Mystery surrounds Amdi

Tvind’s founder, who has led a secret life for eighteen years, has refused to see his old father for a quarter of a century.

In the middle of the worst storm in Tvind’s 26-year history, not even the empire founder’s closest relatives want to confirm even that he is still alive.

The 47-year-old founder and spiritual leader of the Tvind corporation, Mogens Amdi Petersen, is even now surrounded by profound mystery. No ordinary students or teachers at Tvind ever see him. Only the very top of the Tvind pyramid have known the details of his fate since, as a self-appointed martyr, he went to ground in 1979.

As in all good old-fashioned dictatorships, the subjects are not allowed to know whether their great leader is ill, infirm, dying or dead.

The leaders of a flawless system cannot fall ill.

Among Tvind defectors the theory dominates that the great helmsman is no longer in the land of the living. But nobody knows for sure.

25 years ago, Amdi broke with his father, whose name is also Amdi. He has not spoken to him since. The ageing man of almost 80 breaks into tears when you mention his lost son.

Amdi’s mother says that she has no idea where he is. Amdi’s brother, Henrik Amdi Petersen, does not even want to say when he last saw his famous big brother.

"But you’ll never guess the truth about Amdi. And you’re not getting it out of me."

The tax inspector who receives Amdi’s income tax return form every year informs us that it is not signed by Amdi himself but by a Tvind group with power of attorney.

Ekstra Bladet knows that Amdi’s old mother, Eva Petersen, normally known as Mrs. Amdi, and Amdi’s brother Henrik Amdi Petersen, have had some contact with Amdi through all the years.   His mother used to be on the Board of a couple of Tvind schools and today she lives next to the corporation’s four schools in the town of Juelsminde.   Her grandchild stays there regularly.

On the other hand, Amdi’s revolutionary break-away in the late ‘sixties — when he was fired from his job at the Kroggaardsskolen in Odense for being long-haired — and his subsequent founding of the Tvind Travelling High School meant that he ended up in deep opposition to his bourgeois father, who to this day presents himself as "former school headmaster of [the town of] Ringe, Amdi Petersen". Amdi Junior broke off his contact with Amdi Senior and since then, in the name of Tvind cultural revolution he has demanded the same unconditional loyalty towards himself and against one’s own parents.

Officially, Mogens Amdi Petersen is alive and well. He is a tax payer in the village of Tvind in the West Jutland municipality of Ulfborg-Vemb, site of Tvind’s HQ.

The Population Register states that he lives in a house at Skovkaervej 6, Tvind, 6990 Ulfborg. Until 1994 he lived at Skovkaervej 12. Both houses are on the Tvind Corporation’s land. Amdi has not set foot in either house for the last ten years.

"He may be in breach of the law. I know as well as you do that Amdi doesn’t live in that house. We don’t go in for prying investigations, but I must say I’ve never seen him within this municipality," says Tax Inspector for the Ulfborg-Vemb Municipality Mads Overgaard to Ekstra Bladet. Overgaard is also the in charge of the Population Register.

"I receive his tax return form every year. Most recently for 1994."

"No Amdi doesn’t sign his own form. He has given power of attorney to a so-called power-of-attorney group at Tvind. So I have to admit that of course I don’t really know whether the man is alive at all," the tax inspector admits.

"I’m not allowed to give that information."

"Yes, if he does not spend the majority of nights, some 180 nights a year, at the address he has given, he’s in breach of Danish laws concerning address registration. You have to reside where you have registered to be resident. But there has been no official complaint about his residence. So I don’t think there’s anything we can do," says the Tvind guru’s tax collector.

Tvind has admitted that Faelleseje will not support individual schools.

"Whether the state will get its money back from Tvind?    No we won’t."

For six months, Anne-Marie Meldgaard, Educational spokesperson for the Social Democrats, has worked intensively on the Tvind case. And she considers all the millions paid in grants to be lost.

"It would be far to optimistic to believe that we would get the money back. We can withhold the state subsidy that is due up to the New Year, but then the schools will be bankrupt. They own nothing. They’ve paid everything to Faelleseje," says Anne-Marie Meldgaard.

In 1995 Tvind received 103 million kroner. Demands for 14 million have already been sent to the seven Tvind schools which have been investigated, and more demands are on the way.

Anne-Marie Meldgaard, spearheading the government’s involvement in Tvind project, has had numerous meetings with the headteachers, students and parents from the Tvind schools. And they have revealed that Tvind solidarity stops at the money chest.

"Many of them are completely immune to criticism of Tvind. They defend the Tvind community, but when I say community I also imply solidarity.

"I have asked them whether Faelleseje will show solidarity now that the subsidies stop? The leaders say no.

"I have then asked them whether they can have the rent paid to Faelleseje reduced, once they no longer get a subsidy. They say no.

"I have finally asked them whether Faelleseje will allow individual schools to go bankrupt. The answer to this was affirmative," says Anne-Marie Meldgaard

One of the criticisms raised against the government’s instant action against Tvind is that it did not happen many years earlier. On Wednesday, the Danish Public Accounts Committee reprimanded Education Minister Ole Vig Jensen (radicals), a reprimand he shares with his predecessors in charge of inspecting the schools. They are Education Minister Bertel Haarder (Liberal), Arts Minister Grete Rostbol (Conservative) and Ole Vig Jensen himself who inherited the Independent Schools Act when he tookover in 1988.

Anne-Marie Meldgaard admits that the inspection of the schools has not been sufficiently effective. But she does not believe that a thoroughgoing inspection would have been possible any earlier.

"Only when Tvind was reported to the police in Holstebro did we suddenly gain access to the accounts from Estate and Faelleseje, which we could not get hold of before," says Anne-Marie Meldgaard.

"At first sight, you only notice minor points about individual schools, it is only when get an overview that it becomes evident that the state funding were channeled into Faelleseje. For instance, the teachers who worked on Tvind’s development projects were supported through development funds. But the teachers turned down their salaries. Instead the money went to Faelleseje," says Anne-Marie Meldgaard