The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

Before the educational course began, Rudolf Steiner addressed the participants, who were gathered in the “White Hall” of the first Goetheanum, with the following words:

[ 1 ] “Ladies and gentlemen, before I begin my discussion, please allow me to address an administrative matter. The course was originally intended only for a small, intimate group, and now it has attracted such a large number of attendees that it is clear we will not be able to conduct the course properly if we are seated so tightly packed in this hall. That would be impossible; you would certainly notice this if you were here during the lecture and during the translation. Therefore, I must decide to hold the course twice: the first session every day at 10 a.m., and then—especially for those of you who wish to participate in the translation, since technically there is no other way to do it—at 11 a.m. I will thus begin the first lecture every day promptly at 10 a.m., and the repeat session at 11 a.m. I would ask that you perhaps arrange things so that all of you here—those from England, Holland, and Scandinavia—attend the second lecture, and the others attend the first.”

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[ 2 ] The first words I speak shall be words of heartfelt joy and deep satisfaction at your visit, ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who is most deeply enthusiastic about the movement that seeks to take its starting point here at the Goetheanum must, in the face of the interest so extraordinarily demonstrated by your visit, be deeply delighted and profoundly satisfied. And out of this joy and satisfaction, allow me to welcome you here today, at the beginning of this introductory lecture, in the warmest possible manner.

[ 3 ] In particular, I would like to welcome Professor Mackenzie, whose efforts have made it possible to inaugurate this course, and to whom I therefore owe my very special thanks on behalf of the anthroposophical movement. But I welcome all of you most warmly, in the spirit and essence of our movement. And, ladies and gentlemen, the fact is that it is not merely a single individual who is welcoming you here, but above all, the building itself—the Goetheanum—that welcomes you.

[ 4 ] I fully understand that some of you may have reservations about this Goetheanum as a building, as a work of art. However, anything that comes into the world in this way is, of course, subject to criticism, and any objection made in good faith will be most welcome, especially to me personally. Nevertheless, this Goetheanum welcomes you; its form and artistic design will surely indicate to you that this is not merely a matter of inaugurating a single sphere of human life, nor is it, in any one-sided way, limited to the field of education alone. The very spirit of this building and its very existence can show you that what is at stake here is a movement for our entire civilization, conceived and willed forth from the spirit of our time. And insofar as education and instruction are essential parts of human civilization, they, in particular, must also receive special attention from here on out.

[ 5 ] The intimate connection between anthroposophical will and questions of education and teaching will, of course, become clear to us in great detail over the next few days. Today, however, allow me to add something to the warmest greetings I offer you—something that, in a sense, goes without saying, given that this is, after all, a social movement.

[ 6 ] In a sense, you have come here to learn about the movements originating from the Goetheanum in Dornach. As I warmly welcome you here at the Goetheanum as honored guests, I feel obliged—as is indeed customary in social interactions among people in similar circumstances—to first and foremost introduce you to the movement that has its origins here.

[ 7 ] What has been intended for this anthroposophical movement ever since its inception twenty years ago is only now slowly coming to light. Essentially—as you will see from the following lectures—this movement was conceived from the very beginning as what the world now perceives it to be, both in a positive sense and, above all, in a negative sense. Only now are people beginning to speak of this anthroposophical movement in the way it was originally intended. However, this anthroposophical movement has gone through a wide variety of phases, and it is through these phases that I will be able to present this movement to you most easily, at least in purely external terms, to begin with.

[ 8 ] At first, the anthroposophical movement was regarded by the small circle that identified with it as a kind of religious worldview in the narrower sense. People who cared little about scientific foundations, who cared little about artistic expressions and about the consequences of anthroposophical living practices for social life as a whole—such people were the first to be drawn to this anthroposophical movement. People who, above all, felt unsatisfied within the existing traditional religious denominations; people who sought that which springs from the deepest human longings regarding the great questions of the human soul and the human spirit; people who felt deeply unsatisfied by the traditional mental images of existing religious denominations in relation to these questions—such people were drawn to this movement, and they initially embraced this movement with their feelings, with their sensibilities.

[ 9 ] For me personally, it was often astonishing to see how what I had to say about anthroposophy was, in terms of its foundations, not at all understood by its followers, yet how this anthroposophical movement was met with sympathy and support based on simple and elementary human feelings. From what was, in essence, a scientific endeavor from the very beginning, these first followers heard what spoke to their hearts, what spoke to their immediate feelings and sensibilities. And one could say that this was the calmest period—although calm in this regard is not always desirable—it was the calmest period of the anthroposophical movement.

[ 10 ] Because this was the case, this anthroposophical movement was initially able to align itself—albeit purely outwardly, in terms of mere administrative cooperation—with the movement you may know as the Theosophical Society.

[ 11 ] People who, in the manner described, seek answers to the questions of the eternal in human nature from the depths of their simple hearts—even if they overlook certain essential and fundamental aspects—ultimately find equal satisfaction in both the Theosophical Movement and the Anthroposophical Movement. However, the Theosophical Movement was oriented from the outset toward a certain purely theoretical aspect. The Theosophical Movement aims to be a doctrine, as expressed in words, that encompasses a cosmology, a philosophy, and a religion; and to the extent that cosmology, philosophy, and religion can be proclaimed through words, the Theosophical Movement seeks to realize itself. People who, in regard to the other circumstances of life, are actually content with their situation and merely wish to hear something different about the questions of the eternal than what traditional religious creeds can provide—such people often find satisfaction in both movements alike. And it was only when it became apparent—though this went largely unnoticed at the time—that anthroposophy aspires to be something that does not merely engage in theoretical discourse on cosmology, philosophy, and religion, but rather, in accordance with the demands of the present spirit of the age, must intervene in the practical realities of life in all areas, it gradually became clear, for internal reasons, that it was impossible for the anthroposophical movement to continue working together with the theosophical movement. For today—as we shall also see in the subsequent lectures—any movement that limits itself to these three fields—cosmology, philosophy, and religion—in a more theoretical sense inevitably degenerates into a dogmatic squabble that ultimately becomes unbearable. And it was precisely this dogmatic squabbling—which, when it came down to it, revolved around trivialities—that ultimately led to the separation of the anthroposophical movement from the theosophical movement.

[ 12 ] It goes without saying for any reasonable person educated in the Western tradition that what appeared as dogma within the Theosophical Society at the time the Anthroposophical Society split off from it, such dogmatic squabbles over the preponderance of the Indian worldview versus the Western worldview—a discussion conducted in the same manner as it was back then—and, above all, the dogmatic dispute over an Indian boy as the future Christ—are things that cannot be taken seriously, that can in no way be considered serious, but which, when it comes down to it, amount to nothing but trivialities.

[ 13 ] The anthroposophical movement, however, is not, by its very nature, inclined to lose itself in theoretical disputes; rather, it seeks to enter directly into life and to have an impact on it. And thus the inner separation from the Theosophical Society arose when the need arose to gradually transition, based on the fundamental principles of the anthroposophical movement, toward artistic, social, scientific, and above all, educational activity. This did not become apparent immediately; but, fundamentally speaking, everything that took place within the anthroposophical movement after 1912 was merely evidence that this movement had to carve out its own independent position in the world as a movement rooted in practical life.

[ 14 ] The first important insight I gained regarding the impossibility of an inner alignment with a mere theosophical movement came to me in 1907, when the Theosophical Society organized a congress in Munich. It fell to me and my friends from the German Section of the Theosophical Movement at that time to determine the items on the agenda for this congress. We added to the traditional programs that were part of the Theosophical Movement a mental image of a mystery play by Edouard Schuré: “The Sacred Drama of Eleusis.” In doing so, we completed the transition from a mere theoretical-religious movement to a more comprehensive world movement that must also incorporate the artistic as a necessary factor.

[ 15 ] It soon became clear that, insofar as we were standing on anthroposophical ground, we had regarded the performance of the Eleusis drama as an artistic endeavor. Those within the movement who sought only the satisfaction of religious feelings—which can sometimes be very selfish—regarded even what appeared to be a first artistic attempt merely as a template for theoretical interpretation. People therefore asked themselves: What does this or that character in the drama signify? And they ultimately reduced the entire drama—if they were able to do so, they were glad—to a kind of mere terminology.

[ 16 ] Now, a movement that develops in such a one-sided way that it cannot encompass the full practice of life, and that extends only to the area it has characterized, must necessarily become a sectarian movement in and of itself; it must become a sect. From the very beginning, the anthroposophical movement was not predisposed to become a sectarian movement, for its very nature contains everything that must lead to the opposite of a sectarian movement. Its very nature contains everything that must make this movement a universal one, grounded in the practical realities of human life. And, fundamentally speaking, it was the process of moving away from sectarianism that now began with the second phase of the anthroposophical movement, which I would like to call the “movement toward the artistic.”

[ 17 ] Gradually, as the number of new followers grew, the need arose to present what was previously conceived only as philosophy, cosmology, or religious content in a form that could be directly perceived. But if this is to be presented in a truly satisfying way, it can only be done artistically. And so I was faced with the necessity of expressing in my Mystery Dramas—artistically, and initially in poetic form—what people within such movements had, until then, been accustomed to hearing only in theoretical terms.

[ 18 ] These Mystery Dramas must not be interpreted in an abstract, theoretical way. They are intended for direct artistic perception. And in order to cultivate this direct artistic perception among our anthroposophists, these Mystery Dramas were performed in Munich from 1910 to 1913 within the framework of conventional theater productions. Out of all this arose the need to build a home of its own for the anthroposophical movement. And the various circumstances that made it seem impractical to construct this building in Munich ultimately brought us up here to the hill in Dornach, where this Goetheanum was built, to gradually become a place befitting the anthroposophical movement.

[ 19 ] But it was precisely in this that it became clear how this anthroposophical movement, in its very nature, must be understood and intended as something universally human. What would have happened if any other, theoretical religious movement had been compelled to build its own house? This movement—and, unfortunately, there is no way around this in such a case—would, of course, first have raised funds among its friends; then it would have turned to a master builder who would have constructed a building in the ancient, Renaissance, Gothic, or Baroque style—or in a similar architectural style that was simply traditional.

[ 20 ] This seemed to me, at the very moment when the anthroposophical movement was fortunate enough to acquire its own building, to be a complete impossibility. For that which is inwardly organic and full of life is never composed of two or more heterogeneous parts. What would the word—spoken from the spirit of anthroposophy—have had to do with the forms of a Baroque, an ancient, or a Renaissance building that would have surrounded it? A theoretical movement is, after all, capable of expressing itself only through ideas and abstractions. A living movement, on the other hand, permeates all branches of life with its characteristic impulses. And what anthroposophy is as a practice of life, soul, and spirit requires that the form one encounters in the building’s exterior, that the pictorial quality shining out from the wall, that the columns one encounters—that all these forms and colors speak the same language that is expressed theoretically in ideas and abstract thoughts. Every such vital movement that arose in the world was comprehensive in this way. Ancient architecture does not stand in contrast to ancient culture as something foreign to it. It grew out of what was, in every other respect, theory and practical life. The same is true of the Renaissance, and especially, for example, the Gothic period, as well as the Baroque.

[ 21 ] If anthroposophy was not to remain something sectarian, something “theoretical,” it had to develop its own architectural style, its own artistic style. This architectural and artistic style—as I have already said—may still be considered inadequate today, or perhaps even paradoxical, but the fact remains that, given its very nature, anthroposophy could not help but create its own characteristic form of expression. Let me use a comparison that may seem trivial but captures the essence of the matter. Take a nut. You have the kernel of the nut, and you have the shell. It is impossible for the shell of the nut—as an organic structure—to arise from forces other than those that form the kernel. The same forces that form the kernel also form the shell, for shell and kernel are one whole. But that is precisely what would have happened if the anthroposophical will had been enveloped by a foreign architectural style. It would be as if the nut were to appear in a shell foreign to it. That which is natural—and that is the anthroposophical worldview—brings forth both the kernel and the shell, and both express the same thing. This is how it had to happen here. The anthroposophical will had to flow directly into artistic creation—not into symbolism, not into allegory, but into direct artistic creation. When thoughts are expressed here, these thoughts should have no other style than that which is present at the Goetheanum in its architectural and artistic style. Thus, the anthroposophical movement grew, as it were, of its own accord into artistic endeavors.

[ 22 ] This was not entirely easy, for sectarian tendencies are making themselves felt particularly strongly today, especially in the human heart that yearns for religious enlightenment. That inner freedom and openness of the soul—which takes it for granted that one should seek a transition from what the soul’s organism strives for as religious fulfillment to the outer, even artistic, revelation of the spiritual and the soulful—this disposition is perhaps least to be found precisely among those who, in a completely sincere and heartfelt way, seek their spiritual fulfillment in the manner described. But the anthroposophical movement does not orient itself according to the sympathies and antipathies of this or that person; rather, the anthroposophical movement can only orient itself according to what lies within its own nature—which, however, is intimately connected with the needs and longings of the spirit of the age, as we shall no doubt see in more detail in the coming days.

[ 23 ] And so we were in the process of introducing people to that practical aspect of anthroposophy that was initially accessible to us. During the time when we were thus working our way into the arts, I sometimes uttered a paradoxical statement within the circle of followers of the anthroposophical movement. I said: Anthroposophy seeks to enter practical life in all areas. — Today, we are not yet allowed to enter the world with our way of life, but only into those areas that represent the world—on stage or, at most, in the arts—although even there many doors are closed to us. But I said: Most of all, I would like to found banks out of the anthroposophical spirit. - That may have sounded paradoxical; it was only meant to suggest, in its paradoxical way, how anthroposophy appeared to me—not merely as a theoretical or one-sidedly religious sectarian movement, but as something that should have a fruitful influence on all areas of life and, in my conviction, can do so as well.

[ 24 ] This brings us to the period that, emerging from the general catastrophic chaos of humanity, gave rise to very specific needs for humanity today; we had reached the terrible catastrophe of war. In September 1913, we had laid the cornerstone for this building. In 1914, we were engaged in its construction when the catastrophe of war broke out over humanity. In this context, I would simply like to say that during a time when Europe was divided by national aspirations—which had few and increasingly fewer points of contact with one another—we succeeded here in Dornach maintain, throughout the entire course of the war, a place where people of all nationalities could meet and, to a great extent, truly come together to work in harmony, in peace, and in the spirit of cooperation. From a certain point of view, this was something that could fill one with deep satisfaction—that here at the Goetheanum there was a place where, while the nations were otherwise tearing each other apart and bleeding to death, people from all European nations came together for peaceful spiritual collaboration. With this, I have characterized the second phase of our anthroposophical movement.

[ 25 ] During the war, the external activities of the anthroposophical movement were, in many ways, paralyzed. However, every effort was made to accomplish as much as possible within the movement itself. Quite apart from these external events, though, it was evident throughout the entire war that the need for the kind of insights—which, in my conviction, can be provided by anthroposophy—was growing among ever-wider circles of humanity. And one can say that, after the catastrophe of the war had initially come to an outward end in 1918, interest in a movement such as the anthroposophical one aspires to be had grown to an immeasurable degree. But then, as the fall of 1918 gave way to the spring of 1919, a number of friends from Germany—specifically from Stuttgart—came to see me, and the aspirations of these friends actually ushered in the third phase of our anthroposophical movement. For it was out of these aspirations that the anthroposophical movement was compelled, so to speak, to now radiate its impulses into the social life of humanity on the broadest possible scale.

[ 26 ] The anthroposophical movement did not have access to any region other than Germany—and specifically southern Germany, Württemberg—during this period. But they wanted to work within the region where it was actually possible to do so. And this work, of course, had taken on a certain social nuance during the time of its emergence, reflecting what was then the prevailing condition in southern Germany. And that prevailing condition was, in fact, social chaos. One could certainly say that an indescribable misery—even in physical and material terms—weighed heavily upon Central Europe at that time. But even this immeasurably great physical and material misery was, in fact, small—for those capable of observing such things impartially—compared to the spiritual distress. This spiritual distress had, after all, plunged humanity into a kind of chaos in this realm, particularly with regard to social will. One sensed that, with regard to social life, humanity was confronted with the most fundamental questions of human development. The questions once raised by Rousseau—questions that later took concrete form in the French Revolution—did not touch upon the most primordial, most elemental human longings and needs as deeply as the questions that were actually present in 1919 in the very fields in which we were called upon to act.

[ 27 ] Everything that had for centuries constituted the social organism—as it had developed from the various peoples—was called into question. And it was out of this mood that both my short “Appeal” on the threefold structure of the social organism “to the German people and to the cultural world” and my book *The Key Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life in the Present and Future* arose; and it was out of this mood that everything that was initially undertaken in southern Germany to address the social question came into being. At that time, it was essentially necessary—but immensely difficult—to touch upon the fundamental longings of the human heart. Out of physical and spiritual misery, people had to search abstractly for something greater, and given the state of the times, they were incapable of doing so. And more than a few people told me at the end of this or that speech I had given: “That may all be well and good, but it deals with what the future among people is supposed to look like; we have faced death so often in recent years that thinking about the future has become a matter of indifference to us.” Why should we now show more interest in the future than we were allowed to when cannons were aimed at our bodies!—This is roughly how people repeatedly characterized the apathy toward the most essential aspects of human development that had been brought on by misery and hardship.

[ 28 ] From what moved the hearts and souls of my friends at that time, a—I would call it—special field of social work emerged, based on the conviction that the only effective way to lay the groundwork for the future might be to turn to the youth, to the childhood of humanity. — And our friend Emil Molt in Stuttgart, who is himself a manufacturer and entrepreneur, dedicated himself to precisely this endeavor. He first founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart with the children from his Waldorf-Astoria factory, and I was initially entrusted with the pedagogical and didactic implementation of the Waldorf school curriculum.

[ 29 ] In the period leading up to the catastrophe of the war, there had been many experiments in all kinds of educational and pedagogical approaches. This was not about establishing rural boarding schools, nor was it about establishing any special education initiatives arising from narrow interests; rather, it concerned something that falls within the broader framework of humanity’s social aspirations. We will, of course, be discussing all these foundations of Waldorf pedagogy in the coming days. Here I would just like to suggest that anthroposophy, as always, was compelled here as well to reckon with reality—with the full reality. We could not simply establish a rural boarding school somewhere out in the beautiful, open forest, where one could do whatever one pleased; we were initially faced with very specific, real circumstances. We had the children of a small town; we had to establish a school in that small town; and we were dependent on achieving—through this school—what might be accomplished with the highest social goals, based on purely pedagogical and didactic foundations. We could not choose either our location or our students based on social class or economic status. We were bound by fixed circumstances and had to carry out what we could do in the spirit of our mission. Thus, as a necessary consequence of the anthroposophical movement, its work in the field of education and teaching emerged—a topic that will occupy us quite particularly in the coming days.

[ 30 ] The Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which has long since ceased to be what it was in the beginning—namely, a school for the children of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory—has quickly become a school for people from all walks of life, and people from all over are already striving to enroll their children in this Waldorf School. From the 140 children with whom we founded the school, the student body has now grown to 600, and the number of applications continues to rise with each new enrollment period. In recent days, we have had to lay the cornerstone for a new building for this school, and we hope that, despite all the difficulties currently facing such an endeavor, we will still be able to provide it with certain opportunities for development.

[ 31 ] But I must emphasize that the essence of this school lies in its pedagogical and didactic approach, in the adaptation of this pedagogical and didactic approach to the actual, real-life circumstances, and in its grounding in immediate, practical life. If one can choose the class from which to select students, if one can choose the school’s location, then it is indeed easy to carry out an imagined—or perhaps even a real—school reform; but it poses challenges that are, in turn, connected to the primal impulses of all that is human, if such a school is to be founded and maintained on a purely pedagogical and didactic basis.

[ 32 ] Thus, during the third phase of our anthroposophical movement, this movement had expanded into the social and educational spheres. And it is because of the latter that you have come here, and this educational sphere will be of particular concern to us in the coming days. In fact, we have only just begun to build out in the external world what the anthroposophical movement, through its inherent qualities, has had as its foundation from the very beginning.

[ 33 ] Among the developments that have since taken place is the fact that, in recent years, a large number of people with a scientific education and scientific aspirations have come together, recognizing that the anthroposophical movement can also enrich the immediate scientific life of the modern era. There emerged physicians who were deeply convinced that natural science, which relies solely on external observation and experimentation, is incapable of comprehending the healthy and diseased human organism in its entirety. Doctors emerged who deeply felt the limitations of current medicine that must be overcome—above all, they deeply felt the gulf that exists today in conventional medicine between pathology and therapy. Pathology and therapy stand side by side today as if without any connection. Anthroposophy, which seeks its insights not only through external experimentation, observation, and the combinatory intellect, but also through the means I will describe in the coming days, views the human being in terms of body, soul, and spirit, and grasps the spirit in its liveliness, not in its abstraction as a sum of thoughts, as has become customary in recent times. In this way, however, anthroposophy has been able to meet the aspirations of precisely those people who, for example, are urgently seeking new insights for their field from the perspective of medicine today. And so it came to pass that I was to hold two lecture series here in Dornach for academic physicians and practicing doctors on what anthroposophy is capable of contributing to pathology and therapy. Here in Dornach, over in Arlesheim, and also in Stuttgart, medical-therapeutic institutes have been established that work with their own remedies and that, above all, seek to put into practical use what anthroposophy can offer for human healing, health, and illness.

[ 34 ] And from other quarters as well, the individual sciences have sought inspiration from anthroposophy. Courses in physics and astronomy had to be offered. Across a wide variety of scientific fields, anthroposophy had to contribute what can indeed be contributed to modern science through genuine spiritual knowledge.

[ 35 ] This third phase of the anthroposophical movement is characterized precisely by the fact that, where a strictly scientific foundation is demanded, one gradually comes to the conclusion—even though this is still widely contested today— it is nevertheless found that Spiritual Science, as it is practiced here, can satisfy every scientific demand for a solid foundation, and that anthroposophy, as understood here, can operate with the utmost rigor and in full harmony with every scientific standard. As this comes to be recognized more and more, people will understand what was, in fact, already laid the groundwork for in the anthroposophical movement twenty years ago.

[ 36 ] The fact that anthroposophy can enrich a wide variety of fields is also evident from the fact that we were able to establish a unique art of movement in our eurythmy—an art that uses the human being itself as its means of expression, as its instrument, and which seeks to achieve its unique effects precisely through this. — In the same way, we are also striving in other fields—I will have more to say about this over the next few days—for example, in the field of recitation and declamation, to bring about a renewal through what may be called not anthroposophical theory, but anthroposophical life.

[ 37 ] And so perhaps this final phase of the anthroposophical movement, with its educational, medical, and artistic dimensions, is what is most characteristic of anthroposophy. Anthroposophy has found followers; it has found opponents—fierce opponents—but it has now entered the stage of its work in the present that it must actually seek. And so it was gratifying to me that, during my stay in Kristiania from November 23 to December 4 of this year, it was possible to speak about anthroposophical life within educational societies, within economic societies, among Norway’s student body, and also within the broadest circles—circles that are entirely willing to embrace not merely a theory, or a religious sectarianism, but rather that which, arising from the immediate spirit of our time, seeks to reveal itself today within the world as a great demand of humanity.

[ 38 ] The anthroposophical movement has gone through these three phases in its development. In briefly outlining them for you, ladies and gentlemen, I may have, for the time being, merely mentioned the name of the anthroposophical movement in a rather detailed manner. But that is precisely what I intended to do. I wanted to introduce this anthroposophical movement to you today as a preliminary, that is, to mention its name to you, and I will take the liberty of addressing our actual topic starting tomorrow. It is this anthroposophical movement as such—but especially with its pedagogical and didactic implications—that wished to extend its first greeting to you from the depths of a deeply satisfied soul in appreciation of your visit today.