Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School
GA 298
27 March 1924, Stuttgart
Address at a monthly assembly
Dear children, dear teachers, and dear parents who are here today! Each year when Easter comes, it is a very special festival for the school, a special festival for children to experience and a special festival for all of human existence. This festival is anticipated in the beautiful language that nature now begins to speak to us.
Of course nature is always beautiful, and anyone who is sensitive to it can find beauty in it even in winter, when the snow makes its way up the mountains and covers the ground and the trees in a way that is almost sad. It is beautiful then, too, but it is cold outside, and that makes our souls cold and reminds us of how often life chills our hearts and souls.
But then in spring, as Easter approaches, the seeds sprout and the flowers spring up out of the ground. The March violets are a greeting from the sunlight and the world-spirit itself. And the green reminds us of our hopes in life, of what we wish to have from life. The color of hope, of wishing, and of joy in life is there in the green.
Turning from nature to our school of life, because we must say that a school of life is what the Waldorf School intends to be—and now I am speaking to you, dear children—the fact that life is now beginning to unfold outside makes Easter a festival that has a great effect on the school, on the children and on the teachers and on the parents, who are the most important thing standing behind the school’s children and faculty. At Easter-time, the new children enter our school.
This is when the teachers see the life task they face in educating these new children. This is when a wonderful soul-relationship has to come about between the teachers and the parents who are entrusting their children to them. At Easter-time, for a number of children and teachers, something begins that will continue for years as these teachers grow close to these children whom they love so dearly.
But at the same time, there is something different associated with Easter. It is also the time for graduation from school, as is now the case with us for many of the eighth graders and all of the twelfth graders. This is the time when their teachers are heavy-hearted, because they have grown close to these children in soul and in spirit. It is also the time when we can see the heavy hearts of the children who must now leave this school, which was a preparatory school for life, a school where everything possible was meant to be done to show the hopeful side of life. They must now leave this bright, beautiful summertime of their lives and go out into an existence that is often raw and hard, where there is so much pain and so many joys to experience. Life has a lot to give us—joy and sadness and problems—and we must cope with it. And when the festival of Easter is approaching, as it is now, when we turn our gaze to the coming of Easter, we are reminded of how this festival is a very incisive one in the hearts and minds of students and teachers.
In welcoming their new students, teachers look toward everything that is to come. They feel their tasks as teachers especially strongly now, as they turn to the parents of these children and realize that these men and women are showing their confidence in them by bringing them their nearest and dearest. This is something meaningful that should enter the teachers’ hearts and be very deeply felt. The children come in, joyfully looking forward to what they will be graced with through their teachers love and through everything that human beings have brought forth.
Then we must also be aware of the departures, for one or the other student will have to leave this school. That is when we get the other feeling, a feeling of mixed wistfulness and sorrow in many respects. Especially for teachers, this engenders a very wistful sorrow in their hearts and minds, because they must now send the children they have grown to love out into life. These children must now seek for themselves what they and their teachers had sought together in school. But to this is added the satisfaction of being able to say as a teacher, “If you have succeeded, then they will take with them the strengths that you wanted to give them.” This thought is what makes graduation beautiful for the teachers and makes their Easter a happy one.
It is one of the nicest things about being a teacher to hear from the children when they have been out there in life for a while, sometimes years later, and to find out what has become of them—how they have found their place in life, what good fortune they have experienced, how they learned to bear sorrow. When these messages from the students make their way back into the school when the students are practically grown up, perhaps, and are firmly rooted in life, these are experiences that really give the teachers strength and reanimate them, even if they have been teaching for a long time.
If we make ourselves aware of everything that is working into the school at Easter-time, we get a feeling—and this is a feeling that you too should get, dear boys and girls—for what this time in school signifies in a whole human life between birth and death. It is a real summertime, life’s sun time, and Easter in particular, as it is now starting to happen in nature, reminds us of it.
Then the teachers realize how happy they are to have the confidence of people like the parents who entrust their children to them. Because of all the effort they have made, the teachers are then really able to experience this: For years and years the parents have entrusted what is dearest to them to us in full confidence, and the school is fortunate in having been able to not only uphold this confidence but also to justify it, so that the parents can see their children leaving school, full of hope on entering life, with the same satisfaction that they had in trustingly sending them off to school for the first time.
All this is present in our hearts and souls at this time of year. I merely wanted to say a few words to impress it on the hearts and souls of the students and teachers.
All this will come about if something that must be present becomes a general practice among the students, namely love and devotion toward the faculty and devotion toward what you are learning through this school. If the right love prevails in the Waldorf School among parents, teachers, and students, then in what love can do when people are to be led through life by all that is beautiful and grand, this life will be able to prevail and to give people the forces they need.
This is why I have always asked you if you have succeeded in learning to really love your teachers. If you can learn to love them even more, it will be possible for everything to well up out of this love as if from a spring of fresh water. Then you will learn everything, and the Easter season will give you all it can. I would like to ask you, “Do you love your teachers?” [They all shout, “Yes!”] That is nice of you. Now, in this love that has developed between you, look at the ones who are now leaving school and resolve to follow them through life with your loving glances, and a wonderful relationship of love and friendship will be able to develop. And then the Waldorf School will be like a sun, able to ray out beautifully into life.
Ansprache Bei Einer Monatsfeier
Meine lieben Kinder, verehrte Lehrer und Lehrerinnen und verehrte Eltern, soweit sie anwesend sind! Alljährlich, wenn die Ostern kommen, dann ist ja für die Schule, für das kindliche Erleben und für alles menschliche Dasein ein ganz besonderes Fest. Es wird dieses Fest schon angedeutet durch die schöne Sprache, welche die Natur beginnt zu uns zu sprechen.
Zwar ist die Natur immer schön, und wer für diese Schönheit Sinn hat, kann auch diese Schönheit finden, wenn im Winter Schnee fast traurig die Erde bedeckt, die Bäume bedeckt, bis in die Berge hinauf sich zieht. Auch das ist schön. Aber es ist ja äußerlich kalt. Es macht auch die Seele recht kalt und erinnert, wie oft das Leben Herz und Seele kalt macht.
Aber dann im Frühling, wenn Ostern herankommt, dann sprossen die Saaten, die Blumen aus der Erde heraus. Die Märzveilchen sind ein Gruß von dem Sonnenlicht und Weltengeist selbst. Und das Grün erinnert uns an das, was wir zu hoffen haben von dem Leben, was wir wünschen möchten von dem Leben. Die Farbe der Hoffnung, des Wunsches, der Lebensfreude ist im Grünen enthalten.
Wenn wir dann von der Natur hineinschauen in unsere Lebensschule, denn eine Lebensschule will die Waldorfschule sein, so muß man auch sagen - ich spreche zu euch, meine lieben Kinder! - dieses Osterfest ist schon einmal durch die beginnende Entfaltung des Lebens ein recht stark wirksames Fest für die Schule, für die Kinder- und Lehrerschaft und für dasjenige, was als das wichtigste hinter Kinderschaft und Lehrerschaft der Schule steht, die Eltern. Da kommen zur Österzeit die neuen Kinder hinein in unsere Schule.
Da sehen die Lehrer das, was als eine Lebensaufgabe ihnen zufällt, in der Erziehung dieser neuen Kinder. Da ist es, daß dieses schöne seelische Verhältnis eintreten muß zwischen Lehrer und Eltern, die vertrauensvoll dem Lehrer ihre Kinder hingeben, und es beginnt für eine Anzahl von Kindern und Lehrern in dieser Österzeit dasjenige, was sich dann durch Jahre hindurch fortsetzt, das Zusammenwachsen mit den Kindern, die sie so innig lieben. .
Aber wiederum ein anderes ist verbunden mit der Österzeit zugleich. Da kommt, wie es bei uns jetzt für viele Kinder der achten Klasse und sämtliche Schüler der zwölften Klasse der Fall ist, da kommt der Abschied von der Schule. Da wird es den Lehrern recht schwer ums Herz, denn sie sind mit den Kindern seelisch und geistig zusammengewachsen. Da kann man sehen, wie es den Kindern schwer ums Herz wird, den Schülern und Schülerinnen, die hinaus müssen aus der Schule, die eine Vorbereitungsschule für das Leben war, in der alles getan werden sollte, was das Leben von seiner hoffnungsvollen Seite zeigt; die hinaus müssen von dieser schönen, hellen Sommerszeit des Lebens in das oft recht rauhe, harte Dasein, wo so viel Schmerz erlebt werden muß und manche Freude. Das Leben gibt viel: Freude, Trauer und Kummer. Wir müssen darüber hinauskommen. Dann, wenn das Österfest naht, wie es jetzt der Fall ist, wenn wir hinlenken den Blick auf die kommende Östern, da werden wir so recht erinnert, wie dieses Fest ein tief einschneidendes ist in das Schüler- und Lehrergemüt.
Der Lehrer schaut hin, wenn er die neuen Schüler empfängt, auf alles dasjenige, was wird. Er fühlt seine Aufgabe als Lehrer ganz besonders intensiv, wenn er nun zu den lieben Eltern der Kinder hinblicken kann und sich sagen muß: Diese Persönlichkeiten bringen mir ihr Vertrauen entgegen für dasjenige, was ihnen das Allerteuerste geworden ist im Leben. Das ist etwas Bedeutsames, denn das soll besonders tief empfunden in die Herzen der Lehrerschaft einziehen. Die Kinder kommen herein, freudig erwartend dasjenige, was ihnen durch die Liebe der Lehrer, durch das, was die Menschen hervorgebracht haben, werden soll.
Dann wird wiederum hingesehen werden müssen auf den Abschied, daß dieser oder jener Schüler von der Schule hat weg müssen. Dann kommt das andere Gefühl, ein Gefühl, das vermischt ist mit Wehmut und Trauer in vieler Beziehung, das insbesondere im Lehrergemüt eine recht wehmütige Trauer auslöst. Denn die Kinder, die man liebgewonnen hat, die man geführt hat, man muß sie hinausschicken ins Leben. Sie müssen dasjenige, was man mit ihnen gesucht hat, selbst suchen. Da fällt die Befriedigung hinein, die sich sagen kann: Wenn es dir gelungen ist, dann gibst du die Kräfte, die du hast geben wollen, die gibst du ihnen mit. - Und das gibt ja auch eine schöne Ostern, gerade dann wird der Abschied von der Schule auch für die Lehrer zu etwas Schönem.
Zu dem Schönsten des Lehrers gehört es ja, wenn er oftmals nach Jahren, wenn die Kinder draußen gewesen sind im Leben, hört von dem oder jenem, was er geworden ist im Leben. Wie er sich hineingestellt hat ins Dasein, welches Glück er erfahren hat, wie er den Schmerz hat ertragen gelernt. Wenn so von den Kindern Botschaften zurückkommen wiederum in die Schule, vielleicht wenn die Schüler schon fast ganz erwachsen geworden sind, fest darinstehen im Leben, dann sind das die Empfindungen, die insbesondere dem Lehrer recht Kraft geben, die dann auch, wenn er schon lange seines Amtes in der Schule gewaltet hat, ihm noch Rüstigkeit geben.
Und wenn man sich das alles vergegenwärtigt, was da hereinspielt in die Schule zur Osterzeit, dann kommt das Gefühl, das kommen sollte bei euch, meine lieben Kinder und Schüler und Schülerinnen, das kommen sollte: Was für das gesamte Menschenleben zwischen Geburt und Tod bedeutet diese Schulzeit! Sie ist eine richtige Sommerzeit, Sonnenzeit des Lebens, an die uns insbesondere, weil sie da beginnt in der Natur, Ostern erinnert.
Die Lehrer sagen sich da: Glücklich sind wir, daß wir das Vertrauen von Menschen besitzen, wie das der Eltern, die uns ihre Kinder übergeben. Dann werden die Lehrer so recht fühlen können - und die Art und Weise, wie gestrebt wird, die möchte das fühlen lassen: Durch Jahre hindurch haben uns die Eltern ihr Liebstes überlassen, vertrauensvoll haben sie es uns übergeben, und das wird das Glück der Schule sein, daß wir dieses Vertrauen nicht nur erhalten, sondern gerechtfertigt haben, daß die Eltern mit derselben Befriedigung ihre Kinder Abschied nehmen sehen voller Hoffnung, mit der sie ins Leben eintreten, daß die Eltern mit ebensolcher Befriedigung entgegennehmen ihre abgehenden Kinder und Schüler, wie sie sie im Vertrauen in die Schule hineingeschickt haben. Das alles tritt vor unsere Seele, vor unser Gemüt, gerade in dieser Zeit. Ich wollte es mit ein paar Worten in die Seelen, in die Gemüter der Schüler und Schülerinnen und der Lehrerschaft hineinsenken.
Alles das wird aber, wenn es allseitig beachtet wird, bei Kindern und Schülern dasjenige, was da sein muß: Hingabe und Liebe zur Lehrerschaft, Hingabe an dasjenige, was durch die Schule erarbeitet wird. Wenn da waltet in der Waldorfschule die rechte Liebe zwischen Eltern und Lehrern, Kindern und Schülern, dann wird in dem, was die Liebe tun kann, wenn der Mensch durch alles Schöne und Große durch das Leben geleitet werden soll, dann wird dieses Leben walten können, wird die dem Menschen notwendigen Kräfte geben können.
Darum habe ich euch immer gefragt, ob es euch gelungen ist, eure Lehrer recht lieb zu gewinnen. Könnt ihr sie noch lieber gewinnen, dann wird alles aus dieser Liebe wie aus einem frischen Quell kommen können. Dann werdet ihr alles erarbeiten, dann wird die Österzeit alles geben können. Ich möchte euch fragen: Liebt ihr eure Lehrer und Lehrerinnen? [Alle rufen: Ja!] Das ist schön von euch. Dann, blickt ihr in dieser Liebe, die ihr zwischen euch entwickelt, blickt ihr hin auf diejenigen, welche die Schule verlassen, nehmt euch vor, sie zu verfolgen im Leben mit euren liebenden Blicken: und es wird sich ein schönes Verhältnis der Liebe und Freundschaft entwickeln können. Und es wird die Waldorfschule schön hinausstrahlen können ins Leben wie ein Sonnenhaftes.
Address at a monthly celebration
My dear children, esteemed teachers, and esteemed parents, as far as you are present! Every year, when Easter comes, it is a very special celebration for the school, for the children's experience, and for all human existence. This celebration is already hinted at by the beautiful language that nature begins to speak to us.
Nature is always beautiful, and those who have a sense for this beauty can also find it when snow covers the earth and the trees almost sadly in winter, stretching up into the mountains. That is also beautiful. But it is cold outside. It also makes the soul quite cold and reminds us how often life makes the heart and soul cold.
But then in spring, when Easter approaches, the seeds sprout and the flowers emerge from the earth. The March violets are a greeting from the sunlight and the spirit of the world itself. And the green reminds us of what we can hope for from life, what we would like to wish for from life. The color of hope, of desire, of joie de vivre is contained in green.
When we then look from nature into our school of life, for the Waldorf school wants to be a school of life, then we must also say – I am speaking to you, my dear children! – this Easter is already a very powerful festival for the school, for the children and teachers, and for those who are the most important people behind the children and teachers of the school: the parents. At Easter time, new children come into our school.
The teachers see this as their life's work in the education of these new children. This is when that beautiful spiritual relationship must develop between teachers and parents, who trustingly entrust their children to the teachers, and for a number of children and teachers, Easter marks the beginning of something that will continue for years to come: growing together with the children they love so dearly.
But there is something else connected with Easter at the same time. As is now the case for many of our eighth-grade children and all of our twelfth-grade students, it is time to say goodbye to school. This makes it very difficult for the teachers, because they have grown together with the children spiritually and mentally. One can see how heavy the hearts of the children become, the pupils who have to leave school, which was a preparatory school for life, where everything was done to show the hopeful side of life; who have to leave this beautiful, bright summertime of life for the often harsh, hard existence where so much pain and some joy must be experienced. Life gives us much: joy, sorrow, and grief. We must overcome these. Then, when Easter approaches, as is now the case, when we turn our gaze to the coming Easter, we are reminded how deeply this festival affects the hearts of students and teachers alike.
When the teacher welcomes new students, he looks at everything that will happen. He feels his task as a teacher particularly intensely when he can now look at the children's dear parents and say to himself: These personalities place their trust in me for what has become most precious to them in life. This is something significant, because it should be felt particularly deeply in the hearts of the teaching staff. The children come in, joyfully anticipating what will become of them through the love of their teachers, through what human beings have brought forth.
Then, once again, we must look at the departure, that this or that student has had to leave school. Then comes the other feeling, a feeling mixed with melancholy and sadness in many respects, which triggers a rather wistful sadness, especially in the teacher's mind. For the children whom one has grown fond of, whom one has guided, one must send them out into life. They must seek for themselves what one has sought with them. This brings satisfaction, which can be expressed as follows: if you have succeeded, then you give them the strength that you wanted to give them. And that also makes for a beautiful Easter, because then leaving school becomes something beautiful for the teachers as well.
One of the most beautiful things for a teacher is when, often years later, when the children have been out in the world, they hear about what has become of them in life. How they have settled into existence, what happiness they have experienced, how they have learned to endure pain. When messages like this come back to the school from the children, perhaps when the students are almost grown up and firmly established in life, these are the feelings that give the teacher in particular a great deal of strength, which then, even after he has been teaching at the school for a long time, still give him vigor.
And when you consider everything that comes into play at school during Easter, then the feeling that should come to you, my dear children and students, should come: What does this school time mean for the entire human life between birth and death! It is a real summertime, a sunny time of life, which Easter reminds us of, especially because it begins in nature.
Teachers say to themselves: We are fortunate to have the trust of people such as parents who entrust their children to us. Then teachers will be able to feel it properly – and the way in which they strive will make them feel it: over the years, parents have entrusted us with their most precious possessions, they have entrusted them to us with confidence, and it will be the school's good fortune that we have not only maintained this trust, but justified it, that the parents see their children off with the same satisfaction, full of hope as they enter life, that the parents receive their departing children and students with the same satisfaction with which they sent them to school in trust. All this comes before our soul, before our mind, especially at this time. I wanted to sink it into the souls, into the minds of the students and the teaching staff with a few words.
But if all this is taken into account on all sides, it will become what must be there in children and students: devotion and love for the teaching staff, devotion to what is achieved through school. If the right love prevails in the Waldorf school between parents and teachers, children and pupils, then in what love can do, when human beings are guided through life by all that is beautiful and great, then this life will be able to prevail and give human beings the strength they need.
That is why I have always asked you whether you have succeeded in truly loving your teachers. If you can love them even more, then everything will flow from this love as from a fresh spring. Then you will achieve everything, then Easter will be able to give everything. I would like to ask you: Do you love your teachers? [Everyone calls out: Yes!] That is wonderful of you. Then, in this love that you develop among yourselves, look at those who are leaving school, resolve to follow them in life with your loving gaze: and a beautiful relationship of love and friendship will be able to develop. And the Waldorf school will be able to shine out beautifully into life like a sun.