The Rudolf Steiner Archive

About the Johannesbau in Dornach

[ 1 ] Before I get to the lecture itself today, I would like to say a few words to you, simply to explain that this year, unfortunately, unlike in previous years, we will not be holding the events in the middle of summer that have usually taken place in Munich, since the next such event is scheduled to take place in the Johannesbau, and construction of this building is taking somewhat longer than originally anticipated. It is to be hoped that we will be ready by the end of this year so that a solemn, festive opening of the Johannesbau can then take place.

[ 2 ] This construction project is actually creating more work for us than one typically has a mental image of, and you will therefore understand that, for a certain period of time now, our in-person meetings have had to be suspended.

[ 3 ] For our dear Austrian friends, it has certainly not been easy in many respects to come to terms with the idea that the Johannesbau is so far away. However, although I am not in a position to elaborate further on this at the moment, as time is lacking, it was simply the case that karma led us to build the Johannesbau where it is being built; and that will be for the best.

[ 4 ] We must surely recognize that we view this building as a kind of central hub and symbol of our spiritual movement. What is far for one person is near for another; that could not be helped from the outset. But we can certainly hope that our Austrian friends, too, will find ways and means to experience this landmark of our anthroposophical movement—and I would like to emphasize this—as their own through their personal presence at the corresponding event of the Johannesbau. In reality, it is not only a landmark because of what it will be as a monumental building, but it is, in a sense, a landmark because, if it truly comes to fruition, it can and could only come to fruition through the great willingness to make sacrifices shown by some of our friends, who truly went to the utmost in their willingness to make sacrifices in order to bring the difficult and, above all, costly construction to completion, just as it is meant to be.

[ 5 ] What is to be created should, in every respect, truly express what our spiritual movement will be. And the entire architectural style must correspond to this. Everything that goes into the building must be such that it is not incorporated in a symbolic or allegorical way, but must flow into this building in a truly artistic manner. Above all, this was necessary: to erect a building that, in all its forms, is an embodiment of the spiritual essence to which we are devoted. The various eras and cultures of human development also had their own corresponding buildings. The building to be erected in Dornach is to demonstrate, through all the forms of which it is composed—and with which it is to form, as it were, a shell for our spiritual work—and through the way this shell opens and closes inwards and outwards and joins together, that something is expressed in its forms which is something that, in architecture, was fundamentally never before conceived for such a building.

[ 6 ] Just as the Greek temple stands to be a dwelling for the god within it, and just as the Gothic cathedral stands to form a whole together with the congregation gathered within it, so our building should present itself in such a way that the forms—I would say, in a spiritual, Spiritual Science sense—shape the building so that it is spiritually transparent. That is to say, when one is inside the building, one will have the feeling, through the architecture and through that which passes from the architecture into the sculpture, that these walls are not like other architectural walls have been until now—enclosing, merely confining—but rather they are at the same time the communicators that open up spiritual life into infinite spiritual expanses. They are walls that, through their very forms, transcend themselves; at the same time, they are not present in the sense of their physical existence. The aim is for everyone who is inside and will gradually grow accustomed to understanding these forms—not allegorically or symbolically, but through a living sense of them—to have something like a view into the world we are speaking of, simply through the experience of form.

[ 7 ] This is, of course, something entirely new in architecture; it is something unusual; and it requires time and effort, and as is often the case in our day and age—forgive the blunt expression—it also requires, and has always required: money! Moreover, the willingness of some of our friends to make sacrifices has truly been so accommodating to us that we can say: this very willingness to sacrifice is, in a certain sense, a hallmark of the way our spiritual movement has penetrated the understanding of souls.

[ 8 ] That is all I wanted to say with these words: that you take this building into your heart, that you feel it as the center of our movement, so that you can think of yourselves as united with it, and that you grant it your personal presence, as much as that may be possible in the future, starting from the opening.