Patricia's story

Patricia Brunklaus came to Tvind at the age of nineteen, in 1977. This bright, young and intelligent Dutch woman thought she was going to join an organisation which really fought for major changes to improve the world, especially for the ones in need in the Third World.   It all ended in a big deception in 1984 and she left the Teachers Group. Up till today shes fighting feelings being betrayed by the Teachers Group and being used by Amdi Petersen.

By Han Gommeren

In my opinion Amdi Petersen is brilliant, a genius, but he is also frantic. He suffers from megalomania. Those are the first words to come up in the mind of Patricia Brunklaus, confronted with the name of cult leader Amdi Petersen. The Dutch woman, now 45 years of age, was a member of the Teachers Group for six years and left it in 1984. She first saw Petersen in 1977, at one of the well known acquaintance weekends for new students at a gym in Tvind. At that time she had never heard of Amdi Petersen, nor did she know anything about the Tvind-structure as it was being built by the guru and his inner circle.

Suddenly a tall, handsome man entered the gym with a harem of women around him. I kind of liked that, 19 years of age as I was, feeling freedom in the hippie period and aching for a better world. Because I had heard that was what Tvind was all about. And thats what Amdi always drummed into our mind: we were revolutionaries, fighting for a new world. You never initiated a conversation with him. He did that, he was the leader.

Amdi was an attractive man, tall, dark blond hair and he was quite charming. The question was always which of the women would be his favourites, he always had a harem around him. Many of them must have shared the bed with him. He gave them power. At the same time sex was a taboo in Tvind. None of us was allowed to have a family or a relationship outside the Teachers Group, some of the men even got themselves sterilized. Sometimes couples came into Tvind, but they always were separated and sent to different places to work for Tvind. After I left Tvind the purpose of this became clear to me: if people get intimate they might get to talk with each other what was happening with them. That might make them strong enough to take the decision to leave this cult-like organisation. In this way Amdi Petersen was maintaining absolute power.

From the beginning Tvind has been fighting against society, trying to grow by drawing money out of it. By evading tax.     I was, for example, one of the first foreigners studying in Tvind. To make certain that they wouldnt miss any governmental subsidy for the schools, they pretended different courses to be one course. In that way not more than one at ten students seemed to come from outside Denmark, which was a condition for public subsidizing. I didnt really mind this at that time, as I was convinced it was all done for the good cause: working on a new world and helping the poor in the Third World.

Members of the Teachers Group, like Patricia, worked day and night and had to live from five Danish crowners a day. And even then we needed to have a coupon to to justify our expenses. She even recalls the name of the Teachers Group-member who checked them, a financial man now high in the Tvind-hierarchy. We had so little money that after closing time of the local supermarket in the place I lived then we went to the boxes in which the date-expired cheese was dumped. We were often so hungry, the cheese was still possible to be eaten, so we ate it.

As Patricia says she was very ambitious, she wanted to start a Tvind-school for new development workers in Holland. Although Amdi Petersen didnt like this idea at all, she didnt give up easily. After long discussions Amdi allowed me and Jan Orbons to write a plan in Denmark for a school in Holland. The first plan he rejected, he agreed with the second one when we spoke about it in hotel La Kolk at Rm, which at that time recently had been bought by Tvind. When we wanted to leave the room, he said no and suddenly opened a window: Jan and I had to leave the room through the window. It was one of his ways of humiliating members of the Teachers Group. Though it were mostly men being humiliated. It was part of the system. Amdi had everything thought out, he must have started planning his empire not long after the founding of Tvind.

 It was 1983. Just before Patricia started with the school in Holland, in Oud-Gastel, a small village in the south-west of the country, she got an unannounced visit from the guru himself and his partner Kirsten Larsen. Patricia explained that the course could be given to the students for just a small amount of money because she was receiving an unemployment benefit. So she figured the students didnt have to pay her any salary. After all we were working for the benefit of the world, I thought then. But this caused rage with Amdi Petersen, she tells. He demanded that the students should pay me and two other members of the Teachers Group a salary. Thirteen of the students left at once, because they were unable to pay for it or did not agree. Amdi showed no interest in the students. It was obviously the money, that it was all about. Just as her unemployment benefit her salary immediately was put on a bank account of Tvind like the income from all the members of the Teachers Group, following the principle of common economy within Tvind.

It opened Patricias eyes more or less. But still she didnt decide to leave Tvind, even got some more young rebellious Dutch people into the Teachers Group. The Tvind-course ended after one year and then she was sent to Zimbabwe as a development worker. In that period things got too tough for her. I had a relationship with someone, who wrote me letters. But all my letters were opened and then translated into Danish, because a few members of the Teachers Group were suspicious. And so it came clear I had a relationship with someone from outside the Teachers Group. I was interrogated one and a half day without any break about this. That is brainwashing, I should think. And after that one and a half day I decided that it was better to end my relationship, you even get convinced that it is the best. You really want to end the discussion. But some later on, when you get a rest and try to find yourself back again, you think: what am I doing here?

Her biggest deception came, when Amdi arranged a trip to South-Africa for the Teachers Group, on which she wasn t welcome to come along.      I asked: why  -  dont you trust me?   They confirmed that. For Patricia Brunklaus this was the bottom line. For myself I immediately decided to leave the Teachers Group, I had had it with Tvind. By hitchhiking I went from Zimbabwe through Zambia to Tanzania, where I knew Dutch missionaries who could help me buy a ticket to Holland.

Now she says: Giving money to Tvind/Humana is supporting slavery. Look for instance at the plantations Tvind has in South-America. Amdi Petersen is a kind of Hitler: he doesnt put people in a concentration camp, but he takes advantage of people by taking their money and their time to enrich himself and his inner circle. Still, Im convinced many members of the Teachers Group wouldnt know about this, for example chopping trees on a plantation in Brazil. They probably still think theyre working for the good cause. At the same time Amdi Petersen compares himself with the great of the earth, seeking for power.

Did Amdi Petersen ever ask her about the results of the development projects she worked at in Africa? Patricia: Not once. He couldnt care less. After I got out of Tvind I began to understand it was just all about money.