About us

On the initiative of the Association for the Promotion of Holistic Lifestyle and Cultural Care eV, an extraordinary community emerged in the mid-1990s here in south-east Thuringia: Inspired by the Indian mystic Osho, a dozen friends set out on the site of a former wood sawmill with an inn in the midst of the wooded mountain ranges of the nature park “Thuringian Slate Mountains – Obere Saale”, to realize a common vision of alternative coexistence.

Halfway between Lichtentanne and Wurzbach, a community was created in Zschachenmühle that should offer space for both internal and external development, in which awareness as well as a holistic way of life and cultural maintenance are in the foreground to this day. At the present time, 25 people between 1 and 86 years of age live permanently in our community, supplemented by guests and friends who want to accompany us on our way for a short or long time.

Here and now

Today the Zschachenmühle site includes around a dozen buildings as well as several hectares of fertile soil and building land, which we use for all kinds of creative plans and projects. When it comes to everyday goods, we maintain contacts with regional suppliers. Our paradise garden supplies vegetables, herbs and fruit. Our delicious, fragrant wood-fired oven bread and raw milk from organic farmers complement the menu as desired. The same applies to the water: We have our own source of drinking water and an organic sewage treatment plant for our wastewater. A large wood gas stove and smaller stoves with switchable or individual oil heating are used for heating. We get the firewood from the surrounding forests. We cover a large part of the electricity demand with solar energy.

We are also quite diverse in terms of craftsmanship and artistically: The site houses various workshops for woodworking, a locksmith’s shop, cutlery, electrical workshop, antique restoration, innovation workshop, handicrafts, painters’ studios, car workshops, carpentry, creative workshops and a small gardening shop. Various meditation rooms and music studios round off the colorful program. Although our closest neighbors are kilometers away, we maintain lively contact with you: on the one hand through the federal road B90 from Hockeroda to Bad Lobenstein, which runs directly past the Zschachenmühle, on the other hand through the Sormitztalbahn and its two train stations in Lichtentanne and 5 km away Wurzbach. Not insignificant for the present time, we also have an internet connection via parabolic antennas and a small network café for guests for some time.

 

Questions, problems and conflicts are discussed in the community, in which we come together for a “meeting or sharing” in which we try to find a consensus and thus an amicable solution. Not always successful, but mostly.
The inner core and guideline of the community are meditations and a corresponding way of life. Because the center of our existence is and remains for everyone to find the way to oneself, through meditation and conscious action, but also the ability to distinguish essentials from insignificant and thus ultimately to give our energy to those things that make us aware and Letting live a full life – a never ending, constantly changing process for both the individual and the group. Anyone who would like to get to know us is cordially invited to visit us sooner or later. There are enough parking spaces for caravans and guest rooms in a simple standard.

See you soon
The commune