about the large crowds that gathered. Following Various groups continue to promulgate Gröning's teaching, including the Circle of Information, the Bruno Groening Trust, the Bruno Groening Friends, the Association for the Advancement in Germany of Spiritual and Natural-Psychological Foundations for Living, the Association for Natural Spiritual Living, the Bruno Gröning Circle of Friends, and Help and Healing Sessions. Gröning founded the Association for the Advancement in 1958 to replace the Gröning Association. The Circle of Friends was founded in 1979 by Grete Hausler, an Austrian school teacher who worked closely with Gröning. The Circle of Information was created by Thomas Busse, who has written a number of books about Gröning and directed the documentary film The Gröning Phenomena. Help and Healing Sessions is an association of independent Gröning groups and hosts online meetings. The Bruno Gröning Circle of Friends was listed as a commercial cult in an official 1997 report by the Berlin Senate Committee. Personal life Apprenticeships Leaving school at fifth grade, Gröning began a business apprenticeship. He had to give this up after two and a half years, due his father, a bricklayer foreman, insisting he learn a trade. He apprenticed in carpentry, but this was interrupted three months short of finishing when the firm closed down due to the business turmoil of the post-war period. He then worked at various jobs. Egon Arthur Schmidt wrote of this time: He was a success at any work he turned his hand to. Various workmates of his told me that a noticeable feature was that whatever he turned his hand to, he was able to do, whether it was repairing clocks or radios, or whether he was working as a locksmith. He was especially suited to technical things. Also, he was never shy about taking on the roughest and physically most strenuous work. As a dockworker, he pulled his weight. He made no secret of the fact that doing all this was connected to the path which led him through the depths, in order to reach the heights. An old chinese proverb says, ‘He who has never been through the swamp, cannot become holy.’ There are plenty of reports from among his early compatriots, one of which reached me recently. In it the writer says plainly and simply and without reservation, that having worked with him for a year, he was the best and most decent comrad he ever had,