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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School
GA 298

7 September 1919, Stuttgart

The opening of the Independent Waldorf School

Ladies and gentlemen! From Herr Molt’s words, you will have inferred out of what spirit he took the initiative to found this Waldorf School. You will also have gathered from his words that its founding springs, not from any mundane intention, but from a call that resounds very clearly from the evolution of humanity in our times in particular. And yet, so little of this call is heard. Humanity’s evolution resounds with much that can be encompassed within the framework of rebuilding society, of giving social form to humanity’s lot. Thus there is something in this call, above all else, that must not be disregarded: the issue of education. We can rest assured that the only people who hear this call for social restructuring correctly amid the chaos of what our present time demands of us will be those who pursue its consequences all the way to the issue of education. But we will certainly be on the wrong track if we hear this social call in a way that makes us want to call a halt to all our social striving when faced with the issue of education, preferring to fashion the facilities of our educational system on the basis of social principles, whatever they may be, that have not also sprung from a renewal of the source of education.

For me, ladies and gentlemen, it has been a sacred obligation to take up what lay in our friend Herr Molt’s intentions in founding the Waldorf School, and to do so in a way that enabled this school to be fashioned out of what we believe to have won from spiritual science in our present times. This school is really intended to be integrated into what the evolution of humanity requires of us at present and in the near future. Actually, in the end, everything that flows into the educational system from such requirements constitutes a threefold sacred obligation.

Of what use would be all of the human community’s feeling, understanding, and working if these could not condense into the sacred responsibility taken on by teachers in their specific social communities when they embark on the ultimate community service with children, with people who are growing up and in the becoming? In the end, everything we are capable of knowing about human beings and about the world only really becomes fruitful when we can convey it in a living way to those who will fashion society when we ourselves can no longer contribute our physical work.

Everything we can accomplish artistically only achieves its highest good when we let it flow into the greatest of all art forms, the art in which we are given, not a dead medium such as sound or color, but living human beings, incomplete and imperfect, whom we are to transform to some extent, through art and education, into accomplished human beings.

And is it not ultimately a very holy and religious obligation to cultivate and educate the divine spiritual element that manifests anew in every human being who is born? Is this educational service not a religious service in the highest sense of the word? Is it not so that all the holiest stirrings of humanity, which we dedicate to religious feeling, must come together in our service at the altar when we attempt to cultivate the divine spiritual aspect of the human being whose potentials are revealed in the growing child?

Science that comes alive!
Art that comes alive!
Religion that comes alive!
In the end, that is what education is.

If we understand teaching and child-rearing in this sense, we will not be inclined to carelessly criticize what is imposed from the other side as the principles, goals, and foundations of the art of education. However, it does seem to me that no proper insight into what our modern culture demands of the art of education is possible unless we are aware of the great need for a complete spiritual renewal in our times, unless we can really work our way through to understanding that in future, something must flow into what we do as teachers and educators that is quite different from what can thrive in the sphere of what is now known as “scientific education.” Nowadays, after all, future teachers, people who will have a formative influence on human beings, are introduced to the attitudes and way of thinking of contemporary science. Now, it has never occurred to me to denigrate contemporary science. I am full of regard for all the triumphs it has achieved, and will continue to achieve for the sake of humanity’s evolution, through a scientific viewpoint and method that are based on understanding nature. But for that very reason, it seems to me, what comes from the contemporary scientific and intellectual attitude cannot be fruitfully applied to the art of education. Its greatness does not lie in dealing with human beings or in insight into the human heart and mind. Great technical advances are possible as a result of what springs from our contemporary intellectual attitude, and on that same basis it is also possible to develop the basic convictions of a free humanity in the context of society. However, it is not possible—grotesque as this may still sound to the majority of people today—to take a scientific viewpoint that has gradually come to the conclusion that the human heart is a pump and the human body a mechanical device, to use the feelings and sensations that proceed from this science to inspire us to become artistic educators of growing human beings. It is impossible to develop the living art of education out of what makes our times so great in mastering dead technology.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where a new spirit must enter the evolution of humanity—the spirit we seek through our spiritual science, the spirit that leads us away from seeing the living human being as a carrier of implements that pump and suck, as a mechanism that can only be understood according to the methods of natural science. Into this intellectual attitude of humanity must come the conviction that spirit is alive in all natural existence, and that we are capable of recognizing this spirit. This is why, in the course that preceded this Waldorf venture, in the course intended for teachers, we attempted to found an anthropology or science of education that will develop into an art of education and a study of humanity that will once again raise what is alive in the human being from the dead. The dead—and this is the secret of our dying contemporary culture—is what makes people knowing, what gives them insight when they take it up as natural law. However, it also weakens the feeling that is the source of teachers’ inspiration and enthusiasm, and it weakens the will. It does not grant human beings a harmonious place within society as a whole. We are looking for a science that is not mere science, that is itself life and feeling. When such a science streams into the human soul as knowledge, it will immediately develop the power to be active as love and to stream forth as effective, working will, as work that has been steeped in soul warmth, and especially as work that applies to the living, to the growing human being. We need a new scientific attitude. Above all, we need a new spirit for the entire art of education.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we think about contemporary education and its needs, we will not be too quick to criticize what has been undertaken with the best of intentions on the basis of all kinds of worthwhile impulses, both in the present and in the recent past. What beautiful impulses underlay the efforts to move the educational system out of the chaos and deadening aspects of city life to the country, to rural boarding schools! We must acknowledge all the good will that was expended in this direction. However, ladies and gentlemen, if the living spirit that makes the human being comprehensible to human beings, that shows people how to deal with the growing human being, does not enter these rural boarding schools, then what was dead in the cities remains dead in the country.

People are now considering how to draft a constitution for a school so that the teachers” authority would no longer work in a deadening way. However, if they are unable to inject the real living spirit that makes human beings human into these newly structured schools, then in spite of all their socio-educational theories these educational establishments will remain something dead, something that cannot lead the present generation into the future in the right way.

The conviction that the call resounding from humanity’s evolution demands a new spirit for our present age, and that we must carry this spirit into the school system first and foremost, is what underlies the efforts of this Waldorf School, which is intended to be a model along these lines. An effort has been made to listen to what is subconsciously present in the demands of the best of those who have attempted to work for healing and regeneration of the art of education in the recent past. In this context I had to think of explanations given by Theodor Vogt, a student of Herbart’s and a prolific thinker, and by his successor Rein, professor of education at Jena.1Theodor Vogt, 1835-1906. Wilhelm Rein, 1847-1929, author of Pädagogik im Grundriss [An Outline of Pedagogy]. Their thoughts seem to me to spring from a deeper feeling for what is lacking in our educational system at present. Vogt and Rein suspected, although they did not clearly say it, that in order to really be able to educate, it would be desirable to know how children actually develop in the early years between infancy and the time they enter school around the seventh year of life, and above all how they develop during the primary school years, from their sixth or seventh year of life up to the time in their fourteenth or fifteenth year that impacts so heavily on the growing person’s entire development. Insightful instructors of education ask whether we can also understand the kinds of forces at work in human nature, which presents us with a different intellectual, emotional, and bodily face, if not every month, then at least every year. As long as we have no real science of history, so these educators say, we will also not be able to know how an individual human being develops, because the individual human being presents in concentrated form what humanity as a whole has gone through in the course of its historical development.

People like the ones I mentioned felt that modern science is basically a failure when it comes to saying anything about the great laws that prevail throughout history, or to grasping what wells up out of the great all-encompassing laws of human evolution for us at the present moment. We would be attempting to do something very foolish if we tried to understand individual human beings on the basis of the composition of the nutrients they take in from their first breath until their last. However, this is basically what we are trying to do in the case of history, in understanding humanity’s entire evolution. In the case of an individual, we must understand how a physiological process such as the change of teeth intervenes in development, for example. We must know all the mysterious things that are going on in the body as a result of a completely new physiology that is not yet available to modern science. But we must also know what is accompanying this transformation on an emotional level. We must know about the metamorphoses of human nature. In the case of an individual, we will at least not deny, although we may be powerless to fully recognize the fact, that a person experiences metamorphoses or transformations on the basis of his or her inmost being. We do not admit to this with regard to the historical development of humanity as a whole. The same methods are applied to antiquity, the Middle Ages, and recent times. We do not accept that great leaps have taken place in humanity’s historical evolution. Looking back over historical developments, we find the last leap in the fifteenth century. Humanity’s ways of feeling, conceptualizing, and willing, as they have developed in more recent times and as we know them now, have only taken on this subtle character among civilized humanity since the fifteenth century. How this civilized humanity differs from that of the tenth or eighth century is similar to how a twelve-year-old child differs from a child who has not yet reached his or her seventh year. And what happened by way of transformation in the fifteenth century proceeded from the innermost nature of humanity, just as the change of teeth as a lawful development proceeds from the innermost nature of the individual. And everything we are living with now in the twentieth century—our striving for individuality, the striving for new social forms, the striving to develop the personality—is only a consequence of what the inner forces of history have brought up since the time in question.

We can understand how individuals attempt to take their place in the present only if we understand the course that humanity’s development has taken, as described above. People like Vogt and Rein who have given a lot of thought to education and who have also been involved practically in such things know that the powerlessness of our modern art of education is a result of the powerlessness of modern historical insight. Just as it is impossible to educate human beings with a science for which the heart has become a pump, it is also impossible to find one’s place as a teacher in a system of education based on a historical understanding that does not draw on the living spirit of humanity or recognize the metamorphoses that have taken place between the Middle Ages and modern times. We are still involved with the consequences of what began there.

Regardless of the fact that we tend to make fun of prophecy in this day and age, it must be said that in a certain respect teachers must be prophets. After all, they are dealing with what is meant to live in the generation to come, not in the present.

From the insightful vantage point of real, true historical happenings, ladies and gentlemen, such things often look somewhat different than they do to modern observers of humanity. In many respects, these observers often have a very superficial grasp of what is meant to come to life in the science and art of education. Today the question is being debated of whether people should be educated more in line with what fosters human nature itself—that is, whether a more humanistic education is preferable—or whether they should be provided with an education that prepares them for their future careers and to fit into the context of the state, and so on. For those who attempt an insight into the depths of such things, discussions of this sort are verbal dialectics that take place on the surface. Why is that? Those with insight into the generation to come get a clear feeling that individuals, in what they work at, think, and feel, and in what they strive toward for the future as adults, emanate from the womb of history. Careers and state context and the places people can make for themselves—all this originated in these people themselves. It is not something external that is superimposed on them. We cannot ask whether we should have the individual being or the outer career more in view when we educate people, because if seen rightly, these are one and the same thing!

If we can develop a living understanding of the careers and people that are out there, then we can also develop an understanding of what previous generations that are still alive and at work today brought up out of the womb of humanity into the present time.

Separating education toward a career and education toward being an individual is not sufficient when we want to work as teachers and educators. There needs to be something living in us that is not outwardly visible, neither in a career nor in the context of the state nor anywhere else in the outer world. What must be alive in us is what the generations to come will bring to life’s outer level. What must live in us is a prophetic merging with the future evolution of humanity. The educational and artistic feeling, thinking and willing of a faculty stands and falls with this merging. A living theory and methodology of education for the present must strive to have flow into the faculty what can be known about the growing human being. This is like a soul and spiritual life-blood that becomes art without first having been knowledge. What is to enter the childlike heart, mind, and intellect can proceed only from this living methodology.

I cannot present our educational principles in detail today. I only wanted to point out how the art of education as it is meant to be in the present and future is to take its place in a living spiritual grasp of the entire nature of the world and of humanity.

We talk a lot today about the social forms of humanity’s future. Why is it always so difficult to take steps to bring this future about? It is difficult because in our times, antisocial drives and instincts are present in the evolution of humanity and work against social striving.

When we look back at patriarchal times, to a time when humanity led a more instinctive life than is the case in our civilization, we may have many reasons to be proud of the accomplishments of the present. However, the impulses of earlier times were more social than ours; we are now governed by antisocial impulses. These antisocial impulses, however, must be eliminated from the art of education above all else. More precise observers will note how our educational system has gradually developed into an antisocial system. However, the only art of education that can be fruitful is one in which the teacher’s effect on the child results from a commonality of feeling from the very moment they enter the classroom. The child’s soul and the teacher’s soul must become one through a mysterious and subconscious bond that passes from the teacher’s spirit to the child’s. This gives the school its social character. For this to happen, the teacher must be able to put him or herself in the child’s position.

What do we often do nowadays? We make an effort to formulate our thoughts in ways that will enable us to explain something to the children. Perhaps we say to them, “Look, here is a chrysalis. A butterfly is going to come out of it.” We may show the children the butterfly and the chrysalis and may also demonstrate how the one develops out of the other. Perhaps we then go on to say, “Your immortal souls are at rest in your bodies just as the butterfly is at rest in the chrysalis. And just as the butterfly leaves the chrysalis one day, so too your immortal souls will one day leave your bodies when you go through the gate of death.” We have thought of an image from nature that we use in order to make something clear to the children, but we know that we have only used a comparison, and that we ourselves have a different way of understanding the whole thing. We have made an effort to straighten something out for the children. However, according to a mysterious law, we cannot really accomplish anything in the lesson if we straighten things out in this way. It is really only possible to convey to the children what we ourselves believe in the depths of our souls. Only when we have wrestled our way through to the feeling that the image of the butterfly and chrysalis is no mere cooked-up comparison, but one presented to us by divine spiritual nature itself, only when we can believe in the truth of the image in the way that the children are meant to believe it, only in that instant are we able to convey living spirit to them.

It is never permissible for us to merely give lip service to something, although this plays such a great role in cultural development today. We must speak and be able to work out of the spirit of truth. This is possible only when we are connected, deeply and intimately connected, to everything human. Even if we are already white-haired, we must be able to unite with what growing human beings are in accordance with their essential nature. We must have an inner understanding of the growing human being. Can we still do that today? No, we cannot, or we would not sit ourselves down in laboratories and practice experimental psychology in order to work out the rules by which human understanding and human memory work. If teachers see these superficial methods and procedures as the essential thing in learning to understand the human being, they kill off their living intuitive connection and relationship to human beings. I know that educational experiments and experimental psychology are useful to teachers in a certain way. However, I also know that these are only symptoms of what they are supposed to be most useful for, and I know that we have lost the direct soul-route from person to person and are looking for it again through outer observation in laboratories. We have become inwardly estranged from what is human and are looking for it in outer ways. However, if we want to be real teachers and educators, we must be reunited with the human aspect. We must foster the whole person within us, and then this whole person will be related to what we have to develop in the child in educational and artistic ways. What we as educators gain from experimental study and observation, which are often promoted as the basis of the science of education nowadays, is comparable to the effort of trying to understand how we eat and drink on the basis of the study of nutrition and its applications to the human being. We do not need a science of how one eats and drinks, we need a healthily developed sense of taste and healthy organs, and then we will eat and drink properly. Nor do we need a theory of education based on experimental psychology. What we as educators need is an awakening of our living human nature, which will experience in itself the whole of the child to which it makes a spiritual connection.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, we want to create this Waldorf School on the basis of a new spirit. You will also have noticed what this school is nof meant to become. In any case, it is not meant to become a school to promote a particular philosophy. Anyone who says that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is founding the Waldorf School, and that it is now going to inject its philosophy into this school, will not be speaking the truth. I am stating this now, on the opening day. We are not interested in imposing our “dogmas,” our principles, or the content of our world-view on young people. We are not trying to bring about a dogmatic form of education. We are striving to turn what we have been able to learn from spiritual science into a living act of education. We are striving to include in our instructional methods a way of dealing with individual souls that can originate in a living spiritual science. Dead science can give rise only to knowledge; living spiritual science will give rise to instructional methodology and practical applications in the soul-spiritual sense. We strive to teach, to be able to educate. With regard to all this, we are fundamentally aware of the responsibility our dear friend Herr Molt spoke of earlier. We have pledged that the various religious denominations will be able to provide religious instruction in the school and to introduce the principles of their world-views, and we will honor this promise. It remains to be seen whether the art form we want to introduce provisorily and in a modest way will encounter as little interference from them as the world-views which they introduce will encounter from us.2Unlike in the U.S., in Germany it is even now quite standard for state-supported schools to make space available in the school and time in the school week for religious instruction, with teachers supplied by the churches. We know that before humankind can acquire a correct insight into issues involving world-views and their interrelationships, people must understand that an art of education in the pedagogical and methodological sense can result from a spiritual world-view. Thus, we are not going to found a school on the basis of a particular world-view. What we are attempting to create in the Waldorf School is a school based on the art of education.

To you parents of the first children to be sent to this school, let me say that you are pioneering not only a personal human intention, but also a cultural challenge of our times, and that you will be able to grasp in the right way what is now meant to happen with regard to the Waldorf School only if you feel yourselves to be pioneers of this sort.

It is too soon to speak to the children in words as rational as those I spoke to their parents, but we will promise these children that what we are conveying to their parents in words will come to them in the form of actions—actions that will help them find their place in life so that they will be a match for the difficult challenges facing the generations to come. These challenges will be difficult, and what we today, especially in Central Europe, are experiencing as a time of great troubles is only the beginning of greater troubles to come. But just as the greatest things for human beings have always emerged from pain and suffering, so too a true, reality-based human art of education will emerge from these troubles. By seeking the source and foundation of our school system in the whole human being, by trying to build it up on the basis of the whole human being, we want to insert the social issue of education into the overall social issue of our times.

Comprehensive school! That is what our times are saying. And the art of teaching that draws its ability from the whole human being, as has been indicated here, will appear only in a comprehensive school. If humanity is to be able to live in social justice in the future, then people must first educate their children in a socially appropriate way. Through the Waldorf School, we hope to make a small contribution toward bringing this about.

In spite of the best will, we may be able to accomplish only a portion of what we set out to do, but we hope that the strength of the effort may not be exhausted in our feeble attempts, and that it will find successors. For we are convinced that although a feeble attempt may fail due to opposition and lack of understanding, the central core of this effort will find successors. When a real social art of education finds its way into the consciousness of all of humanity, which is what carries the faculty and the group of children to be educated, then the school will be incorporated into our overall life in society in the right way.

May the Waldorf School make a small contribution toward this great goal.

Ansprache Rudolf Steiners bei der Eröffnung der Freien Waldorfschule

Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Aus den Worten des Herrn Molt werden Sie haben entnehmen können, aus welchem Geiste heraus er die Initiative ergriffen hat zur Begründung dieser seiner Waldorfschule. Sie werden aus seinen Worten heraus vernommen haben, daß diese Gründung nicht irgendeiner alltäglichen Absicht entsprungen ist, sondern dem Rufe, der heraustönt so klar aus der Entwickelung der Menschheit gerade in unserer Zeit, und der doch so wenig vernommen wird. Indem aus dieser Entwickelung der Menschheit heraustönt vieles, das eingefaßt werden kann in den Rahmen des sozialen Gestaltens der Menschheitsgeschicke, des sozialen Neuaufbaues, liegt auch etwas in diesem Rufe, das nicht überhört werden darf: es liegt in ihm vor allen Dingen die Erziehungsfrage. Und man kann überzeugt sein, daß nur diejenigen den Ruf nach sozialer Neugestaltung richtig hören in dem verwirrenden Chaos von Forderungen der Gegenwart, die seine Wirkung hineinverfolgen bis in die Erziehungsfrage. Aber wenn der soziale Ruf so gehört wird, daß man mit allem möglichen sozialen Streben haltmachen möchte vor der Erziehungsfrage und dann die Einrichtungen des Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesens selbst ausgestalten möchte im Sinne von irgendwelchen sozialen Grundsätzen, die nicht mitentsprungen sind aus einer Erneuerung der Erziehungs- und Unterrichtsquelle, dann wird man ganz bestimmt auf falschem Wege sein.

Für mich, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, war es eine heilige Pflicht, dasjenige, was in den Absichten unseres Freundes, des Herrn Molt, bezüglich der Gründung der Waldorfschule lag, so aufzunehmen, daß diese Schule herausgestaltet werden könne aus dem, was man glauben darf in der Gegenwart durch die Geisteswissenschaft gewonnen zu haben. Es soll diese Schule wirklich hineingestellt werden in dasjenige, was gerade in unserer Gegenwart und für die nächste Zukunft von der Entwickelung der Menschheit gefordert wird. Und wahrhaftig: alles, was zuletzt aus solchen Voraussetzungen heraus einläuft in das Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen, es stellt sich dar als eine dreifache heilige Pflicht.

Was wäre schließlich alles Sich-Fühlen und Erkennen und Wirken in der Menschengemeinschaft, wenn es sich nicht zusammenschließen könnte in der heiligen Verpflichtung, die sich gerade der Lehrer, der Erzieher auferlegt, indem er in seiner besonderen sozialen Gemeinschaft mit dem werdenden, dem aufwachsenden Menschen, mit dem kindlichen Menschen einen im allerhöchsten Sinne so zu nennenden Gemeinschaftsdienst einrichtete! Alles das, was wir schließlich wissen können vom Menschen und von der Welt, recht fruchtbar wird es erst, wenn wir es lebendig überführen können in diejenigen, die die soziale Welt gestalten werden, wenn wir nicht mehr mit unserer physischen Arbeit dabeisein können.

Alles das, was wir künstlerisch vollbringen können, es wird doch erst ein Höchstes, wenn wir es einlaufen lassen können in die größte Kunst, in diejenige Kunst, in der uns nicht totes Kunstmaterial wie Ton und Farbe übergeben ist, in der uns übergeben ist der lebendige Mensch, unvollendet, den wir bis zu einem gewissen Grade künstlerisch, erzieherisch zum vollendeten Menschen machen sollen.

Und ist es nicht schließlich eine höchste heilige, religiöse Verpflichtung, das Göttlich-Geistige, das ja in jedem Menschen, der geboren wird, neu erscheint und sich offenbart, in der Erziehung zu pflegen? Ist dieser Erziehungsdienst nicht religiöser Kult im höchsten Sinn des Wortes? Müssen nicht zusammenfließen alle unsere heiligsten, gerade dem religiösen Fühlen gewidmeten Menschheitsregungen in dem Altardienst, den wir verrichten, indem wir herauszubilden versuchen das sich als veranlagt offenbarende Göttlich-Geistige des Menschen im werden den Kinde!

Lebendig werdende Wissenschaft!
Lebendig werdende Kunst!
Lebendig werdende Religion!

das ist schließlich Erziehung, das ist schließlich Unterricht. - Wenn man das Unterrichten und das Erziehen in diesem Sinne auffaßt, dann ist man nicht geneigt, leichtfertig Kritik zu üben an demjenigen, was von anderer Seite her als Prinzipien, als Absichten und Grundsätze für die Erziehungskunst aufgestellt wird. Allein mir scheint nicht, daß jemand in richtiger Art gerade das durchschauen kann, was die Gegenwartskultur der Erziehungskunst, der Unterrichtskunst auferlegt, der nicht gewahr werden kann, wie notwendig ist in unserer Zeit eine vollständige geistige Erneuerung, der nicht durchdringend erkennen kann, wie in der Zukunft einfließen muß in das, was wir als Lehrer und Erzieher tun, ein ganz anderes, als gedeihen kann in der Sphäre gerade desjenigen, was man heute «wissenschaftliche Erziehung» nennt. Wird doch heute der Lehrer, der zukünftig den Menschen bilden soll, eingeführt in die Gesinnung, in die Denkweise der gegenwärtigen Wissenschaft. Nie ist es mir. eingefallen, diese gegenwärtige Wissenschaft abzukanzeln in abfälliger Weise. Ich bin durchdrungen von voller Schätzung für alles, was diese gegenwärtige Wissenschaft mit ihrer gerade auf Naturerkenntnis gegründeten Wissenschaftsgesinnung und Wissenschaftsmethode an Triumphen für die Menschheitsentwickelung erreicht hat, und was sie in der Zukunft noch erreichen wird. Aber gerade deshalb, so scheint es mir, wird das, was herausfließt aus der gegenwärtigen Wissenschafts- und Geistesgesinnung, nicht fruchtbar übergehen können in die Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst, weil die Größe der gegenwärtigen Wissenschaftsund Geistesgesinnung in etwas anderem liegt als in Menschenbehandlung und in Einsicht in das menschliche Herz, in das menschliche Gemüt. Man kann mit dem, was herausquillt aus der gegenwärtigen Geistesgesinnung, großartige technische Fortschritte machen; man kann damit auch in sozialer Beziehung eine freie Menschheitsgesinnung entwickeln, aber man kann nicht - so grotesk das heute noch der Mehrzahl der Menschen klingen mag — mit einer Wissenschaftsgesinnung, die auf der einen Seite allmählich zur Überzeugung gekommen ist, das menschliche Herz sei eine Pumpe, der menschliche physische Leib sei ein mechanistischer Betrieb, man kann nicht mit den Gefühlen und Empfindungen, die aus dieser Wissenschaft heraus fließen, sich selber so beleben, daß man künstlerischer Erzieher des werdenden Menschen sein kann. Unmöglich ist es, gerade aus dem heraus, was unsere Zeit so groß macht in der Beherrschung der toten Technik, die lebendige Kunst des Erziehens zu entwickeln.

Da, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, muß ein neuer Geist in die Menschheitsentwickelung eingreifen, der Geist eben, den wir durch unsere Geisteswissenschaft suchen. Der Geist, der davon hinwegführt, in dem lebendigen Menschen den Träger von Pump- und Sauginstrumenten, einen Mechanismus zu sehen, der nur nach naturwissenschaftlichen Methoden begriffen werden kann. Es muß einziehen in die Geistesgesinnung der Menschheit die Überzeugung, daß Geist in allem Naturdasein lebt, und daß man diesen Geist erkennen könne. Und so haben wir versucht, in dem Kursus, der vorangegangen ist unserer WaldorfUnternehmung, und der bestimmt war für die Lehrer, eine Anthropologie, eine Erziehungswissenschaft zu begründen, die eine Erziehungskunst, eine Menschheitskunde werden kann, welche aus dem Toten das Lebendige im Menschen wieder erweckt. Das Tote - und das ist das Geheimnis unserer gegenwärtigen absterbenden Kultur -, das Tote, es macht den Menschen wissend, es macht den Menschen einsichtig, wenn er es aufnimmt als Naturgesetz; aber es schwächt sein Gemüt, aus dem die Begeisterung hervorgehen soll gerade im Erziehen. Es schwächt den Willen. Es stellt den Menschen nicht harmonisch in das ganze, gesamte soziale Dasein hinein. Nach einer Wissenschaft suchen wir, die nicht bloß Wissenschaft ist, die Leben und Empfindung selber ist, und die in dem Augenblick, wo sie als Wissen in die Menschenseele einströmt, zu gleicher Zeit die Kraft entwickelt, als Liebe in ihr zu leben, um als werktätiges Wollen, als in Seelenwärme getauchte Arbeit ausströmen zu können; als Arbeit, die insbesondere übergeht auf das Lebendige, auf den werdenden Menschen. Wir brauchen eine neue Wissenschaftsgesinnung. Wir brauchen einen neuen Geist in erster Linie für alle Erziehungs-, für alle Unterrichtskunst.

Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, derjenige, der so über die Erziehung der Gegenwart und ihre Notwendigkeiten denkt, kritisiert nicht leichtfertig, was in bester Absicht unternommen worden ist aus allerlei würdigen Impulsen der Gegenwart und der jüngsten Vergangenheit heraus. Welch schöne Impulse liegen zugrunde, da man aus dem Chaos und Ertötenden des Stadtlebens heraus das Erziehungswesen auf das Land, in die Landerziehungsheime hinausverlegen wollte. Man muß anerkennen all den in dieser Richtung waltenden guten Willen. Aber, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, wenn in diese Landerziehungsheime nicht der lebendige Geist, der den Menschen dem Menschen begreiflich macht, der den Menschen anweist, den werdenden Menschen zu behandeln, wenn in diese Landerziehungsheime und in all das andere, was heute begründet wird, nicht hineinzieht dieser lebendige Geist, es bleibt auch auf dem Lande tot, was in den Städten tot ist.

Man denkt nach, wie man die Schulverfassung gestalten könne, damit nicht mehr in einer ertötenden Weise die Autorität des Lehrers wirke. Wenn man aber nicht hineingießen kann in jene Schulen, die nach dieser neuen Weise gestaltet sind, den wirklich lebendigen Geist, der den Menschen erst zum Menschen macht, es bleiben trotz aller sozialen Pädagogik die Schul- und Erziehungsstätten etwas Totes, etwas, was die gegenwärtige Generation nicht in der richtigen Weise der Zukunft entgegenführen kann.

Die Überzeugung, daß der Ruf, der aus der Entwickelung der Menschheit heraustönt, für unsere gegenwärtige Zeit einen neuen Geist fordert, und daß wir diesen neuen Geist vor allen Dingen in das Erziehungswesen hineintragen müssen, diese Überzeugung ist es, die den Bestrebungen dieser Waldorfschule, die ein Musterbeispiel sein sollte nach dieser Richtung hin, zugrunde liegt. Und versucht ist worden, zu hören, was unbewußt gerade in den Forderungen der Besten liegt, die sich abgemüht haben in der jüngsten Vergangenheit, für eine Gesundung, für eine Regenerierung der Erziehungs-, der Unterrichtskunst zu wirken. Denken muß ich an solche Darlegungen, wie sie zum Beispiel von dem immerhin sehr gedankenreichen Herbartschüler Theodor Vogt oder dessen Nachfolger Rein, dem Jenaer Pädagogen, stammen, denn sie scheinen mir zu entspringen einer tieferen Empfindung desjenigen, was in der Gegenwart unserem Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen mangelt. Vogt und Rein, sie haben ahnend bemerkt, aber nicht deutlich gesagt: Man möchte so gerne erkennen, um richtig unterrichten und erziehen zu können, wie sich das Kind eigentlich entwickelt in den ersten Jahren, vom Säugling bis zu der Zeit, wo es gegen das siebente Jahr in die Schule kommt; wie es sich entwickelt dann vornehmlich in der Volksschulzeit vom sechsten oder siebenten Jahr bis zu der Zeit, die so mächtig eingreift in alle Entwickelung des werdenden Menschen, bis zu der Zeit im vierzehnten und fünfzehnten Jahr. Da frägt sich der einsichtige Pädagogiklehrer: Können wir auch verstehen, was da für Kräfte spielen in der Menschennatur, die fast mit jedem Monat, jedenfalls aber mit jedem Jahr uns ein anderes geistig-seelisches-leibliches Antlitz zuwendet? Solange wir keine wirkliche Geschichtswissenschaft haben - so sagen diese Pädagogen -, solange können wir auch nicht wissen, wie der einzelne Mensch sich entwickelt. Denn der einzelne Mensch stellt in sich konzentriert dasjenige dar, was die ganze Menschheit im Laufe ihres geschichtlichen Werdens darstellt.

Solche Leute, wie die genannten, fühlen, daß im Grunde genommen die gegenwärtige Wissenschaft versagt, wenn sie etwas sagen soll über jene großen Gesetze, die durch die Geschichte walten, und wenn man ergreifen sollte im gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt dasjenige, was für uns herausquillt aus diesen großen, umfassenden geschichtlichen Gesetzen der Menschheitsentwickelung. Würde man den einzelnen Menschen verstehen wollen aus der Beschaffenheit der Nahrungsmittel, die er aufnimmt vom ersten Atemzuge an bis zum Tode hin, so würde man etwas höchst Törichtes anstreben; aber in der Geschichte, in dem Begreifen der ganzen Menschheitsentwickelung hält man es heute im Grunde so. Beim Menschen muß man wissen, wie zum Beispiel eingreift in die Entwickelung solch ein physiologischer Vorgang, wie es der Zahnwechsel ist. Man muß wissen, was da alles leiblich an Geheimnisvollem vorgeht aus einer ganz neuen Physiologie, welche die gegenwärtige Wissenschaft noch nicht hat. Man muß aber auch wissen, was seelisch diesen Umschwung begleitet. Man muß die Metamorphosen der Menschennatur kennen. Da, beim einzelnen Menschen, wird man wenigstens nicht leugnen, wenn man auch ohnmächtig ist, es zu erkennen: daß der Mensch aus seinem innersten Wesen heraus Metamorphosen, Umschwünge erlebt. Im geschichtlichen Werden der ganzen Menschheit gibt man so etwas nicht zu. Dieselben Methoden werden angewendet für das Altertum, für das Mittelalter, für die neuere Zeit. Darauf läßt man sich nicht ein, daß große Sprünge in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit vor sich gehen. Indem wir zurückblicken in das geschichtliche Werden, finden wir einen letzten Sprung im 15. Jahrhundert. Alles, was in der neueren Zeit Empfinden, Vorstellen, Wollen der Menschheit geworden ist so, wie wir es jetzt kennen, hat erst seinen intimen Charakter angenommen in der zivilisierten Menschheit seit dem 15. Jahrhundert. Und diese zivilisierte Menschheit unterscheidet sich von der des 10. oder 8. Jahrhunderts etwa so, wie sich das Kind als zwölfjähriges unterscheidet von dem Kinde, das noch nicht das siebente Jahr erreicht hat. Und dasjenige, was als ein Umschwung sich vollzogen hat im 15. Jahrhundert: aus dem Innersten des Menschheitswesens ging es hervor, wie hervorgeht aus der innersten Menschennatur die gesetzmäßige Entwickelung des Zahnwechsels. Und alles das, indem wir heute leben im 20. Jahrhundert - jenes Streben nach Individualität, das Streben nach sozialer Gestaltung, das Streben nach Ausgestaltung der Persönlichkeit -, es ist nur eine Folge desjenigen, was die inneren Kräfte der Geschichte heraufgetragen haben seit dem angedeuteten Zeitpunkt.

Wir können nur verstehen, wie der Mensch sich hineinstellen will in die Gegenwart, wenn wir verstehen den Gang, den die Menschheitsentwickelung in der gekennzeichneten Art genommen hat. Solche Leute wie Vogt und Rein, die über Pädagogik viel nachgedacht haben, die sich auch praktisch mit den Dingen beschäftigt haben, kennen die Ohnmacht der gegenwärtigen Erziehungskunst aus der Ohnmacht der gegenwärtigen geschichtlichen Einsicht heraus. Sowenig man mit jener Naturwissenschaft, der das Herz zur Pumpe wird, den Menschen erziehen kann, sowenig kann man sich als Lehrer hineinstellen in das Erziehungsleben mit einer geschichtlichen Erkenntnis, die nicht aus dem lebendigen Geiste der Menschheit herausschöpft und solche Metamorphosen durchschaut, wie sie sich zugetragen haben vom Mittelalter in die neuere Zeit hinein. Wir stehen noch immer in Auswirkung des da Begonnenen drinnen.

Der Lehrer muß - man mag spotten über Prophetismus in unserer Zeit, trotzdem muß man sagen: der Lehrer muß in einer gewissen Weise ein Prophet sein. Hat er es doch zu tun mit dem, was leben soll in der zukünftigen Generation, nicht in der Gegenwart.

Durchschaut man solche Dinge vom Gesichtspunkte wahren, wirklichen geschichtlichen Geschehens aus, dann, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, nehmen sie sich allerdings etwas anders aus als oftmals für den gegenwärtigen menschlichen Beobachter. Dieser faßt in vieler Beziehung dasjenige, was Leben werden sollte in der Erziehungswissenschaft und in der Erziehungskunst, in sehr äußerlicher Weise. Man diskutiert heute über die Frage: Soll man den Menschen mehr erziehen im Sinne dessen, was die Menschennatur selbst fordert, also mehr eine Menschheitserziehung, eine humanistische Erziehung pflegen; oder soll man dem Menschen mehr eine Erziehung angedeihen lassen, die ihn für den künftigen Beruf, für das Staatsgefüge vorbereitet und dergleichen? - Für den, der die Dinge in ihrer Tiefe durchschauen will, sind solche Diskussionen an der Oberfläche verlaufende Wortdialektik. Warum? Wer die werdende Generation durchschaut, der bekommt ein deutliches Gefühl davon: Die Menschen sind mit dem, was sie arbeiten, mit dem, was sie denken und empfinden, mit dem auch, was sie für die Zukunft anstreben als Erwachsene, aus dem Schoße der Geschichte aufgestiegen. Und das, was heute Berufe sind, was heute Staatsgefüge ist, wohin sich heute die Menschen stellen können: das ist ja aus diesen Menschen selbst entsprungen! Das hängt ja nicht als eine Äußerlichkeit diesen Menschen an! Man kann gar nicht fragen: Soll man den Menschen mehr für das Menschenwesen erziehen oder mehr für den äußeren Beruf? Denn richtig angesehen, ist schließlich doch beides ein und dasselbe!

Können wir heute ein lebendiges Verständnis entwickeln von dem, was draußen die Berufe, die Menschen sind, dann entwickeln wir auch das Verständnis für dasjenige, was die vorhergehenden Generationen, die heute noch leben und Berufe haben, aus dem Mutterschoße der Menschheit heraufgetragen haben bis in die Gegenwart herein.

Mit der Trennung von Erziehung zum Menschen und zum Beruf reichen wir nicht aus, wenn wir als Lehrer, als Erzieher wirken sollen. Da muß in uns etwas leben, was äußerlich nicht sichtbar ist, nicht in einem Beruf, nicht in einem Staatsgefüge, nirgends im Äußeren. Da muß in uns dasjenige leben, was erst die nachfolgenden Generationen auf den äußeren Plan des Lebens bringen werden. Da muß in uns ein prophetisch wirkendes Zusammengewachsensein leben mit der kommenden Entwikkelung der Menschheit. Mit diesem Zusammengewachsensein steht und fällt das erzieherisch-künstlerische Fühlen und Denken und Wollen einer Lehrerwelt. Daß fließen kann in die Lehrerwelt dasjenige, was man wissen kann über den werdenden Menschen, wie ein seelisch-geistiges Lebensblut, das, ohne erst Wissen zu sein, Kunst wird, dahin muß eine lebendige Pädagogik und Didaktik der Gegenwart streben. Und von dieser lebendigen Didaktik kann allein dasjenige ausgehen, was in das kindliche Herz, in das kindliche Gemüt, in den kindlichen Intellekt eingehen soll.

Ich kann heute unsere Erziehungsgrundsätze nicht im einzelnen ausführen. Ich wollte nur zeigen, wie sich hineinstellen soll in ein lebendiges, geistiges Auffassen des ganzen Welt- und Menschheitswesens dasjenige, was Erziehungs- und Uhnterrichtskunst der Gegenwart und Zukunft sein soll.

Wir reden heute viel davon, daß eine sozial gestaltete Zukunft der Menschheit herankommen soll. Warum wird alles so schwer, was wir in der Richtung unternehmen wollen, um eine solche Zukunft herbeizuführen? - Ja, das wird so schwer, weil dem sozialen Streben gerade in unserer Zeit die antisozialsten Triebe und Instinkte in der Menschheitsentwickelung entgegenstehen.

Wenn wir in patriarchalische Zeiten zurückblicken, in Zeiten, in denen die Menschheit instinktiver gelebt hat als in unserem Zivilisationszeitalter, so mag man auf viele Veranlassungen kommen, stolz sein zu können auf die Errungenschaften der Gegenwart: sozialere Triebe aber haben ältere Zeiten gehabt. Antisoziale Triebe beherrschen uns. Antisoziale Triebe müssen aber vor allen Dingen ausgetilgt werden in der Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst. Wer genauer beobachten kann, der sieht, wie auch allmählich das Erziehungs- und Unterrichtswesen eingemündet ist in antisoziales Wesen. Nur diejenige Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst aber kann fruchtbar sein, durch die der Lehrer von dem Momente an, wo er das Schulzimmer betritt, auf das Kind wirkt wie aus einem einheitlichen Empfinden heraus. Eins muß sein Kindesseele und Lehrerseele durch ein unterbewußtes geheimnisvolles Band, das vom Lehrergeist übergeht in den Kindergeist. Das gibt der Schule ihr soziales Gepräge. Dazu muß der Lehrer fähig sein, in das Kind sich wirklich hineinzuversetzen. Was tun wir heute oftmals? Ja, wir bemühen uns, unser Denken in solche Formen zu bringen, daß wir dem Kinde etwas erklären können. Wir sagen vielleicht dem Kinde: Sieh einmal, hier hast du eine Puppe, aus der wird ein Schmetterling herauskommen. Man zeigt ihm vielleicht den Schmetterling und die Puppe, vielleicht auch, wie das eine sich aus dem anderen entwickelt. Dann sagt man ihm weiter vielleicht: Deine unsterbliche Seele ruht in deinem Leibe wie der Schmetterling in der Puppe. Und so wie der Schmetterling die Puppe verläßt, so wird deine unsterbliche Seele einmal den Leib verlassen, wenn du durch des Todes Pforte gehst. - Man hat sich ein Naturbild ausgedacht, um etwas an diesem Bilde dem Kinde klarzumachen; aber man ist sich bewußt, daß man nur einen Vergleich gebraucht hat, daß man die ganze Sache ja auf eine andere Art weiß. Man hat sich angestrengt, für das Kind etwas zurechtzurichten. Aber es gibt ein geheimnisvolles Gesetz, wonach man, wenn man so die Dinge zurechtrichtet, nichts richtig im Unterricht erreichen kann. Denn man kann wirklich nur das auf das Kind übertragen, woran man selbst glaubt aus tiefster Seele heraus. Erst wenn man sich dazu durchgerungen hat, zu empfinden, daß in dem Bilde von Puppe und Schmetterling nicht ein äußerlich zusammengeschusterter Vergleich gegeben ist, sondern ein solcher, den uns die göttlich-geistige Natur selber hinstellt, in dem Augenblick, wo wir glauben können an die Wahrheit des Bildes, wie das Kind daran glauben soll, in dem Augenblick erst gelingt es uns, lebendigen Geist auf das Kind zu übertragen. Wir müssen sprechen, wir müssen wirken können aus dem Geiste der Wahrheit heraus. Wir dürfen niemals aus dem heraus wirken, was heute in der Kulturentwickelung eine so große Rolle spielt: aus dem Geiste der Phrase heraus. Das können wir nur, wenn wir verbunden sind, innerlichst verbunden sind mit allem Menschlichen; wenn wir aufgehen können, noch wenn wir die allerweißesten Haare schon erlangt haben, in dem, was der werdende Mensch seinem Wesen nach ist. Innerlich müssen wir verstehen können den werdenden Menschen. Können wir das heute noch? Nein, sonst würden wir uns nicht hineinsetzen in Laboratorien und experimentelle Psychologie treiben, um Regeln aufzustellen, wie der menschliche Verstand und das menschliche Gedächtnis arbeiten. Der Lehrer, der als Wesentliches das Durchgehen durch diese äußerlichen Methoden ansieht, um den Menschen kennenzulernen, der ertötert in sich die lebendige intuitive Beziehung, das lebendige intuitive Verhältnis zum Menschen. Ich weiß, nach welcher Richtung ihm Experimentalpädagogik und Experimentalpsychologie nützlich sind. Ich weiß aber, daß sie für das, wofür sie heute am nützlichsten gelten, nur Symptom sind, daß wir den unmittelbaren Seelenweg von Mensch zu Mensch verloren haben und ihn durch äußerliche Anschauung im Laboratorium wieder suchen. Wir sind dem Menschlichen fremd geworden im Inneren und suchen daher dieses Menschliche auf äußerem Wege. Wir müssen aber, wollen wir richtige Erzieher und Lehrer werden, innerlich dem Menschlichen wiederum vereinigt werden. Wir müssen den ganzen Menschen in uns entwickeln, dann wird dieser ganze Mensch verwandt sein mit dem, was wir erzieherisch-künstlerisch an dem Kinde heranzugestalten haben. Was wir als Pädagogen gewinnen aus einer Experimentierkunde und aus der Beobachtung heraus, die heute vielfach als die Grundlage der Erziehungswissenschaft gepflegt wird, das gleicht dem Streben, aus der Nahrungsmittellehre und ihrer Anwendung auf den Menschen erkennen zu wollen, wie man ißt und trinkt. Wir brauchen nicht ein Wissen, wie man ißt und trinkt, wir brauchen eine gesunde Geschmacksentwickelung, gesunde Organe, dann können wir richtig essen und trinken. Wir brauchen nicht eine Pädagogik, die auf Experimentalpsychologie gebaut ist, wir brauchen als Erzieher eine Erweckung der lebendigen Menschennatur, die in sich das ganze Kind wieder erlebt, indem sie mit ihm in geistige Beziehung tritt.

So, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, möchten wir aus einem neuen Geiste heraus diese Waldorfschule gestalten. Und Sie werden bemerkt haben auch, was diese Schule nicht werden soll. Jedenfalls soll sie nicht eine Weltanschauungsschule werden. Derjenige, der da sagen wird: die anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft gründe die Waldorfschule und wolle nun ihre Weltanschauung hineintragen in diese Schule - ich sage das jetzt am Eröffnungstage -, der wird nicht die Wahrheit sprechen. Uns liegt gar nichts daran, unsere «Dogmen», unsere Prinzipien, den Inhalt unserer Weltanschauung dem werdenden Menschen beizubringen. Wir streben nicht danach, eine dogmatische Erziehung zu bewirken. Wir streben danach, daß dasjenige, was wir haben gewinnen können durch die Geisteswissenschaft, lebendige Erziehungstat werde. Wir streben an, in unserer Methodik, in unserer Didaktik dasjenige zu haben, was aus der lebendigen Geisteswissenschaft als seelische Menschenbehandlung hervorgehen kann. Aus der toten Wissenschaft kann nur Wissen kommen, aus der lebendigen Geisteswissenschaft wird Methodik, wird Didaktik, wird Handgriffliches im geistig-seelischen Sinne hervorgehen. Daß wir lehren, daß wir erziehen können, das streben wir an. In bezug auf all das sind wir uns gründlich jener Verantwortlichkeit bewußt, von der unser lieber Freund, Herr Molt, vorhin gesprochen hat. Aber ehrlich werden wir einhalten, was wir gelobt haben: daß die verschiedenen religiösen Bekenntnisgesellschaften, die von sich aus den Religionsunterricht erteilen sollen, ihre Weltanschauungsprinzipien in unsere Schule hineintragen können. Wir wollen nur abwarten, ob, ebensowenig wie wir stören werden im geringsten dasjenige, was so als Weltanschauung hereingetragen werden soll in unsere Schule, ob ebensowenig dasjenige gestört wird, was wir, in bescheidenster Weise vorläufig nur, als eine Kunst hineintragen wollen. Denn wir wissen: Früher wird die Menschheit verstehen müssen, daß aus einer geistigen Weltanschauung heraus Erziehungskunst im pädagogischen, methodischen, didaktischen Sinne entstehen kann, bevor sie eine richtige Einsicht in Weltanschauungsfragen und ihre gegenseitigen Beziehungen haben wird. Also eine Weltanschauungsschule werden wir nicht begründen. Eine erziehungs-künstlerische Schule werden wir uns bemühen mit der Waldorfschule zu schaffen.

Ihnen, die Sie die Eltern sind der Kinder, die als erste in diese Schule hineingeschickt werden, Ihnen darf es gesagt werden, daß Sie nicht nur Pioniere sind für eine menschliche persönliche Absicht, sondern für eine Kulturforderung unserer Zeit, und daß Sie das, was jetzt geschehen soll mit Bezug auf die Waldorfschule, nur richtig auffassen werden, wenn Sie sich als solche Pioniere fühlen.

Zu den Kindern kann ich heute noch nicht in einer solchen verständlichen Sprache sprechen wie zu den Eltern, aber geloben wollen wir diesen Kindern, daß dasjenige, was wir den Eltern in Worten mitteilen, zu ihnen durch Taten dringe, die sie wirklich hineinstellen werden ins Leben so, daß sie genügen können den schweren Forderungen der künftigen Generationen. Schwer werden diese Forderungen sein, und was wir heute, insbesondere in Mitteleuropa, als eine große Not empfinden - es ist erst der Anfang von dem, was als die noch größere Not empfunden werden wird. Aber hervorgehen kann aus dieser großen Not, wie aus Leid und Schmerzen immer auch ein Größtes der Menschen hervorgegangen ist, auch das, was wirkliche, auf Wirklichkeit gebaute menschliche Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst ist. Indem wir die Grundlage und den Quell für das Erziehungswesen in dem ganzen Menschenwesen suchen und durch das ganze Menschenwesen auszubilden versuchen werden, möchten wir hineinstellen die erzieherische soziale Frage in die gesamte soziale Frage unserer Zeit.

Einheitsschule - so sagt unsere Zeit! An keine andere als eine Einheitsschule wird herantreten diejenige Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst, die, so wie es angedeutet wurde, aus dem ganzen Menschenwesen heraus ihr Können schöpfen will. Soll die Menschheit künftig sozial gerecht leben können, dann wird sie zunächst sozial richtig ihre Kinder erziehen müssen. Daß das der Fall sein könne, dazu möchten wir ein Kleines beitragen durch die Waldorfschule.

Möge das, was wir vielleicht nur teilweise erreichen werden, wenn wir auch das beste Wollen haben, seine Kraft nicht schon in unserem schwachen Versuch erschöpfen. Möge es Nachfolge finden. Denn wir hegen die Überzeugung: der schwache Versuch kann vielleicht durch Gegnerschaft und Unverstand scheitern; dasjenige aber, was als Kern in dieser Bestrebung liegt, es muß Nachfolge finden. Denn wenn einzieht in das Bewußtsein der ganzen Menschheit, die tragen soll Lehrerschaft und zu erziehende Kinderschaft, eine echte soziale Erziehungs- und Unterrichtskunst, dann wird im ganzen sozialen Leben die Schule in der richtigen Weise drinnenstehen.

Möge ein Kleines zu diesem großen Ziele die Waldorfschule beitragen können.

Rudolf Steiner's speech at the opening of the Waldorf School

Ladies and gentlemen! From Mr. Molt's words, you will have been able to discern the spirit in which he took the initiative to found this Waldorf School of his. You will have heard from his words that this foundation did not arise from some everyday intention, but from the call that resounds so clearly from the development of humanity, especially in our time, and yet is so little heard. While much of this development of humanity can be framed within the context of the social shaping of human destiny and social reconstruction, there is also something in this call that must not be overlooked: above all, it concerns the question of education. And we can be convinced that only those who follow its effect through to the question of education can truly hear the call for social restructuring in the confusing chaos of present-day demands. But if the social call is heard in such a way that one wants to stop all possible social striving before the question of education and then wants to design the institutions of education and teaching themselves in accordance with some social principles that have not sprung from a renewal of the source of education and teaching, then one will certainly be on the wrong path.

For me, ladies and gentlemen, it was a sacred duty to take up the intentions of our friend, Mr. Molt, regarding the founding of the Waldorf School in such a way that this school could be developed from what we may believe to have been gained in the present through spiritual science. This school should truly be placed within the context of what is required of the development of humanity in our present time and for the near future. And truly, everything that ultimately flows from such premises into education and teaching presents itself as a threefold sacred duty.

What would all feeling, knowing, and working in the human community be if it could not be united in the sacred obligation that the teacher, the educator, imposes on himself by establishing, in his special social community with the developing, growing human being, with the child, what can be called in the highest sense a community service! Everything we can ultimately know about human beings and the world only becomes truly fruitful when we can pass it on in a living way to those who will shape the social world, when we can no longer be there with our physical work.

Everything we can achieve artistically only becomes supreme when we can incorporate it into the greatest art, the art in which we are not given dead artistic materials such as clay and paint, but are given living human beings, unfinished, whom we are to shape artistically and educationally into complete human beings to a certain degree.

And is it not ultimately a supreme sacred, religious obligation to nurture the divine-spiritual, which appears anew and reveals itself in every human being who is born, in education? Is this educational service not religious worship in the highest sense of the word? Must not all our most sacred human impulses, especially those devoted to religious feeling, flow together in the altar service we perform by trying to develop the divine spirit of the human being that is revealed as an aptitude in the child in the making!

Science coming to life!
Art coming to life!
Religion coming to life!

That, after all, is education; that, after all, is teaching. If one understands teaching and education in this sense, then one is not inclined to lightly criticize what others have established as principles, intentions, and foundations for the art of education. However, it does not seem to me that anyone can correctly understand what contemporary culture imposes on the art of education, the art of teaching, who cannot realize how necessary a complete spiritual renewal is in our time, who cannot penetratingly recognize how, in the future, something completely different must flow into what we do as teachers and educators than what can flourish in the sphere of what is today called “scientific education.” Today, teachers who are supposed to educate the people of the future are introduced to the mindset and way of thinking of contemporary science. It has never occurred to me to disparage contemporary science in a derogatory manner. I am filled with deep appreciation for all that contemporary science, with its scientific mindset and methods based precisely on knowledge of nature, has achieved in terms of triumphs for human development, and what it will still achieve in the future. But precisely for this reason, it seems to me, what flows out of the current scientific and intellectual mindset cannot be fruitfully transferred to the art of education and teaching, because the greatness of the current scientific and intellectual mindset lies in something other than the treatment of human beings and insight into the human heart and mind. With what springs from the current intellectual mindset, one can make great technical advances; one can also develop a free humanistic attitude in social relationships, but one cannot — as grotesque as it may still sound to the majority of people today — with a scientific attitude that has gradually come to the conviction that the human heart is a pump, the human physical body is a mechanical operation, one cannot, with the feelings and sensations that flow from this science, enliven oneself in such a way that one can be an artistic educator of the developing human being. It is impossible to develop the living art of education precisely from what makes our age so great in its mastery of dead technology.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, a new spirit must intervene in human development, the spirit that we seek through our spiritual science. The spirit that leads us away from seeing the living human being as the bearer of pumping and suction instruments, a mechanism that can only be understood by scientific methods. The conviction must enter into the spiritual consciousness of humanity that spirit lives in all natural existence and that this spirit can be recognized. And so, in the course that preceded our Waldorf enterprise and was intended for teachers, we have attempted to establish an anthropology, an educational science, that can become an art of education, a study of humanity, which reawakens the living in human beings from the dead. The dead – and this is the secret of our present dying culture – the dead makes people knowledgeable, it makes people insightful when they accept it as a law of nature; but it weakens their mind, from which enthusiasm should arise, especially in education. It weakens the will. It does not place people harmoniously in the whole of social existence. We are looking for a science that is not merely science, that is life and feeling itself, and that, at the moment it flows into the human soul as knowledge, simultaneously develops the power to live in it as love, so that it can flow out as active will, as work immersed in the warmth of the soul; as work that is transferred in particular to the living, to the developing human being. We need a new scientific mindset. We need a new spirit, first and foremost for all education, for all teaching.

Ladies and gentlemen, those who think in this way about contemporary education and its necessities do not lightly criticize what has been undertaken with the best of intentions, based on all kinds of worthy impulses from the present and the recent past. What beautiful impulses lie behind the desire to move education out of the chaos and numbing effects of city life and into the countryside, into rural boarding schools. We must acknowledge all the good will that has gone into this endeavor. But, ladies and gentlemen, if these rural boarding schools do not have the living spirit that makes people understandable to other people, that instructs people to treat the developing human being, if this living spirit does not enter these rural boarding schools and everything else that is being established today, then what is dead in the cities will also remain dead in the countryside.

People are thinking about how to structure the school system so that the authority of the teacher no longer has a stifling effect. But if we cannot pour into these schools, which are designed according to this new method, the truly living spirit that makes human beings human, then despite all social pedagogy, schools and educational institutions will remain something dead, something that the present generation cannot lead into the future in the right way.

The conviction that the call that resounds from the development of humanity demands a new spirit for our present time, and that we must bring this new spirit into the educational system above all else, is the conviction that underlies the efforts of this Waldorf school, which should be a model example in this direction. And attempts have been made to listen to what lies unconsciously in the demands of the best, who have struggled in the recent past to work for a recovery, for a regeneration of the art of education and teaching. I am reminded of statements such as those made by Theodor Vogt, a very thoughtful student of Herbart, or his successor Rein, the Jena educator, for they seem to me to spring from a deeper understanding of what is lacking in our present-day education and teaching system. Vogt and Rein sensed this, but did not say it clearly: in order to teach and educate properly, one would like to understand how children actually develop in their early years, from infancy to the time when they start school at around the age of seven; how it then develops primarily during elementary school, from the age of six or seven to the time that has such a powerful influence on the development of the growing human being, up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. The discerning teacher of education asks himself: Can we also understand what forces are at work in human nature that, almost every month, but certainly every year, present us with a different mental, emotional, and physical face? As long as we have no real historical science, say these educators, we cannot know how the individual human being develops. For the individual human being represents in concentrated form what the whole of humanity represents in the course of its historical development.

People such as those mentioned feel that, fundamentally, contemporary science fails when it comes to saying anything about the great laws that govern history, and when it comes to grasping, at the present moment, what springs forth for us from these great, comprehensive historical laws of human development. To want to understand the individual human being from the nature of the food he or she consumes from the first breath to death would be a highly foolish endeavor; but in history, in the understanding of the whole of human development, this is basically how it is viewed today. With human beings, one must know, for example, how a physiological process such as the changing of teeth intervenes in their development. One must know all the mysterious physical processes that take place as a result of a completely new physiology, which current science does not yet have. But one must also know what accompanies this change on a spiritual level. One must know the metamorphoses of human nature. In the case of the individual human being, one cannot deny, even if one is powerless to recognize it, that human beings undergo metamorphoses and transformations from their innermost being. In the historical development of humanity as a whole, this is not acknowledged. The same methods are applied to antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. There is no acceptance that great leaps occur in the historical development of humanity. Looking back at historical development, we find a final leap in the 15th century. Everything that has become part of humanity's feelings, mental image, and will in modern times, as we now know it, only took on its intimate character in civilized humanity since the 15th century. And this civilized humanity differs from that of the 10th or 8th century in much the same way as a twelve-year-old child differs from a child who has not yet reached the age of seven. And what took place as a turning point in the 15th century emerged from the innermost being of the human being, just as the lawful development of tooth replacement emerges from the innermost human nature. And everything we experience today in the 20th century – the striving for individuality, the striving for social organization, the striving for the development of personality – is only a consequence of what the inner forces of history have brought forth since the time indicated.

We can only understand how human beings want to position themselves in the present if we understand the course that human development has taken in the manner described. People such as Vogt and Rein, who have thought deeply about education and have also dealt with practical issues, recognize the impotence of contemporary educational methods based on the impotence of contemporary historical insight. Just as little as one can educate people with that natural science that reduces the heart to a pump, so little can one, as a teacher, place oneself in educational life with a historical insight that does not draw on the living spirit of humanity and see through such metamorphoses as have taken place from the Middle Ages into modern times. We are still living with the effects of what was begun then.

The teacher must—one may scoff at prophetism in our time, but nevertheless one must say: the teacher must in a certain sense be a prophet. For he has to deal with what is to live in the future generation, not in the present.

If one sees through such things from the point of view of true, real historical events, then, my dear audience, they certainly appear somewhat different than they often do to the contemporary human observer. In many respects, the latter grasps what should become life in educational science and the art of education in a very superficial way. Today, the question is being discussed: Should people be educated more in accordance with what human nature itself demands, i.e., should we cultivate more of a humanistic education, or should we give people an education that prepares them for their future profession, for the structure of the state, and the like? For those who want to see things in depth, such discussions are superficial verbal dialectics. Why? Anyone who sees through the emerging generation gets a clear sense of this: people have risen from the womb of history with what they do, with what they think and feel, and with what they aspire to for the future as adults. And what are professions today, what is the structure of the state today, where can people position themselves today: this has sprung from these people themselves! It is not something external to these people! One cannot ask: should people be educated more for their humanity or more for their external profession? Because, when viewed correctly, both are ultimately one and the same!

If we can develop a living understanding of what professions and people are today, then we will also develop an understanding of what previous generations, who are still alive today and have professions, have carried from the womb of humanity into the present.

With the separation of education for humanity and for the profession, we are not enough if we are to act as teachers, as educators. Something must live within us that is not visible externally, not in a profession, not in a state structure, nowhere in the external world. There must be something living within us that will bring the next generations to the outer plane of life. There must be a prophetic connection within us with the coming development of humanity. The educational and artistic feeling, thinking, and willing of a world of teachers stands or falls with this connection. A living pedagogy and didactics of the present must strive to allow that which can be known about the developing human being to flow into the world of teachers like a spiritual lifeblood that, without first being knowledge, becomes art. And only from this living didactics can that which is to enter the child's heart, the child's mind, the child's intellect, emanate.

I cannot go into detail about our educational principles today. I only wanted to show how what should be the art of education and teaching in the present and future should fit into a living, spiritual understanding of the whole of the world and humanity.

Today we talk a lot about the need for a socially structured future for humanity. Why is everything we want to do in this direction to bring about such a future so difficult? Yes, it is so difficult because, especially in our time, social aspirations are opposed by the most antisocial drives and instincts in human development.

When we look back to patriarchal times, times when humanity lived more instinctively than in our age of civilization, we may find many reasons to be proud of the achievements of the present: but older times had more social instincts. Antisocial instincts dominate us. Above all, antisocial instincts must be eradicated through education and teaching. Those who observe more closely will see how education and teaching have gradually become antisocial in nature. However, only those educational and teaching methods can be fruitful in which the teacher, from the moment he enters the classroom, influences the child as if from a unified feeling. There must be a mysterious subconscious bond between the child's soul and the teacher's soul, which passes from the teacher's spirit to the child's spirit. This gives the school its social character. To achieve this, the teacher must be able to truly empathize with the child. What do we often do today? Yes, we try to shape our thinking in such a way that we can explain something to the child. We might say to the child: Look, here you have a pupa, from which a butterfly will emerge. We might show them the butterfly and the chrysalis, perhaps also how one develops from the other. Then we might go on to say: Your immortal soul rests in your body like the butterfly in the chrysalis. And just as the butterfly leaves the chrysalis, so your immortal soul will one day leave your body when you pass through the gate of death. - One has devised a natural image in order to explain something to the child using this image; but one is aware that one has only used a comparison, that one knows the whole thing in a different way. One has made an effort to prepare something for the child. But there is a mysterious law according to which, if one prepares things in this way, one cannot achieve anything properly in teaching. For one can really only convey to the child what one believes in from the depths of one's soul. Only when one has brought oneself to feel that the image of the doll and the butterfly is not an externally cobbled-together comparison, but one that the divine spiritual nature itself presents to us, only at the moment when we can believe in the truth of the image, as the child should believe in it, only at that moment can we succeed in imparting a living spirit to the child. We must speak, we must be able to act out of the spirit of truth. We must never act out of what plays such a large role in cultural development today: out of the spirit of rhetoric. We can only do this if we are connected, deeply connected with everything human; if we can still, even when we have reached the age of white hair, lose ourselves in what the developing human being is in essence. We must be able to understand the developing human being inwardly. Can we still do that today? No, otherwise we would not sit in laboratories and engage in experimental psychology in order to establish rules for how the human mind and memory work. The teacher who considers it essential to go through these external methods in order to get to know human beings kills within himself the living intuitive relationship, the living intuitive connection to human beings. I know in what way experimental pedagogy and experimental psychology are useful to him. But I also know that they are only a symptom of what they are considered most useful for today, namely that we have lost the direct soul path from human being to human being and are searching for it again through external observation in the laboratory. We have become estranged from the human within ourselves and are therefore seeking this human aspect through external means. But if we want to become true educators and teachers, we must be reunited with the human within ourselves. We must develop the whole human being within us, then this whole human being will be related to what we have to shape in the child through education and art. What we as educators gain from experimental science and observation, which is often cultivated today as the basis of educational science, is similar to the endeavor to learn how to eat and drink from nutritional science and its application to humans. We do not need knowledge about how to eat and drink; we need healthy taste development and healthy organs, then we can eat and drink properly. We do not need a pedagogy based on experimental psychology; as educators, we need to awaken the living human nature that experiences the whole child again by entering into a spiritual relationship with it.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we would like to shape this Waldorf school out of a new spirit. And you will also have noticed what this school should not become. In any case, it should not become a school based on a particular worldview. Anyone who says that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science founded the Waldorf school and now wants to bring its worldview into this school—I say this now on the opening day—is not speaking the truth. We have no interest in teaching our “dogmas,” our principles, the content of our worldview to the developing human being. We do not strive to bring about a dogmatic education. We strive to ensure that what we have gained through spiritual science becomes a living educational practice. We strive to have in our methodology, in our didactics, that which can emerge from living spiritual science as a spiritual approach to human beings. Dead science can only produce knowledge, but living spiritual science produces methodology, didactics, and practical skills in a spiritual and soulful sense. We strive to teach and to educate. In relation to all this, we are thoroughly aware of the responsibility that our dear friend, Mr. Molt, spoke of earlier. But we will honestly keep our promise: that the various religious denominations, which are to provide religious instruction on their own initiative, can bring their worldview principles into our school. We just want to wait and see whether, just as we will not interfere in the slightest with what is to be brought into our schools as a worldview, so too will there be no interference with what we, in the most modest way for the time being, want to bring in as an art. For we know that humanity will have to understand sooner or later that an artistic approach to education in the pedagogical, methodological, and didactic sense can arise from a spiritual worldview before it will have a proper understanding of worldview issues and their mutual relationships. So we will not establish a worldview school. We will strive to create an artistic school of education with the Waldorf School.

To you, the parents of the children who are the first to be sent to this school, it may be said that you are not only pioneers for a human personal intention, but also for a cultural demand of our time, and that you will only understand what is now to happen with regard to the Waldorf School if you feel yourselves to be such pioneers.

I cannot yet speak to the children in such understandable language as I can to the parents, but let us promise these children that what we communicate to the parents in words will reach them through deeds that will truly prepare them for life, so that they can meet the difficult demands of future generations. These demands will be difficult, and what we perceive today, especially in Central Europe, as a great hardship is only the beginning of what will be perceived as an even greater hardship. But out of this great hardship, as out of suffering and pain, the greatest of human beings has always emerged, so too can emerge what is real, human education and teaching based on reality. By seeking the foundation and source for education in the whole human being and attempting to educate through the whole human being, we want to place the educational social question within the overall social question of our time.

Uniform schooling – that is what our time demands! Only a unified school system can approach the art of education and teaching that, as has been indicated, seeks to draw its abilities from the whole human being. If humanity is to be able to live in social justice in the future, it will first have to educate its children in a socially correct manner. We would like to make a small contribution to this through the Waldorf school.

May what we may only partially achieve, even with the best of intentions, not exhaust its power in our weak attempt. May it find successors. For we are convinced that the weak attempt may fail due to opposition and misunderstanding, but the core of this endeavor must find successors. For when a genuine social art of education and teaching enters the consciousness of the whole of humanity, which is to be carried by teachers and the children being educated, then the school will have its rightful place in the whole of social life.

May the Waldorf school be able to contribute a little to this great goal.