The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Rudolf Steiner's Teaching Activities in England

Rudolf Steiner often and gladly spoke about spiritual science in England.

[ 1 ] In England, there is a certain generosity when it comes to accepting truths from the humanities: people are more open to the unlimited possibilities they offer. There is less fear of losing one’s own hard-won intellectual knowledge; the stubborn resistance to the new and unknown is less deeply rooted; people are not so firmly entrenched in their scholarly vanity. There is more daring, a bolder stride toward the conquest of unknown worlds.

[ 2 ] What has united present-day England into a single people are the conquest-hungry tribes of various nations. Following the Roman invasion came the conquering Germanic Anglo-Saxons, who drove back the indigenous Celtic populations of the Britons and Gaels and forced them as far as the northwestern coast of France; invading Frisians and Danes; and the conquering, French-influenced Normans. Britain was thus conquered repeatedly, and its peoples were subsequently forged together after fierce mutual struggle. Yet what emerged from this was a strong, self-assured unity, a proud sense of self permeating the whole, and a power to project its own essence into the fabric of other peoples. The spiritual forces, drawn from the distinctive characteristics of various national identities, held each other in balance. Individual consciousness, elevated to a sense of national identity, permeated them and kept the forces in balance. Thus, this multifaceted national unity was now able to defy all attacks from outside; on its island, surrounded and sheltered by the sea, it could actively develop into self-assured independence and stride forth to conquer the world.

[ 3 ] Noblesse oblige. It would be unworthy of a people so confident in their strength to suppress freedom of thought, stifle freedom of conscience, or hinder freedom of action—whether in intellectual matters or in matters of state and humanity. Thus, England is also the country where the quest for the spirit has been allowed to unfold most freely. Neither state power nor ecclesiastical coercion has been able to extinguish it; nor have secret organizations with secret courts.

[ 4 ] If Rudolf Steiner had been able to make the same impact in English-speaking countries as he did in Central Europe, his name would now be on everyone’s lips. He would neither have been silenced nor branded; no one would have sought to destroy his honor and his life in order to neutralize him. Instead, however, he was forced to speak there in a language foreign to his audience at a time when hatred of Germans was at its peak; no translation, however accurate, could ever do justice to the artistic verve of his speech.

[ 5 ] And yet his work made an impact. A loyal circle of students gathered around him and drew the attention of outsiders to this outstanding researcher of the spirit. The war then threatened, as it did everywhere, to stifle the seeds that had already been sown; yet they slowly managed to break through and come to new life.

[ 6 ] Just three years after the end of the war, Rudolf Steiner was able to speak to an English audience about educational issues, initially at the Goetheanum in Dornach. Mrs. Millicent Makkenzie, the well-known English educator, led the group of interested individuals who traveled from England to Switzerland to draw inspiration from new spiritual sources to shed light on educational problems. The impulses given at that time continued to have an effect. First, Rudolf Steiner received an invitation to speak on artistic and educational issues in April 1922 on the occasion of the Shakespeare birthday celebrations in Stratford-upon-Avon. “Drama in Its Relationship to Education” was the topic of two lectures; “Shakespeare and the New Ideals” was the other. It was a fortunate omen to connect with Shakespeare’s spirit, transcending ethnic hatred, and finding common ground in a shared spiritual striving. Shakespeare, whom Goethe rediscovered for the world, whom the builder of the Goetheanum—drawing on his spiritual knowledge—was able to place in that light which, emerging from the events of the spiritual world, surrounds him and makes him a problem for a materialistic age, to which tentative hypotheses cling rather helplessly. The festivities in Stratford that follow the commemorative ceremony—and in which representatives from various countries participate in the parade—are worthy of the proud joy of recognition shown by England’s greatest son. Germany was not yet officially represented, but it was represented spiritually—and thus more tangibly—by Rudolf Steiner. The bond had been reestablished, and as early as August 1922, Rudolf Steiner was able to speak to a sizeable audience of interested listeners on educational issues in Oxford, that enchantingly beautiful university town that still harbors the spirit of the Middle Ages.

[ 7 ] The eight lectures on education and the debates that followed led to the founding of the “Educational Union,” chaired by Mrs. Millicent Mackenzie. The goal of this association was to promote Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on education to a wider audience, particularly within English and American educational associations.

[ 8 ] Such events were always followed by lectures on spiritual science in London and at the venue itself. They were also accompanied by eurythmy performances by artists from the Goetheanum. Eurythmy, a movement art whose principles are based on the spiritually perceptible vibrations of the spoken word or sounding tone—which resounds in the air and continues to vibrate in the ether—is a source of renewal for all the arts and an educational factor of inestimable value for a growing humanity in need of spiritual nourishment. Intuitively perceived by Rudolf Steiner from spiritual life and presented at a time when requests for clarification on these matters were pressing upon him, a new art form emerged on the basis of original theoretical principles. These were put into practice by diligent students, thereby attracting ever more guidance, which then became revelations; this new art has effectively established itself in contemporary cultural life.

[ 9 ] The enthusiasm that this new art form sparked among Rudolf Steiner’s friends in London led to a wonderful outcome. As early as June 1926, a lecture and theater hall was opened in one of London’s most accessible locations (33 Park Road NW), bearing the name “Rudolf Steiner Hall.” Fortunately, the architect, Mr. Wheeler, combined the structural necessities dictated by London’s street conditions with inspiration drawn from Rudolf Steiner’s architectural vision in Dornach. The building serves primarily to spread Rudolf Steiner’s teachings and artistic intentions.

[ 10 ] And the educational initiatives also led to practical results. First, the headmistress of an existing country boarding school—Kings Langley Priory, a charming former Dominican abbey near London—had agreed to gradually transform her school system in accordance with Rudolf Steiner’s educational principles. Miss Cross, the headmistress of Kings Langley Priory School, had to allow for a certain amount of time to adapt existing structures to the new educational methods; she pursued this goal courageously and faithfully, sparing no effort and enduring every disappointment. As early as after the Pedagogical Christmas Course in Dornach, Miss Cross began to put her resolution into action. Those who were more eager and desired a school that, in the London area itself, would be directly based on Rudolf Steiner’s educational principles were able to bring their ideal to fruition in a relatively short time. In 1923, following a two-week series of educational lectures by Rudolf Steiner in Ilkley, their decision took shape. And by June 1926, we were already able to visit “The New School” in Streatham, a pleasant suburb of London—a school that functions excellently with its attached boarding school, works vigorously and joyfully, and had already attracted attention through an educational conference: “The New School.”

[ 11 ] The charming tradition of English “summer schools” meant that Rudolf Steiner visited not only places with famous names, such as London, Oxford, and Stratford, but also remote areas that offer an interesting insight into the diversity of English life. What surprises the foreigner most of all is the strikingly sharp contrast between state-of-the-art commercial and industrial operations and a profound sense of seclusion from the world. The world of cars, engines, gramophones, and radios—the whizzing pace of traffic, the superficiality of modern cultural life—borders directly on profound seclusion from the world, on cultural memories dating far back beyond the Middle Ages, on geological formations that almost transport one back to those times when the continents rose from the waters. One can experience such impressions when roaming through the wilds of Dartmoor in Devonshire, only to then witness the roaring onslaught of the ocean waves against the rocky ruins of Arthur’s Castle in Tintagel on the coast of Cornwall. The Middle Ages, so wonderfully preserved in England’s architecture, create a magnificent transition that makes such contrasts bearable as a powerful experience. One can well understand how it must be a vital necessity for the Englishman to preserve the Middle Ages—even in certain traditional costumes and customs, and even in his guild life. It strengthens his sense of self, bolsters his national consciousness, and fortifies him against the overwhelming tide of socialization that strikes the first blow at the mighty trunk of an imperialist system. It also builds, for aesthetic consciousness, that bridge to the ancient past, which stares back at them with uncanny vitality from moors and mountaintops, from landforms, and from the etheric waves rustling and flowing through them.

[ 12 ] Our visit to Ilkley in August 1923 gave us a first glimpse of such contrasts. You drive through the blackest of industrial areas: Leeds, Bradford, monstrous black houses—monsters worthy of a Strindberg hell. Ilkley is a pleasant town at the foot of the Yorkshire moorland hills. There, an ancient past speaks to us; there, atop the moors of those hills, one finds druid stones, dolmens, and engraved symbols that speak the language of that inner depth which connected the culture of that time with the spirit.

[ 13 ] But all of this is experienced even more intensely in Wales, the legendary land of Merlin, who found his favorite magical garb in the rustling of the forest and the foam of the sea. From Ilkley, the train travels through a densely populated, black, sun-drenched industrial area, past the factory complexes of Manchester, to a bright, friendly landscape. The medieval battlements of Chester beckon, and the blue bays of the approaching Irish Sea glisten. Seagulls and other seabirds, arrayed in vast flocks, announce that their undisturbed realm will soon begin. Mighty fortresses rise up, magnificent in the sweep of their lines, which dominate the valley expanses and merge with the rock. The realm of the barons, which no king nor church could subdue, imposes itself impressively upon the soul. Now everything has become poetry—poetry woven by nature in stone and ivy. High on the cliffs, the heroic epic; down below, among the gentle flocks of sheep on green pastures, the idyll: in the tremor of their backs nestled together, reminiscent of the gentle lapping of the sea, the pulse of the world’s rhythm quivers.

[ 14 ] The pulse of time preserved in this land leads us through the Middle Ages to the Nordic antiquity that has remained here. It was—but it still is. It is so powerfully present in the wild beauty of its nature, in the force of its elements, in the sun’s laughter breaking through half-cloudbursts, that modernity cannot do it much harm. It fades away in this setting.

[ 15 ] Even though cars whiz by in long lines down on the bayfront, almost as if on Piccadilly, they are insignificant in this scene. The gaze is drawn upward, where, at first, industry naturally captures one’s attention. Mighty gashes have been carved into the mountain ridges—the quarries. The villages that serve them lie there, black and gloomy, without any organic connection to the nature surrounding them. Rails, steam-powered carts, and blasting equipment have burrowed into the bedrock, tearing apart its veins. But nature is stronger than they are; it defies them, laughs at them—sometimes softening the mountain’s harshness, sometimes making it even harsher, depending on the atmosphere. The realm of air and light reigns here: the racing clouds, the whirling wind, the rain that keeps pelting down anew, or its playful showers, the sparkling sun, which subdues the turmoil of the elements with its cheerfulness, only to veil itself again in an instant. It teases and plays in a whirl, rages and threatens, crouches and rejoices, chases and sweeps: a magnificent, roaring youth amidst the awe-inspiring witnesses of gray antiquity. But there, behind the mountains, the past lives on, standing there in mighty, enduring images; even today, it draws the seeker to it; he makes a pilgrimage upward toward it, up the steep slopes, not shying away from the struggle against the winds whistling and whipping out of the gorges. Soon he is richly rewarded. The bay’s shoreline vanishes from view; radiant yellow and deep, luminous violet in vast, sweeping hanging meadows surround him—broom and heather. It blazes and rests, it beckons and flares; the color overwhelms. But nature here is too harsh to linger in its beauty. The struggle against the wind grows more arduous; every step must be fought for. Soon there is nothing but rock around us, dry grass, and moss. One must brace oneself, one must fight back to avoid being knocked down; one pushes forward and draws new strength from drinking in the lines and colors of the horizon.

[ 16 ] The druids did not make things easy for their pilgrims.

[ 17 ] What a grand festival it must have been, what generosity in the festive procession, as people from the villages all around poured out from every side of the surrounding area, up toward the mountaintop—the people of the slopes and valleys. What a breath of solitude, what a murmur of desolation, of depth, of vastness. Up there, one was far from everyday life, close to the deity. Here, spirit beings spoke through the elements; here, the sun inscribed its script into the waiting shadows; stones were attuned to these signs, arranged in a circle corresponding to the zodiacal constellations; as the sun passed through each zodiacal sign, it imprinted itself upon the shadow of the stone, and the initiated druid deciphered the mystery.

[ 18 ] Facing east stood a stone that received the god’s ray of light when the sun rose. By placing horizontal stones over vertical ones, shadowed spaces were formed, in which the sun, in turn, inscribed its language. Thus the priest, versed in light and shadow, communicated with the spiritual world, deciphering the commandments that decisively shaped the order of the year, work, festivals, laws, and customs. In this way, divine wisdom was received and transformed into human wisdom.

[ 19 ] How vibrant all of this still seemed in this country, where the ancient wisdom could once again be taught in its metamorphosis and historical development, in accordance with the demands of the present.

[ 20 ] It could be taught here in a different way than in Germany, where the epistemological foundation—and above all, the scientific basis—had first had to be established. Here, before an English audience, one could approach the spirit more directly, more immediately. An environment like that of Penmaenmawr, with its captured imaginings, could provide the mood and the courage to do so.

[ 21 ] And this is the fruit of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture activities in England. They provided an opportunity to approach the understanding of the history of the spiritual world and human development from a different perspective.

[ 22 ] Penmaenmawr: a foreign murmur in the sound of the notes, a foreign breath, yet more eternal and spiritually permeable; not clinging, not stagnant, unlike what has emerged from the blending of the Celtic idiom with the Anglo-Saxon; the language sparkles mysteriously in many of its wind-breathed sounds.

[ 23 ] Rudolf Steiner, deeply moved, read the language of this atmospheric and ethereal world woven in the past; he transformed the wisdom of that time into the wisdom of today; he infused it with the “I” force that leads human beings back to God, thus closing the circle in its coming and going, traversing it on behalf of humanity. When the past and the future find their spiritual focal point in a person’s consciousness, thus encompassing eternity, the experience of the spiritual development of the world and of humanity is forever granted to humanity.

Dornach, December 1926.
Marie Steiner