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Tamera is a peace research village with the goal of becoming “a self-sufficient, sustainable and duplicatable communitarian model for nonviolent cooperation and cohabitation between humans, animals, nature, and Creation for a future of peace for all." It is also often called a “healing biotope." Literally translated, "biotope" simply means a place where life lives. In Tamera, however, “healing biotope” is also described as a “greenhouse of trust,” “an acupuncture point of peace,” and “a self-sufficient future community." It is located on 335 acres in the Alentejo region of southwestern Portugal.

History


Tamera was founded in 1995 by three Germans: Dieter Duhm (M.S. in Psychoanalysis, Ph.D. in Sociology), Sabine Lichtenfels (Theologian), and Rainer Ehrenpreis (M.S. in Physics). However, its history goes back to 1978 when these three left their professions and tried to create an interdisciplinary research center to find solutions to the ecological and technological problems the world was facing at that time. Very quickly they discovered that if their project had any chance of surviving, they first had to research the core human relationship questions that lay hidden under all issues and prevent real solutions – such as competition, greed, and jealousy. In 1983 they began a three-year “Social Experiment” with fifty participants in the Black Forest of Germany, and then further developed the results of this research into creating a functioning community in other projects throughout Europe, until they finally established Tamera in 1995.

Experimental research
Currently, approximately two-hundred coworkers and students live and study in Tamera which operates as an experimental research center dedicated to discovering how human beings can live peacefully among themselves and with nature, and create a successful, working, and sustainable community. Tamera is also a “free lab” and an international meeting place where peace workers and specialists in various fields from many parts of the world share their expertise. In 2008 participants from more than twenty-five different countries will live, study, work, or visit there.

Theory
The research in Tamera is based on a complex world view explained in detail in The Sacred Matrix by Dieter Duhm. One essential part of this theory is the “implicate order” of David Bohm. Another is the “morphogenetic field theory” developed by Rupert Sheldrake, where only a few peace research villages worldwide of a large enough size and complexity in which peace is established in all its aspects are enough to create cultural healing on a global level. “What will determine the success of such peace projects is not how big and strong they are (compared to the existing apparatus of violence), but how comprehensive and complex they are, and how many elements of life they combine and unite in a positive way. When establishing new fields in evolution, it is not the law of the strongest, but the success of the more comprehensive that is the determining factor. Otherwise, no new developments could be made, for when they begin they are all small and inconspicuous." The political goal of Tamera and its cooperation partners worldwide is to create several such centers on earth, which they call “the plan of the healing biotopes.”

Projects
Tamera serves as the headquarters for a number of different and independent projects that, when brought together properly,they believe can establish a new social model and a new culture of peace. They include the Global Campus, Monte Cerro Peace Education, the GRACE Foundation, the Institute for Global Peacework, Verlag Meiga Publishing Company, the Children’s Center, the Love School, the SolarVillage, the Permaculture Project, the Horse Project, and the Seminar and Guest Center.

The Global Campus
The Global Campus is a worldwide educational initiative designed to offer knowledge in community development as well as the basic principles of decentralized energy supply, architecture, and ecology required to establish autonomous peace villages. Tamera is the home of the first phase of the Global Campus – the Monte Cerro Peace Education – and is cooperating with the San José de Apartadó Peace Village in Colombia and the Holy Land Trust  in Palestine to establish others educational centers around the world.

Monte Cerro Peace Education
“Monte Cerro Peace Education” is a three-year course of studies for a comprehensive understanding for the development of globally-effective peace villages. More than one-hundred students have enrolled since “Monte Cerro” opened on May 1, 2006, and in April 2009 the first class will graduate.

GRACE Foundation
Since 2005 the GRACE Foundation has organized pilgrimages to various crisis areas in the world, led by Sabine Lichtenfels, Benjamin von Mendelssohn, and coworkers and students from Tamera. The major focus thus far has been in Isreal/Palestine, with pilgrimages in 2005 and 2007, and in Colombia in 2008. The goal is to offer peace knowledge and community experience, along with political protection and humanitarian aid, to those in need.

“GRACE follows the realization that we can only create as much peace outside ourselves as we have created inside ourselves. GRACE reminds us that the healing of our planet can only succeed if humanity succeeds in connecting itself with the true basis of life and love, trust and truth; and humanity will only succeed if we personally succeed. GRACE embraces the commitment not to aggravate personal and political conflicts, but to create new possibilities for solutions.”

The Institute for Global Peacework (IGP)
The Institute for Global Peacework is a network of peaceworkers and peace initiatives around the world who want to cooperate to create a nonviolent future. It coordinates all the different projects in Tamera and serves as the “base camp” for all external activities. It also hosts an annual “Summer University” that brings these different people and projects together in a “think tank.”

Verlag Meiga Publishing Company
Verlag Meiga publishes books, literature, and essential thoughts to disseminate the knowledge and experience of over thirty years of research into the development of the “plan of the healing biotopes.” Its main headquarters is in Germany, with a branch in Tamera.

The Children’s Center
The basic principle of the work with children in Tamera is the “education of perception.” In addition to languages, math, biology, and geography, the main emphasis in learning is placed on studies in community development, art, cosmology, international networking, and how to be a spiritual being in the world.

The Love School
One core tenet of the Tamera theory is that a nonviolent culture will essentially depend on whether we succeed in ending the war between the genders. Love without jealousy, sexuality without fear, faithfulness that is not broken when one loves and desires others, truth and longevity in love, and new pathways in partnerships are the focus of the “Love School.” “There cannot be peace between nations as long as there is war between man and woman.”

The SolarVillage
The “SolarVillage” is a test site in Tamera creating a model village that will be self-sufficient in energy and food production enough for fifty people. It can be built without any assistance from the big energy companies. Ecology, technology, architecture, and community are combined in a holistic pilot project designed and monitored by physicist and inventor Jürgen Kleinwächter. With the energy produced by a system of lenses within a greenhouse and stored in a hot oil system, round-the-clock cooking is available. Power and electricity can also be produced by means of sun-powered pulses of the low-temperature Stirling engine. Even in a hot climate, vegetables and other useful plants flourish and grow very well under light filtered by these lenses.

The Permaculture Project
Since Tamera was founded, an ecological team has made ponds and oases, and planted about 20,000 trees. Sepp Holzer, a mountain farmer known throughout Europe as the “Agro-Rebel,” is cooperating with Tamera to build a sustainable “lakescape” in the dry Alentejo region of Portugal, surrounded by a self-sufficient edible landscape with trees, gardens, and wetlands.

The Horse Project
The basis of working with horses in Tamera is to develop a new way of cooperation between human and horse, to promote inner growth, and to increase the ability to be in intimate contact with animals. The horses are ridden without bits or saddles, which requires trust and sensitive communication. The Horse Project is now expanding to offer first-aid treatment for sick, injured, or abused animals, and developing an Animal Sanctuary.

Seminar and Guest Center
The Seminar and Guest Center offers visitors the possibility to get to know Tamera, its grounds, and its research activities. The Center includes the Tamera Guesthouse, visitor’s cabins and community tents, as well as the International Youth Cultural Center; and its activites include courses and seminars, Information Weeks, the Summer University, and Open Sundays.

Art and Music
In many intensive courses and community encounters throughout the history of the Tamera project, art was discovered to be a creative principle of Creation and became an essential element for the inner development of community. In addition to painting, “art” in Tamera now includes music, theater, dance, landscape art, and artistic expression in language. For example, there is a Tamera Chorus as well as a small a cappella jazz group called the “MoonRiders.” .

Architecture
Tamera has created experimental buildings as models for the construction of peace villages, designed by various architects such as Gernot Minke, professor of Clay Architecture at the University of Kassel, Germany. Designer Martin Pietsch of Tamera has developed “Shade Creations” which have been used not only in Tamera but in quite a number of light-roof pavilions in other locations.

The Great Hall in Tamera is a meeting place for up to 300 people. It is a wood-frame, straw bale, clay, and green roof construction. With its harmonic interior structure, it is the largest straw bale and clay building on the Iberian Peninsula.

Spirituality
In Tamera, spirituality and religion are not questions of some profession of faith or creed, but of a clear perception, openness, and connection with universal forces in daily life. The core community gathers together every morning and every afternoon in the “Political Ashram” to focus on attunement and connection through spiritual lectures. There is also a stone circle in Tamera made up of more than sixty monoliths, created and arranged by Sabine Lichtenfels in cooperation with Marko Pogacnik and Peter Frank, that serves as a place of meditation and power.