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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Metamorphoses of the Soul II
GA 59

Preface

The series of public lectures given in the Architect's House, Berlin, in 1909/1910 is being published in the 1983 edition in chronological order. In the first edition, on which all further editions so far have been based, Marie Steiner (who also chose the titles) arranged the Metamorphoses of the Soul and Paths of Experience according to criteria of contents. Three of the lectures (20th January, 3rd March and 28th April) were not included in the two volumes and were published elsewhere.

The lectures on 21st and 29th October were replaced right from the first edition by parallel lectures in Munich (5th December 1909 and 14th March 1910). The Berlin lecture on 21st October, “The Mission of Anger”, is incomplete towards the end and the direction which the Munich lecture takes at the end in content is not present in the Berlin one. The lecture on 29th October, “Human Character”, only became available to the Archive in the 1960's and the text is too fragmentary for it to replace the Munich parallel lecture, although in style it would fit better into the Berlin series of lectures. Of particular note is that the later Munich version develops aspects in compressed form which are presented in Berlin in two different contexts. Thus the Munich lecture contains aspects of the lectures “Human Character” and “Sickness and Healing” (3rd March 1910, 2nd vol.).