Biography of Rudolf Steiner - A lecture by Martin von Mackensen on 17 January 2019

To the film: part 1 and part 2

- Biography of Rudolf Steiner Part 1 -

- Biography of Rudolf Steiner Part 2 -

More lectures by Martin von Mackensen can be found here at https://biodyn.wiki/Martin_von_Mackensen

Transcription of the biography of Rudolf Steiner Part 1

A Childhood in the Waiting Room 0:01:08

Yes, I welcome you most warmly to this evening hour. And we intend to deal with the Biography of Rudolf Steiner. And that is not a very easy undertaking, because there is an incredible amount in this biography. And it is not really possible to present all of it in one evening. And at the same time, a great deal has already been published about this "biography". And when you're standing here like this, you have a certain trepidation about whether you're getting it right. That a picture emerges that is worthy of describing this person.

So my effort is to try to give you a picture of this personality. And at the same time, in this attempt to present it as objectively as possible in its time, it is unavoidable that sympathy and admiration spill over. Even if this is not intended or targeted, I would like to say in advance, so to speak, that it is unavoidable. Yes. And it's always a difficult thing for me, too, this unit. On the one hand, I love it because it spurs me on to deal with it again. And on the other hand, I hope that you will hold out for these two good hours. And that we can talk for a few minutes afterwards and collect questions. We can try to find out whether I can answer them. That would be the goal. So the attempt to put this life in front of you, in two parts. And to keep in mind, "How could this person be the way he is?" "And how could this person give us these suggestions, which 100 years later are still somehow interesting at least once? And there is perhaps so much that can be said, just last week an article appeared in a large magazine about what the "Bauhaus impulse" actually was. And there was the anthroposophical impulse at the same time. And both were presented as a bit of a, yes, weird thing of the 20th century. And at the same time it is also the case that there are many great spirits who say, yes, somehow Steiner still has something to say to us and perhaps also to say in the future. What might be good for us to somehow improve our conditions and make them more fruitful and better.

So my perspective is that of agriculture. From the point of view that you are actually faced with the question of more or less entering into biodynamics and becoming active in it, or are already active in it, and of getting to know the founder of this agriculture a little better.

In 1861, at the south-eastern corner of Central Europe, this imperial and royal monarchy, the "imperial-royal Austrian monarchy", a giant monarchy, a multi-ethnic state, centred in Vienna. And there, in the corner between Hungary, Styria, Croatia, Austria, Kraljevec, a small railway village, Rudolf Steiner was born. And he was actually born into a landscape of which we can rightly say that it is one of the most beautiful in Central Europe. Very small-scale, very fertile, really cold winters, wonderfully hot summers, almost Mediterranean climate, but even more humid. All the crops you can imagine could be grown there. A wonderful, small-scale world, agricultural world. And in 1861 in the area, in the periphery of this Austro-Hungarian empire, there the church was still really in the village. Everything was still as it had always been. And yet there was already a great deal of awakening and a great deal of modernity.

And now this person is actually standing at such an interface, because his father had the profession of being a railway clerk, a station - we would perhaps say today, a station manager. A person who had to do everything connected with train traffic at such a small station, such a railway station. That person was there alone. And that was the Austrian Southern Railway. And it was single-track. And maybe every one, two or three hours a train came and had to be handled. They had to call beforehand and telegraphs had to be sent. And then it would bring something that had to be unloaded or loaded. Then there might have been passengers who had to buy a ticket beforehand and so on. And that was quite a gruelling job. And once a week the man had the day off. Someone arrived by train, and then he had 24 hours off, the father. And then it went on again for six days. And he had to see how he could organise his sleep to fit in with the railway life. So an eight-hour day or something, far from it. That's how it was. And the mother is a very loving, very reserved woman, about whom we know very little, also from a very simple background. Both of them actually come from rural and rural backgrounds. The father was also an employee before - or employed sounds perhaps very good - so he was a little bit active in a forestry business. Simple, very poor circumstances. And Rudolf, the first child. And you have to imagine a small village like that, if things go well, the station forecourt paved, otherwise actually unpaved, dusty roads, a few carts, a few farms and maybe a small trade somewhere, a small manufactory and the next village and so on. And a hilly, moving, beautiful landscape. And this little infant, a screamer for the first few months. It happens from time to time that you have a child who cries for at least two, three or four months when it is awake. These are very special people. I know this from my own children. It can be very exhausting for the parents. And now, at the age of five or six, a strange situation occurs, which he later writes down for us. And I would like to read it out. A child who actually spends his childhood in the waiting room, that is, in this context of the railway. And because the parents have to move all the time, always to new stations that they have to manage, no real connection to other children, to a village rural life. That was the case from time to time, but not in the same way as a farmer's child. And Rudolf Steiner later describes this as something typical of his biography, that he got caught in between. That he had already received something of modern technology and culture as if it had been put into his cradle. And you have to imagine that the railway was connected with telegraphy and steam propulsion. And these were really the most modern technologies that existed at that time. And he writes like this:

Question from the audience: Was he actually an only child?

No, he was followed by two siblings. Just a second, now I have a little one here...

"One day, before he was eight, he was sitting alone in the waiting room. A woman appears to him, asks for help and then disappears in a strange way. Days later it turns out that at that very time his mother's sister, who lived far away, had taken her own life."' Later Steiner suggests that since then the outer world has become transparent to him.

quote. Oh, I see, that's the next one. That's enough for now! The child, which has a, well, how can one describe it, a perception that is quite clearly not sensual. And at another point he describes it himself and says, yes, he actually sought contact with the adults and tried to describe the experience. And then he was simply told: "What are you talking about, you stupid boy? Stay here in the here and now, so to speak! And the news that the aunt had died and committed suicide, he didn't get that directly. And the parents got it two weeks later. And only from the parents' reaction did he understand as a child that it all falls apart. And at the same time it intimidated him and confused him with regard to these perceptions that he has and that the parents, and there were other adults, obviously don't have. So right at the beginning this problem, I have perceptions that are there of something that I bump into in the world. He then reports on his dealings in this world, in this nature, and now writes in the third person, when he was about 50. All kinds of nonsense has been published about him, about his biography. And then he feels compelled to write something about it himself, which was otherwise very far from his mind.

"And the boy lived from that time onwards with the spirits of nature, which are particularly observable in such a region, with the creative entities behind the things, in the same way as he let the outer world affect him."

So, in a short biography, which at that time was, yes, 15 pages long, which he also gave as a lecture in 1913, he begins by touching on this railway experience. And then this connection to the spirits of nature, with whom he has a connection, with whom he has a perception, as with the outer world. Even before his school days, or perhaps in the first year of school, or at the latest in the second. So this experience was at the very beginning of his biography.

Yes, I'll interject briefly to show a little bit of the sources from which I'm operating here. This is above all this little booklet: "The Man Rudolf Steiner, Taja Gut". I have also put it there. You can also consult it there in the next few days. This is a wonderful summary for someone who has read a lot about this biography, one admires the genius that has made a short summary possible here.

The rest is mainly by an author who has spent many, indeed many years on the biography of Rudolf Steiner, Christoph Lindenberg. There is a rororo biography and a larger, two-volume biography. And something that is typical for a real historian, Christoph Lindenberg was a very precise and good historian. He also did this one, which is a treasure: Rudolf Steiner - A Chronicle. And there he simply arranged all the documents, everything that one can know, chronologically. And there are also nice jokes about this man. When people appeared somewhere: "Yes, my aunt, I inherited something. And it says that on the last day of September 1918 Rudolf Steiner told my aunt this and that. And the whole thing was in Cologne." And then they went to Lindenberg with it. And then he looked it up and said: "Completely impossible. Rudolf Steiner was in Berlin at the time and one day later he went to Freiburg. And three days later he went to Hamburg. And if you really maintain this claim, then I'll get the Reichsbahn plans and show you that it's all nonsense what you're telling me here, because it wasn't possible at all to get there by train." So he really did some research like that, because of course there are also unbelievable claims in Rudolf Steiner, what he had done and where he had been everywhere. So Lindenberg as one of the, yes, neatest and most precise biographers and I use him a lot and rely on him a lot.

There is a now unmanageable amount of literature on Rudolf Steiner's biography. I have really read a lot of it. And I can really recommend this little Taja Gut, which I also refer to, as an introduction. And this short account by Lindenberg in the Rowohlt Verlag. And then there is a third one that I would like to highlight. That is this biography "Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy, Walter Kugler. This is from the seventies. And I know Walter Kugler well. And he completely revised it again eight years ago. I think it's over there, too. That's three biographies I'd like to point out.

Yes, I try to read out a lot of original sources in the first part, because that might make it more accessible. And in the second part, from about 1900 onwards, I will tell a lot freely. So we have this structure 1861 to about 1900, in the first part. And then 1900 to 1925. That's how we're going to structure it tonight. And this first experience after the description of the landscape, the locality, the family. So the first experience is this situation with the aunt, this perception of a spiritual phenomenon and not getting along with the parents. And the second, this connection with the spirits of nature, as he calls it about forty or fifty years later.

The third essential event, which we know and which he himself also describes, is something that happened during his "school days". And the school years, although he has moved several times, are marked for him by the fact that it is terribly boring because he understands everything. In fact, he usually has it clear long before it comes in class. And then in the higher classes he often does it in such a way that he holds the textbook, according to which the lessons are somehow stubbornly carried out, he does it like this: He takes the cover of the textbook and puts it around another book to read during the lesson. But he is able to answer immediately when the teacher asks a question. And he reads very, very hard-to-digest philosophical literature. That is typical for him, that he has this unbelievably high, fast comprehension ability, even as a child and as a teenager.

Geometry as an experience of happiness: Geometry appeared to me as a knowledge that is apparently generated by the human being himself, but which nevertheless has a meaning that is completely independent of him 0:20:40

Now I would like to describe this example, of the approximately ten-, twelve-year-old. He is at school and the teacher, one of them is very kind to him and lets him into the teacher's library from time to time, because he realises that he can't really help him in the lessons with the other children. And he just lets him into the library. And a "geometry book" falls into his hand. He is allowed to borrow it and studies it very thoroughly. And he traces everything like this. And there he writes, even if at first more emotionally, here for the first time a way emerged for him to grasp the spirit world, which is in the immediate present experience, as an objective fact. Thus he describes it abstractly, so to speak. Now the description that he himself gives, now comes again from this lecture with about 50.

The fact that one could live psychologically in the formation of purely inwardly perceived forms, without impressions from the external senses, gave me the greatest satisfaction. I said to myself that the objects and processes which the senses perceive are in space. But just as this space is outside the human being, so there is a kind of soul-space within, which is the scene of spiritual entities and processes. In the thoughts I could not see something like pictures that man makes of things, but revelations of a spiritual world on this soul scene. Geometry appeared to me as a knowledge that is apparently generated by the human being himself, but which nevertheless has a meaning entirely independent of him. I did not tell myself clearly as a child, of course, but I felt, like geometry, one must carry the knowledge of the spiritual world within oneself. 'For the reality of the spiritual world was as certain to me as that of the sensual. But I needed some kind of justification for this assumption. I wanted to be able to say to myself: The experience of the spiritual world is no more a delusion than that of the sensual world. With geometry I said to myself: Here one may know something that only the soul itself experiences through its own power. In this feeling I found the justification to speak of the spiritual world I experienced as well as of the sensual one. I know that it was in geometry that I first came to know happiness."'

Now this is from Autobiography, that is, the experience of the ten-, twelve-year-old who borrows the teacher's geometry book and traces it. And in the tracing, he starts thinking about how to construct a cube, how to construct a tetrahedron, how to draw perspective and so on. And then, passing into the purely mental, geometric forms and explanations, which are always connected with mathematics, to notice in this process that this is a world which is no longer sensual and which is at the same time an incredibly secure and clear and unambiguous world. And to suddenly realise that this is actually what I always experience. And here it is so clear and certain and the path is so unambiguous. And this is what he now calls happiness. That is quite amazing. As a child, to say that the experience in the, as it were, autodidactic reworking of such geometrical thoughts, to call that happiness, because it means a transition into a world in which this child was quite obviously constantly at home, in which it constantly had perceptions. And where it had great problems communicating that with other people. Yes. That's this little description of the geometry experience.

And now it's developing in such a way that he continues to be totally underchallenged at school. And he "draws" on the side. And there are wonderful drawings of typical, yes, great phenomena of that time, some count with a beautiful full beard and such a character head. And some of them have only been found in archives in the last twenty years. And you can study them over there in the next few days. So I'll leave these books and pictures there. We could have enriched the whole thing here with an incredible number of pictures. But I was more concerned that something of this human being emerges in you. And you can get the pictures yourself. You can do that too. So the drawing pupil who likes to draw things precisely and cleanly and exactly and also transforms them a little. It's a typical thing that, let's say, was typical for the twelve- or fourteen-year-old child or boy.

Rudolf Steiner as a tutor - I owe a great deal to this tutoring 0:27:06

Now comes something that also distinguishes him, namely the need that the other children do not understand all this at school. And very early on, Rudolf becomes a "tutor". And he says much, much later in his life that it was because he always gave private lessons that he actually learned properly in the first place. That what came to him, he was so clever and so quick to grasp, that he didn't really notice that he already had it all down. And it was only when he was confronted with a fellow pupil or a younger pupil who had difficulties that he really woke up to the material. That's how he writes it. It's only when you have to somehow painstakingly teach someone what this is all about that you think of a law of leverage or a context from a German essay or something. Only then does it become really clear to him. And later he says: "I owe a lot to these private lessons. And we see something in this that I would like to put a bit above the whole first part, so to speak, the motif that he has to brake. Speed is a huge problem for him. He's just insanely fast. And to somehow adapt to a normal speed, that's a real problem for this young man. And we're going to catch that a few more times now, so to speak, this issue. And there is a wonderful description about a school experience. I would like to bring that back in the original. Just a second, I have to sort myself out a bit. I'm missing one right now. Somehow it got lost. Is it under there? Yes, it's there.

Study of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: I strive in my boyish way to understand what human reason is capable of achieving for a real insight into the nature of things 0:30:02

In the spring of 1877, Rudolf Steiner discovers in a bookshop the Reclam edition of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which has just been published. He didn't know the first thing about Kant at the time. But he must have had some idea of what the word reason meant. Quote: "I strive in my boyish way to understand what human reason is capable of doing for a real insight into the nature of things." After laying cruiser upon cruiser for a few weeks, he was able to buy the book. Thus began the study of Kant in free hours during extremely boring history lessons and in the summer holidays Kant was read. Quote: "I probably read some pages more than twenty times in a row. I behaved quite uncritically towards Kant at the time, but I got nowhere through him." The author here, the Lindenberg, says so beautifully: "

"For Kant gave him no satisfactory answer to his question of how thought really gets at nature.

So someone whom we, even if we are 25 and have a certain scholastic and perhaps through study acquired intelligence and mental agility, whom after the first three sentences we pepper against the wall because we don't understand it because it is so insanely complicated - this student reads on the side in a boring history class. And some pages he reads twenty times. But he will understand it. He has a deep question: How can one's thinking actually become so clear that one can really understand the reality of nature and the spirituality that is effective in it, which I spoke of at the beginning, which comes in the first quotation, how one can really understand that. And it torments him and drives him. And since that age, somehow between 14 and 16, he has been absolutely well versed in this difficult philosophical work by Kant, who, as we know, lived about 150 years earlier and who was a very, very important philosopher for the separation of man with his thinking from the world. He came to the conclusion that "thinking is something that perhaps has nothing at all to do with the world". And the impression of the world can be a Maya and what I think about it can be something completely different. So this separation, which this philosopher formulates so massively for the first time, so to speak, of thinking from the world, moves Steiner incredibly. And what I have just read out, as he says here, completely uncritically at first, he absorbs it.

Engineering studies in Vienna - including mathematics, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, zoology, botany, biology, geology and the mechanics of geology. In addition, he attends lectures in history and at the same time continues his self-study in philosophy 0:33:24

Another detail from this time at school. He can then finish school with an extra distinction. And makes, so to speak, a 1.0 Abi, we would say today, with distinction. And because that's the case, he can get a scholarship from the company, this railway company, where his father is employed. This scholarship enables him to study in Vienna. But he knows very well that this is short-term. This scholarship will only last, I think, three years. And he has to see to it that he studies something in that time that will give him an income afterwards. He doesn't belong to the social group that has such great opportunities to study because he is from a middle-class family and so on. Instead, he belongs to a very poor social class and has to see how he can somehow make ends meet. And he already realises that he might have a hard time with his studies later on and so on. And at first he decides on a so-called bread course of study, a course of study where you don't study philosophy or history or something like that, but where you study something application-oriented. That is initially a kind of engineering study.

However, he does not only study what is offered, but I have listed here, just a moment, because it is very well documented what he actually studies, because it is a huge mass. Just a moment! I already had it earlier. He studies mathematics, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, zoology, botany, biology, geology and the mechanics of geology. Besides this, he attends lectures in history and at the same time he delves further into his philosophy self-study. And besides, he gives private tuition'. And he participates in a reading hall. You can imagine it like this, there they always studied each other and lectured on what was current. And because there wasn't enough money during his studies, he took a "job". That's how it was at that time that people started to produce "encyclopaedias". You hardly know that anymore, because today you google everything. But until the nineties, there were still huge Brockhaus and things like that. And at that time, they started producing so-called "universal encyclopaedias". And you needed a lot of authors for a lot of subject areas. An article about graphite in mining. Or about how to drill boreholes/ how to drill deep in geology. Or what the latest chemical mixture of a certain substance is and so on. And this young student of about 19, 20, 21 years old just writes articles for the encyclopaedia. And of course they are checked and they are up-to-date, they are good and then they are printed. A job he does simply to earn a little money. And another job he does is that he goes to parliament for a newspaper and listens to long, hour-long speeches by parliamentarians and then summarises them in an article. So that the newspaper can write the next day, "What was that debate like yesterday? And then, late at night, he is in a small room somewhere on the roof, sleeps for a few hours. And the next day he's back at the "university". And there comes a letter from a friendship, which we have handed down. And I would like to read out a passage, because I find it very, very typical for him at that time.

It was the night of the tenth to the eleventh of January 1880", that is, when I was 19 years old, "during which I did not sleep for a moment. I had occupied myself with individual philosophical problems until half past one in the middle of the night. And then, at last, I threw myself on my bed. My endeavour last year was to investigate whether what Schelling said was true." Quote Schelling: "We all have a secret, wonderful ability to withdraw from the change of time into our innermost self, stripped of everything that came from outside, and there, under the form of immutability, to look at the eternal in us." End quote. "I believe and still believe that I have discovered this inner capacity quite clearly in myself. I have suspected it for some time. The whole idealistic philosophy now stands before me in a substantially modified form. What is a sleepless night against such a discovery?"'

He writes this to a friend at the age of 20. So I discover something that I have already read in philosophy somehow abstractly, as it were, from the outside. There is like an innermost core that, yes, is immovable in every individuality. And that suddenly becomes so clear to me. And then he writes about it, that's like something, yes, what could be better than finding something like that? That is this person, at this age, thinking and feeling at such a level or in such circumstances. Yes, I go on to the next.

Meeting with a herbalist: he carried on his back his bundle of medicinal herbs, but in his heart he carried the results he had gained from the spirituality of nature in his gathering 0:40:10

He now comes, a year and a half later, to a most extraordinary incident, which is also of importance to us here in connection with agriculture'. He often travels to Vienna by train because he can do it for free through this railway company. And then he can also come home and help his parents and so on. And on these train journeys he meets someone. And this man's name is "Felix Koguzki" and he must be thirty or forty years older. And he's a herbalist. You have to imagine, Vienna is still a small city, but at that time it was a cosmopolitan city. And of course there were no modern medicines, no modern pharmaceuticals. So there were no antibiotics or anything like that, of course, but there was an incredibly sophisticated and highly developed "naturopathy". And a pharmacy in the city produced its own medicines. And it made them from medicinal herbs that it just got. And they got them from herbalists, as long as they were "wild herbs". And this man, whom he met there, is such a "wild herb collector". And about him he now writes the following, I quote again from his own biography, My Life. I didn't mention it before. It's over there. It's a thick biography that only covers "two thirds of his life". It's not written to the end, but he describes the first two thirds of his life there himself. And this Felix Koguzki now plays a huge role for him. And he gets to know him. And there he writes the following:

"When you were with him, you could take deep glimpses into the secrets of nature. He carried on his back his bundle of medicinal herbs, but in his heart he carried the results he had gained from the spirituality of nature in his gathering."

He carried on his back the bundle of herbs and in his heart he carried something of the spiritual context in which these herbs were so inside nature. He is madly fascinated by this quite uneducated man. And he says he had to get to know his spiritual dialect. He somehow senses something. But he can hardly communicate with him and first has to learn how he can, so to speak, tap into this man's completely uneducated nature, this spiritual thing that he carries in himself, so to speak, through nature. And then he visits him once, or so we are told. And he says that was a wonderful visit. And above the door was written: All things are in God's blessing. And he had no books at home. And he was deeply "religious". And at the same time he was someone who could spiritually perceive something of what was going on in nature, where certain healing herbs were to be found. And this man is now very important for Rudolf Steiner because he points him to another personality whose name we do not even know, of whom Steiner only writes to us once quite succinctly, yes, through this Felix Koguzki I got to know someone who helped me to systematise what one has as spiritual perception, we would perhaps say today. He speaks of the order and the regularity of spiritual perception, of being helped to do this. And he also probably met this person only once. In another place he then speaks of, yes, the master. In other words, someone who was obviously able to give him structures in which what he perceives can somehow be ordered. Perhaps that's how you could put it today. And this Felix Koguzki, much later in a drama of his, a mystery drama, a character is developed that is, so to speak, copied from him or where he tries to bring this into an artistic form. There is a wonderful little biography about this Felix Koguzki. And it's over there, too. You can also have a look at it.

First curative education experience: Learning through play 0:46:01

Yes, another one from this first phase is now a letter that I would like to read out. No, first something else. Sorry. And that is, maybe we've already figured that out a bit now, he has a special childhood, no other peers. His siblings are much younger. He actually has these insanely poor circumstances, "he was never able to play properly". And that's what he describes. And now he gets into the wonderful situation that he is asked or is wanted in a rich Viennese family, a Jewish family, the father is a fabric dealer. They are looking for a kind of tutor for the wife and above all for the four boys. And this has the background that there is a child, I think it is the third, a boy who is very retarded due to an illness, a hydrocephalus child, and about whom one has to worry a lot, how he will get into life at all. And Steiner applies for this job and he gets it. And that becomes a very long-lasting relationship and a very friendly relationship with this family. He does an incredible amount of playful learning with this child. This leads to the fact that this child can later go to school regularly, yes, even attend high school, then take the Abitur, then even study medicine. Then Steiner is no longer connected with him. And then dies as a doctor in the First World War. And Rudolf Steiner describes this experience, this special care for this child, as very essential for him. At the very end of his life, we will come to that later, it is about anthroposophical curative education. And he says once that without this experience, these years of work in the Specht family, it would have been impossible for him. And this attention also enables him to get to know what it feels like from the inside, so to speak, healthy child development. Also a typical signature for this extraordinary biography.

Editing a complete edition of Goethe's scientific writings 0:48:47

Now, at the age of 20 or 21, something happens that is very, very decisive for the rest of his life. He has a professor at university whom he admires very much. Later he says it's his fatherly friend, "Karl Julius Schröer", a professor of German literature. And this man is such a real, well-educated man, an authority, let's say, in German culture. And he was commissioned to make a complete edition of Goethe'. Goethe had been dead for about 40 years at that time and many of his works had been published, but there was no complete edition. And Karl Julius Schröer knows that he is a "man of letters" and is incredibly well versed in "literature" and so on. But that he has no idea about "natural science". And he knows that Goethe did many different scientific activities, endeavours and works. Goethe was, after all, a geologist, a botanist of the first order, so you just have to imagine, all his life he was interested in the rock world. And when he died, he left behind 30,000 rock samples. And he had a large part of them close to him, so that he could go there every now and then and look, ah, this is what it looked like there and there, what I found 15 years ago or took with me. So someone who was incredibly knowledgeable about how the rock world appears. And who, with his geological insights, contributed to the fact that today's geological maps, for example, have the red colour for the granite. We have Goethe to thank for that, "Goethe's mineralogical interest". And this Schröer now, forty years after Goethe's death, understands that I can't get the natural science right in a complete edition of Goethe. I need someone there. And now he has the courage to ask a 21-year-old student if he can do it. Totally unusual, actually. A professor in his fifties, a world-class output. There must have been money enough to find someone else. It wasn't the money that was the reason. But this professor recognised this student and realised that he really had what it takes, that he could do it. And I would like to briefly read out another original source here.

"My representations of Goethe's ideas were a struggle that lasted for years. To understand Goethe better and better through the help of my own thoughts, that is, Goethe through Goethe's thoughts. Looking back on this struggle, I must say to myself that I owe much to him for the development of my spiritual experiences of knowledge. This development was much slower than it would have been if Goethe's task had not been fated to take place in my life. I would then have pursued my spiritual experiences and presented them just as they had appeared before me. I would have been swept into the spiritual world more quickly. But I would not have found any reason to submerge myself in my own inner world.

Whoops, what is someone talking about a proper editorship,' of a scientific part of a great genius? Editorship. Do you know what that is? It's the most painstaking micro-work. In a letter, an idea, a quotation. Where does that come from? Aha! That's where it's described for the first time. Does it exist before? It refers to that. Aha! I have to prove that. Footnote to this letter. The next story. Oh, there's something else in this letter! An unbelievably tedious micro-ministry, this student is doing. And he is really able to get a 500-page volume to print within half a year. The first of six volumes. And the experts are screaming: Yay, wow! That's very neatly done. It opens up a whole new world for us... We get to know sources and things that we are not used to from Goethe. And now, somehow, a career seems to be mapped out. This could be a scientist who could soon become a professor. With something like that, you're somehow a made man as a very young guy.

And now I would like to read you something that is directly related to this, which has to do with the problem of time. Just a moment, I have to find it first. Mr Kürschner writes to him. And Mr Kürschner is the publisher of this Goethe Complete Edition.

"Dear Sir, you will probably guess what is forcing my pen into my hand again today. It will be two years in the near future since I received the first telegram from you in response to my repeated reminders: Manuscript to follow Saturday for sure. Since then, 87 weeks have passed and at least four identical telegrams have come in response to my reminders. But not a single sheet of the manuscript of the last volume of the scientific writings.

A person who quite obviously has problems somehow getting his things in order in terms of time. And such letters abound. This man mercilessly overtaxes himself. And while he wants to finally finish this Goethe work, he is doing other editorships, whole six-volume editions of famous writers and all sorts of other things on the side. And it's always in conflict with that time frame, isn't it? So you really have to imagine it. I send a telegram away, a telegram, not a letter. I get a letter: So why don't you finally finish writing! Then I send a telegram to the publisher and say: Yes, it'll be here on Saturday. And then it's two years. You really have to let that melt on your tongue. We have to open the window. I think you're a bit under ventilated. So this delay. And now I have to tell you a few things about this first period that are very important.

Sociable life in Vienna: His first philosophical work is written in a café 0:56:42

At the age of 23 or 24, he really began to enjoy social life. Before that he had actually lived in poor circumstances, very ambitious and very preoccupied with his inner world, as I have tried to describe it. And now he is actually interested in the social. And he loves that so much, that's also a bit typical of Steiner, the excessive. So what we had now with the delay, that occurs there with the love of social activity or life in society, in exchange with others. This culminates in the fact that at the end of his studies he actually lives in a café for two to three years. He even has his mail sent there. And his first major, difficult philosophical work is written in a café. He doesn't have a flat of his own, a room somewhere, an unheated room. He doesn't mind that at all. All the noise, he loves it, having a little table in the middle of this café in a corner, where people sit down with him and so on. So all of a sudden this man, in the Café Griensteidl, there is also a picture, you can also look at it over there, is like at home in the social life and enjoys it in Vienna. He is acquainted with all kinds of artists, also very weird types. And exchanges ideas. And he suddenly swims, so to speak, in this social life. Always poor, always insanely overworked, does far too much and always behind the time of the tasks he actually promised.

Moving to Weimar: Summary of Goethe's Worldview - You have to understand the type of being a plant 0:58:32

And now this thing with the Goethe edition is coming into its fifth or sixth year. He actually has to get the thing done somehow. And so it comes about that now, finally, in 89, almost ten years, yes, eight years after starting this Goethe work, it becomes clear to him, it's no use, I have to go to Weimar, to the archives. And I can't do that with one trip. He travels there once and works there. And then he realises I have to be there, I really have to study everything. I can only get the last volumes there with these unbelievably many documents. I have to live there. And that hurts him to part from Vienna - finally he is at home in a world, so to speak - to then move to Weimar. And this move then happens, yes, in 89/90. And this move is painful for him. And this is preceded not only by the first publications of Goethe's scientific writings in Vienna, but he is now also busy with his own philosophical approach, so to speak, from this Goethe work, actually from what I read out earlier, learning to understand Goethe with Goethe's thoughts. And then produces a book. I just want the original title, that I don't get it wrong/ second. Yes, it's a pity, I don't have it here properly at the moment. So I have to memorise it.

Grundlinien einer Goetheschen Weltanschauung mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Schiller 1:00:58

So he's trying to summarise Goethe's worldview. And it sounds like it's going to be a purely receptionist work that now only grasps this Goethe spirit. But that is not the case at all. And for anyone who has anything to do with agriculture and anthroposophy, it is an extremely readable booklet. And especially beautiful is something in the last chapter where he tries to grasp a concept of science, how can one actually get knowledge of the inorganic and the organic? That's how he distinguishes. We would say today, from the natural sciences and the life sciences. And there he brings the first wonderful theory or formulation of his own, the type. He says that if you want to understand life, for example of plants, then you have to develop something that is not the ideal or the superior concept and also not the perception, but something in which all plants are and yet which is nothing concrete. One must understand the type of being a plant in general. And this type-thought is not formulated in this way in Goethe's work, but he gets it, he lets himself be inspired by it, but it is one of his first independently formulated, original philosophical insights.

And the second thing is, a little later comes his own dissertation writing: Truth and Science. And that now leads to his own, self-formulated epistemology. And the essence of this epistemology, of course, can hardly be summarised so simply, but I'll pick out one thing that seems essential to me, which is this idea:' I am actually quite sure that I am and I am actually quite sure that something is, only in my thinking. By forming a concept of something with my thinking and putting this concept in relation to what I perceive, I can actually justify myself at all. And this difficult act of a secure inner justification is what he calls the foundation of a philosophy of freedom.

The Philosophy of Freedom - A Central Work of Steiner's for Understanding Anthroposophy at All 1:03:38

And so then in 93 in the Weimar period this Philosophy of Freedom comes out for the first time. And for many it is completely incomprehensible how this is connected with later anthroposophy. But he also emphasises again and again later, even forty years later, a central work for understanding anthroposophy at all. And so one must actually say to each of you: study this! It's exciting. It's really exhausting. You have to do it in twos or threes. But there you can have inner experiences that are completely neutral and completely, yes, even without, so to speak, what anthroposophy then brings everything, but which you can really develop, develop out of clear concern. And these lead to a sure recognition also of what is not sensual.

Steiner is still in Weimar in 1895, meets a woman who is a widow and has four children and enjoys moving in with her and connecting with her, also helping her with the children. Is happy to be in a household somewhere, so to speak. And loves this woman, marries her later on. But he separates about ten or twelve years later. She also goes completely different ways. And she also dies long before he does. That's also part of the Weimar period. Yes. Now I have to look. The last one before the break. Yes, that's what I wanted to show you. That was all very serious, what I said. And Steiner isn't that serious. It's so difficult to grasp the humour. And perhaps I will succeed a little with this.

Rudolf Steiner fills out a questionnaire - visit to Nietzsche 1:05:43

A questionnaire that he fills out in 92, in the Weimar period. And this questionnaire, at that time it was such a game. And I'll just read it out.

-You could write a motto at the top. And there he writes: "In God's place, the free man!!! That's his motto.

-And then first comes the next question: Your favourite quality in a man: "Energy". Your favourite thing about women: "Beauty.

-Your favourite thing? And now, this is a Goethe quote: Sinnen und Minnen. That's a great thing. Goethe cultivated that, that he contemplated things and really loved them inwardly. This withdrawing and working on things in such an inner way. That's where this concept comes from. And he repeats it here.

-Your idea of happiness? Sensing and minning.

-Which profession do you think is best? Now this is interesting. "Anything that can kill you with energy.

-Who would you like to be if not you? "Friedrich Nietzsche on the verge of madness.

-Where would you like to live? "I don't care.

-When would you like to have lived? In times when there is something to do.

-Your idea, of unhappiness? To know nothing to do.

-Your main character. I don't know him.

-Your favourite writers? Nietzsche, "Hartmann," "Hegel. - So he's obviously massively preoccupied with Nietzsche at the moment. And then he has the enormous luck, about three years, four years after this, in '96 or '97, he has the chance to visit Nietzsche, who at that time was already deranged, because his sister asks him, as a side job to this Goethe story, whether he would like to do a Nietzsche edition. And there he has the huge chance to meet this completely absent Nietzsche. And he describes how he is incredibly moved by this incredible forehead and this beautiful pink face. How Nietzsche was lying there on the sofa and perceiving him and yet not perceiving him, completely silent. And that beautiful moustache and the still brown hair. And two years later Nietzsche was dead. So Nietzsche, who was already completely unresponsive - that was a very big experience for him. And then he also writes a book. Nietzsche, a fighter against his time. So he deals with something like that. And along the way, a book is then simply formulated. So Nietzsche on the verge of madness, that would be when he wants to be someone else. Where would you like to be/ Oh, I already have.

-Your favourite painter or sculptor? That's interesting too. Michelangelo. And I can't read that right now. Rembrandt' maybe, something with R. I don't know.

-Favourite composer? Beethoven.

-Your favourite colour or flower? - "Purple autumn crocus". You can see how crazy he was there, can't you? So that's what you did as a game.

-Favourite hero in the story? That's great, too. Attila or Napoleon or Caesar.

-And favourite heroine in history? "Catherine of Russia. So all pretty brutal characters.

-Favourite character in poetry? "Prometheus.

-Favourite name? "Radegunde". Let the women decide.

-Which historical character do you dislike? "The weak.

-Which mistake would you be most likely to excuse? All of them if I can't comprehend or all of them that you can't comprehend. Sorry. I'd have to look that up. Takes too long.

-Your insurmountable dislike? That's important too. "Pedantry and orderliness", insurmountable dislike. What really repels you? Pedantry and a sense of order.

-What do you fear? "Punctuality.

-Favourite food and drink? Frankfurter sausages and cognac and black coffee.

-Your temperament? Changeability. Some game, huh? It's sort of half humour and half seriousness. You kind of get a sense of the person. Yes.

Now a small document. I've skipped a lot of things now, because we've simply come so far with time, which is now part of this first phase of life. He's moving to "Berlin" in '99. The Goethe thing is finally finished. And he associates in Berlin with all kinds of crazy people and anarchists and socialists and so on. I'll tell a bit about that after the break. And in a book, he's always writing down all kinds of things, he left an insane amount of notes. And in one of his books from that time, my friend Walter Kugler found this note. There are many such notes. And there he simply makes a kind of house cash book.

What does he spend his money on? 1:11:52

Whatever was in short supply. And this is beautiful. About 1900, maybe 1899 or 1900. And there's always days like that now, right? 8/29, 8/30, 9/1, 9/2, 9/3, 9/4. And then it goes: cigarettes 35, coffee 35, a ride 20, always pennies. One evening, the coming ones, we know that, it's a club like that, they were philosophers who discussed all kinds of things, he somehow spent 85. Then another trip, 40. Raisins, cigarettes, cigarettes, coffee trip, beggars. That's what moved me so much about this. That's why I made a big copy of it for you and brought it here. I think it's so incredible. Then, Anna, this is his wife, six marks. Somehow he got money and gave it to her. Cigarettes, stamps, coffee, cigarettes, sultanas, cigarettes, coffee, sultanas, ride. Zeche, Zeche and I can't read that at the moment. Down there I don't know right now. Then again a larger sum, these are always the full, the Mark amounts. Anna Haushalt, for his wife, so to speak, cigarettes, coffee, trip, trip, trip. And so on. Yes? That's where you really look into a personality, into such circumstances. Thank you very much for listening so far! We'll now take a 7.5 minute break so you can stretch your legs. And I'll have the heavy first name for no longer than an hour, the second part of this biography. See you soon!

Transcription of the biography of Rudolf Steiner part 2

Summary from Part 1. In which direction will Rudolf Steiner orient himself? 0:00:21

Yes, this second part from 1900 to 1925 is actually mainly about the development of anthroposophy, the spiritual science, as Rudolf Steiner always emphasises. And yet I would like to summarise the first part beforehand. We actually have before us a human being who has a quite extraordinary nature since childhood. And who is insanely gifted. And who is also very lucky in a certain way, in that at 21 he is given this Goethe task, which is actually much too big for him. He works incredibly hard at it. I also read out how he himself later assessed it. He then became an "active philosopher" around the age of 30 and came out with his own books. I have only mentioned a few. And yet, if you look through all the dates of the 90s, this Weimar period and then also the beginning Berlin period. You don't really know what he wants, where he actually wants to go, what he actually strives for. He works incredibly hard, an insane amount, is always short of money, is interested in all kinds of things. But what does he actually want? "What does he actually stand for? What is it all about? That remains open. He has, so to speak, philosophically worked out a very clear position. But what does his life, so to speak, stand for? Does he want to have a chair? Does he want to become a professor? But then he doesn't act accordingly for that either. It is actually not clear. Does he want to become a philosophical writer? He doesn't go straight towards that either. That's the big question. And he dives into this Berlin life around 1900 with a certain relish and a total overwork typical of him.

Berlin, around 1900, melting pot of culture, a place where unbelievably many different directions come together, where it crackles. And here comes the acquaintance with the socialists Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. And we have just today, in these days, that we have to commemorate one hundred years the murder of Rosa Luxemburg. And I would like to do that clearly. Rosa Luxemburg is not only a woman of genius who brought this socialism into the world. And this greatest saying of hers:

Freedom is first always the freedom of the other! Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht bring Steiner to the workers' educational school 0:03:39

Freedom is always first the freedom of the other. Mad, big. And she is involved with Liebknecht in bringing Rudolf Steiner into the so-called workers' educational school in Berlin. And of the socialists, she is also the one who has had the longest and deepest contact with Steiner. And there is a real correspondence, two personalities who touch and appreciate each other. He came to this workers' training school. And it is now completely influenced by socialism. You have this "proletarian class", the uprooted class, we've touched on that a bit, the social group catapulted out of agriculture and thus somehow deprived of any connection. Those who work twelve hours a day. They are so poor that they can't even take the tram or something to work, but usually walk another half hour or hour to their factory. And they are uprooted. They don't really know where life will take them. Who are completely dependent on the owners of the respective companies and who are now uniting, "trade union movement", which was forbidden and so on. And now at some point this spark of education. Education, education, education is the only thing that liberates. And there the birth of the workers' educational schools.

Steiner is politically intangible. Condition: He does not want to be forced by a theory of socialism or whatever theory to put forward certain things 0:05:26

And you have to imagine the worker-education schools in such a way that after just such an 11-, 12-, 13-hour day, you then wandered to the school in the evening and sat down in a lecture there. And Steiner also writes that it happened quite often that one or the other fell asleep. So there had to be exciting lessons if that was to work. And Steiner, it is also typical of Rudolf Steiner, he is asked and he says yes immediately. But he makes one condition. And this condition is, he does not want to be forced by a theory of socialism or whatever theory to put forward certain things. But he wants to have total freedom to put forward whatever he thinks is right. And amazingly, they agree. Because Steiner is politically intangible. On the one hand, he is connected with the anarchists, meets with them once a week in a certain pub. The table where they meet is called the Criminals' Table, and it has a sign. So he's really together with people who, so to speak, operate very hard on the border of legality. And on the other hand, he is also on the move with very dignified forces in the political and above all social-cultural-artistic world. And you can't classify and grasp him politically either. And yet they have this idea to engage him.

And he does it with great pleasure and love. And we have a wonderful report from that time. He starts, I think, with a "history lesson". And within a short time he's teaching "very different subjects". And he does that for almost ten years. And there is now a report. Of course, Labour Day, 1 May, is a very important day for such a movement. And now you can make an excursion. It's spring and you go out and make an excursion. And here we have a wonderful report.

"Then we camped in the woods in the tall grass until nightfall. The members of the Jewish Workers' League for Poland and Lithuania, who took part in all the undertakings and, despite their unconditional attitude to the Marxist doctrines, were among Steiner's most faithful followers, performed their native dances for us and sang their somewhat melancholy revolutionary songs from the struggles against Tsarist Russia. "Immortal victims - you sink". Or the rebellious "To the barricades, you working people!" Once their chant attracted two gendarmes, but they left us unmolested, as the translations we were familiar with were not widely known. Steiner then camped in the middle of us. We talked to each other. And we asked him about books and theatre, about old and new and the latest literature. It might be the Greek poets and philosophers, Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, the wisdom of Confucius and Lao Tzu. Or the altar from Asia Minor set up in the Pergamon Museum. Émile Zola or Stefan George. He explained to us the flowers in the grass, the ferns, the insects buzzing around. When we thought we had found a caterpillar of the peacock butterfly, he was able to tell us that it was that of a privet hawk moth. And he gave us an exact description of them with all their colours and signs. Steiner seemed to us like a silo, filled to the top with the knowledge of the world."'

Entering the world of the noble and the rich 0:09:57

Yes, so much perhaps up to this point in 1900. And now something very important happens for him. In September 1900 he is invited by a group with whom he normally does not associate at all, with whom he has no relationship at all. And I can describe them a little bit because I myself, my grandmother, came from such backgrounds and told me a lot about them - noble, rich, wealthy people, who also didn't have to do a manual or strenuous job every day, so to speak. Noblemen who owned a city palace in Berlin. Noblemen who cultivated culture, who knew many languages, who wanted to be up to date in literature. Noblemen who cultivated music, who had a large salon, who had a grand piano, into which the servant with the livery and the towel with the fruit basket came in the evening. A world that was completely unknown to Steiner. And there are now such people who belong to a spiritual direction in the Indian, direction of theosophy and who have somehow heard, this man has something interesting to say about Nietzsche.

It was an important experience for me to be able to speak in words coined from the spirit world 0:11:24

And they invite him, a lecture in this tea party.' No? You don't meet in the evening, you also have time in the afternoon. One can also have a tea party in the afternoon at four. And you invite interesting people to such a tea party. And so you invite this philosopher, this weird, colourful dog. And he lectures about Nietzsche. And now I would like to read to you how Steiner himself describes this thing.

"This was the time when I was invited by Countess and Count Brockdorff to give a lecture at one of their weekly events. Visitors from all circles gathered at these events. The lectures that were given belonged to all areas of life and knowledge. I knew nothing of all this. Until I was invited to a lecture. Didn't know the Brockdorffs either, but heard about them for the first time. I was suggested a presentation on Nietzsche as a topic. I gave this lecture. Now I noticed that within the audience there were personalities with great interest in the spiritual world. Therefore, when I was asked to give a second lecture, I suggested the subject: Goethe's Secret Revelation. And in this lecture I became quite esoteric in connection with the Fairy Tale of Goethe. It was an important experience for me to be able to speak in words coined from the spirit world. After I had hitherto been forced by circumstances in my Berlin time to let the spiritual shine through only through my representation.

This is the decisive turning point, at 39. This philosopher, where one doesn't know where he actually belongs, what he actually wants, who does all kinds of things, who is on the road in the most diverse groupings, who publishes a magazine - die Deutschen Dramatischen Blätter für die Bühnen' - where books and new plays are reviewed every fortnight. He experiences in this aristocratic, in this, yes, somewhat upper-class event: these are people who would understand what I actually can't always express. And that is a key for him. And now, after this lecture on Goethe's Fairy Tale, immediately people come, women above all, who then become decisive for him for 25 years. And it immediately doesn't stop at all.

The interest of these very educated, relatively free, but also conservative people in a spiritual enables Steiner to give more and more lectures 0:14:29

From the first lecture on Nietzsche comes this second one, and after the second one they immediately ask him to give a series of 30 lectures throughout the winter. People immediately sense that there is something of incredible substance that has not been tapped into at all up to now. And there is something coming together from both sides. There comes the interest of these, yes, very educated, relatively free, but also conservative people for a spiritual. And there comes for him the possibility of finally being able to express what has apparently been living in his soul for a long time and which he had hitherto not considered expressible.

Lectures before the Theosophical Society. Foundation and structure of the German Theosophical Society 0:15:14

And so after half a year, he is already working up the, let us say, winter lectures of this Theosophical Society. And a little less than a year later, this first series of lectures is already published as a book. And this goes on for the next few years. He still keeps in touch with all the other clubs and associations in which he is so involved. But increasingly he puts all his weight, so to speak, on this representation of a spiritual world in these theosophical circles. And after a short time, after two years, it is so far that they say to him, yes, so we are such an association of an Indian wisdom teaching and they still exist in England and in the Netherlands and in the USA. But we actually want to establish a national society in Germany. And there are also a few small interest groups in Hanover and Hamburg and so on. And they also came, these members from these other cities, from time to time. And then he also travelled there sometimes. And then came this request: Couldn't you, as General Secretary, found this Theosophical Society together with us, as German Theosophical Society? And then actually make that their main commitment, their main field of work? And Steiner is interested in this, although only ten years before he had written very disparagingly about the Theosophists: backwoods, backward, backward-looking and so on. And one doesn't really understand that.

The German Theosophical Society already has 12,000 members in 1905. Collaboration with Marie von Sivers 0:17:13

And then, however, there comes again this typical after-sentence or this typical restriction, as also with the Workers' Educational School: Yes, I do that. But I will only do it if I am allowed to teach here according to my points of view. I will not somehow bow to a theosophical world view that is somehow illogical or contains any dogmas, but I will report from what I perceive and nothing else. And that's what they do. And this society then becomes huge within a few years. So there are already 12,000 members in Germany in 1905. And he compiled several such lecture cycles into small writings. And he is actually on the road non-stop for this society by now. And he is constantly writing a journal for this society and he has a, yes, how can one put it, girlfriend, colleague, with whom he does this work together. A noblewoman, a half-Russian, half-German, half-Russian, Maria von Sivers, who does this work together with him.

And he actually describes to these members, who increasingly belong to this rather conservative and rather rich social class, the spiritual backgrounds of antiquity, the history of philosophy, the history of mankind, in general the spiritual backgrounds of the human being. And at the moment you are studying a bit of theosophy, or rather that is coming now. And there you will also read a very condensed piece of this first presentation of Anthroposophy. And now these members are endeavouring that he should not only be the General Secretary of the German Society, but that he should also go to the international congresses of the Theosophical Movement, to London.

Rich lecturing activity - esoteric-meditative teaching - first breaks with the Theosophical Society 0:19:42

And that's what he does. And one notices in the way he writes about it and in the way he reports about it at home or in the lectures and so on, that this is fragile, that this will probably not go well for long. That there are still "many dogmas" being cultivated. And that sooner or later this will lead to a crash. Now I would like to describe this society and its work in a few words. So you have to imagine - maybe thirty, forty so-called branches of the Theosophical Society in Germany', as a national grouping of this Society. And as a rule he is in these branches sometimes twice, sometimes three or four times a year. And he organises himself in such a way that he lives in Berlin and also publishes this journal and gives most of the lectures, but in between he is always on the road to give lectures in these branches of this society. And often this happens in such a way that he first gives a public lecture. That's what this particular branch does, these maybe fifty, eighty, a hundred and twenty people who are members of this society in a town, they rent a large public hall and he determines a topic. And then he speaks publicly about it. Then maybe the afternoon before or the next morning or whatever there is a so-called branch lecture. And now, from about 1905, 1906, a third element begins. And that is very difficult to grasp. There are also relatively many transcripts of this. You can perhaps describe it as a kind of esoteric-meditative instruction. That is what the contents of anthroposophy are actually presented as. But they have much more the character of how one also, let us say, takes them into one's own inner, yes, nurturing, meditative consciousness. And these are then a few members. And usually it is in a small room that is specially decorated and prepared for this purpose.

These three elements actually characterise these years, these noughties. That he is actually constantly on the road, writing at the same time, what he is actually putting forward, once again in condensed form. And actually, that the whole cosmos of the human being and the world view is presented from a spiritual point of view. At the same time, one can notice from today how he struggles to make it clear to these theosophical members that there is something to do in the world. This becomes clearest in 1905 in a wonderful lecture, which is well worth reading: "The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science". He actually says that everything I bring you in many, many lectures and books and articles and so on, you can apply concretely in relation to education and school. This can make a better pedagogy possible, so to speak, if you don't always look at the small details, but if you look at the big picture of the human being. And no one in this Theosophical Society is interested!

We have Ita Wegmann to thank for anthroposophical medicine 0:23:41

About parallel he talks about medical questions' and wraps it up wonderfully, speaks wonderful remarks about Paracelsus. Some of the things that he then tells there in the lectures, that has then only been really dug up scientifically fifty years later. One is sometimes amazed. He was very, very well-read. But in some places he really let his inner eye take over and described things that would only become known later: theosophy, medicine. And actually he wants to say to the doctors present there: Come, let us develop together a concrete practical medicine. Something can be done. None of the doctors are interested.

The only one who is interested, who shows up in Berlin as early as 1902, is a Dutch woman. At that time, I don't think she was even 20, 19, 18. A very beautiful, pretty young woman, who had trained as a physiotherapist, yes, we would perhaps say today, and who was insanely "interested in medicine". And she somehow understands that this man, with whom one could develop something that could become a new medicine. And he communicates with her. She approaches him and they communicate. And she then decides to study medicine. And "as a woman, you can only do that in Switzerland in 1903 or 1904," in Zurich. And that's what she does. Ita Wegman, the woman to whom we actually owe anthroposophical medicine. The one and only. All the other great theosophical, interested, spiritually interested doctors, there it doesn't really fall on fertile ground. And one notices more and more, how he suffers from it, 1905, 1908, 1909, that there are somehow about 50,000 people in the meantime in the whole German-speaking area, up to northern Italy, up to Switzerland, up to Austria, up to the Netherlands, who are all insanely interested in this spiritual side of the world, who are insanely interested in their own spiritual development with the help of meditation instructions. This booklet, which we know today: How to attain knowledge of the higher worlds, appears as a series of essays in the Zeitschrift der Theosophen. There is a lively life, a great interest.

The Mystery Plays: A format, a way of bringing this spiritual content to the stage 0:26:27

But the engine, the man who brings all this into the world and pushes it forward, actually makes increasingly the impression as if he wants more.' And they understand, they don't notice that at all. And later he describes it in such a way that he says: "Yes, it was actually possible through art to go a step further. And in particular through the drama, through the theatre. And actually finds a format, a way to bring these contents, these spiritual contents on stage, the so-called mystery plays. It also has something to do with Wagner. Wagner also did the Parsifal and calls it a Bühnenweihespiel. He reworked the Parsifal legend. But also with completely different sources. And above all, it is also very much its own thing. It is also connected with a Frenchman whom he holds in high esteem and with whom he is very much in exchange. Whom he visits often, who lives in Alsace, Édouard Schuré, a German-French writer, who also writes esoteric texts and whose first play even makes the beginning. So that in 1907 he rehearsed such a play together with these theosophists in a kind of summer play in Munich. A theatre that is closed in the summer is rented, and it is transformed inside with cloths and decorations. And pictures and seals are hung up and rehearsed. And he writes the role on the body of the theosophically interested people who play there at night, so to speak. And the next morning they get it in writing. And then the next "scene" is rehearsed. And so, within two or three weeks, a play is created. And then it is performed, once or twice. And then a lot of Theosophists come from all over Germany. The theatre is full to bursting. And he also gives "lectures". And so it's a "summer festival event situation". And they think that's great. And they want more of it. And so the next year he writes his own play and that is repeated three times, so that in the end four such mystery dramas are performed, always in this constellation. And it doesn't really go any further.

Groundbreaking Developments: A worthy venue for the mystery plays is sought - development of eurythmy 0:29:03

His content goes uncannily further. He makes a very deep turn'. He works up Christianity and brings that into the context of anthroposophy or - at that time - theosophy. Deep wisdoms, which are presented there very neatly fanned out. But these theosophical members take it all up insanely gladly and are followers, so to speak. But nothing actually happens. Then a theosophist comes to him and says: "Yes, my daughter, she really wants to do ballet, some kind of dance and so on. She's 17 now, but you could actually do something else. She would also like to do a different kind of dance and so on. Don't you have any ideas?" And that somehow rings a bell with him. And then he starts doing the first practice sessions with this girl. And then others join in. And so on. And so he then develops the first elements of eurythmy. Again an art form that takes its first steps into the world. And in addition to this theatre, there are a few people in Munich who are interested in therapy, and they want to develop a "coloured light therapy" together with him. And then a few "architects" come along who actually want to do a "building" now. And he finds that incredibly interesting and supports it very much. They say, yes, we actually have to do something like that in a specially created building, these mystery plays. It can't just be a festival here in the summer, it has to be somehow, anthroposophy, that is, theosophy, needs a permanent centre, its own home.

Plans for the building of the first Goetheanum - Steiner makes the design and drafts the concept - A beautiful wooden double-domed building 0:31:02

And he actually thinks that's great. And so they make huge plans and submissions. And that's sort of over several large plots of land. In the middle of Munich, they're actually planning a cult theatre therapy centre with a hall of almost a thousand people, a big dome and stuff. But the city of Munich doesn't want that, doesn't approve it. And then a member comes to him in 1913. He belongs to the branch in Basel, is a dentist, Großheintz. And this Doctor Großheintz simply says so very succinctly: Yes, if this doesn't work out here, Doctor Steiner, you can also have the property from me. I have a piece of fruit near Basel, near Dornach." And that electrifies Steiner. He made an appointment immediately, moved everything. And a few days later he is on the plot, looks at everything and so on. And three weeks later the building is entered. And I think six weeks later, they start building in 1913. There is a "ceremonial laying of the foundation stone". He drafts a "concept". Now it's no longer the architects who do that, but he does the design. The architects then do that afterwards. A beautiful wooden double-domed building. And he understands that he actually has to build this together with this community. And that is very interesting that the anthroposophists today look back on this "first Goetheanum", which was initially still called the "Johannesbau". And somehow celebrate it madly. It was also a great, incredibly great building. But they didn't really understand what it really was. It is the art building, the temple building of a community, of this theosophical community. And there is a Swiss-German magazine "Archithese". And it did a special issue a few years ago, in 2012, and it really discovered this. And it said, yes - the "building of the community" is this "Goetheanum". There you have a beautiful picture. This double-domed building with the scaffolding in front of it, where the whole community, this whole Theosophical community is now integrated in the building activity. And this is the most decisive thing in relation to the development of Anthroposophy and in relation to Rudolf Steiner's biography, that this movement is now really coming down to earth, so to speak.

The 1st World War: The Primordial Catastrophe of the 20th Century 0:33:41

And unfortunately not a year passes, already after three quarters of a year the First World War breaks out. And Rudolf Steiner is one of the few intellectuals who characterises this from the outset with incredible clarity as something quite, quite reprehensible. One has to imagine that such great artists as Franz Marc went to war there with joy. Quite strange. All the intellectuals, many intellectuals, were completely paralysed. So it was terrible that very few people actually saw through what this war meant. Steiner was one of the few who said very clearly from the beginning that this was a total aberration. And this war catastrophe only comes about because those who are actually in charge, those in power, are asleep. And it takes almost a hundred years that this famous book was now published a few years ago, by the English writer, historian Clark, who then takes this title: "The Sleepwalkers". And actually describes those responsible in 1913, 1914, when just in Moscow, as well as in Berlin, as well as in Paris, as well as in London, as completely out of touch with reality, wacky lunatics actually, one must say, who cause this primeval catastrophe of the 20th century.

The cult building of the community and the war - peace efforts by Rudolf Steiner - meditation texts for the young men perishing in the field 0:35:25

And now you have to imagine quite figuratively how it was there, in that hill there behind Basel'. There is a community, an international community working to build a beautiful wooden double-domed building. And at night, on the ridges of the Vosges, you can see the fire of the Franco-German demarcation line, the Maginot Line. Quite a few of the young men who worked there got their conscription orders there. Whether they were French, whether they were Russian, whether they were German. An incredibly strange situation. The cult building of the community and the war. You have to imagine it like this: There was "Lenin" in "Zurich". And there was a whole Russian, yes, how should one put it, exile intellectual society in Switzerland. And there were also Russians who were very interested in everything cultural. And it was not yet a modern time like today. It wasn't so easy to get around. And it was a sporty Russian. And he was in Milan. And then he cycled back to Zurich and then he went to see Lenin for two or three days. And then he went back to Dornach by bicycle and continued to work a little at the Goetheanum. Such were the circumstances. And with the war, there are now fewer and fewer people who can work there. The money of the community is running out, it is becoming scarcer and scarcer. And Rudolf Steiner is getting more and more involved, so to speak. He can hardly move at all in these lectures. It is extremely difficult to be on the road in Germany. He is not German, he is Austrian. And he lives in Switzerland. And even crossing the Swiss-German border at Basel is a huge act. And so on. And he gets more and more involved by making it clear that this war is terrible and the outbreak is completely wrong. There is actually "no real reason for the war". And then in 1916, in the middle of the war, at the beginning of 17, he gains access through a very influential friend, also an anthroposophist by now, who is Austrian, to a minister of the Austrian cabinet', in order to propose there and then also a German secretary of state from Berlin, He asks the German Reich to authorise him to operate a branch office, a press office of the German Reich, in neutral Switzerland in Zurich, in order to initiate peace negotiations from there. That would be the Supreme Army Command. Germany is no longer governed by any emperor, let alone by any chancellor, but the power is actually held by the generals, the field marshals, who are making this war. And they reject it, of course. These are things that you don't see and hear so quickly in Steiner's biography, where I now also place a certain emphasis on them. This then continues in such a way that he continues to engage himself in connection with this war. The theosophists, for example, no longer necessarily only give lectures on the spiritual world, but also very concrete lectures on dressing wounds. And gives meditation texts for the young men who die in the field and so on. So he goes along with it incredibly.

1913 Farewell to the Theological Society - New Foundation of the Anthroposophical Movement 0:39:31

He has previously, 1913, taken his final leave of the Theosophical Society, founded the Anthroposophical Movement because he no longer agrees with the dogmas of Theosophy. And I think ninety percent of the members are changing to him. And he doesn't want to be the leading head himself, but lets this Society/ Just asks members to form their own board and so on. He is not in charge, so to speak.

The three qualities of the soul life correspond to the threefolding on the social level - From 1916/17: Necessity of developing a new social order after the war catastrophe 0:40:04

And now he begins to write another new Grundlagenschrift über das innere Leben, actually the soul life of man, a very little-read writing. And in the 8th appendix chapter of this writing on the riddle of the soul, 1916, he hints for the first time, the soul life actually has three different qualities. And now it goes like an explosion that he suddenly develops this threefoldness and applies this threefoldness in relation to everything possible. And so also to "social development". The amazing thing is that today, next week, we will also be dealing with this functional threefolding, a very decisive, very important basis of the whole of anthroposophy. This is actually the last thing, with much more complicated, much greater wisdom. The Landbau-Schüler, when we think what is already presented there in the Secret Science. It is not the threefolding. That was only added in 1916/17.

Censorship by the von Moltke family: "Memoirs of Helmuth von Moltke, edited by Rudolf Steiner" is taken off the market 0:41:15

And he tells people: We have to think about what social order after this war catastrophe' is actually right, what is needed there. Because that will now finally be over with this empire. And I would like to tell you about something that is not always known, that is not read very much, when it comes to Rudolf Steiner. There is a member, a woman, again a "noblewoman Eliza von Moltke". She is a member already in 1904 or 1905 in Berlin. And her husband is Generalfeldmarschall, then in the First World War, Helmuth von Moltke, the younger one. And he's sort of responsible for the first battles in France. And then resigns or is whistled back by the emperor. It's a bit unclear how that actually works exactly. In any case, he has contact with Rudolf Steiner and Rudolf Steiner then travels incognito here to Bad Homburg and meets this field marshal general shortly after the ousting of this supreme army commander in 1914, at the beginning of World War I. And what you discuss is until today - one does not know. He's probably there with him for an hour. And then he meets him again three quarters of a year later in Berlin. Rudolf Steiner continues to give a public lecture in Berlin every winter through every week. And in the course of this he meets this Helmuth von Moltke once again. And a year later, this Helmuth von Moltke dies, relatively surprisingly, relatively young, so maybe just 60 or so. And now 17, 18, towards the end of the war, Rudolf Steiner obtains from this former or from this member of the Society, from this woman the right to print the memoirs of Helmuth von Moltke. And with this he intervenes directly in, let us say, historiography. For he wants a document, which in his opinion is very, very important, not to remain unknown - these memoirs of this Helmuth von Moltke. And he is actually only interested in one thing, namely the outbreak of the war at the end of July, beginning of August 1914. He makes a little writing on this outbreak of the world war. And just, it's really just a little preface. And essentially it's this memoir, excerpts from this memoir. And one doesn't really understand why this is now suddenly so important to him. Such a typical side branch of anthroposophy. Something that anthroposophists today also .... don't know anything about. And then it's like this, this book is finished. He has finished the conception. And it was finished in Stuttgart at the printing works at the end of the First World War, in 1918/19. That was a difficult thing, a larger print run, a book there at that time when everything was scarce and so on. The war had just ended. And the book is called: The Guilt of War, The Memoirs of Helmuth von Moltke, edited by Rudolf Steiner. And the anthroposophists, his fans, so to speak: Oh! Run there and have a look, the latest from the doctor and so on. And they literally steal copies from the printers and pass them around. And in this way this book comes to a "very conservative non-anthroposophist", who is distantly related to the von Moltkes. And he "intervenes" with the highest family member of this family. And he in turn puts pressure on this widow. And she forbids the approval afterwards to Rudolf Steiner. And the book has to be pulped. There are few copies left. We know what exactly it says. But what Rudolf Steiner actually wanted is impossible. The book cannot be sold because the widow of von Moltke, she withdraws the permission, so to speak.

Peace Treaty of Versailles - Rudolf Steiner finds Germany's sole guilt unjustified. He sees where this will lead 0:45:49

And now comes the famous Negotiation of Versailles in 1919. And now it slowly becomes clear what Steiner has in mind. He sees this question of Germany's sole guilt in the war as unjustified. And not in order to make Germany great, but because he already sees what will grow out of it. And what grows out of it - and everyone who has paid a little attention to history should know this - is this "Peace Treaty of Versailles", which was really quite a hard thing for Germany. And the fight against this peace treaty within Germany was the beginning of the brown National Socialist movement. Steiner sees that and fights against it. That's interesting, you have to discover that first. In other words, someone who really sees the politics of the day with foresight and intervenes directly. That touches me incredibly. And I am also very touched by the fact that anthroposophists don't really take note of what other sides Steiner actually had.

No more spiritual teachings during the war - Dornacher Bau develops - Doctor Ita Wegmann opens a practice in Dornach 0:46:58

And in 1914, with the beginning of the war, he stops all esoteric teachings. He says when such a war, when such a thing takes place, one can no longer cultivate spiritual teachings. And laboriously after the war, the activity at this Dornach building now slowly begins again. is gaining momentum. And in a way it is then halfway finished in 20/21. And now suddenly interest in Anthroposophy comes from the young. This young doctor, Ita Wegman, has a small practice in Zurich and is successful there. And now asks him if he would support her if she came to Dornach-Arlesheim to do her practice there. And he literally cheers, so to speak. He draws for her, he designs a little prospectus for her, he takes care of the property, he makes her a design for her buildings. He makes sure that this little clinic can start within a short time. And this activity of this doctor, there are many young, new doctors coming along. And Rudolf Steiner is always available for them. 533 documented bedside visits with the doctor. That is the fund of anthroposophical medicine. These medicines are produced by a young chemist who came there to develop the plant dyes of the first Goetheanum. It is Rudolf Steiner's concern that these domes are painted on the inside and that special colours are developed for this purpose. And it happens, we would say today, in a garage. And in this very garage, for three or four years, these endless instructions and exact specifications for the production of various medicines are then carried out and immediately tried out on the patients, so to speak. And that is actually the reason, the basis of the whole today nevertheless worldwide active anthroposophical medicine.

Precursor of the Weleda Group: Practical application of anthroposophical medicine in Dornach - cooperation Ita Wegman-Oskar Schmiedel-Rudolf Steiner- Weleda Company 0:49:13

'Oskar Schmiedel. I have to name a few people who always fall behind. A very great figure, a very young man, very young guy, who is simply available. And this triangle: Ita Wegman, Oskar Schmiedel, Rudolf Steiner, as the birth of anthroposophical medicine. And then the garage becomes a small company and so on. Today it is a worldwide operating concern, the Weleda. Which is still largely owned by the Anthroposophical Society. A concern, one has to say, really a huge thing, but which nevertheless has a structure that is not private business.

Now comes this social situation, end of the war, defeat, complete chaos. Nobody knows how things are supposed to go on. The idea of a soviet republic, the idea of a social democratic republic. In the end, yes, Ebert, who then becomes Reich Chancellor. The master craftsman who then allies himself with these Freikorps and actually has his own people shot and so on. That's all terrible. If you look at 1919, it's terrible. And Rudolf Steiner says directly after the war, at the end of 18, in November, December, to the members in Switzerland:

Yes, dear friends, there are situations where one can no longer stand by and watch. Something has to be done in the world, in society. And that may well be that in the next few weeks we will have to break off everything that we are cultivating here and go directly into the struggle for a future for society ourselves.

The movement for social threefolding is born - The concept is hardly understood - Rudolf Steiner speaks to thousands of workers 0:50:49

The birth of the Movement for Social Threefolding, in Stuttgart especially, because that's where most of the people came from. The idea of a social structure beyond socialism, communism and capitalism. A concept that was hardly understood. A concept that Rudolf Steiner fought for like a berserker for four months. He speaks in front of thousands of workers, he speaks in the Mercedes-Benz, in the Robert Bosch factories, he speaks with the boards of the companies, he speaks with the government councillors. Everywhere he tries to make it clear to them that there is a social structure that will perhaps lead us into a new direction, where such a war catastrophe will not be repeated. And it actually falls a little at first, but less and less on fertile ground. It is read. At the beginning, when I started in Switzerland, he told the members that it would be necessary, that we might have to change everything. And it is so typical for him to deal with time. Zurich, Winterthur, Berne, Basel... - four cities in which he presented this idea for the first time.

And now, although he has a flat in Dornach, of course. And so he retires to a hotel in Zurich and within ten days writes the book, which then becomes the most published, most successful: The Key Points of the Social Question. A book that even the Chancellor of the Reich reads. A book that is really perceived socially somehow and yet does not lead to this threefolding somehow falling on fertile ground.

And exactly today, in these days, a hundred years ago, then a year later, in 1919, no, sorry, that's a bit later. At the end of this phase, twenty then, a hundred, so 99 years ago, he then calls it off. And then he says to his most intensive fellow fighters, a group of thirty or forty young people who were active everywhere as the League for the Threefolding of the Social Organism, he says: "There's no point to it all. No one wants to understand. They want to go back to Pforzheim and present my quotations. And people don't understand it and you don't understand it either. It doesn't make any sense. And we still have a bit of money here from our Federation for Threefolding. What do we want to do with the money? I suggest we start somewhere else. We take this money and see if we can't establish a school somewhere. We have to bet on the next generation.

And now there is a man who played a central role in this movement for threefolding and who had also been an anthroposophist for many years before and had been somewhat involved in the Anthroposophical Society. And whom Rudolf Steiner held in high esteem and who listened to these lectures a lot and for whom it meant a lot - "Emil Molt". The little biography is also on the table back there. And Emil Molt is the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart. And it's a very prosperous factory. And during the war, of course, he has to buy the tobacco and so on. And so he comes to Zurich and trades there. And on the way back he thinks: Oh, I'll go to the Goetheanum again. And in 1917, during the war, he arrives at this unfinished building. And next door in the carpenter's workshop, in the room where Rudolf Steiner gave most of the lectures of his whole life, I think over two thousand lectures. In a carpenter's workshop. That is also typical of Rudolf Steiner. The man who actually mainly speaks where there is a workshop. There are beautiful photos of this "workshop atmosphere". Once Emil came in the back during a lecture. And Rudolf Steiner just said:

"Yes, it will all depend on a future generation, on how we deal with the children."

And he took that with him. And now, two years later, 19, he goes through his company like that. Upheaval - finally the war is over. And there is a young, great master craftsman whom he values very highly as an employee. And he asks him: "Yes, what's wrong with you? Is it going well?" and so on. And then he complains that he can't give his child to a sensible school. And he goes pling at the Emil Molt. And then he thinks to himself, I'll approach Rudolf Steiner and ask him if we can't do something about this school now.

1919: Foundation of the first Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart - the first free school with legal status 0:55:39

And this is what happens in April. A first small preliminary application in January, exactly one hundred years ago. And then again in April. And then Rudolf Steiner himself goes to Stuttgart to the Ministry in June 19 and discusses it with the administrative official and clarifies that such a free school can be admitted as a public school, from the first to the thirteenth grade, a uniform elementary and secondary school. This is typical also for this man, whom one so discusses as being remote and spiritual and somehow at home in some spiritual worlds. He is quite capable of knowing exactly that what matters now is him and no one else. Only he could push this through at this point. That something like this became possible. That there was suddenly a "legal status" for a "free school". That didn't exist at all before. It was an "absolute novelty". And so in 1919, in September, this Waldorf School began in Stuttgart. Waldorf just because of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. And he then has to assert himself once again against Emil Molt, whom he holds in such high esteem. I have to say: Mr. Molt, it's great that you're doing this. We do it together and you are the manager and so on. But this school is open to everyone. It's quite right that it's your factory's workers' school, but others are also allowed to come.

And Emil Molt understands that. And so it becomes a truly public school. And the first twelve teachers, he collects them himself from among his comrades-in-arms, young anthroposophists. And in September 1919, 14 lectures and seminar meetings, three weeks, basically two weeks, are then, so to speak, prepared for this task.

A pedagogy of the future - Rudolf Steiner teaches, gives personal instructions, recommendations to the teachers - lectures: General Study of Man as the Foundation of Waldorf Education 0:57:32

Incredible lectures. You must have heard them at some point in your life. The General Study of Man as the Foundation of Waldorf Education - I can only recommend this to you. And then it starts. Four classes, I think, at first. And now he looks after this school intensively for four years, is there almost every week, goes into the lessons, gives very personal recommendations to the teachers, makes it very clear where what is to be taught, what is important, until shortly before his death. And these "instructions" are very interesting. There are teachers who are thrown out after a short time, even though he got them there himself, and others where things are totally chaotic. And you think, why doesn't he throw them out? And then he just says, "Yes, yes, that's not bad at all. Just close the class behind you so that the noise doesn't flood out into the school building". So you think, well, there was something to it. Yes. So, quite practical, unbelievable "practical advice" on how "pedagogy" should actually work. Open to the future'.

Waldorf education is the first education that has a medical point of view - No reference to gender roles 0:58:46

And all kinds of things that still amaze us today. That the boys should do manual work. Of course, that was a great challenge at first. No more gender roles at all. The girls are the same in sports and so on. Waldorf education is the first pedagogy that has a medical point of view. The basis of Waldorf education aims to provide a healthy education, to put people in a situation where they have a healthy foundation thirty, forty years after they have left school. Today, I just read something a few weeks ago by a completely normal person who doesn't even know Waldorf education, a scientist, a pedagogical scientist, who says: "Yes, we have to look at that more and more in the future, how can we actually measure how pedagogy is also relevant in relation to health. It took almost a hundred years to actually have such a point of view in general. Pedagogy, which has health in mind. I can't go into any more detail now. This is, so to speak, the link to Waldorf education.

The last intensive years - Rudolf Steiner focuses on youth 1:00:06

And now begin these quite insanely intensive last years 1922/23/24. And these Anthroposophists, who had previously been Theosophists, are actually making more and more problems, fighting each other above all, and are still not really in the place of pushing things forward. In the context of the agricultural course in 1924, he said to the "young people", "Yes, it's just that those who were born at the turn of the century, who were in their early 20s at the time, are the ones who can move things forward. You can feel all this frustration with the older theosophists, who somehow just can't get their act together. And next to the care of medicine, next to this draft of pedagogy, an unbelievable abundance of general presentations, many public presentations in many cities too. And just the frustration about the development of society. And then this Goetheanum is almost completely finished. The first events are held there. He is not at all satisfied with the opening. These anthroposophical members simply set it at some point. Then a huge publication and an opening event that he doesn't really like at all and so on. So you can feel that it's also shaky.

New Year's Eve 1922/23: Fire, destruction of the first Goetheanum - But we will build again, with one material and in one form for the friends and enemies of Anthroposophy (Rudolf Steiner) 1:01:42

And then it comes to the fire' of this wooden building. And it is an incredible blow for him and for the whole movement. This building where so much sacrifice and so much power has gone into. This beautiful double-domed wooden building is totally burning. And it's also typical. I want to go into a little more detail, the night of the fire shortly after a lecture, it is in the evening at eleven, New Year's Eve 1922 at 23 - the alarm - the Goetheanum is on fire. And what does Rudolf Steiner do? He takes a young man and says: "We are both going down to the boiler house", a very modern building. That was district heating from the outside. It was one of the first buildings in the world to have district heating. And go into the boiler house with this witness and read off the flow and return, heating temperature. So that no one can say later that the heating, this modern new heating, would have ignited the building. So someone with both feet on the ground. Everybody was racing, going crazy, trying to somehow put it out, which was totally impossible. It was a very professional arson, so in the intermediate part between the domes. And the supposedly so spiritualistic philosopher or anthroposophist, floating above the clouds, goes there single-mindedly and reads the temperature. And just as single-mindedly, a few days later he goes to Basel to the insurance company and negotiates the insurance sum himself again. And then the newspapers come and ask: What's going to happen and so on? And then he says: Yes, we will build again. But we will build with one material and in one form for the friends and enemies of Anthroposophy. And I would ask you to take this seriously, because when you see this second Goetheanum today, of which he can only design the model, you can see that it is a building which has a very special character, because it is built for the friends and enemies of Anthroposophy. And it is not something that one should somehow copy in order to build Waldorf schools from it. This is a great misunderstanding in my eyes, of anthroposophical architects'.

Labour-intensive: Rudolf Steiner works to exhaustion - Agricultural conference - Curative education course - Not handicapped! Every human being is a full human being 1:03:51

Yes, we must now come to the end and we look again briefly at this situation of agriculture. I have already described this. These theosophical members, who are now landlords in the countryside and who notice that something is somehow going wrong and who are praying to him. And this "Keyserlingk"... - he describes himself as an iron count who has to administer several huge estates - he has leased a castle in Koberwitz, so to speak. And he wants this course to come about, that this Rudolf Steiner says something about agriculture. And then somehow it doesn't work out. And Rudolf Steiner is so "insanely overloaded". And then he has a nephew, this Keyserlingk. He's 19, 20, a half-breed. He somehow doesn't know how to go on. Someone who is not quite down to earth, who is still searching. And then he says: "Go to Dornach, go to the conference and report to Steiner that you are coming from me and that you need the appointment for this conference, this agricultural conference. And you don't leave there until you have an appointment." This iron count with this tactic is what actually made this agricultural course possible for us. And Steiner also says in retrospect: "If he hadn't demanded it so brutally, it probably wouldn't have happened at all. And so in 1924 this course took place at the castle, parallel to a huge event in Breslau. He travelled back and forth every day, eurythmy performances, public lectures in front of "thousands of people" in the "largest concert hall in Breslau". And in the morning, at lunchtime, these eight lectures with answers to questions, in this castle, on the future of agriculture. And now there are a few, four, three, four young men, most of you are older than them, they were just 20, 22. And they had resolved to do something in their lives for the so-called disabled. That is of course after such a war and so there were some children. And they come to Rudolf Steiner. And he drops everything, all the Theosophists, all his commitments, shit. These three young guys who come from somewhere and want to do something for these handicapped children, he thinks that's totally cool.

After the agricultural course, he goes straight there to "Jena". He looks at the building they want to buy or rent, helps them, supports them and says: Come to Dornach! I will make a foundation for you. I help you. I am training you so that you can take on this task. And this is really added in August 24. I think 13 lectures, this so-called curative education course. He tells them: Yes, you have to make "Waldorf education" the basis. But what you need for these children, we are now working on separately. And I can only say so much in terms of content, the term alone or Steiner is sometimes very precise: Not handicapped! Every human being is a full human being. There are only people who must be given special care. These are souls, people in need of care. There are no handicapped people. So this alone may perhaps show what greatness and foresight' and what image of humanity is behind it.

Biodynamics and anthroposophical curative education are siblings - Camphill community in Northern England and Ireland 1:07:37

And one can say that this anthroposophical curative education was founded together with agriculture after the famous Christmas Conference 1923/24 in a very short act. They are only like drafts, both of them. But in a certain way we are also brothers and sisters in the anthroposophical sense. Because both of us, both movements, "biodynamics" and "anthroposophical curative education", have, how can I put it, a completely different character, because they came into being after the Christmas Conference. And this fraternity was discovered by one of the most important curative educators of the first generation, a young Jewish Viennese doctor, Karl König, who had to flee from the Nazis in the 1930s. And he linked them together in this first "Camphill community in Northern England and Ireland". And it became a worldwide movement in the fifties, this idea of a village community, agriculture and curative education as the nucleus of an actually healthy life for people and nature. A great idea and a great thing. Of course, you also have to change it, somehow adapt it to the times. And you can say very well today that wherever a Camphill institution is not permitted, you are dealing with a totalitarian regime. Or also where Waldorf education is not permitted. Of course, Waldorf education is not financed in many, many countries, but it has to be approved. And in some countries it is forbidden. And then you can actually say that this "education for freedom" is not wanted. Yes. I wanted to end with one last little document. And I will read it out now.

Last story 1:09:41

There was a woman in Dornach who was simply the village midwife. And in the 1930s - she had nothing to do with the Anthroposophists - they happened to hear this story from her and reported it. And I would like to read it to you in the original, so to speak, as this midwife tells it about her father.

Her father, the furrier and farmer, Zeltner von Ober-Dornach, who often behaved somewhat drastically towards idlers, was once mowing his meadow at Melchersgraben. (If you know the area there, they are relatively steep and mowing here means mowing with a scythe there). His daughter Hermine helped him. (That's the one who reports this). She helped him to weed out the high maggots. (We have the word zetter here today, the spreading. To disperse the large maggots). When a walker came along at a long, slow pace and said to Zeltner, who was bathed in sweat, "That's hard work. The latter replied gruffly: "What do the gentlemen who can still walk understand?" The older man replied, "I have done that too." - "Yes, that's what you look like!" grumbles Zeltner. But the gentleman said calmly, "In my youth I often had to mow down the steep railway embankment for our goats." He walked up to Zeltner, took the scythe from his hand and began to mow slowly, completely correctly. Then Zentner exclaimed, "Oi! Hi hi, the man, he can do it!" The two then looked at the grass together and chatted about which herbs give the best milk. The foreign gentleman proved to be just as good a connoisseur of all types of grass as Zeltner. He then inquired whether there was surplus milk to be bought. And when this was confirmed, from then on he sent for the milk daily from the Zeltner family." It was Rudolf Steiner.

Thank you very much for listening! (Applause) Yes. So I have to apologise for the fact that of course I skipped a lot, a lot. And for me it is always very agonising to know what I am bringing and what I am not bringing. And what kind of overall picture emerges and so on. And of course I can't estimate that at all. I would have to look inside you now. But we can discuss a few more questions or at least collect them and let them flow into the next hours.

Questions and answers - I want to be understood, not worshipped! 1:13:30

Q.: What was the reasoning behind just naming the agricultural course now, but not telling a bit about it?

A.: Yes, why did I not elaborate on the agricultural course here? Because I have already done that in the context of this course in class and will continue to do so. Of course, you can already do that here. After all, this is an extreme extension. The principle of extension is, I believe, universal in Rudolf Steiner's work, both in education and in medicine, as well as in agriculture. And it is actually about massively expanding the view that we have today into such an area in order to then develop fruitful solutions, better solutions to the problems.

F.: Did Rudolf Steiner ever offer to pass on esoteric, spiritual knowledge to the workers' movement?

A.: Yes, that was also the case!

Q.: I did not understand the question.

A.: I repeat the question, yes. Whether Rudolf Steiner ever offered also 'to pass on spiritual knowledge to the workers' movement. And that is of course a very good question and it also shows a little bit the inadequacy of my presentation. It's true, I've already portrayed it correctly, that there were actually two different levels in the biography and two different worlds. And yet there were people from the Workers' Educational School who later became members of the Anthroposophical Society. They simply followed him in some way, that is, they continued to follow him in some way and then changed over to the Anthroposophical Society. And of course his huge efforts for the workers within the framework of the threefolding in the factories in Stuttgart and Baden-Wuerttemberg, North Baden-Wuerttemberg. And then also this school foundation. In principle, all this refers centrally to the proletarian class, to which he always felt he belonged. Nevertheless, one can also say that what you assume or what you say or from which context you ask is true. There was not that much interest in the spiritual among the proletarians. And he didn't make any special contortions for it now. He never promoted anything anyway, but only did something and reported and told something when he was asked about it. That was a fundamental principle.

F.: But that changes a little bit with the intervention after the First World War, where he actually takes responsibility and wants to shape history. So there he already goes in actively and wants to interpret contexts.

A.: Yes, that is the question. The second question was, doesn't that change after the First World War, in that he wants to actively participate, so to speak, in shaping it? And that is true, that is the case. I have also tried to present this in such a way that one notices that his impulses are now even more concrete, even more direct, that they should really improve something in the concrete everyday life of people. And to the Waldorf teachers, for example, he writes a letter a few days before his death. It is actually about how initiatives for new Waldorf schools are now springing up everywhere, so to speak. How to deal with them and so on. And then he writes - I'm not healthy and it will take a long time before I'm fit again and so on. Unfortunately, you also have to take care of the other school foundations somehow. I can't manage that. And then there are a few very short sentences at the end of this letter. He probably didn't know himself that this would really be the last one. Or maybe he did. I don't know. And then he says that the Waldorf School is a child of concern for him and yet it is the emblem of the fruitfulness of anthroposophy in the world. So he is concerned that anthroposophy should bring about something fruitful in the concrete lives of people. I have left out many, many things. So also in relation to the political-social there is still an interesting thing, 1922, where he gives public lectures in Germany. He's so en vogue, he's so hip among the intellectuals and he's hired by the biggest concert agency for the biggest halls. And he goes along with it because he thinks, yes, somehow anthroposophy has to be brought to the people, doesn't it? And then there was a real attack in Munich from the first brown people. And he already had a few young people who protected him. And they darkened the hall, so to speak, cut the electrical supply and it was pitch black. And he just keeps talking into the darkness. And then at some point the lights come back on. And then they want to storm the stage at the end of the lecture. And then he goes out the back, guarded, surrounded by his companions, so to speak, to an emergency exit and just says: "That's it in Germany. If gentlemen like that become active here now, we can't do any more public lectures." So he sees that very clearly.

F.: "I would be interested to know that the image I have of him is that of a very harried, but also somehow very committed and very self-confident person. So for the content he gives, I am very impressed that he seems to have brought it into the world with such self-assurance. I would have been interested to know about his self-doubt or phases of complete overstrain and withdrawal.

A.: Yes, that's something he cultivates very much and also answers regularly. And you can also find that in the books. Just today I looked into a very early GA2 in preparation. And in the preface, which he writes almost at the end of his life, forty years after he published the first, actually independent book, he makes a new preface for it. And he writes about his change and also about his doubts. And that's exactly what you find in a preface to Secret Science. A few weeks before his death, at the very end of his life, he writes a new preface for this fundamental work and also touches on the question of how it has changed. That's hard to summarise. You'll just have to read it yourself. It's not difficult.

F.: "But that's nothing, just as a picture of him, he apparently never let himself be hindered by the self-doubt that was there. Always this active thing.

A.: Yes, the active thing is clear. But also always changing and transforming and stopping what doesn't work and trying something different and so on. That's all right. Yes. Of course I don't have all the publications, there are about 35 books that he wrote in his life. For a writer or philosopher, it's the middle class. There are people who have left behind fifty or sixty books. But that is quite remarkable. And what is absolutely unique in intellectual history is that 6,000 lectures! 4,500 lectures documented! Even today, not all of them have been published, although they have been documented. So that is exciting, this huge achievement of presentation.

Q.: Did you ever say anything about his death?

A.: No, I did not. Rudolf Steiner died at the beginning of 1925, and he had been seriously ill for at least two years before that. And the last six months, from September, the end of September 1924 until March 25, he is no longer able to move. And it's very interesting that he doesn't retire to his flat in Dornach, so to speak, but to his studio.' He is a craftsman, he is a worker with his hand. Working by hand is the greatest thing for him. For the last ten years of his life he has been working with a wooden mallet and a chisel on large wooden sculptures. And he wants to lie at the foot of these wooden sculptures. And that's how he arranges it. And that's where he dies. "The craftsman". You could also give a whole lecture on this: "Rudolf Steiner, the craftsman". There are wonderful details. I showed this to the Landbau students in Dornach - this lock on the glass house, where he designs a special door lock with a blacksmith and somehow takes pleasure in it. The humour also comes through, with which he wants to emphasise, so to speak, that now you are crossing a threshold here. And you have to move the door handle here and push the door like this. You have to be quite awake. And on top of that, this door handle is forged in such a way that you can get terribly stuck and hurt terribly. And when the first eurythmists really got stuck there and complained and said, "Doctor, you can't do that! You're hurting yourself terribly," and then there's just a nice, smiling remark: "Spiritual people don't hurt themselves. Or walking up the Dornach hill in conversation with someone else and suddenly he says, "We have to go for a moment, I have a cherry stone here, I have to take it out now, otherwise the whole of Dornach will be limping tomorrow."  These copycats, that corroded him, ticked him off that people adored him. He is a very kind and gentle man. And at some point, someone comes to the end of a lecture and brings a big gift and: "We adore you so!" And then it bursts out of him: "I don't want to be worshipped! I want to be understood!" That's when he really suffered. This can also be seen as a strange love-hate relationship, or a difficult relationship, perhaps one should say - a difficult relationship - Rudolf Steiner and his followers - or Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical Society. It's never quite that simple. Yes. Let's go to bed now. You'll be back here again tomorrow morning. And now we need to find a few more people to clear away the tables to the front and back so that eurythmy can take place here tomorrow. (Applause)

Theme-related reading suggestions

- My Course of Life 1923 - 1925, Rudolf Steiner, GA 28, ISBN 3-7274-0280-6;

- Aller Geistesprozess ist ein Befreiungsprozess - Der Mensch Rudolf Steiner, Taja Gut, Pforte Vlg., Dornach 2003.

- Rudolf Steiner - A Biography 1861 - 1925, Christoph Lindenberg, Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1st edition 2011, ISBN 978-3-7725-0150-0.

- Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy - An Introduction to his Life's Work, Walter Kugler, 24.08.2010, ISBN 978-3-8321-6138-5

- Goethe's secret revelation, as Rudolf Steiner also called the fairy tale, formed the starting point for the development of anthroposophy (see below); Steiner's detailed reflections on this can be found, for example, in GA 53, p. 329ff and GA 57, p. 23ff. Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas were also based on the fairy tale (lit.: GA 14). Source: Anthrowiki

- Friedrich Nietzsche, a fighter against his time, Rudolf Steiner, GA 5

- The Education of the Child from the Viewpoint of Spiritual Science - lecture 1907, Rudolf Steiner, Weblink

- 'The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Moved into the First World War, Christopher Clark, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2013

- The Secret Science in Outline, Rudolf Steiner, GA 13

- 'The Key Points of the Social Question, GA 23

- 'General Study of Man as the Basis of Pedagogy, GA 293

- Curative Education Course, Twelve Lectures for Curative Educators and Doctors, Dornach 25 June to 7 July 1924, GA 317

- Camphill - Origin and Aims of a Movement, Karl König: Stuttgart 2019 - Karl König Institut (ed.): 80 Jahre Camphill, Sonderheft des Karl König Instituts, 2020 - Karl König Institut (ed.): Kunst in Gemeinschaft - Gemeinschaft als Kunst, Sonderheft des Karl König Instituts, zu 80 Jahren Camphill, 2020, Source: AnthroWiki.