Although in his youth – after he had allegedly caused a friend to lose an eye through playing around with a gun – he had sworn never to carry one again, he knew he had to do military service.
They got into a conversation on Christmas Eve that lasted all night – one so lively that Hahn reports that they went to the early morning service refreshed, though the candles had burnt down long before.
Together the friends of Hahn’s circle began also to study the texts on Social threefolding that were being sent out from Stuttgart, hearing names like Emil Molt, Professor Wilhelm von Blume or Carl Unger for the first time.
The decision changed the course of his further life, he moved to the Sonnenhof in Arlesheim, Switzerland and worked under the guidance of Ita Wegman, who inspired him with her insights into the needs and methods adopted in caring and educating children with mental handicap.
He agreed on the condition that the co-workers of the institution would be permitted to run their lives in its daily and annual rhythms in the manner that corresponded to the basic requirements of the anthroposophical curative movement.