The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preliminary Remarks

[ 1 ] My "Appeal to the German people and the cultural world" was published at the beginning of March 1919. It was intended to express in brief what was needed to bring healing forces to the declining life that had revealed its symptoms of illness in the world catastrophe. Numerous personalities from Germany, Austria and a number of Swiss people signed this appeal, thereby testifying that they considered the suggestions expressed in it to be something that points to the vital necessities of the present and the near future. I then gave these suggestions a further elaboration in my book "Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft". In order to stand up for them in a sustainable way and to implement the suggestions in practical life, the "Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" was founded in Stuttgart and also in Switzerland. Among the various measures taken to bring about this practical implementation was the founding of the weekly journal "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" (Threefolding of the Social Organism), which was published in Stuttgart. The following essays were the lead articles that I wrote for this weekly in the summer of 1919 and the winter of 1919-1920. They can be regarded as supplementary explanations of what I have explained in the "Mernpunkte". They can just as well be seen as a preparation for reading this book.

[ 2 ] Everything I published in both the "Key points" and in these essays did not grow out of theoretical thought. Over the course of more than three decades, I have followed the intellectual, political and economic life of Europe in its various ramifications. In doing so, I believe I have gained an insight into the tendencies that this life is pushing towards its recovery. I believe that the thoughts I am expressing are not those of a single individual, but that they express the unconscious will of European humanity. The particular circumstances of contemporary life, to which I repeatedly refer in the "Mernpunkte" and in these essays, have not allowed this will to emerge in clear outline and in connection with the striving for practical realization in the full consciousness of a sufficiently large number of people. One might call it the tragedy of the present day that countless people, through illusions about what is worth striving for, obstruct their insight into what is really necessary. Completely outdated party views spread a dense fog of thought about what is necessary. They indulge in impractical, impracticable tendencies; the real things they undertake become unfruitful utopias, and the proposals made on the basis of real life practice are regarded by them as utopias. It is with this fact that what is expressed in the following essays has to contend; it wants to take a fully conscious stand on it.

[ 3 ] This fact is still the basis of world politics in our world of civilization today. Versailles and Spa are the stages of this policy. The number of personalities who see through how these stages lead to the further decline of civilization, which has proved the impossibility of its progress in the world catastrophe, is still small. Such personalities do exist today in the countries of the victors and the vanquished. But firstly, there are not enough of them, and secondly, most of them regard what is really needed as utopian.

[ 4 ] If the "Bund für Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus" is perceived by many as a community of impractical people, this is, in my opinion, because these many have strayed from all true life practice and consider their party illusions and life routines to be practice. But no recovery of civilization will be achieved unless the will of the time, which is so densely hidden in the thicket of impractical, illusionary party templates, is brought to full consciousness.

[ 5 ] For someone who knows only too well that he does not suffer from silly conceits, it is difficult to write down what earns him the reputation among many today: "He believes himself to be more clever than all those who have acquired the right in practical life activity to have a say in the matters at issue." The author of these essays believes, however, that the false reproach inherent in such words should not prevent one from saying what one considers necessary, if one is of the opinion that a special relationship between one's own situation in life and the life of the present has directed the mental eye towards this necessity for more than three decades.

[ 6 ] It is, after all, my conviction, acquired through the observation of life, which believes in avoiding everything theoretical and focusing only on the practical, that the will of the time urges for the "threefolding of the social organism", and that everything that is experienced in the phenomena of decline has its origin in the fact that the public consciousness of European civilization, instead of turning to this urge, wishes to continue along the old paths that have become impossible.

[ 7 ] The one group of people from which the leading personalities emerged before the war, and from which many still emerge today, continues to live in the views that led to the decline, and does not want to see the connection between these views and the decline. It wants to carve a new life out of the forces that have led it to death.

[ 8 ] The other group continues the way of thinking that is born out of negative criticism; it does not want to see that in this way of thinking there is the possibility of bringing pseudo-structures of social organization with the ruins of the old to a transient existence, but one that is devastating even in this transience. It continues the old in an inverted way, but it is without the germs of a new one.

[ 9 ] Between these two groups are the forces that would like to liberate the efforts for the "threefolding of the social organism" from the will of the time, which really exists but is covered by the debris of the old. Their supporters are of the opinion that they contain what is needed today.

Mid-July 1920
Rudolf Steiner