Werner Erhard

Landmark Education

In 1991, the group that later formed Landmark Education purchased Erhard's intellectual property. In 1998, Time magazine published an article about Landmark Education and its historical connection to Erhard. The article stated: "In 1991, before he left the U.S., Erhard sold the 'technology' behind his seminars to his employees, who formed a new company called the Landmark Education Corp., with Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg at the helm." According to Landmark Education, its programs have as their basis ideas originally developed by Erhard, but Erhard has no financial interest, ownership, or management role in Landmark Education. In Stephanie Ney v. Landmark Education Corporation (1994), a court ruled that Landmark Education Corporation did not have successor-liability to Werner Erhard & Associates, the corporation whose assets it purchased.

According to Steven Pressman's 1993 book Outrageous Betrayal, Landmark Education agreed to pay Erhard a long-term licensing fee for the material used in the Forum and other courses: "Erhard stood to earn up to $15 million over the next 18 years." But Arthur Schreiber's declaration of May 3, 2005 states: "Landmark Education has never paid Erhard under the license agreements (he assigned his rights to others)."

In 2001, New York Magazine reported that Landmark Education CEO Harry Rosenberg said that the company had bought Erhard's license outright and his rights to the business in Japan and Mexico. From time to time, Erhard acts as a consultant to Landmark Education.

Parents Magazine Cultural Institute

From the early mid-1950s until 1960, Rosenberg worked in various automobile dealerships, with a stint managing a medium-duty industrial equipment firm. In 1961, Erhard began selling correspondence courses in the Midwest. He then moved to Spokane, Washington, where he worked at Encyclopædia Britannica's "Great Books" program as an area training manager. In January 1962, he began working at Parents Magazine Cultural Institute, a division of W. R. Grace & Co. In the summer of 1962, he became territorial manager for California, Nevada, and Arizona, and moved to San Francisco, and in the spring of 1963 moved to Los Angeles. In January 1964, Parents transferred him to Arlington, Virginia as the southeast division manager, but after a dispute with the company's president, he returned to his previous position as west coast division manager in San Francisco. Over the next few years, Erhard brought on, as Parents staff, many people who later became important in est, including Elaine Cronin, Gonneke Spits, and Laurel Scheaf.

Influences

Erhard acknowledges many influences on his development, including a variety of experiences. He did not have much formal education and was self-educated. He became interested in physics in high school and later developed friendships with Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann, from whom he gained knowledge of theoretical physics. Erhard also credits being tutored by philosophers Michel Foucault, Humberto Maturana, Karl Popper, and Hilary Putnam.

During his time in St. Louis in the 1960s, Erhard read two books that had a marked effect on him: Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich (1937) and Maxwell Maltz's Psycho-Cybernetics (1960). When a member of his staff at Parents Magazine introduced him to the ideas of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, both key figures in the Human Potential Movement, he became more interested in personal fulfillment than sales success.

After moving to Sausalito, he attended seminars by Alan Watts, a Western interpreter of Zen Buddhism, who introduced him to the distinction between mind and self; Erhard subsequently became close friends with Watts. Erhard also studied in Japan with Zen rōshi Yamada Mumon. In Bartley's biography, Werner Erhard: The Transformation of a Man, the Founding of est (1978), Bartley quotes Erhard as acknowledging Zen as an essential contribution that "created the space for" est.

Erhard attended the Dale Carnegie Course in 1967. He was sufficiently impressed by it to make his staff attend the course, and began to think about developing a course of his own. Over the following years, he investigated a wide range of movements, including Encounter, Transactional Analysis, Enlightenment Intensive, Subud and Scientology.

In 1970, Erhard became involved in Mind Dynamics and began teaching his own version of Mind Dynamics classes in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The directors of Mind Dynamics eventually invited him into their partnership, but Erhard rejected the offer, saying he would rather develop his own seminar program—est, the first program of which he conducted in October 1971. John Hanley, who later founded Lifespring, was also involved at this time. In their 1992 book Perspectives on the New Age, James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton write that Mind Dynamics, est, and LifeSpring have "striking" similarities, as all used "authoritarian trainers who enforce numerous rules," require applause from participants, and deemphasize reason in favor of emotion. The authors also describe graduates recruiting heavily on behalf of the companies, thereby eliminating marketing expenses.

In the early 1980s, shortly before the est training was phased out, Erhard was introduced to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger. He consulted with the Heideggerian scholars Hubert Dreyfus and Michael E. Zimmerman, who noted commonalities between est training and elements of Heidegger's thought.

John Paul Rosenberg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1935. His father was a small-restaurant owner who left Judaism for a Baptist mission and then joined his wife in the Episcopalian denomination where she taught Sunday school. They agreed that their son should choose his religion when he was old enough. He chose to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, served for eight years as an acolyte and has remained an Episcopalian.

Rosenberg attended Norristown High School in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he received the English award in his senior year. He graduated in June 1953, along with his future wife Patricia Fry, whom he married on September 26, 1953; they had four children.

In 1960, Rosenberg deserted his wife and their children in Philadelphia. He and his new wife, June Bryde, assumed false identities and traveled to Indianapolis. He chose the name "Werner Hans Erhard" from Esquire magazine articles he had read about West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard and physicist Werner Heisenberg. Bryde changed her name to Ellen Virginia Erhard. The Erhards moved to St. Louis, where Werner took a job as a car salesman.

Patricia Rosenberg and their four children initially relied on welfare and help from family and friends. After five years without contact, Patricia Rosenberg divorced Erhard for desertion and remarried.

In October 1972, a year after creating Erhard Seminars Training, Erhard contacted his first wife and family, arranged to provide support and college education for the children, and repaid Patricia's parents for their financial support. Between 1973 and 1975, members of his extended family took the est training, and Patricia and two of his siblings took jobs in the est organization.

Werner Erhard Foundation (1973–1991)

In the early 1970s, the est Foundation became the Werner Erhard Foundation, with the aim of "providing financial and organizational support to individuals and groups engaged in charitable and educational pursuits—research, communication, education, and scholarly endeavors in the fields of individual and social transformation and human well-being." The Foundation supported projects launched by people committed to altering what is possible for humanity, such as The Hunger Project, The Mastery Foundation, The Holiday Project, and the Youth at Risk Program, programs that continue to be active. It also organized presentations by scholars and humanitarians such as the Dalai Lama and Buckminster Fuller and hosted an annual conference in theoretical physics, a science in which Erhard was especially interested. The annual conference was designed to give physicists an opportunity to work with their colleagues on what they were developing before they published, and was attended by such physicists as Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Susskind.