FAMILIAR FACES (13th Edition)



Hello DWS Alumni from the 70's and 80's! Welcome to our thirteenth edition of Familiar Faces. In this two part edition, we are featuring Werner and Barbara Glas, co-founders of the Detroit Waldorf Institute with Hans and Rosemary Gebert in 1967.

Werner Glas, Teacher/Mentor

August 1929 - October 1991

Written by Fiona Glas

The following is a tribute to my dad who helped to train so many teachers at our Detroit Waldorf School and tended to the growth of new Waldorf schools across the country. He was well known for his work in the international community of Waldorf schools as well. As a child people often introduced me to new adults as “Werner Glas’ daughter,” as if that were my name, which made me feel like he was famous.

The Waldorf Institute had a symbiotic relationship with the Detroit Waldorf School (DWS). It trained Waldorf teachers to teach in Waldorf schools across the country and many of the teachers at DWS in the 70s and 80s received their training there. The Institute initially began in Detroit and later moved to the campus of a Franciscan monastery in Southfield. The institute in Southfield was surrounded by woods and they eventually grew a large bio-dynamic farm on the grounds. In 1986 the Institute relocated to Spring Valley, New York where it remains today as the Sunbridge Institute.

Above: Werner with Rudy Wilhelm and Theo Buergin at an early organizational meeting circa 1969 (right to left) Theo Buergin, Rudy Wilhelm, Werner Glas, and others

Below: with Barbara, Fiona and Ian

My father was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929 to a Jewish family during World War II. At the age of 6 his mother and father put him on a Quaker train along with his older brother Bruno bound for London, England to escape the Nazis. He became a refugee in England along with his older brother. He initially lived in an orphanage which he described as, “like something out of a Dickens story.” His brother ran away from the orphanage. I learned about this from my mother because my father never talked about his early childhood to me. My mother said, “imagine that, having to say goodbye to your children and not knowing if you would ever see them again.”

His parents told him if he ever saw someone with his last name spelled with one s, they were probably family. This is how he moved from the orphanage into the family of Dr. Norbert Glas where he lived and attended the Waldorf school Wynstones in Gloucester. As a young adult he studied acting and became a Shakespearian Actor in London. My father always had a dramatic flair and a gift for weaving stories into his lectures about Waldorf Education.

My father was an English teacher at Rudolf Steiner School in Edinburgh, Scotland from 1952 to 1958. He taught in a Waldorf school in Mexico City from 1958 to 1961. He then moved to Los Angeles where he taught history at the Highland Hall Waldorf School and was the director of Waldorf Teacher Training there. Fortunate for my brother and I, he co-taught an art history class with my mother, and they fell in love. He proposed to her on Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. Because of the way that these stories in Familiar Faces inform each other and weave together connections to DWS like roots of our shared history, I learned that Rudy and Amelia Wilhelm contacted my dad and invited him to start the Waldorf Institute in Detroit. Thus, my parents moved to Detroit, started the Waldorf Institute in 1967, and two years later my mom birthed this alum, and three years after that my brother Ian.

My father tended Waldorf Education like a garden. He traveled extensively supporting the start of new Waldorf Schools across the country. I remember him taking calls from the black rotary phone that hung from our wall at all hours and even during meals (thankfully there were no cell phones then). I remember our house having a flow of my parent's adult students moving through it. At Christmas when we lit the live candles on the Christmas tree, I remember our living room filled with students singing Christmas carols and the smell of bees wax candles is unforgettable. 

Werner and Barbara at Werner's PhD graduation

I remember his visits to DWS to observe teachers in training. My father had narcolepsy and I remember being mortified when he occasionally fell asleep snoring loudly from the sidelines. It makes me laugh today but I hope that any teacher in training that experienced this did not take it as a commentary on their work. Because of his narcolepsy my father did not drive a car and my mother did not either. They both rode their bicycles for shopping and several of my parents’ students as well as faculty and staff at DWS graciously drove our family to places too far away to bike. The lesson learned; take care of community and community will take care of you.

I remember overhearing his instructions to a teacher in training, he said, “review the day each night from the perspective of each of your students.” I think of his teaching of principles and practices like this as part of his legacy to the Detroit Waldorf School. We all benefited from the seeds of learning that he planted with our teachers, and his instruction for teachers to set aside time every evening to consider us individually.

Teacher and Staff Reflections

I mostly knew Werner Glas as one of my teachers at the Waldorf Institute when it was located in Southfield. Like many others, when I think of Werner, I recall that impish grin and twinkle in his eye. But I think what I learned most from Werner was how to tell a story. With that rich, warm voice and a developed instinct for drama, Werner could wrap you in a story in a moment. He had a way of building imaginative pictures with humor and reverence that drew listeners right in. He also was able to read his audience quite well, and could deliver a tasty morsel it seemed to each and every audience member while he was speaking. I have tried to remember that in my own teaching. 

- Linda Williams



Education classes at my alma mater where far from inspiring, and yet, as far back as four years old, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. As I was sitting in my German professor’s office, she asked what I would do after graduation and I told her how much I wanted to teach and how discouraged I was by my two education classes. She suggested I go to see a lecture by a visiting professor named Werner Glas. I entered the classroom and there stood a man with a delightful, impish smile and a gleam in his eye, his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he alternately peered over them or through them. I was surrounded by education students. At one point Dr. Glas pulled out a handful of coins from his pocket and began placing them one by one on the desk. He asked what was happening and several students shouted out “subtraction” or “addition”. I was exploding inwardly, though I said nothing, because there was finally someone doing math that made sense. He was, of course, doing both and yet people could not see that. Having experienced “New Math” in the California schools (better described as “confounding math”) I was so relieved that somewhere, in some school, math would make sense again. Shortly afterwards, I left for Detroit, knowing little about the city, about the Detroit Waldorf School and almost nothing about teaching. What a moment of inspiration Werner was in my life! I am grateful for that. - Francina Graef

It was from the lips of Werner Glas that I first heard the words Waldorf Education, and like Francina, I too, at the end of my elementary teaching degree program, was yet to hear anything that connected me to the children I was to stand before each day. In the spring of 1967, Werner was scheduled as a guest lecturer in Dr. Robert Teachman’s (yes, that Teachman) Philosophy of Education class. New parents that we were, Fran and I were anxious to hear what he was offering and needless to say, it was inspirational; we were sold, and, throwing naysayers comments to the wind, we enrolled Kristine, and that began an entirely new way of living. We were in that only the best for my child mode and Werner’s words were life changing; this newly minted teacher/parent heard a clarion call that continues to ring in my ears some fifty years later. Non-driver that he was, Werner was able to walk to the Waldorf Institute when it was housed at the Waldorf School. On this particular afternoon, as he was walking home, he heard threatening mumblings from folks approaching him from behind. What to do?! He waited until they were very close, he stopped and twirled 180 degrees and, dropping his brief case, faced them in a karate stance and yelled in his best and most stentorian voice “Yaahhh!” whereupon the would be assailants, surprised and no doubt frightened, turned and ran away. Werner picked up his briefcase and did the same.

Years later in 1980, on sabbatical, at The Art Therapy Center in Gloucester, England, I was privileged to attend a class on The Senses taught by the man who raised Werner, his uncle, Dr. Norbert Glas, another excellent teacher, whose notes I still treasure. - Jerry Altwies

My training was at Mercy College in Detroit. We had just finished a semester and almost all of us students were leaving for a week-long break. We rather crushed our way into the elevator and jabbered away as we descended. One of my peers told me she was going to read Proust during the break and I shared a confidence with her: I was going to read Shaw. It was not like me to share a confidence in public, so I wondered why I had - then I heard Werner's deep voice rather ascend from the back of the elevator, saying "whatever for?" We all laughed of course; yet here I am, forty-four years later, bringing to mind once again that simple question that has guided my pedagogical ventures for a life time. Mentors guide in various ways.

Whenever Werner returned from a recruitment trip to Honolulu he wore a Hawaiian shirt. I took a vow the first time he showed up in class with one: I vowed never in my life to buy anything that ugly. I mention this because I eventually taught at the Honolulu school for six years and - I am not making this up - struggled with Werner every time I bought a shirt on that island. The third memory I will share is the one closest to my heart. About five years ago (which is to say, about thirty-five years after Werner accepted me into the training program) I was quite perplexed about how to frame a four-week training session for teachers. Too many options and variables? I picked up Werner's The Waldorf Approach to History, followed my eye to one paragraph in the introduction that spoke of Hegel's historiography, and experienced inwardly the organic organization of the course. 

- Paul Gierlach

With his rich baritone voice, Werner was a master at delivering thoughts; never in a straight-forward manner but always through some surprising, circuitous path. I vividly remember his once lecturing from the stage of DWS and beginning with some description of his daughter Fiona's experience of Easter, segueing to some esoteric idea, then wrapping up the talk with a quote of his daughter's response to the mentioned event. It was an "a-ha moment" for the rapt audience. Because of his busy schedule, he often snoozed through student presentations in class, but he always remarked that he heard the ideas more deeply because of his "dream" state. We were all grateful that DWS had teacher training so available and in the hands of a gifted teacher. 

- Frances Altwies

Werner was my first encounter with Waldorf Education and the teachings of Rudolf Steiner when I enrolled in the Waldorf Institute in the fall of 1973 when I was 21 years old. There were many lectures, book studies, and art classes. Werner was a great orator and a profound thinker, and could speak on a multitude of philosophical and educational topics. We were in awe of him. But he was also an unusual and humorous character, at times absent-minded, forgetful, and was known to dose off during classes in those moments when he was not speaking himself. Still, he was a one of a kind genius whom we all loved.

After finishing up my BFA at Wayne State in Detroit, I had found my way to Emerson College in England in 1977 to study in the sculpture program and understudied as a teacher of adults. Right at the end of my four years there, Werner suddenly, and out of nowhere, appeared at the art studio door. After a brief conversation, he offered me a scholarship to come back to Detroit and enter his new M.A. program in affiliation with Mercy College of Detroit, and he further sweetened the offer by asking me to teach sculpture classes at the Waldorf Institute, by then located in Southfield, MI. This got me back to my old stomping grounds and led to my eventual part time teaching job at DWS where I taught middle to high school woodworking and clay sculpture for a couple of years before migrating to upstate NY where I have lived and taught for the last 35 years. In that brief time at DWS, I learned a tremendous amount from teacher role models like Paul Gierlach, Ralph Marinelli, and Ann Bickel. Some of my best memories of Werner were of being privileged to be one of his drivers. That meant sometimes taking him to restaurants where we had some randomly fun and fascinating conversations. Two of his favorite food destinations was Greektown and the International House of Pancakes! 

- Patrick Stolfo

Barbara Glas, Artist/ Eurythmist

March 1930 - March 2007

Written by Fiona Glas

Taking a walk with my mother gave one a new appreciation for color and nature, “look at that color” and “notice the quality of light” she often said pointing as we walked.

Barbara Glas was born into a wealthy New York family on March 7, 1930. She grew up in Sands Point, New York. As a young woman she studied art at Yale University but gave that up when she discovered Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education. She was cut off and disinherited because of her decision to leave Yale. She studied Eurythmy with Else Klink in Köngen, Germany near Stuttgart and became a member of her performing stage group. She spoke of Else Klink as a mentor. In 1956 she returned to the United States and became a Eurythmy teacher at a Waldorf school in Garden City, Long Island, New York. She also taught painting to high school students. She then moved to Los Angeles and worked as an art teacher at the Highland Hall Waldorf School. In 1966 she married my father Werner Glas and shortly after they moved to Detroit.

Amelia Wilhelm purchased this painting by Barbara in the early '70s. She had it hanging in a place of prominence in her home.



My mother taught painting at the Waldorf Institute, and she cared deeply for the many students who painted with her over the years. She taught veil painting and the watercolor wet on wet technique that is the hallmark of elementary school art in Waldorf schools.

As a child I remember her matting the paintings of her students at the Waldorf Institute in preparation for the yearly exhibit of their work in her class. Most of all I remember her helping to hand bind the story books that her students made. Each student wrote and illustrated a full-length children’s book in her class, and the books were magical to me. Her students received her careful attention even after the workday ended. Her support of my father and our family enabled my father to travel and support the growth of Waldorf Education in North America.

Madonna and Child (This painting along with Starry Night was printed in cards sets and sold for many years to benefit DWS.)

My parents moved with the Waldorf Institute to Spring Valley, New York in 1986. When my father became ill with cancer, she and my brother Ian cared for him at home while I was at college. After the death of my father my mother moved to Boulder, Colorado, they both had plans to retire there, but she moved there without him.

Barbara in Boulder in later years

Later in life my mother got Alzheimer’s disease and slowly lost her memory and ability to speak in words, though her tone of voice was always expressive. My brother moved to Boulder to care for her for several years and then she was placed in a care home in Oakland, California near me. I visited her before and after work every day and could not have done it without the incredible support of Paul and Karen Gierlach who visited her regularly. When she passed Paul Gierlach accompanied me to her cremation. I felt so fortunate that up until the end when she could only say a few words they were “thank you” and “I love you,” so representative of her nurturing spirit.

Teacher and Staff Reflections

The Tiger by Barbara

One felt both Werner and Barbara Glas “carried” the Waldorf Institute programs and “held” those of us enrolled, in their kind, loving awareness. They were pillars at the Institute, preparing and inspiring us for our role as Waldorf educators through their expertise and love for Waldorf education. Those were beautiful times under their tutelage.

- Marjorie Joy Masoud

When I first came to the Waldorf Institute and stepped into Barbara Glas’ painting class, I was immediately introduced to a world of color that I had not noticed before. Gentle Barbara, with her watercolors and brush, was able to take a complete novice and show how and why -- in a way that made it possible for me to teach children how to paint. I am truly grateful for that. I also remember what a kind and adventurous mother Barbara was. She always looked out for Fiona and Ian and Werner too, navigating Detroit city life with the needs of the family. I admired both her gumption and her devotion. 

- Linda Williams

The Lyre by Barbara

To be taught painting by Barbara Glas was to be completely awash in a wonderful experience of color. Our lessons were full of moments of light and dark, color mixing and color theory and gradually our minds were widened like watercolors spreading on a wet painting paper. Barbara wove spellbinding stories to introduce the colors as if they were beings living on the page. She showed us how to paint through the curriculum subjects and introduced us to specialized experiences such as veil painting. Gradually, we all learned what a deepening effect colors had on the children and ourselves. We learned to make color a focus of everything we thought of doing in our classrooms and our lessons. What a magical time those lessons were! Hardly a day goes by when thoughts about colors, color combinations, or colors in nature do not enter my thinking. So many greens in the forest, so many variations of color in the skies. It is a blessing to have been given such a gift by Barbara! - Francina Graef

What a lively, entertaining, passionate human being. Before her taking on the teaching of watercolor to teacher trainees, Barbara had been a eurythmist. She once told of traveling with a eurythmy troupe and going through customs where her luggage was thoroughly inspected by the agent who quizzically handled her gossamer costumes. When asked what these items were and what she did, she replied, "I am a veil dancer!" Such swirls of color that lived in her veils were duplicated with watercolor paints. Her instructions to would-be teachers was spirited and yet clearly laid out the why, when, and how to bring to students this valuable artistic experience. Thank you, Barbara for your inspiration. - Frances Altwies

Barbara was my first Waldorf painting teacher, from whom I learned a lot about how to teach art. I will never forget her demonstrations of wet on wet watercolor painting…vibrant, controlled fluidity. She had a wonderful sense of humor and a down to earth sensibility… there was nothing airy fairy about Barbara, and yet she was thoroughly artistic. I remember that she also had a background as a trained eurythmist, which certainly contributed to her demeanor of graceful artistry. - Patrick Stolfo

Thank you to Fiona Glas and Cynthia Wilhelm for the photos and to Paul Gierlach and Claudia Valsi for their editing support.

Do you know other alums who might like to join this group?

Can we feature you in an upcoming edition? 

Contact: Claudia Valsi, DWS Alumni Outreach Volunteer Coordinator