📚 Historical Archive Notice
This content is from the original TvindAlert.com (2001-2022), preserved for historical and research purposes. Some images or documents may be unavailable.
Tvind Alert
contact: Britta Rasmussen
<britta.rasmussen.aarslev@get2net.dk>
The Teachers Group (TG or LG) is at the heart of Tvind. It began in about 1970 as a group of like-minded anti-establishment people in Denmark. Today it is a circle of several hundred people who have accepted Petersen's founding principles: common economy, common time, and common distribution.
Common economy means that the teachers transfer all their available income to joint savings, while for their own requirements they receive food, lodging and pocket money from the community.
Common time means that the members of the TG are available to the community and that to a certain extent theyn forgo their personal rights, such as the right to start a family according to their own wish.
Common distribution means that the community is to decide where the TG members are to work and what theyb are to,mwork with. In practice this is decided by the Distribution Group.
This concise description of the Teachers Group is drawn from the Danish police documents (pdf file)
TG members are highly-motivated people who are teachers, project leaders, company directors, administrators and recruiters. Some of these loyal followers of Tvind have spent their whole adult lives in the organisation.
Within the Teachers Group is a kind of inner circle within a circle. These people are the most loyal followers of all, entrusted with sensitive projects that have nothing to do with Tvind's public face as a charity. They are company directors, property owners, farmers in huge plantations. They do what they're told and are tremendously loyal, and they have usually come up entirely within the Tvind system.
You get to join the Teachers Group after a couple of years as a promising development instructor or volunteer. Volunteers are invited to join if they show enough loyalty and commitment. The principles are 'common time, common economy, common work.' You promise to hand over your earnings to the common economy, in exchange for pocket money, a place to live and a job for life
The downside of this collective existence, as in any cult, is that members of the TG are liable to lose their sense of individual identity. Former Teachers Group members have reported becoming estranged from their friends and family, become totally reliant on Tvind for everything, and to have suffered psychological trauma at the prospect of leaving. They have become brainwashed.
There is evidence that Tvind fosters this. In the 1980s, Mogens Amdi Petersen issued instructions to members of the Teachers group to burn old family photographs and scrapbooks. Among Teachers Group members, evidence of disloyalty or wrong thinking is punished by the prospect of ejection from the inner circle. These are the values passed down to ordinary, non-TG volunteers.
Most TG members are in responsible positions as Tvind head teachers or project leaders, and many unquestioningly work for companies which earn money for Tvind, becoming company directors and the managers of commercial plantations.
Many former Teachers Group members have succeeded in leaving the organisation, but according to psychiatrists most are severely traumatised. But a few - since the arriva lof Tvind Alert, an increasing number - have gone public about their experiences. Among these are Britta Rasmussen and Steen Thomsen. Read the personal stories.
Rasmussen was a member of the Teachers Group working in the United States when she realised she had become part of a cult. Click here for Britta's story.
Steen Thomsen worked for Tvind for 26 years and was head teacher of Winestead Hall School in England when he realised he had got in deeper than he wanted. He realised that his loyalty to Mogens Amdi Petersen was leading him to behave unreasonably - he left, and has since written a long report to the Danish government exposing Tvind as a cult.
Tvind Alert aims to provide a meeting place and informal 'advice service' for members of the Teachers Group who want to leave, and ex-members who want support from others like them.
We will provide a focal point for TG members and ex-members who want to join together to sue Mogens Amdi Petersen, in the light of claims that he is living in luxury on Fisher Island.
If there is demand, we will create a private 'ex-TG forum' by email, so that ex-TG members can exchange information away from the public view.
We will publish the personal stories of former Teachers Group members (see the links below)
Wherever possible, we will publish ex-TG members email addresses, so they can get in contact with each other.
If people want it, we may compile a 'directory' of ex-TG members around the world. If TG members do not want their identities revealed, they can use Tvind Alert as a 'post box' to exchange messages.
Teachers Group members can post to the guestbook, to share their experiences with other visitors to the site.
We welcome information from TG members and ex-TG members about Tvind's financial affairs, so that the internal affairs of the Teachers group are no longer secret. We collect information and if verifiable, we will publish it on the site.
We will put ex-TG members in touch with journalists, if they have a story they want to tell.
Tvind Alert would like to hear from any TG member, past or present. Simply email Tvind Alert.
Current or former members of the Teachers group - now click here. (under construction)
Steen Thomsen's report to the Danish Government
(155 kb) (in English)
Britta Rasmussen's story
Jostein's story
During the first month, a blissfully warm, cornfields-as-high-as-an-elephants-eye August, I learned about the Teachers Group (TG). At the time I believed it wasnt a problem. Now, I see its a big problem, because at the projects only TG people can be project leaders, a restriction that prevents the right person being hired for the job. It puts inexperienced people in charge, and creates a big mess when problems come up they are completely unequipped to handle.
'The real name [of the cult] is The Teachers Group (TG). TG is a top-down managed cult which consists of idealistic members who are ruling the whole Tvind Empire. They've got several collectives spread out over the whole world. You can be a member on trial for a couple of years, or write a contract for lifetime. As a teacher in Denmark you get your salary from the State, but 95% of the salary is put in to an account that you haven't access to. But the money isn't important, it's that they want you to sign a contract for lifetime, both on your money and your time. You won't have any leisure time, but the collective will decide what you should do.
'When you've signed in to the TG they exhort you to burn pictures and address books. It's motivated by the risk of pursuit against both the TG and the private. When you've chosen to sign the contract for lifetime all your assets are given to the TG, as well as all your future incomes.'
'Some former members have gone public, speaking out vociferously against the organisation. One Norwegian woman, who wished to remain anonymous, commented: "You really enter Tvind after about two years of living and travelling with one of its schools. Then, as a teacher, you are expected to sign a so-called "lifetime" contract, in which you sign away all your time, property, and earnings to the organisation. The contract is valid until age 67. About 600 men and women live their lives like this.
"It can be a harsh life. You can be ordered anywhere on the globe at any time. You can expect to be separated from others with whom you have made close friendships. Tvind teachers can work up to twenty hours per day, seven days a week, and all year around. They claim that the projects help the Third World, but they just help the leaders accumulate wealth"
[Copenhagen Post, Dec 1998]
Steen Thomsen
Remember that the teaching staff has been 600 strong and there were still over 400 when we left Tvind five years ago..."
"500," Vibeke corrects him.
"Five hundred, thats right. They all receive a salary from the Danish State of more than lets say 200,000 Danish kroner per annum. 500 times 200,000. Thats a hundred million every year. And the individual teacher hardly spends anything himself. And we get more than 100 million every year from the state in student fees. All of it goes into the general account. Although there are some costs, of course. But the investments around the world also earn very nicely. Dammit, I dont know what theyre going to do with all that money
[Interview with Herning Bjornlund
Steen Thomsen
Remember that the teaching staff has been 600 strong and there were still over 400 when we left Tvind five years ago..."
"500," Vibeke corrects him.
"Five hundred, thats right. They all receive a salary from the Danish State of more than lets say 200,000 Danish kroner per annum. 500 times 200,000. Thats a hundred million every year. And the individual teacher hardly spends anything himself. And we get more than 100 million every year from the state in student fees. All of it goes into the general account. Although there are some costs, of course. But the investments around the world also earn very nicely. Dammit, I dont know what theyre going to do with all that money
[Interview with Herning Bjornlund
Remember that the teaching staff has been 600 strong and there were still over 400 when we left Tvind five years ago..."
"500," Vibeke corrects him.
[Interview with Herning Bjornlund
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