitled, “The End of Starvation: Creating an Idea Whose Time Has Come” [44]. Erhard served on the project's board from 1979 to 1990.

[edit] Landmark Education

In 1991 the group that would shortly form Landmark Education purchased the intellectual property of Werner Erhard. In 1998, Time Magazine published an article [45] about Landmark Education and its historical connection to Werner Erhard. The article stated that: "In 1991, before he left the U.S., Erhard sold the 'technology' behind his seminars to his employees, who formed a new company called the Landmark Education Corp., with Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg at the helm." Landmark Education states that its programs have as their basis ideas originally developed by Erhard, but that Erhard has no financial interest, ownership, or management role in Landmark Education.[46]

In Stephanie Ney v. Landmark Education Corporation (1994),[47] the courts determined Landmark Education Corporation did not have successor-liability to Werner Erhard & Associates, the corporation whose assets Landmark Education purchased.

According to Pressman in Outrageous Betrayal: Landmark Education further agreed to pay Erhard a long-term licensing fee for the material used in the Forum and other courses. Erhard stood to earn up to $15 million over the next 18 years."[4]:253-255 However, Arthur Schreiber's declaration of 3 May 2005 states: "Landmark Education has never paid Erhard under the license agreements (he assigned his rights to others)." [48]

In 2001 New York Magazine reported Landmark Education's CEO Harry Rosenberg said that the company had bought outright Erhard's license and his rights to the business in Japan and Mexico.[26] From time to time Erhard consults with Landmark Education.[49]

[edit] Documentaries

[edit] The Century of the Self

Werner Erhard appeared in the 2002 British documentary by Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self, featuring in episode part 3 of 4[50]. This segment of the video discusses the est Training in great detail, and includes interviews with est-graduates John Denver, and Jerry Rubin.

[edit] Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard

In 2006, Erhard appeared alongside Landmark Forum Leader Laurel Scheaf (pictured) and Landmark Forum Leader Randy McNamara (pictured), in the Robyn Symon documentary: Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard.[19][51]

[edit] Books

  • Bartley, III, William Warren (1978). Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of est. NY, NY, USA: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. ISBN 0-517-53502-5.
  • Kettle, James: The est Experience. Zebra Books, 1976.
  • Marks, Pat R.: est: The Movement and the Man. Playboy Press 1976.
  • Pressman, Steven (1993) Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile. New York, New York, USA. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-09296-2
  • Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story. (Chapter on "Let Them Eat est.") Addison-Wesley, 1983. ISBN 0-201-10858-5
  • Rhinehart, Luke: The Book of est. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.
  • Self, Jane (1992) 60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard: How America's Top Rated Television Show Was Used in an Attempt to Destroy a Man Who Was Making A Difference. Breakthru Publishing. ISBN 0-942540-23-9
  • Fenwick, Sheridan (1976). Getting It: The psychology of est. Philadelphia, PA, USA: J. B. Lippincott Company. ISBN 0-397-01170-9

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Werner Erhard
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Bartley, William Warren (1978). Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of EST. Clarkson Potter. ISBN 0-517-53502-5. 
  3. ^ "Distilled Wisdom: Buddy, Can you Paradigm", Fortune Magazine, May 15, 1995
  4. ^ a b c d e f Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2
  5. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of EST, Clarkson Potter, 1978. ISBN 0-517-53502-5 pages 117-138
  6. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of EST, Clarkson Potter, 1978. ISBN 0-517-53502-5 pages 117-138
  7. ^ Steven M. Tipton: Getting saved from the sixties: moral meaning in conversion and cultural change. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982, page 329. ISBN 0520038681
  8. ^ Steven M. Tipton: Getting saved from the sixties: moral meaning in conversion and cultural change. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982, page 329. ISBN 0520038681
  9. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978 page 13, 121, 141
  10. ^ AGPF web-page on Erhard, est etc: "1963 nimmt Erhard an Esalen-Seminaren teil. Er trifft Fritz Perls und ist in mehreren Selbsterfahrungs- und Bewußtseins-Gruppen (Encounter Training)."
  11. ^ AGPF web-page on Erhard, est etc: "1967 absolviert er ein Verkaufstraining bei Dale Carnegie und einige andere Kurse in Gestalt-Therapie und Transaktionsanalyse."
  12. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978. ISBN 0-517-53502-5, p. 121, 146-7.
  13. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the transformation of a man: the founding of est. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978. ISBN 0-517-53502-5, p. 118
  14. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the transformation of a man: the founding of est. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978. ISBN 0-517-53502-5, p. 121
  15. ^ Bartley, William Warren, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. 1978 pages 151 and 157
  16. ^ Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2, p.33-34
  17. ^ Wilson, Brian R.; Jamie Cresswell (1999). New Religious Movements: challenge and response. Routledge, 56, 72, 280. ISBN 0415200490. 
    "Especially influenced, it would appear, by his time with Mind Dynamics at the beginning of the 1970s, Erhard went on to found est, (the first seminar ran in October 1971)."
  18. ^ Hoffmann, Frank W.; William G. Bailey (1992). Mind & Society Fads. Haworth Press, 119. ISBN 1560241780. 
  19. ^ a b c Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard at the Internet Movie Database, Documentary, 2006, Directed by Robyn Symon. http://www.transformationfilm.com/
  20. ^ Fernando Flores, website, "biografia"
  21. ^ Republica de Chile Senado, website, Senate of Chile, retrieved 9/14/2006
  22. ^ See Industry Weekly June 15 1987 article (vol 233, no 6), "Create Breakthroughs in Performance by Changing the Conversation," by Perry Pascarella; among other sources forthcoming[citation needed].
  23. ^ Compare Bärbel Schwertfeger, "Foreword" in Martin Lell, Das Forum: Protokoll einer Gehirnwäsche: Der Psycho-Konzern Landmark Education [The Forum: Account of a Brainwashing: The Psycho-Outfit Landmark Education], Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-423-36021-6, page 8 : "Am 31.1.91 verkaufte Erhard seine Anteile für drei Millionen Dollar an seine Mitarbeiter, die die Organisation in Landmark Education umbenannten. Landmark verpflichtete sich zudem, in den folgenden achtzehn Jahren bis zu fünfzehn Millionen Dollar Lizenzgebühren an Erhard zu zahlen."
  24. ^ "Landmark Education Corporation: Selling a Paradigm Shift", Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA, Karen Hopper and Mikelle Fisher Eastley, 9-898-081, p.1, Rev. April 22, 1998. Availability restricted by Harvard "to faculty and staff of universities" (see Alex Beam, "Church takes to bully pulpit" in the Boston Globe, April 2 1999, page F01; transcribed at http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/l/landmark/beam.htm, retrieved 2007-10-21).
  25. ^ Mastery Foundation
  26. ^ a b Pay Money, Be Happy, New York Magazine, Vanessa Grigoriadis, July 9, 2001.
  27. ^ Past Menus, Christmas Dinner, Lighthouse at Breakers, December 19, 1997, Grand Cayman chapter, Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs
  28. ^ . V. J. Fedorschak, Shadow on the Path : Clearing the Psychological Blocks to Spiritual Development, Hohm Press, October 1999, ISBN 0-934252-81-5
  29. ^ Laurence Platt, Conversations For Transformation, November 11, 2003, Jackson, Mississippi.
  30. ^ Excellerated Business Schools, [1], "Other Teachers, Masters and Mentors"
  31. ^ Oh My News Feb 17, 2008|http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381801&rel_no=1
  32. ^ Warren Bennis, Leaders, Strategies for Taking Charge, page 68-69
  33. ^ http://www.whyaretheydead.net/misc/Factnet/SPLIST.TXT THE SCIENTOLGY ENEMIES LIST], F.A.C.T.Net, Inc., Golden, Colorado
  34. ^ "Erhard in Exile Fearing Scientoklogy", The Cult Observer, Vol.11, No.7, 1994.
  35. ^ IOL - Error Page
  36. ^ Heber Jentzsch Vs. Scientology
  37. ^ Harry Rosenberg on Larry King
  38. ^ http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=article_snider believermag.com]Believermag.com retrieved 2007-10-21
  39. ^ "Daughter of est founder sues Mercury News over two articles", San Jose Mercury News, July 16, 1992
  40. ^ Faltermayer, Charlotte. "The Best Of Est?", Time, 2001-06-24. Retrieved on 2007-09-28. 
  41. ^ Werner H. Erhard v. IRS (9th Circuit 02/08/1995)
  42. ^ [2] "IRS Settles Lawsuit brought by Werner Erhard," Business Wire, September 11, 1996.
  43. ^ P.J. Huffstutter, Los Angeles Daily News, September 12, 1996.
  44. ^ net
  45. ^ The Best Of Est?. TIME.
  46. ^ Landmark Education, media Q&A
  47. ^ Case reference, Rickross.com
  48. ^ Declaration filed 5 May 2005 at the US District Court of New Jersey, civil action 04-3022 (JCL), pp 3 and 4, via Rickross.com. retrieved 2006-11-15
  49. ^ Landmark Education, website, archived, controversy, Landmark Education website; retrieved before the owner of the http://www.landmarkeducation.com site blocked archival and the availability of archives of www.landmarkeducation.com at some time between 4 March 2007 and April 7 2007 per http://www.landmarkeducation.com/robots.txt
  50. ^ The Century of the Self 3 of 4 at Google Video
  51. ^ http://www.transformationfilm.com Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Languages