With a heavy heart we must announce the passing of long-time Schumacher Center board member, Gustav Petersen. Gustav was a businessman, a poet, and the brother-in-law of Fritz Schumacher.
Concerned with the ominous events taking place in Germany, Gustav moved to America in the late 1930s and entered into an international trading business working with companies in South America. Once established he sent for his beloved Vita and they were married.
Their life together is the tale of one long and beautiful love affair. The Petersens lived in New York City, but had a country home in Falls Village, Connecticut where Vita could paint and Gustav could live more closely to nature which kindled his poetics spirit.
James Morton, of Cathedral St. John the Divine, introduced Gustav to the Schumacher Center in the 1980s and he joined the board of directors. When the Center undertook to establish a Library at its Jug End Road home, Gustav spoke with family members about adding Fritz Schumacher’s collection to what was already in place. From the beginning, the Schumacher Library collection was computer-indexed for easy searching, and the index was then placed on-line so that researchers around the world would be able to view the collection. Clearly E. F. Schumacher’s library would hold a great deal of interest for future researchers. It was important to keep it together and accessible.
In January of 1994, Verena Schumacher moved from the Surrey, England home she had shared with her husband and in which she had raised their children. As part of that move, she donated her husband’s books and papers to the Schumacher Center. They are now catalogued and available to visiting scholars.
We thank Gustav Petersen for his forethought and good influence in facilitating a permanent home for his brother-in-law’s books. Fritz Schumacher’s library is not a collection on economics, rather books that encompass the world’s great religious and philosophic traditions. It took a study of life’s big questions, “What is the role and responsibility of the human being on earth?” to arrive at a new understanding of economics.
In much the same way these were Gustav Petersen’s interests. He was reading poetry, religion, psychology, and bringing these studies to his work and life.
When Gustav and Vita left their Connecticut home for the simplicity and convenience of their New York City apartment, Vita called with a request. She asked that we come and take the weeping cherry tree given to Gustav by his daughter, Andrea, on the occasion of his birthday. She asked that it be planted on the grounds of the Schumacher Center Library.
Each spring when the cherry comes early to blossom, we take pictures for Vita and Gustav. It is planted on the south side of the building, near the patio, just outside the front entrance. When all the work was done in the winter of 2002 on the foundation of the building, the cherry was the only planting that remained. An electric company truck scarred it as it backed up one day, but it recovered short one branch, but blossoming again in the spring.
Gustav died at home surrounded by his wife and daughter on October 17, 2002. One of his friends asked if she could purchase a tree for the Library in Gustav’s honor. It was a lovely little crabapple. One by one other friends of Gustav offered the same. Peaches, plums, cherries, a dozen blueberry bushes, currants, gooseberries, three holly, and a beautiful hawthorn were all gathered in Gustav’s honor. His wife, Vita, recalls one of their favorite things to do together was to visit pick-your-own orchards in the summer and fall. Even when walking became more difficult, Gustav could sit under a cherry tree and gather cherries for Vita.
For three Tuesdays in November, volunteers worked to plant the trees, adding rock dust for fertilizer and spreading mulch around each base to protect through the winter. We were all cold and wet but there was a smile on every face as Billie Best, Cecillia Defarrarie, Catherine Reynolds, Claudia Vispo and her little son Otter, Wanda and Tony Weigert, Jean Dillard, Nick Peck, Will Ketchum, Steve Borns, and board member Starling Childs moved compost in wheelbarrows, dug holes, lifted trees, and placed them with love and care into their new homes on Jug End Mountain.
In May of 2003, a memorial service for Gustav Petersen will be held at the Schumacher Center Library. The Memorial Orchard and Garden will be completed at that time with the planting of a second weeping cherry, a gift from Vita.
