The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner
Foreword
Rudolf Steiner presented his autobiography to us in the volume The Course of My Life. He commenced to write this in December 1923. It describes the course of his life in its fullness of knowledge and activities, its inward and outward decisions, its spiritual experience and creative impulses, his childhood and youth, his scientific and spiritual research and the development of his work until shortly after the turn of the century. When he had recorded his life up to this decisive turning point, his death in March 1925 brought the autobiography to an end.
The life of a great man can be revealed in its deepest truth only by the person himself. Yet those who follow demand to know, and ought to know, in what manner the course of this great life fulfilled itself after the turn of the century. He began the record of his life, as he himself said, because of the need he felt to counter with objective truth the many distortions, errors, and misinterpretations by those who opposed him and his work. In this he did not escape the common fate of all spiritual leaders who have undertaken to reveal a new source of knowledge and way of life. It becomes thus a duty to venture upon a continuation of the history of events beyond the point where death brought his own account of his life to an end. This endeavor must needs be only a record of facts. Yet it is just the final decades of his life, bringing about as they did the birth of spiritual science and the fulfillment of his life’s work, which already face the danger that many of the experiences and events which characterized his career may fall into oblivion or misinterpretation, if this period is not depicted in the context of its historical development, and thus kept alive in the consciousness of posterity. The attempt must therefore be made, however reluctantly and with a full sense of responsibility, to preserve in a biographical record the significant facts of that portion of this career between the turn of the century and the life’s end. The following pages are devoted, then, to the endeavor to avert the danger that the creator of spiritual science should suffer the fate which has overtaken other great ones in history whose lives and deeds have been lost in the impenetrable fog of past ages.
In the foreword to one of Rudolf Steiner’s works, Frau Marie Steiner wrote: “For those approaching spiritual science, every one of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture courses appears of the very greatest importance, not only in its content, but also as regards the chronological order, through which alone the living organic method of this development can be appreciated.” To record to the best of our ability the chronology of his words and deeds has been our endeavor in the following pages.
Even today the student of Rudolf Steiner’s books and lectures is already confronted by a serious difficulty. In addition to the books and other writings which he himself prepared for publication, he gave approximately 6,000 lectures, of which many are preserved in transcripts unrevised by the author. The reader, whether of today or the future, who chances upon one or another of these will be faced with the question: In what important historical and life connection did Rudolf Steiner select just this or that theme, complete this or the other step, or come to a certain decision? There will arise the wish to know at what precise point of time in the course of this life a certain lecture course was given, a lecture tour undertaken, a certain expression coined, an action taken, or a fresh impulse set in motion, and thus to determine the inward systematic ascent in the course of this life.
We have striven to avoid two dangers: one, the method chosen by many biographers of depicting a life only in comprehensive pictures, synopses, or surveys, without revealing the separate concrete steps, phases of knowledge and varieties of events through the phenomena themselves. For this reason dates as well as data have been given for the various life stages, lectures, journeys, sojourns, and decisions made by Rudolf Steiner. Difficult as it has been even at present to establish the exact time and place of many an event, the importance of this matter of time and place is measurable by the toilsome preliminary research which has been necessary for its exact determination. We feel justified in claiming that this has in large measure been achieved.
The lives and activities of other personalities of Rudolf Steiner’s circle have been woven into the picture so far as this has seemed relevant and useful for the sake of lending color to the total effect. But, naturally, it is not possible to include all shades of color in a picture of this kind; hence only typical examples have been chosen from the wealth of such available material. To one who might turn the leaves in search of some particular name or subject of special interest, let it be said that the book aims exclusively at being a biography of Rudolf Steiner. To this central theme, everything of more accidental character has been subordinated. The selection of the numerous quotations has been determined essentially with a view to showing by characteristic examples where, in the evolution of this lifework, in the methodical extension of research and imparting its results to his fellow men, a new motif emerged; where a thought was first uttered or appeared in a new aspect through metamorphosis and enhancement. Quotations have been selected in particular where the spiritual plan and guidance underlying this life-course and the spiritual Movement inaugurated by it comes out in Rudolf Steiner’s own words.
Hence it has been necessary also to avoid a second danger,—namely, not to convey merely a mass of dates, names of places, and quotations, and lose in this way a proper perspective, but to cause the spiritual connections and stages of development to appear in the field of vision and bring to focus the significant rhythms and unique wisdom-filled direction in the life and the work of Rudolf Steiner.
For the “architecture” of this life is a work of art, perceptible in its phenomena. Ever anew the contemplation of it guides the beholder to the insight that nothing in it is due to chance but, on the contrary, all is shaped according to plan, based upon the laws in the evolution of spiritual history and of this unique personality. For this reason, it would be wrong merely to turn the leaves or open at single pages of the book of such a life. What matters lies in the essence of the whole, in the consistency in the unfolding of this life, in the mastery with which a great individuality consummated the building of his earthly life and spiritual creation.
Rudolf Steiner revealed in his own words and actions the spirit-archetype of a true humanity. The contemplation of his career provides us with a model by which we may follow him on the path toward this goal. His great pupil and friend, the poet Christian Morgenstern, once wrote:
“The real activity of Rudolf Steiner, creative in the loftiest meaning of humanity, will only be unveiled by the historian who will be called upon to write the story of this lofty life. Then will it be realized with the utmost astonishment what has happened in quietude for the human being as such and what irreplaceable platform and support have been given to him through the lifework of this spirit while this century has been rushing farther and farther into the terrible deserts of materialism.”
This demand on the historian will find its complete fulfillment only in the distant future. Nevertheless, in service to the task of preserving for posterity from documents and memory the facts of this life-course from the turn of the century to the death, and in the hope of cooperating in creating a picture of this great creator and pioneer, the attempt has been made in this biography.
Our thoughts go out in gratitude to Frau Marie Steiner, who gave so much help through the important task of publishing so many of Rudolf Steiner’s works and through narrating to me so many details of his life, which have been incorporated in these pages.
Grateful thanks are due also to Albert Steffen, who sketched in his Meetings with Rudolf Steiner and In Memoriam Rudolf Steiner his portrait of the “friend of God and guide of mankind,” and who is constantly creative in the spirit of Rudolf Steiner. I am indebted to Dr. Ita Wegman for valuable help through contributions from her personal experiences with Rudolf Steiner. Dr. Elizabeth Vreede made available valuable material through her painstaking work in caring for the archives. Further sources of information are referred to in the text.
For very understanding help in determining dates and in examining and correcting the manuscript of this volume, I am especially indebted to Hans and Sophie Schmidt, of Dornach. Lists of publications are to be found in reference works compiled by G. S. Picht, Guenther Wachsmuth; E. Frobose and W. Teichert; and H. Schmidt. Most of the books and printed lectures have been published by Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Goetheanum, Dornach. For photographic illustrations, I have to thank O. and G. Rietmann-Haak, Dr. O. Schmiedl, G. v. Heydebrand, E. Gmelin, Jeck, O. Wyrsch, M. Fellerer, the kind gifts of Frau Marie Steiner, Countess Astrid Bethusy-Huc, Frau Martha Thut, Dr. Grete KirchnerBockholt, Dr. F. W. Zeylmans v. Emmichoven. The specimen of handwriting was a personal gift from Rudolf Steiner to me. Through gathering together all that had been received in the way of notes and reports, memories and experiences, with the help of friends, through my own personal experiences as an eye-witness, and through reverent exploration of this inexhaustible source and flow of life and work, it became possible to pass on this effort at portrayal to posterity— to loyal hands, for further research and discovery.