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Werner Erhard

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John Paul "Jack" Rosenberg (born September 5, 1935 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and sometimes subsequently known as Werner Hans Erhard is an American businessman and educator. Regarded as a key figure in the human potential movement, he founded the large group awareness training program est (short for Erhard Seminars Training, 1971 - 1981) which later gave rise to Werner Erhard and Associates (WEA, 1981 - 1991) and to the "Landmark Forum"/Landmark Education (1991 - ).

Rosenberg married Patricia Fry on 26 September 1953 (Pressman 1993: 4) and fathered four (some sources suggest three) children. He first adopted the name "Jack Frost" as an alias while selling cars in Philadelphia (Pressman 1993: 6). He subsequently used the name "Curt Wilhelm VonSavage" when contracting a bigamous marriage with June Bryde (Pressman 1993: 6).

In 1960 Rosenberg left his first wife and family in Philadelphia and travelled west. He changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard and his lover, June Bryde, changed hers to Ellen Virginia Erhard. Erhard later said that he chose the last name "Erhard" almost at random, selecting it from a magazine article he happened to read about then-West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard. The newly-renamed Erhards moved to St. Louis, where Werner Erhard sold used cars. After a few years, the couple moved further west to California.

After selling correspondence courses and encyclopedias, Erhard trained door-to-door salespeople] for Grolier Society until 1971.

Philosophies and transformation

In California in the 1960s, Erhard engaged in a wide variety of spiritual disciplines including Zen Buddhismand Dianetics. Pressman details some of Erhard's connections with Scientology in this and subsequent periods (Pressman, 1993, pages 25 - 26, 30 - 31, 6s and 125 - 126). Note that the Church of Scientology included "ERHARD, WERNER" on a list of "suppressive persons" and "fair game" (enemies) dating from 1992.

Erhard reported having had a revelation while driving on U.S. Route 101 in Marin County, California in 1971. He started to see the world as perfect "the way it is" and had the 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.

In the 1970s Erhard maintained financial links with Jack Sarfatti and the Physics/Consciousness Research Group.

He also attempted to foster links with Michael Murphy and the Esalen Institute, and allegedly contributed funds to the SRI remote viewing project.

Erhard became an instructor of Mind Dynamics (Pressman, 1993, pages 33 - 34).

Erhard Seminars Training

After his initial realization Erhard put together an intensive two–weekend course he called est (after the Latin word meaning 'he is' or 'she is' or 'it is'; and/or as an acronym for 'Erhard Seminars Training'). He designed the course to bring its students into a conceptual place where they could experience a realization similar to his own Highway 101 revelation. This long course, consisting sometimes of 18–hour days, became controversial and, to many people who went through the seminar, exciting. Pressman characterizes the est training as "the hours of materials [Erhard] had stitched together from Scientology and Mind Dynamics and Dale Carnegie and Maxwell Maltz and a variety of other sources" (Pressman 1993: 70). Many participants claimed to experience greatly increased vitality and better self-expression. A weekly seminar program concerned with various aspects of life (integrity, self-expression, sex, money, commitment, etc.) evolved. A more intensive six-day course originated as a communication workshop.

The Hunger Project

Main article: The Hunger Project

Erhard formed the opinion that death by starvation occurred not because of lack of food to feed all those who suffered from chronic hunger,. Instead he blamed the context in which people viewed and interacted with chronic hunger. That context, he said, consisted of a closely-held belief (or discourse, or conversation) that saw hunger as inevitable, a context of scarcity that governed all the interactions and fixes currently applied by those then attempting to fix the problem.

Along with John Denver and Oberlin College President Robert Fuller Erhard co-founded The Hunger Project in 1977. The Project had the initial stated intention of making "The End of Starvation within 20 Years an 'Idea Whose Time Has Come.'" Erhard served on the Project's board from 1979 to 1990, after which he ceased contact with the organization.

Awards

The Mahatma Gandhi International Foundation awarded Erhard the Gandhi Humanitarian Award in 1988.

Werner Erhard and Associates - The Forum

In the 1980s Erhard worked with Fernando Flores [1] - philosopher, senator [2] of Chile and businessman - on aspects of language, setting up a body of work which makes a distinction between, on the one hand 'speaking that describes being' with, on the other hand, 'speaking that brings forth being'. After he retired the est training, Erhard developed a program that allegedly deploys the Socratic method of inquiry, which he called "the Forum". As the corporate vehicle for delivering his latest offerring, Erhard used Werner Erhard and Associates (WEA or WE&A), the corporate successor to the est Foundation. His program continues today in major cities in the USA and worldwide as the "Landmark Forum" under the auspices of the successor organization Landmark Education.

Erhard later faced tax disputes, allegations that he had perpetrated domestic violence, and an allegation that he had had sex with one of his daughters. Pressman recounts how incest allegations against Werner Erhard made on CBS television's 60 Minutes program in March 1991 came from Deborah Rosenberg, the youngest child from Erhard/Rosenberg's first marriage. (Pressman 1993: 256 - 257).

Another daughter, Celeste Erhard, subsequently stated that third parties tricked her into exaggerating spicy details about her father's alleged behavior. (She and another sister had made allegations of domestic violence against her father on 60 Minutes.) Celeste Erhard said that the media had told her that the articles and her appearance on 60 Minutes aimed to get publicity for a book (San Jose Mercury News, July 16 1992).

Pressman tells how Erhard filed but then withdrew a lawsuit alleging "false, misleading and defamatory statements" against CBS in the wake of the latter's 60 Minutes program (Pressman 1993: 257 - 258).

The United States IRS allegedly settled a tax dispute with Erhard by paying him $200,000 for wrongful disclosure of false information.

In the Stephanie Ney court case of 1992 (resulting from Ney's participation in "the Forum") a U.S. court in a default judgment ordered Werner Erhard (in absentia) to pay more than $500,000 in damages for "mental injuries" (Pressman, 1993: 262). In the trial, the court did not find "the Forum" the cause of Stephanie Ney's injuries, but because Erhard never contested the suit, the court entered the default judgment against him.

Landmark Education era

Some critics regard Werner Erhard [3] as still "pulling the strings" at Landmark Education [4]. Werner's younger brother (Harry Rosenberg) serves as Landmark Education's current CEO, and their sister (Joan Rosenberg) acts as the Vice President of the Centers Division. And years after Erhard left, the favorable Werner Erhard Biographical Website was created by Landmark Education, which registered werner-erhard.com at Network Solutions and provided the initial content from their own site.

According to The Los Angeles Times: "[i]n the end, Erhard received so much notoriety, including a scathing segment on 60 Minutes last March [1991], that he sold his business...". (Welkos, 1991). However, nobody has ever seen fit to substantiate Welkos' published journalistic opinion on the matter further.

For whatever reason, Erhard sold his intellectual properties to Landmark Education and left the United States, resurfacing later in El Salvador, the Soviet Union, Ireland and the Cayman Islands (where he has used the pseudonym "Werner Spits"). A subsequent report implied that he feared physical harm in the United States due to Scientology's Fair Game policy.

From time to time Erhard consults with Landmark Education, but (according to Landmark Education statements) he has no ownership, management or financial interest in that company. (Harry Rosenberg, Werner Erhard's brother, has worked as the Chief Executive Officer of Landmark Education since 1991. Their sister, Joan Rosenberg, also works there in a senior role.)

See also

  • Harry Rosenberg, current CEO of Landmark Education and brother of Werner Erhard

(John Paul Rosenberg)

References

  • Bartley, William Warren Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man: The Founding of EST Clarkson Potter, 1988. ISBN 0517535025
  • "Erhard in Exile Fearing Scientology" The Cult Observer, volume 11, number 7, 1994. Retrieved from http://www.whyaretheydead.net/misc/Factnet/CO0794.TXT on 12 March 2006.
  • Grigoriadis, Vanessa "Pay Money, Be Happy" Retrieved from New York Magazine, 9 July 2001 - The New York Metro Website on 26 January 2006.
  • Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St Martins Press, 1993. ISBN 0312092962
  • San Jose Mercury News, July 16 1992. Article: "Est founder's daughter sues Mercury News over articles". Retrieved from wernererhard.com on 26 January 2006.
  • "The Scientolgy Enemies List" [sic]. Retrieved from http://www.whyaretheydead.net/misc/Factnet/SPLIST.TXT on 12 March 2006.
  • Self, Jane 60 Minutes and the Assassination of Werner Erhard Breakthru Publishing, 1992. ISBN 0942540239
  • Welkos, Robert W. "Scientologists Ran Campaign to Discredit Erhard, Detective Says". Los Angeles Times, December 29, 1991. Retrieved from wernererhard.com on 26 January 2006.
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