Wilhelm Ernst Barkhoff

Wilhelm Ernst Barkhoff (26 June 1916 in Kamp-Lintfort, Germany – 30 September 1994 in Bochum, Germany) was a German solicitor, founder of anthroposophically oriented alternative banking, the GLS Bank, reformer of the German welfare system and inspirer of the movement for Ethical banking.

Wilhelm Ernst Barkhoff was the son of a miner in the German Ruhrgebiet, where he grew up. Already at an early age, through the constant unrest in this area, he developed an interest in social and political questions, but primarily also in philosophical and spiritual ideas and ideals. The concept of transubstantiation became one of his fundamental ideals, though he understood this not in its religious-ecclesiastic sense, but rather tried to realise it in social life, in financial and banking affairs, as also in agriculture and health care.

He studied law in Cologne, Freiburg and Berlin, where, after completing his first state examination, he was conscripted as an officer to do military service in World War II. On the Russian Front he was badly wounded by a grenade, leading to his first out-of-body experience, something that happened on further occasions during his flight on foot from Russia back to Germany.

During the war, he married Ottilie Grave from Bocholt. Their first son was born in 1945, had Down syndrome and lived for only eleven months. Later, the couple had three more sons and a daughter. After the war, on completing his articles in 1948, he became a solicitor, founding and running one of the leading law firms in Bochum. He and his wife cultivated close friendships with the artists of the Bochum Art Association.

In 1956, he joined the governing board of the Rudolf Steiner School Ruhrgebiet, which was looking for a legal counsellor. The school was started contrary to the ban on founding further Waldorf schools which the , the German Waldorf School Federation, had attempted to impose at the time. With it began the public life of anthroposophy in the Ruhrgebiet. It was to have more students than any other Waldorf school worldwide. Amongst other things, the teacher training college, Institut für Waldorfpädagogik, was one of the initiatives it generated. In order to finance this school, Barkhoff invented the “borrowing community”, a system of solidarity, where the combining of individual financial resources enabled persons of otherwise modest financial means to gain access to substantial bank loans. With this, the basis of anthroposophical banking was born. Through his work on the board of the school, he met his future anthroposophical co-workers: Gisela Reuther, Klaus Fintelmann, Klaus Dumke, Franz Schily, Ernst Neuhöfer, Lore Schäfer, Robert Zimmermann and Wilhelm Wollborn. Gisela Reuther joined her own tax consultancy with his law offices. Through this collaboration within the credit guarantee communities, the anthroposophical banks began their work.

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