The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The discussion ties in with the memorandum written by Roman Boos, “Principles of an Objective Development Policy”.

Rudolf Steiner: People are demanding something more specific than is given in the memorandum, at least in political terms. When I wrote my memorandum on the threefold order, it would still have been possible to maintain the old conditions to some extent and simply to expel the economic and spiritual conditions from the political part. Today, however, one has to reckon with the fact that basically everything old has gone. The rights that still exist today will disappear, including private rights. One will have to reckon with an absolute carte blanche. Even today, there are no realizable rights left. The whole system of councils, which is a provisional arrangement but nevertheless plays a role today, has come about through generatio aequivoca, it has sprung up, it cannot be derived from old rights. What rights are there today? Private rights to land, to the means of production, patents, monopolies. That is there. But it cannot be realized. At present, only twelve express trains are to run in Germany. That means that so and so much is not available in the way of real transport documents. The entire state right to build railways thus exists only on paper. The rights of the state have been reduced to absurdity. All these things should have been anticipated under the old conditions. Nothing remains of them.

The following approach should be taken: when calling for democracy as a political system, one should not rely too heavily on the democracy of foreign countries. Rather, the following must be expressed: the major damage has actually only occurred in the course of the last five, six, seven decades, by usurping what does not belong to the state. The idea of universal suffrage, which was only adopted by Bismarck, came from a completely different state system. At the time, this right was not conceived incorrectly. Today, with regard to the structure of the state (political system), one could go back to it. One could draw attention to a modern reform of this right to vote. It would have to be pointed out that under all circumstances, when the economic and spiritual organism are integrated into the state, universal suffrage will not work. If you throw that out, however, then the state really only has those tasks that everyone can help decide. Only then is the possibility of a general right to vote created. - Likewise, it would have to be said that the state has the full right to make demands of its officials. The state must be able to say: I will only accept into my organization those who meet these and these conditions. But it must not train the people itself for this. It could organize examinations for its civil servants. The scholastic training would fall to the spiritual culture. The state would only have rights of claim. It does not employ those who have no knowledge. The right to vote would also have to be restricted in this way. Those who have not gone through elementary school are not allowed to vote. One need only tell the leaders that this would not make a practical difference in Germany. It would only be a rearrangement of the circumstances. (The fact that so many votes were cast for the Center Party is a positive damage that cannot be underestimated.) One must insist on the same, general right to vote (that it be secret is not essential); but the illiterate must be excluded. The Social Democrats will also agree to this.

It must be said that these very practical things can be traced back to anthroposophical spiritual science. People need to realize that either they will accept this or they will suffer shipwreck.

Regarding the details of the “principles”

p. 1: “If we look unclouded at the present-day scene of devastation, we see that we have succumbed to the superior strength of the enemies because we have not been able to counter their physical and spiritual weapons with weapons of equal caliber.

Rudolf Steiner: We would have had the weapons. Our weapons would have been superior if we had countered the Wilson program with our own. Our physical weapons would not have been unequal if we had had spiritual weapons. It is no use saying: Wilson is wrong and the Entente is lying. — We have been defeated because faith in our own spirit has disappeared.

It should also be said that the spiritual weapons of the West are often corpses of thoughts.

Principles: Quote Balfour: “The Germans win the battles, we win the war.

Rudolf Steiner: The battles were only seemingly won. The war could not be won by battles.

Principles: “... the awakened powers of the fully thinking, feeling and willing human being must set about the work of building up, not to surpass others, but to strengthen Germanness within themselves in such a way that they cannot be thrown into economic or spiritual bondage by any power in the world.

Rudolf Steiner: Is there any possibility at all of preventing this enslavement? You can always conquer Germanness, purely in a military sense. You can't promise that. You have to work towards something else: when the tripartite division has been carried out, the other states will be in such a relationship that they will harm themselves if they attack such a state. Today, because the tripartite division has not been carried out, the most nonsensical comparisons are made. For example, it is said that the siege of Paris and the blockade of Germany are to be valued equally. This is like saying that the head and the leg are the same weight. It is necessary to differentiate; because only in this way do differences in value become apparent. One should not say, “to consolidate Germanness in such a way that...” but rather, “to bring Germanness into such an economic and intellectual interrelationship with all the other powers that no other power would want to enslave it because it would thereby harm itself.” If one limits the matter to a single country in the real conditions of life, then one remains in a shell. What is urgently needed today, but is not even being considered, is that Germany should enter the real peace negotiations as a tripartite entity. A manifesto should be issued declaring that we are not acting as representatives of 'Germany', which no longer exists, but as representatives of:

1. a political entity that wants to form,

2. an economic organism, with which opportunistic talk is to be held,

3. an intellectual organism.

One should not put politicians forward, but one should select people according to the principle of threefolding and then put them forward.

Question: How can this be realized?

Rudolf Steiner: You would have to have a number of personalities from the whole of Germany. They would have to issue a proclamation of the German people, so that foreign countries would know what the will of the German people is. It would have to be known that this is the answer to Wilson's program. It is important to have a following, even if it is small.

Emil Molt: Should this matter not be dealt with in Stuttgart in the form of a meeting, with the intellectual originator himself explaining the whole matter? It is beyond our strength to do the matter from the beginning.

Rudolf Steiner: I expect a great deal from having a certain following behind me, which first has to be created. I want to draw your attention to a phenomenon: if you have followed the mood in the Entente in recent years, you will have seen the enormous role played by the manifesto of 93 intellectuals. Today, all you need is to have a good 90 people signed up to such a thing. I would like to be able to say in Zurich that so and so many people are behind me, for example 90 men.

In 1916, I told the man who was Ludendorff's right-hand man that he should give me the opportunity to work for official Germany in Switzerland. This was thwarted at the last moment by Ludendorff because I am not German. At that time, it was enough to be able to say: official Germany is behind me. Today it would be good to be able to say: so-and-so many people are behind me. You need 90 signatures from different parts of the Reich. Then sensible people abroad will say to themselves: at last there are some people who want something real. Because they know that they themselves are facing a short reprieve.

I could give you a kind of draft by the end of the week. Based on this rally, a meeting could then take place in Stuttgart.

They should not feel like amateurs (in reference to a comment by Emil Molt), but like the first masters. Today, it takes more than one person to advance such a cause, but a hundred can do it.

I am convinced that people could be found among the less compromised labor leaders who would be open to such ideas. But I didn't want them for abroad. Labor leaders would be good inside Germany. Among the 90 to 100 should also be simple people: “N.N., previously active in the printers‘ union, the metalworkers’ union, etc. in X.” Our member Fischer in Hanover, a Social Democrat, would certainly be elected. There will only be those among the nameless who can be found.

Ehrenberg wrote confused articles in the “Vossische Zeitung”, but they do show good approaches. Eisner would be favorable. Lerchenfeld would no longer have to try to play hide and seek. Foerster would work well. Rade and Rittelmeyer would be good. As few professors as possible.

Principles: “In the field of political life, realistic thinking demands the unreserved recognition of the fact that the political forms of the West have won the decisive victory...”

Rudolf Steiner: The actual fact is this: in the West, or in the English-speaking areas, victory in this field has been achieved by the fact that, due to the peculiarity of the population, economic life has absorbed the political. They are economic entities, not states. Because today the economy plays this role, these states have had the opportunity to push through their political form because economic life predominates in them. They are economic entities in the guise of state entities. This should be reflected in the wording. — We must not base our political structure on Western democracy, but on Lassalle's ideas. It is only because Lassalle erroneously conflated everything that nothing came of it.

Principles: “... in the course of the last century, there was an increasing overgrowth of production compared to consumption...”

Rudolf Steiner: This is contestable. It is not a question of an overgrowth of production over consumption, but of the fact that pricing and the formation of the value of the goods have been based on production and not on consumption.

“Principles” deal with the concepts of “private property” and “free labor contract”.

Rudolf Steiner: If we think realistically in this area, we only need to create external recognition of what is there. In reality, the correct approach in the world economy is for each person to own that part of the land and the means of production that results when the total amount of land and the means of production is divided by the population. It turns out that the wealth of the people does depend on the population, in that a piece of land is better utilized when it is smaller. When the population in a territory increases, each person ideally becomes the owner of a smaller piece of land. Private property cannot be eliminated from the world, but only masked. I do not want all to become proletarians, but everyone to be a proprietor, of what belongs to him. Private property should not be abolished, but put on such a basis that its beneficial effect works collectivistically. The entrepreneur must have the private profit. The rest comes into consideration at the tax. The “right to the full yield of labor” eliminates all free movement. It is necessary that the entrepreneur has a certain added value. The fact that private property has an effect on the whole in terms of its utility is achieved through tax regulation.

Only expenses are taxed. Determining the tax is the responsibility of the political authority. The entrepreneur does not pay according to his property, but according to his expenses. If, for example, he has 100 workers, he pays tax for each quota he pays to them. The tax on expenses must be implemented radically. No tax on income or property, only tax on expenses. Then all the harm of private property will be eliminated. The harmfulness of profit will also be eliminated if the person in question is forced to pay a certain amount of tax to hire 100 workers. Then the fact that he is able to hire 100 workers will benefit the community. It must be necessary to have, so to speak, a reserve fund for the progress of civilization. Then it is also not necessary for the spiritual workers to join the trust organism, as proposed in the “Principles”. This organism, like everything merely economic, leads to a dead end. Spiritual production, including factory management, is in the realm of the free spiritual life. This must have the possibility of having the proceeds, which remain when everything else is taken care of, at its completely free disposal. Only by allowing complete freedom in the spiritual realm can you create the possibility of true progress. Every economic body leads to a dead end. The only way out of this is through freedom in the spirit. We must always admit this to ourselves. In the realm of spiritual production, I can do no other than create for the general good.

Question Emil Molt: But what if the entrepreneur uses his benefit for himself?

Rudolf Steiner: This danger is easy to prevent. Such action is not isolated. There is taxation of expenses for such expenditures, for example, for rent. Taxes must be kept very liquid, for example, large rent taxes for larger rental claims. The harmfulness arises only at the moment when the expense is made. Example: In the time when there is still primitive exploitation of the sea, someone invents a boat with which ten times more can be caught; that is entirely based on his invention. He thereby increases the prosperity of all those who work in the area where he utilizes the invention. He can only become harmful if he is not bought out, if he exploits. If he only leaves what he earns, it will never be economically harmful. The misers are the least dangerous social boarders. All those who hide countless money in their straw bag do no harm.

Interjection Emil Molt: What happens after the miser's death?

Rudolf Steiner: Money undergoes the same process as goods. You can no longer wear a coat in 14 to 15 years. Simply because the money bears the stamp “1903”, it must become worthless in 1918. This should become law. The important thing is the many consequences that arise from the tripartite division. Money is only the representative value for goods.

Emil Molt: Gold and silver?

Rudolf Steiner: There is no need for metallic money any more. At least it has no advantage.

Interjection Emil Molt: Would the metal money also have to bear the stamp?

Rudolf Steiner: When the matter is beyond the first stages, it will be a matter of creating a comparative scale for the goods. Today everything is corrupted because we have an ideal comparative scale. We need a real one, the covetous value of which is indisputable. For example, a banknote means so many loaves of bread. It would then be necessary to have an agreement between the three areas, between the economic and state bodies, that what is a sign for goods, what is money, is just as stinky as the goods themselves.

Such an economic system would initially be suitable for Central Europe and the East. The West would not accept it. One has to reckon with the fact that one only deals with the West as a whole, on the basis of treaties. But I cannot imagine that it will be any different. We will only deal with the West through goods. Because they will take away our money, for example the gold treasure.

Taxation today is based on the completely wrong premise. When people talk about expenditure taxes, they think of indirect taxes. I, however, think of expenditure taxation. The most important necessities of life should be taxed less, the less important ones more. A bank deposit is an expenditure.

Hans Kühn: Wouldn't all the money then flow into the state, jeopardizing cultural endeavors?

Rudolf Steiner: It is a matter of being specific. The spiritual worker will need certain things for his work. They will be taxed at a low rate. Those who are also industrial entrepreneurs will have to pay high taxes on everything they need for their industrial enterprises. Spiritual production will be able to live from itself. It just needs to be allowed to do so and not hindered by the state interfering. If it can develop freely, then everyone must pay tribute to intellectual production out of what they earn in the other spheres. The other two spheres need specialists, who must be educated. This entire education must be paid for by the other two spheres. The economic viability of the intellectual sphere will also be left entirely to its own devices.

Question: Who pays for intellectual services if expenses are taxed?

Rudolf Steiner: Those who receive them. Those who create intellectually are remunerated for their achievements, not for their work. The others pay. It is likely that less will have to be paid for intellectual services than is the case today. There is a great difference between material and spiritual economic goods. The spiritual ones can be multiplied to infinity. Books! Words addressed to many! Therefore, this must be placed under completely different laws. The loaf of bread must always be produced again by human labor. For the individual book, there is no need to produce it spiritually again and again.

(Inserted from a later private conversation: The economic value of material goods consists in the labor crystallized in them, that of spiritual goods in the labor saved by them.

Hans Kühn: Would it not be right to finance a school through the “trust”?

Rudolf Steiner: Only if it turns out that a class or a class does not pay. It would always have to be kept so that the individual would have to pay for it in the books. You could then always take what you want from this individual, including this service, by having a trust agency step in for him. The teaching profession must support itself, not be maintained by the “trust agency” or the state. The teaching profession as such will undertake to maintain the other things (i.e. teaching materials in the broadest sense) from its earnings. It must have free rein in this. There must be no socialization in the field of teaching. If a free university is set up somewhere out of a teaching post, there is nothing to be said against it.

Principles: “It is a sleepy aberration to think that a factory needs to be socialized in the first place; a factory is a social entity, despite ghostly concepts of ownership and employment contracts...”

Rudolf Steiner: Here we would anticipate an objection from the contemporary social writer, the objection that it does not depend on something being a social entity, but rather on the individual human being being understood as a social being. Through Marxism, it has become clear to people that it does not matter that something is a social entity, but rather that it matters how the share is distributed. It is no exaggeration to say that the only change brought about by Trotsky is that a large ledger is set up for the entire business community. Only the bookkeeping is done differently. Even in foreign countries, only the unified accounting system is used. You can't nationalize either production or intellectual life, only the bookkeeping.

Roman Boos: Is it correct to understand the social carcinoma as a proliferation of production (growth) over consumption (reduction), which characterizes the disease of usury?

Rudolf Steiner: One should not compare production with building up, but only with inhalation. The overgrowth of inhalation over exhalation leads to cancer. This is how the image becomes correct.

Principles: “... the right of co-determination of the untrained worker in entrepreneurial matters, ... the workforce that is not yet mature enough to become self-employed...”

Rudolf Steiner: The worker may not be able to tolerate being told that he is untrained in entrepreneurial matters. The concept of “mature” must be treated esoterically today.

Principles: “A trust organism in the sense of the preceding statements would place itself with such physical and moral power in the midst of the turmoil of the world that a guarantee of life would be created for the incorporated German people.”

Rudolf Steiner: This reference to Germanness should be avoided. Especially in the economic sphere. The economic part has nothing at all to do with the German character. This leads too strongly into Wilsonism.

Principles: “The spiritual core of man, unhindered by all the creatures he has made, unfolds his creative power - demanding nothing more from his creatures (law and economics) than protection and a livelihood: state protection and economic fulfillment of needs.”

Rudolf Steiner: The state and economic life should not demand anything of the spiritual part of the social body. They should only be required to support the individual. The spiritual life should not be prevented from living itself out. Care should be taken to ensure that spiritual life is not suppressed anywhere. And care should be taken to ensure that it can circulate freely. The state has only the task of releasing spiritual life from all compulsion. It is only a policeman towards spiritual life. It maintains itself, also economically. One should not speak of “state protection” and “economic satisfaction of needs”. The state must ensure that spiritual goods reach their consumers. In parliaments, it will be mentioned quite naturally that there and there is spiritual life.

If the intellectual production turns into harm (for example, black magic), the state must take action against the effects.

Regarding the appendixes to the principles:

Rudolf Steiner: A “restriction of the private share of the production profit to a fixed or profit-based annuity”,

as proposed by Boos, is not feasible. The tax must remedy this.

In response to a question from Emil Molt, Rudolf Steiner explains:

Rudolf Steiner: It is not a “share of the profits”, but a “share of ownership”. When someone enters a business, a portion of ownership is attributed to them, regardless of whether they are a worker or an entrepreneur. However, earning is completely independent of this. The minimum subsistence level must arise out of the economic process. It is not to be regulated by law or contract. What is necessary is to take into account the fact that, in the process of piling up, more and more of the pure manual labor approaches intellectual performance. From this point of view, the entrepreneur's profit is transformed into payment for intellectual performance. The three spheres merge completely. In the company, the entrepreneur has his entrepreneurial profit from intellectual performance.

In answer to a question from Emil Molt:

Rudolf Steiner: If the workforce were to elect the entrepreneur, freedom would be suppressed. What must be absolutely guaranteed is this: you must give me what I consider necessary for my spiritual work. The entrepreneur receives his full income for being the spiritual leader.

Emil Molt: Who decides who becomes an entrepreneur?

Rudolf Steiner: In practice, continuity is maintained. Entrepreneurs remain to a certain extent. The entrepreneur will be removed from office if the state is harmed. The entrepreneur must be protected from removal as long as he does not do anything that harms the general public. The three spheres do not stand side by side. The state organism is superior to all of them. In the economic body there are only economic workers, in the spiritual body only spiritual workers. The removal of the entrepreneur would have to take place through legal channels.

We must first found free schools out of the money we still have in order to teach people what they need.

Regarding what was said about the unions:

Rudolf Steiner: The unions are not organized by profession, but by abstract contexts. One would have to study the transition of the old professional associations into the modern unions. In the modern class associations, it is no longer the profession that is essential, but the position of the property-less worker in relation to the entrepreneur.

The trade unions particularly support you (Boos). But the biggest philistines are in the trade unions.

Instead of saying that the cheapening of food is more important than the increase of wages, it should be said that consideration for consumption is more important than the increase of wages, which is also related to production.

January 27, 1919, afternoon

Rudolf Steiner: I am not authorized to simply publish the story of the outbreak of war. Mrs. von Moltke is also not fully authorized. It is not certain that she will give her consent. The notes are testamentary, with the proviso that they are written only for Mrs. von Moltke.

However, I can relate almost everything that is important, because Moltke told me the same.

A publication of this kind would be sufficiently covered by 90 men, who would have to be scattered across Germany. One would have to have support. An order from the Foreign Office, Rantzaus, would not be a particular recommendation. Rantzau is certainly not well regarded. They would have to be people whose name works; even if only so that one comes across a respectable person when making inquiries. But these people who sign should not be united in a league. They should be people who are completely independent of each other. A party can develop from that.

What needs to be said about the genesis of the war is, so to speak, finished.

Question: Is there no fear of the Entente marching in?

Rudolf Steiner: Because this is possible, I think it is perhaps important that this matter be at least somehow centered from Switzerland outwards. It would be important to me to be able to say in Zurich that there are people behind me. If this matter is done from Switzerland, it would not be a hindrance if the Entente were to invade.

Question: Could the Council of Intellectual Workers or the Commission for Social Policy of this Council be used to decentralize the socio-political work?

Rudolf Steiner: My freedom of disposition must not be compromised. I must retain the possibility of being able to direct the matter myself. I must always have the matter in hand. It must always be apparent that the matter comes from me.

Whether you use the advice of spiritual workers depends entirely on whether you believe that there are people in the advice whom you can rely on in a certain sense, and whether you think you can do it alone. But it is better to do it without these people. The councils will disappear in some time, and in a gruesome way. As long as they are there, you have to deal with them on real ground. I would not give such an organization such important things. I am not opposed to lectures being given at the council. But to hand it over to it, in the belief that it can be realized by it, I consider that to be utopian. It would be more favorable to have a memorandum signed by the “90”. But this would have to be shorter. It could be initiated by an ad hoc committee, which could also work towards the founding of a federation. Dr. Unger's lecture could also be initiated by this committee.

An understanding with the Russians is only possible on the basis of these ideas.

Question: How do we get close to the proletariat?

Rudolf Steiner: It is necessary to “eliminate” the leaders. This is the only way with the independents. The followers of the independents seem to me to be the easiest to win over. You have to talk to the people.

Emil Molt presents Rudolf Steiner with the guidelines of the [Württemberg] socialization commission (Fritz Elsas).

Rudolf Steiner: I can't really do anything with today's concept of socialization. When I read these rubber paragraphs, I ask myself: What is real about them?

Regarding point I, 1 by Fritz Elsas:

Rudolf Steiner: “Something depends on this, not something else, that the worker truly wants.” If you run the economy solely “for society”, it is only a change in the economic system, but there is no increase in productivity. Because today only a few people are the profit-takers, it makes very little difference what is taken from these people. How should the workers benefit from this? If I were on this commission, I would calculate how much is gained in the profit interest of private capital and how many workers there are. Then I would show people how little the status has increased.

You have to propagate such thoughts that nothing is gained from this stuff. I will answer the guiding principles that are here in about the same length.

Emil Molt: Should socialization be tackled immediately?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, in the sense that socialization means a kind of preparatory work to put the economic body on its own feet. Socialization would have to begin by first creating associations between producers and consumers, between employers and workers.

Question: Promotion of workers in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: This will play a role in the future. It is necessary to detach any kind of remuneration from the work. What needs to be remunerated is the position, the place where one stands. And it is necessarily linked to this that everyone has the hope of advancing. In principle, this is very important for later. But at the moment it is particularly important that a common social body is formed from the company, so that even the last worker is informed about the whole process of his work, from raw material to consumer. This is the most urgent thing: that the worker does not work as an animal or as a machine, but as a human being. He must be interested spiritually. Everyone must know: “What am I actually?” It is the greatest omission of the bourgeoisie that it has failed to do so. It is a completely false principle to prevent competition by keeping things secret.

Question: Is there not a danger of the creative intelligentsia migrating abroad?

Rudolf Steiner: What harm would it do? But it won't happen at all. People won't earn more abroad than in Germany. The objection only applies if socialization is carried out in the sense of Dr. Elsas. If you implement our ideas, those who are capable will not be worse off. Of course, we have to bear in mind that we are in an exceptional situation due to tribute and war reparations. For example, implementing our ideas will not put people with technical training at a disadvantage.

The only thing is that inefficient entrepreneurs will be somewhat restricted. But the efficient entrepreneur who is able to make his business flourish will not be at a disadvantage compared to anyone in the Entente simply because he is the one who employs the workers. The idea of “electing” the entrepreneur will not even arise. People will gather under some human being who has initiative. In England, the people who will profit are the entrepreneurs. With us, they will have the corresponding benefits. They will have the benefits because the economic body supports each other. Entrepreneurial sectors balance each other out so that the lower-level sectors receive something from the higher-level sectors. You have to imagine this in reality: the activity changes somewhat. You are then never a one-sided entrepreneur. You are, as such, in a certain relationship with your own consumers. This brings you a compensation. The consumer cooperative honors you. This is in addition to the entrepreneur's fee. The economic body is an interweaving of associations. The leading entrepreneur is no worse off than the entrepreneur is today.

Setting the subsistence level is one of the most complicated things that only arises from the economic organism. To do this, it is necessary for all economic organizations within a territory to come to an understanding. The subsistence level cannot be reduced to a formula. It arises as a result.

Private property remains, but private capital ceases to exist. I will never be able to deprive the community of any income. It would be of no use to me to accumulate capital without introducing it into the circulation process.

Everyone has an equal say in the physical work. But in addition, there is what you achieve spiritually by being here in this position. It goes without saying that if you are a leader in a larger workforce, you must be able to do more.

Emil Molt: Socialization of banks?

Rudolf Steiner: This is only fruitful if we think of socialization in terms of our ideas. The bank is nothing in itself. It is only an expression of the rest of socialization.

Emil Molt: There is a danger that the banks will crush us. They will terminate the credit of those who work in the spirit of your ideas. The bank will only give money if the people suit them.

Rudolf Steiner: If you socialize, as Dr. Elsa wants, then the bank cannot lend and therefore cannot exist. But why should the bank refuse to lend to industrial enterprises that arise under the influence of our ideas?

Emil Molt: There are no more profit-making securities, no more speculation.

Rudolf Steiner: Speculative transactions will cease.

Emil Molt: But the big bankers will resist that.

Rudolf Steiner: Among the ideas on which my cause is based, the only one that comes into question is what someone deposits as their property at the bank. All the lending business can be left to run itself. They don't need any money at all. They only need workers.

Emil Molt: The bank has 200 shares in Waldorf. It would then have to lose them.

Rudolf Steiner: Why do you need the shares? You can force the bank to lose the shares. You can reclaim your own shares. If the bank is the owner of the shares, it is simply a pensioner. This is a matter that can only be decided by goodwill. The people who live as drones depend entirely on goodwill. That will simply stop.

Emil Molt: Don't you then have to pay them a pension for a certain number of years?

Rudolf Steiner: But that depends on goodwill. Let's assume you don't give anything at all.

Emil Molt: Then the bank will go bust and thus harm those who have given their money.

Rudolf Steiner: It can only be a matter of goodwill to compensate people. But you cannot agree to postpone something that does not belong in our thoughts. The banks will not be able to work at all under our thoughts. You will not win over the bankers to a social reform.

Hans Kühn: There are private capitalists who depend on rents.

Rudolf Steiner: They would have to be replaced. It would be a matter of goodwill.

Hans Kühn: How would the workers benefit from their participation in the business?

Rudolf Steiner: Property as such has a moral value. You can only make a profit from what the means of production yields, only from the service. The fact that you are the 'owner' has only a moral value: it is a step forward if, in the economic process, you progress from nomadization to rooting. To get into a state of being interested at all, you have to create a similar bond between the worker and the means of production. This cannot be done through communism, but only through individualism. I am not opposed to freedom of movement. What I mean has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that every person has an interest in the means of production on which they work. By entering the factory, you make him a person who is as involved in his business as a farmer is in his estate. The worker must be able to say to himself: Nothing can be changed there without my consent. In real terms, only services bring income. Property has only a moral value. You should not be able to sell land so easily. That is not something that man achieves. According to our ideas, you can only transfer land from one owner to another by means of an economic corporation, and only if the individual transfers his property rights to a corporation by contract. Land is continuously in individual ownership. However, this does not prevent the contractual establishment of large-scale farming operations in individual places. Through contractual assignment. This assignment cannot be inherited. When it comes to running the business, if someone leaves the business, they lose their ownership rights. These are tied to the location. This is something that is self-evident. In practice, the consequence of ownership is that someone who can sell a factory today will be restricted in the future. Everyone would have to agree to the sale. The individual cannot simply leave his post because it does not suit him. Otherwise, the individual is completely free. If he wants to leave, he has to leave his post. But he cannot sell the company. Tell the people: You see, with the current system, as with a nationalization, you are only tools. Today, the entrepreneur sells his entire company with his company and with it all the workers. But if everyone is a co-owner, that cannot happen.

Emil Molt: How are inactive shareholders treated in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: They have different positions in ascending order. Manual workers – foremen – technical managers – commercial managers – at the top a director. Now you can put together those from the top three levels of the hierarchy who are today the “supervisory board”. There can no longer be people who are only drones. Pure pensioners - like Taube, the mute - must be maintained by pure goodwill.

If you set up a purely socialist program today, you can feign, you can satisfy the opinions of many people. Likewise with a pure entrepreneurial program. But it all leads to impossibilities. Only with our program can you satisfy the person who understands the inner nature and essence of the matter, regardless of whether he is an employer or an employee. These concepts simply cease to exist. People will see for themselves what they belong to, whether they are manual laborers or technical managers and so on.

Roman Boos: Is it important for workers today to move up in the company?

Rudolf Steiner: Socialists are not concerned with getting into leading positions, but with gaining political power in subordinate positions. People just want to restructure. But five people can rule 1000, but not 1000 people five.

Emil Molt: Who will collect the tax when it is spent?

Rudolf Steiner: Everyone is obliged to buy a certain number of revenue stamps at the beginning of the month. When you then make an expense, you have to hand over the stamp. These stamps must then be redeemed again, like train tickets. The tax is not paid by the producer. It is paid before the expenditure is made. Categories of tax rates will be established. The system will be very simple. But human judgment will come into play everywhere. Questions will always arise. When a new need arises, a new production arises. Now the new question arises: how should such an article be taxed? There will never be a production detached from human judgment.

At the beginning of February [1919]

When the socialization program was presented (response to Elsa Kohl):

Rudolf Steiner: This program is so different from others that it is necessary to create common ground first. We must first make it clear to people that they achieve nothing with their bungling. Elsa's program is Bolshevist. Bolshevism is everything that uses old forms to pour in new content. Lenin wants to use the old form of dictatorship to pour in new content.

Regarding taxes on spending:

Rudolf Steiner: Money that goes abroad should have to pay tax at the border.

From a later conversation (Boos with Rudolf Steiner)

Rudolf Steiner: Labor law will never arise from economic life alone, but only from the legal system. However, a certain form of modern socialism seeks to perpetuate the disease. The political state must set economic life straight, as breathing does the other systems, so that the human being is not consumed. (NB.: Compare what was said earlier about carcinoma! Carcinoma through over-inhalation! B.)

Question: Payment of war reparations by Germany:

Rudolf Steiner: There are two ways to raise the money: either it can be imposed directly on the economic body or on the political body, which must then raise it from the economic body. It would be good in all circumstances if the war reparations were discussed with the representatives of the economic body.

Question: How can influence on the peace negotiations be gained?

Rudolf Steiner: We must wait to see what the Entente says about the appeal. Everything formulated by Germany has no basis. The arguments about the necessity of the structure of the peace negotiations will be included in the brochure.

Question: What is your opinion of the council system?

Rudolf Steiner: It is impossible for the same council to have a political and economic effect. It is possible for the same people to sit on the two councils. As soon as the competencies are separated, it turns out - it happens naturally - that the interests of the workers go hand in hand with those of the managers. Then the workers can sit next to the manager in the constitutional state. Even the difference between the liberal and conservative parties will disappear because people will only talk about facts.

An important thing that will arise in labor law: there will not be a normal working day, but a maximum and minimum working day. Workers in heavy jobs will work less than others. That will happen naturally.

Question: How can we respond to the objection that the system of associations in economic life hinders or even prevents free trade with its undeniable advantages?

Rudolf Steiner: The associations I have in mind can have a membership of anything from one to infinity. Coalitions will arise between such production associations and such consumer associations. And everything is oriented towards consumption. Rainer started with the production of bread at the consumer level. I said to him: gather so many consumers that you can produce the bread! The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press does the same. It is based solely on the fact that people want the books. Here the Anthroposophical Society itself is the association that brings about production. The ideal association is one in which a leading personality can find a circle of consumers for a particular production. But because economic life is so complicated, there must be a system of associations.

Question: But if the aim is to create demand, then surely advertising will be needed, which you otherwise decry?

Rudolf Steiner: In the threefold social organism, it will automatically follow that advertising will only be possible as product advertising. Agencies will be in place. If I want to manufacture a new shoe, I have to turn to a shoe agent who has an independent agency. He will take my shoe on his journey. Such a product advertisement will always be financially viable.

Question: But won't people who want to get ahead faster resort to suggestive advertising again?

Rudolf Steiner: That will not be the case. When I answer such a question in detail, I do not take the answer from a purely logical consideration, but I see the whole threefolded social body concretely before me. And from this it follows that mere suggestive advertising will not be financeable. There will simply be no money available for it.

I would very much like to discuss all the details, for example, regarding liens, mortgages, bonds and so on, especially regarding those matters in which it is not clear today what needs to be clarified; the confusion of capital interest and land rent is having a disastrous effect today.

Question: So it would be our job to travel with your brochure and, as agents, draw attention to the fact that the brochure contains things that could be covered in detailed lectures and so on?

Rudolf Steiner: That's right.

Boos: Next Monday I will meet with the people who have registered for your last Zurich lecture. Can you give me guidelines for this meeting?

Rudolf Steiner: The people must be won over to do something for the brochure. It would not be a bad thing if people came together and provided clarification that the social question cannot be solved in any other way than through the thoughts of the lectures. As soon as you have enough people who have this opinion, the matter will take care of itself.

It would be of the utmost importance to determine the state of the social movement in Switzerland today by setting up a committee on Monday that would have to determine the nature of the relationship between the old Social Democracy and the Bolsheviks in Switzerland. We should have material to show exactly how many people, for example, support the Basler Vorwärts.

Boos: I recently put together: law - salt, economics - mercury, spiritual culture - sulfur.

Rudolf Steiner: One has to be careful here. It means:

Salt: in the head of the individual human being, in the social body of the economy,

Mercury: in the chest of the individual human being, in the social body of law,

Sulfur: in the lower human being of the individual human being, in the social body of spiritual culture.

Furthermore, we must consider the relationship between the individual human being and the social body, and here

salt means social body, sulphur means individual, and mercury is in between.

The social body is upside down. The productions of the individual human head are to the social body what food and drink are to the individual. Primary production is to the social body what talents are to the individual. Through his head system, the human being feeds the spiritual limb of the social organism. The legal system corresponds to the chest human in that it acts as a regulator between the other two - albeit not rhythmically.

From a later discussion

Roman Boos requests some guidelines for a lecture on spiritual science to students, which is meant as preparation for the lecture by Rudolf Steiner planned for eight days later.

Rudolf Steiner: It should be made clear to people that ordinary knowledge and anthroposophical knowledge are different in nature. The latter can only come from an awakening. It is experience, not speculation. In Theosophy, I speak of body, soul and spirit. The objection was raised: How can one make such a distinction? Answer: One must only consider the human life cycle in its reality:

Child – more body

Adult – more soul

Old age – (decline of the body) more spirit

It would be good to clarify the concept of intuition in such a way as to show that “justice” is precisely the opposite of intuition. In justice, man loses himself completely in external objectivity. Turn that around: man loses himself completely in the spirit, and you have intuition. From there you could start: if you grasp the concept of the human being who loses himself in the physical world, if you turn it around, you have the concept of the prenatal and post-mortal human being.

Question: Does such a definition of the law not coincide with the formulation “The spirit in its otherness”? (Hegel)

Rudolf Steiner: Yes. Rightness is spirit in its otherness, its being outside of itself. If Hegel had said it like that, he would have been right. But he didn't call rightness rightness, he called it nature. And nature is not spirit in its otherness, but spirit in its very corresponding negativity. Nature relates to spirit as debt relates to capital. Nature is a hole in spirit. Hegel knew spirit only as ideology with the last breath of life. For Hegel, it is precisely the ideologies that are the objective spirit. Therefore, he did not arrive at a destiny of the soul.

Boos: Ehrenberg (Heidelberg) is working on a critique of German idealism in which he proceeds in a similar direction. He calls idealism “paganism in Christianity”.

Rudolf Steiner: Much nonsense is done today with such abstract concepts. The essence of paganism is that the divine is not grasped in its connection with the human I. In Judaism, the I is grasped. Other beings are included in the I.

Address by Rudolf Steiner before his Departure for Stuttgart

My dear friends! Since my departure has been delayed a little, I am now able to say a final farewell to you. You are aware, of course, that I am now leaving behind the care here in Switzerland for the publication of the essay on the social question, which has just been completed and which I hope will appear quite soon. After what I said here last Monday, I would like to once again strongly recommend this essay to you. I have indeed expressed the hope that here in Switzerland, in particular, something can be done in the sense intended by this writing, and in a particularly fruitful way, for the reason that in Eastern and Central Europe what has to happen first, what is an urgent necessity, has already been challenged, so to speak, by the immediate pressure for the very near future. Here in Switzerland, traditional conditions will continue for a while. Here, therefore, people are still able to do of their own free will many things that others are forced to do.

Now it so happens in our present human development that only that which happens out of free will, out of the free initiative of people, can be particularly fruitful, truly fruitful. If only people could pull themselves together in places where it is still possible without being forced by the terrible facts of the matter, if only they could be roused to do of their own free will what can ultimately only be recognized in a spiritual-scientific way, something tremendously significant could be achieved through this initiative of free will. For this reason, it may now be said, even on Swiss soil, that very special hopes are possible here.

Now, my dear friends, you know that what has been striven for as anthroposophical spiritual science for almost two decades has experienced many, many trials. It is to be assumed that what is expressed in this social writing will initially be met with strong opposition from many who are unable to rethink, because it still appeals to a broader, much broader public. People will find all sorts of objections: impracticality, fantastic flights of fancy, contradictions. People will take particular issue with the latter because the writing is taken from life and real practice, and life and practice themselves have contradictions, so it is easy to find contradictions in them. The philistines, the philistines, all those who like to grovel for contradictions, will have a rich pickings; all those things that, as you have often heard and also otherwise know, come from originate from gossip, which are actually such that one would not want to deal with them at all, and only has to deal with them again and again because there are always members of our society who cannot take the right view of things. I am always amazed, though, that – while my coherent literary work of world view has been available since the beginning of the 1980s and its most essential features can be examined by anyone in terms of its value and content – there are always people, even among the members, who cannot find the right point of view to naturally reject all the stupidities that arise when, for example, it is said here or there, as is now being said from a particularly foolish side, that what I have taught comes from this or that source, from this or that mysterious place or from this or that person; that not all our members are clever enough to object: Yes, the works have been available since the 1980s. And what kind of foolish, stupid things do you gossip about? It is not necessary to judge by gossip what has been publicly available for decades; the fact that not all of our members have already become so clever is something that could fill us with a certain bitterness. Because what is to be judged here is quite obvious to everyone, it is available to everyone. And when people still come to me and keep asking: “Is it true? Is it true?” and so on, there is a channel where this and that is said. All the material to refute the things is there. They have been around for a long time, in printed form. These are things that naturally, my dear friends, will also be attached to what is really coming out of the revelations of humanity right now, through this social intention that is emerging in this book. And so I would like to add a few words here today, that there should at least be a certain number among our members who understand what is being put into the world in the right way and really take it in terms of its content, not according to all kinds of mysterious ideas and suggestions and so on. It is not necessary, my dear friends, that we always color our things from mysterious hints, but our real task is to step forward boldly and fearlessly with what results from the deepest demands of the present, and to stand up for it in such a way that today only the anthroposophist can actually stand up for these things. For anthroposophy should not only give people something that they can think in one way or another. However strange it may sound, my dear friends, what is a major demand of the present day is that people become wiser. And anthroposophy should help people in all areas of life to become wiser, to make them more agile in their thinking, to give them what people today so sorely lack: the possibility of being convinced of something.

Yes, my dear friends, consider in this area what is perhaps one of the most necessary things in the present day. In response to that appeal, which appeared some time ago, which could have been read by thousands of people, which has been much discussed, even in response to this appeal, some characteristic personalities have said that they cannot understand what is in it. Yes, my dear friends, that is precisely the most saddening thing, that people who for years, in the last difficult, catastrophic years for humanity, have believed everything, have been able to understand everything that they have been ordered to believe, that people who are quite willing to accept what have nothing but an order from above, that they welcome that which appeals to their freedom, to their free understanding, simply when it does not run in the usual lines of thought, so that they say, 'Yes, there you need more detailed explanations, you can't understand that'. That is already one of the saddest things in the present, this resistance to being convinced, this brutal response arising from the most terrible lack of understanding of the demands of humanity: “You can't understand that, it's abstract, or something like that. It is precisely those people who, under the terrible straitjacket of censorship, or the censorship of different countries, have accepted everything, who have parroted every word that has come from above, no matter how idiotic it was, who cannot understand that which appeals to their free minds, to their free souls.

But today we have reached a point where only that which people allow to approach their free understanding will be decisive, only that which people do not allow to be commanded to be understood, but what people want to understand from their innermost being. That is why what a man of the local community recently said to me about the social lecture I gave here is very true: Yes, some people say that they have not understood it: these are just the people who did not want to understand. They did not want to understand. We must always keep this in mind, that must be our strict, straight direction, what is said with these words. That is what it is about. What is needed for the future is not a change of institutions based on old, familiar ideas. What is needed for the future is new ideas, new impulses and, in particular, the awareness that what we have been thinking in the old way is no longer useful.

And the present faces a momentous decision. You of all people should not keep coming back with: But that has already been said, that has been said, that has been said. Of course, many things have been said. But that is not the point. What it is about is summarizing from a broad perspective, from the perspective that follows from the demands of the immediate present. If we as anthroposophists can stand on this ground, then we will be able to place our personality here or there in the turmoil of the times, so that you can really throw something meaningful, no matter how small, into the present.

In particular, I would like to see anthroposophy bear fruit in this social work. I would not like you to regard these two areas as separate entities, but to see how one can support the other and you are aware that people who have never wanted to listen to any spiritual deepening of the world view in recent times are of course at first as unsuitable as possible to understand those social impulses that are given here. But all the more reason to remember our obligation, once we have the anthroposophical basis, to do something to make things understandable to people. Today, my dear friends, it is not a matter of asking for details at every opportunity. Those who ask for details at every opportunity only want to continue in the old tracks. Today, it is truly not a matter of having things worked out in the most specific details. What is at issue is the great, significant lines of a reorganization of things that extends across the world. And much of what still seems to people today as if they could not do without, much of it will no longer be talked about at all in some time, so it will be swept away.

This sense of being attuned to the times will have to provide the basic nuance for what the ideas and ideals and impulses that have grown on anthroposophical soil have to permeate. From this point of view, I would like to urge you not to take this matter lightly, not to take it lightly. As I said last time, it is not a matter of distorting these things into sectarianism, but it is a matter of thinking these things on a large scale, above all, of thinking that it is important to find as many people as possible who understand the matter. It is not so much the institution that matters today: it is people who understand that matter today. For everything that people think who do not want to understand what today's times demand must first go and will go. You can be quite sure: it will go. It must first go. Only that which those who really want to work with new human feelings strive for has validity. The greatest resistance will arise precisely among the so-called intellectuals, among the so-called educated. They are the least able to think outside the box. This is something we are experiencing again today. There is an example, an example that can illustrate what I am talking about here: a little book about a particular person's mental illness has recently been published in Germany. Of course, there are plenty of “academically trained” doctors who accuse such a booklet of amateurism, contradictions, and insufficient foundations - not well researched by an expert. They claim that you can only judge mental illness if you have observed a person for a long time, if you have been in their environment.

Now, in this case, we are dealing with a person whose actions were laid bare for the whole world to see, discussed daily in the newspapers and so on. The fools who have their academic years, their clinics and their specialization behind them do not consider that the case must be judged quite differently. One must have the courage to look into such things without prejudice today.

That, my dear friends, is anthroposophy, not the mere parroting or inward parroting of the individual content: when you go beyond what is today the ballast of humanity, in the so-called professional world - one could better say, in the professional talk - that gives off the worst impulses. If you can penetrate to an unbiased judgment of these things, then you will have done something tremendous for your soul. Because that is what it is about, that is what we need. Above all, we need a courageous penetration through the wild prejudices that come from science, intelligence, scholarship, and their institutions. Because that is what holds us back the most. Do you believe that all the things that have been dreamed of here and there in terms of social structure can be true? Now, however, people are no longer dreaming because they have experienced not construction but destruction wherever it was discussed. But what has been done? Somehow a few people at the top have been replaced by others – and the whole apparatus, the whole vast apparatus, has remained. Yes, my dear friends, what is the inner basis of this whole apparatus in human nature? During the last four hundred years, people have been educated in their youth – but on what basis? They are brought up by the “All-holder, All-embracing, does it not grasp and hold you, me, itself?” - from the state or from that which is in some way connected to the state: to get a job, to live from this job, to let what is necessary for life be passed to you as passively as possible, and then, from this public institution, I mean, from this res publica, to draw a pension for the time after you have worked, until you die. After all, pensionable or insured positions are particularly what people love. And when death comes, the church assures eternal bliss, to which one comes without having really established an inner connection with the divine that flows and weaves through the world. This life, as it has increasingly taken hold of humanity in recent centuries: to be educated as passively as possible for a job that one does on the orders of this or that public institution, then to receive a pension from the very institution one , and finally, after death, eternal bliss, without knowing how to connect with the soul to the eternal in any way, has educated those people who today face the terribly speaking facts so passively. We must rise above this passivity with a pension and an eternal claim. We must find that which is divine substance within ourselves, we must find the impulses that place us in eternal life. We must place ourselves in this, not in some external institution to which we slavishly surrender. Man must become active, find within himself the impulses that are world impulses. This is what is ultimately most necessary and what underlies the question that may be raised: Yes, but how do people come to arrange their lives comfortably? And so on. That will no longer be possible in any case. And unless you first seek the God in your heart, anthroposophy will not grant you any bliss. Hegel's words remain true: Man is not only eternal after his death, man must be eternal - here in this physical body. That is, he must have truly found that which is eternal in him. These things are all already in anthroposophy; these things also underlie the healthy social ideas, which are now being expressed in writing and which I commend to you. And with this heartfelt recommendation, I would now like to suggest to you, since we have to leave, that we stay together in thought. We should have learned that. Therefore, until we meet again, in whatever way, we will stay together in thought, my dear friends.

Record of proceedings, Tuesday 11 o'clock

Hans Kühn opens the meeting and asks Rudolf Steiner to take the chair. Rudolf Steiner takes the chair with the unanimous consent of the assembly.

Rudolf Steiner: The call is for something quite different from what is usually intended by calls. It is not directed at institutions, but at people. If a new order is to be possible now, then as many people as possible must be found who start from healthy ideas. The general prerequisites are given in the flyer “Proposals for Socialization”. You can start practical work at every point, wherever you stand. Two areas must be separated from the state structure. This is the practical point of view. The state exists; through its various representations, it will have the task of separating out all spiritual life, and in the same way, economic life and its competence for what remains should be based on a democratic foundation. It is impossible to achieve anything by transferring all competencies to the state. Economic life must be based on associations: firstly, by profession; secondly, and more importantly, representatives of consumption together with representatives of production. A practical example: we wanted to implement something like this within our circles before the war. First of all, we found a collaborator in Mr. von Rainer, who had a mill and the associated bakery. A business like this is only possible if you start from consumption, not from blind production, which leads to crises. A circle of consumers was to be created out of the Anthroposophical Society. The reason it did not work was that Mr. von Rainer had the thinking habits of the old days and was not up to the task; all sorts of quirks came into it.

We also thought in terms of intellectual production in society. Blind production harnesses labor for nothing. 98 percent of writers are uncommissioned writers. Of a print run of 1000 books, 50 are sold, the rest are pulped. The printers and so on have done unproductive work. Now it is important not to do unproductive work. I have begun by creating the consumers first. We will also have a market for the brochure. After my lectures, people are now demanding the brochure.

When this is referred to as advertising, it is not an ordinary form of advertising. First, the needs are considered. Even for the spiritual, one must be able to think purely economically. The needs must not be dogmatized: this or that spiritual is not justified! - This must be left to the spiritual organization. In the book trade, there are only crises. The advertising must only begin when consumption is secured, and then one only draws the people's attention to it.

All legal relationships must be eliminated from the economic sphere: ownership and employment relationships. Today, as every textbook says, you can buy goods in exchange for goods, goods in exchange for labor, goods in exchange for rights. These are the economic terms. The latter two must disappear completely. Rights must not be bought. Labor must not be sold. The worker must no longer be in a wage relationship; the worker must, under all circumstances, be in a free relationship within his working community. Labor law must be created outside of the economic organization. The economy tends to consume; anything that cannot be consumed is unhealthy in the economic organization. In the old order, labor was consumed, while it is a legal relationship. Labor law must be created from the democratic organization.

During rest from work, there must be the opportunity for everyone to participate in social life. The working hours would be very short if everyone did physical labor. Division of labor is necessary. In the future, it must be a principle that the formation of prices in economic life is a consequence of labor law, just as it is a consequence of natural processes. The income of workers must only come from labor law. Then prosperity would depend on labor law. That, however, would be a healthy dependency.

If, for example, prosperity were to decline as a result of a six-hour working day, then the legal organization would have to agree on whether to work longer. It should not be possible to extend working hours or hire women and children for economic reasons. The working hours, the type and the amount of work must be regulated outside of the economy. Before the economic process begins, labor law must be regulated, just as the raw materials are given by nature.

Property law must also be removed from the economy. Things are sold that do not even exist. Ownership means that you have free disposal over some thing. This has only gradually been transferred into private property. In the future, property will no longer be an object of purchase at all. We must get rid of Roman legal concepts. Property and ownership are concepts that must disappear. One last remnant of the old way of thinking is the idea that private property must pass into the community. This is also outdated. Today, an acceptable property right has only been established for intellectual property. In the future, all material property must also be subjected to a similar process: it must circulate. Capital must be taken out. We will need capital, but the old concept of it must cease. The building in Dornach is not a capitalist enterprise. No one will be able to benefit from the Dornach building. What is needed for it has been withdrawn from the capitalist order. The Dornach building would have to be recognized as serving the spiritual organization. With 30 centimes from each Swiss person, we could easily complete the building. It could be socialized overnight. The concept of socialization must also be tenable. Recently someone in Switzerland said: Lenin must become world ruler. First, however, domination itself must be socialized. What is in the call must be realized because it is the only practical thing.

Hummel: He comes from Cologne and is the only person present from the occupied area. There are no signatories from the Rhineland. English censorship has prevented this appeal from being published in the “Mühlheimer Zeitung”. The “Kölnische Zeitung” has rejected the idea because of a “paper shortage”.

Rudolf Steiner: It is not only desired that the appeal be worked for in the occupied area, but it should be ensured that it has an effect wherever possible. Signatures could not be collected in the occupied area. Understandably, the English censorship will prohibit its distribution. There was also resistance in French-speaking Switzerland. This is based on the dislike of everything that comes from the German side. The hatred against the Germans has not been overcome. This is the result of Zimmermann's policy. A fraternization festival was celebrated with the American representative, while Zimmermann's infamous letter was already afloat. If something real like this appeal comes today, people won't believe it. We can only gain trust if we do not think of making common cause with those who pursued politics in the old Germany. There can be no compromise with the old regime. This principle should not be proclaimed to the outside world, but it must be in our actions. Mr. Collison, who is our representative in England, is currently in America. That is why the appeal has not yet been printed in England. Then the censor might think differently. The book should also be printed in England as soon as possible.

Ludwig Polzer and Walter Johannes Stein are asking about the developmental tendencies in order to better assess the tasks in the individual countries. Three questions: Firstly, what is the actual position of English politics on China, Japan and India; how is it influenced by America? Secondly, what would be the consequences of an Italian revolution for the peoples of former Austria? Thirdly, how does the far north relate to these developmental tendencies? Furthermore: How should our work be organized? Should the valuable personalities be concentrated in one place that is suitable for this, or should a rich island formation be considered?

Rudolf Steiner: More detailed information will be available in the next few days. Today, only the following: Firstly, the policy of the English-speaking population has not changed. These politicians knew what they wanted before the war and are sticking to it. Europe should be shaped in such a way that it is simplified as much as possible and becomes a market for England.

I recall the map that I drew up at the time according to English intentions. The Rhine forms a kind of border that continues to the south. Between the Rhine and the Vistula, a strip of German-speaking areas, to the east the Slavic Confederation, around the Danube the Danube Confederation. This policy also counts on winning China and Japan over. There is no difference to America. It all depends on whether we have a positive impulse for the future.

The Western policy will be able to work without decency as long as we don't come up with something that impresses people. They have to see that we are dealing with realities and practical matters. That is why we should not have capitulated to the 14 points. We should have responded with the same thing that is in our appeal. Surrendering to Wilson presents him with the most impossible task, because he is supposed to help and knows nothing of what we want. We can easily be understood by China, Japan, India, the whole of the Orient, if we do anything that is not an American imitation. We have already submitted everywhere, for example in commercial matters. The Orient counts on the spirit, despite the cleverness of the Japanese and the cruelty of the Chinese. If we do something intellectually and politically, we will be understood. German industrialists are not people like, for example, the English, but have simply become machines. Industrialists have had the last word in politics during the war.

Secondly: an Italian revolution will not have any major foreign policy consequences if it is not accompanied by a major industrial crisis, which will have a major impact.

Thirdly, the far north is an area about which I know nothing. I do not know what the north wants or how it feels about England. We go where we can with our appeal, and only give way to impossibility. Perhaps Mr. Vett can provide information about the north.

Carl Vett: In the north, there is an aspiration to unite the four countries, including Finland. They got to know each other during the war in order to supply each other with goods that used to be delivered from outside. This is also being striven for politically.

Rudolf Steiner: Do you think that there could be an atmosphere for such a practical ideal policy as I propose? In the north, there is also a certain conservatism. We could not do anything with that. We have to distinguish between countries like Württemberg, Baden and Prussia. There is a certain compulsion there. If the bourgeoisie resists, the proletariat will give in in this direction. In Russia, the matter would have been understood before Brest-Litovsk. Perhaps the time will come when Lenin and Trotsky would also wish that they had started it that way. It is quite different in such countries where something like this could be realized out of free will. That would be of the utmost importance.

Carl Vett: believes that there could be some understanding for this. In Denmark there is a socialist ministry that has already proved that it cannot get anywhere with its program.

Rudolf Steiner: This answer is very important.

Hermann Heisler recalls the sentence “Property must end, it must be put into flux”. For us, the land question has not become clear here. Can the land be kept in flux?

Rudolf Steiner: You will find that the land question is only dealt with in passing. Land is nothing more than a means of production and can only be treated as such. The question of money is linked to the question of land. The greatest of social lies prevails when it comes to land. You all own a piece of land in fact. What you otherwise own has no real value unless it is covered by a piece of land. You have to calculate: a certain territory, divided by the number of people living on it. The fact that you do not really own this land is a fraud. This is made ineffective by rights. This is how the land situation is related to the individual. Land is a means of production. Through the division of labor, much has become a means of production that was not previously. When a tailor makes a skirt for himself, it is a means of production. Land is to be treated in exactly the same way. Only those who can exploit the means of production should have access to them. The worker will work together when he knows that he works more rationally when one and not another leads. The relationship between employer and employee will be one of trust. The employer stands in his place through his abilities.

The gold standard means bruising the whole world through English politics. The useful means of production must take the place of the gold standard. An unnecessary war will be reflected in the currency because it puts the means of production in a damaging position.

Emil Leinhas: Objections are often raised that it is difficult to understand. How was the appeal received by the bourgeoisie on the one hand and by the proletarians on the other?

Rudolf Steiner: I did not understand much of what came from the headquarters, which ordered people to understand. Emil Molt: Bourgeoisie took up the call the least. The employees at our company slept through it, while the workers came to us with questions about it.

Alfred Meebold confirms Emil Molt's view.

Hans Kühn asks about joining a party.

Rudolf Steiner: There is nothing to be said against it. Our cause demands time, not party support. The greatest understanding will come from the proletariat. Of course, the appeal can also appear without bourgeois representatives. There are two impulses in the appeal. During the war, they should work for foreign policy. Now the social threefolding comes into consideration.

Alfred Meebold warns against entering into a party, because the call could then easily be understood by those who think differently as a party matter.

Schuler: Requests meetings in the smaller towns of Württemberg and the sending of speakers.

N.N: The labor leaders refuse. The individual workers sign because the matter is not a party matter.

Hans Kühn reports from letters in which the government is repeatedly referred to, especially from the bourgeois side.

Rudolf Steiner: Bourgeois politics is a product of fear, we can't do anything with that. But we must not proceed like Trotsky, who wanted to turn the world upside down. It is necessary that the professional training and experience of those who have acquired it is not lost. These are mostly middle-class people. We have to take in the people who support the call. The Social Democratic programs must also be incorporated into a program for humanity. Of course, we must avoid bourgeois sabotage.

Hermann Heisler recalls the mistrust of anthroposophy and speaks of his experiences with student youth.

Rudolf Steiner: Student youth can easily be won over if they are emancipated from their professors. We will have the worst experiences with the professors of economics. We will have to do without them. The quagmire of the universities shows the worst of bourgeois society.

Max Benzinger: What means of coercion will we have if the factory owners want to keep their means of production?

Rudolf Steiner: We'll just let them sit on them. Ultimately, forced expropriation comes into question. It will become clear that it is impossible to work against our cause.

End of program after 1 a.m.

Rudolf Steiner again chairs the meeting and opens the assembly.

Ms. Weisshaar, an architect, asks how the appeal is to be brought to the rural population.

Rudolf Steiner: The social ideas have spread mainly among the industrial workers. Marxism has never been able to gain a foothold in the rural population. Even if they are temporarily interested, the rural population would soon fall back again. But the appeal can certainly work. Here, too, a distinction must be made between the Catholic and Protestant populations. The former is suspicious of anthroposophy; otherwise, their church would have prepared them well for the threefold order by always striving for church freedom. There is less understanding in Protestant circles because the prince was often the 'patron' of the church. On the other hand, there may be some sympathy for the free school. In general, the farmer will be glad if the state cannot interfere in his economic life, especially after the experiences of the war.

Ludwig Polzer also worked among farmers in the sense of the call. He recommends speaking of “the dismantling of state authority”. In this regard, the farmers and the workers are united by a revolutionary mood. If the connection continues to be successful, struggles that are in preparation could be avoided. He also believes he can find understanding for the free school.

Wilhelm von Blume points out that small communities today are close to the threefold division because one already speaks of political communities in contrast to church communities. For the economic work, one often uses the term real or active civil community.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the remnants of an old way of thinking. In Austria we used to say, “No lawyer, no civil servant and no priest is allowed in the economy”.

Alfred Reebstein, Karlsruhe: People say that the food supply would be disrupted if the threefold social order had to be implemented first. Food should be provided first, and then everything would take care of itself.

Rudolf Steiner: This should not interfere with the work of the appeal.

Ludwig Polzer in Vienna has found that people are wary of the Entente.

Emil Leinhas often had similar experiences to Reebstein's, but always replied that food and coal would be provided as soon as the threefold order was realized. People should just not think and come up with such objections.

Schwedes: The Entente will not let us lose out if the threefold order brings calm to the country again.

Karl Stockmeyer, Mannheim, often hears that the state's basis of power will be lost.

Rudolf Steiner: That is what they want. To give in to such objections would be the most dangerous thing. Behind all this stands the rise of the old dictatorship (Ludendorff came to Germany via Kolberg and is now walking quietly in Berlin). The Center Party is working with all means to achieve reaction.

Karl Stockmeyer: In England, the revolutionary mood is also said to be very strong, although there is enough food there.

Rudolf Steiner: Above all, we have to work from factual documents. We must bear in mind that the English and German labor movements cannot be compared. The collapse of Germany brings a completely different basis. The German army was cut off from supplies from the homeland, so Ludendorff had to stop. The sailors in Kiel acted under the secure impression that their comrades over there would immediately join in loyally. Only in this way can the sailors' actions be understood. But the workers in the west did not join in. In England, therefore, the movement must be approached in a very specific way.

Carl Unger: A worker said that if the appeal is to be effective, the border posts must disappear. He thought that fraternization should be easy on the basis of the appeal.

Rudolf Steiner: The appeal should initially be geared towards foreign policy action. I already said to Kühlmann: Since the migration of nations, the disputes between nations have always been about economic issues. The movements of the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths went into the wasteland. But now people want to put the soil on top of each other, for example Germany and France in Alsace-Lorraine. If it had been announced that Alsace-Lorraine would only be administered by the state according to the legal issue, without regard to the economy and schools, so that children in France or Germany could have gone to school, the solution would have been easy. It was similar in Serbia. In Vienna one often heard the war called a 'pig war' because of the introduction of the Serbian pigs. It would have been tremendously effective to maintain economic relations across the borders. This is already justified in the call, but people do not want to introduce it through the peace agreement, but rather let it develop slowly and organically. In Austria, the development in the direction of threefold social order would have been most necessary.

Wilhelm von Blume: The nationality question has only become so pressing since the end of the 18th century. In the past, wars were waged for religious reasons or for reasons of conquest. It is only since the state has intervened in church and school that the state has become inconvenient for the people. If the state can take over culture and the economy, the nationality question will be resolved. Examples are Poland and Silesia, where German schooling had to be maintained. There was no ethnic hatred in the past either. This has only existed since the beginning of the 19th century. Here, too, threefolding will bring the solution.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to mention an example from my youth. I lived in Hungary and had to go to school in Austria. There, in times of peace, children were sent across the border. Some learned Hungarian in Hungary, others learned German in Austria. This ended with the dualism of Austria-Hungary, when everything became pedantic. In Vienna, under the Stephanskrone, sloppiness prevailed. This meant that everything could develop peacefully in the past. The dualism put an end to peace. Hungary was made sharp.

Harriet von Vacano: Dr. Steiner often said that schools should be founded first. But the teachers in Munich often reply that nothing can be done because the church and the state do not allow it. The teachers have a latent fear. Wouldn't it be better to turn to the proletarians?

Rudolf Steiner: Teachers are the last ones to approach because they depend on the state. If the “Farce of Weimar” had released the school system, the teachers would have tried very hard. Today, one must approach the power that has the authority of the state. If the state wants to socialize, then bourgeois sabotage will follow. This is actually already the case in Germany. One then turns to the free areas.

In Germany, Lenin and Trotsky could not act in the same way. In Russia, they simply killed the citizens in order to suppress bourgeois sabotage. (Rudolf Steiner mentioned the example of Solf, whose officials went on strike so that he would remain in office. This was very dangerous.

Hermann Heisler, Tübingen: He always says that we should found schools based on a worldview, because we want to have anthroposophical schools. Of course, the Catholics would then also want to have Jesuit schools. How does Rudolf Steiner understand the unified school?

Rudolf Steiner: In the unified school, only the classes should disappear. The aristocrats will not be able to found private schools for the simple reason that they will have no more money to do so. Otherwise, the spiritual organizations will take care of schools. Above all, however, I would never found anthroposophical schools. The Anthroposophists would have to reshape the methods and the organizations, but never teach Anthroposophy. First of all, we must understand what spiritual freedom is. We must avoid schools of world view the most. (Under Minister Gautsch, Rudolf Steiner advocated the blackest clerical Thun as Minister of Education because he allowed all denominations to teach. He said schools should be managed objectively.)

Hermann Heisler: Does this not cause insecurity and inner conflict in children?

Rudolf Steiner: This is where a pedagogical factor comes into play. If we educate children up to the age of 14 according to a template and then let them go into today's competitive world, we would turn all children into neurasthenics. But freedom at school will bring truth instead of dishonesty. That will be the compensation. For education, it matters much less which religion the child hears than that one meets him with a true soul life.

Karl Stockmeyer: His parents sent him to Catholic schools for a time. He has always striven for teachers to be appointed as ministers of education and for the Ministry of Education to develop from the bottom up.

Ludwig Polzer believes that the Ministry of Education must disappear altogether. After the school question was postponed at Molt's request, Carl Unger raised the question of organization.

Carl Unger: The seven-member working committee should be supplemented over time by local groups from outside Munich.

Emil Leinhas asks whether the work in northern and southern Germany should be managed differently for tactical reasons.

Rudolf Steiner: This must develop out of the factual circumstances. It is not possible to set up regulatory principles. Perhaps the matter needs to be presented in one way in one district today and in another way tomorrow. This is a question of personal tactics.

Schuler, Tübingen, asks about the general debate: In the countryside, the land reform has won over many supporters for the Social Democratic Party. Couldn't we win over the farmers even more if they heard that we use land as a means of production and do not want to expropriate it?

Rudolf Steiner: I have not placed particular emphasis on the means of production of the land in the writing.

Clormann, Mannheim: Should the appeal not be particularly promoted among students?

Rudolf Steiner: These things are to be treated quite differently in the future. Of course, students and professors should be in full harmony later on. It should be possible to win over students as a unified group. I was asked to speak to students in Zurich and was very well received. Students should work for themselves and for the whole world. I was supposed to give a lecture to proletarians in Basel. The Social Democratic Party executive was approached, but they declined. Then they asked about a lecture to railway workers, the railway officials' association, which also refused because the leaders were afraid. After the public lecture in Basel, however, I received the invitation from them all by myself. You can deal with students who refuse today in a similar way.

Hermann Heisler: Thinks students are receptive.

Schwedes, as representative of the U.S.P., speaks out against arming the students. He also believes that the workers will easily go along. But it would be necessary to speak with one voice. The speakers should meet more often to discuss plans, like a kind of traveling conference. He is in favor of all speakers speaking on their own behalf and representing the ideas of the call as their own views. He speaks confidentially of the coming general strike. You should eliminate the leaders and win the masses.

Rudolf Steiner does not want to intervene in the latter. Because of the silence about various activities, Rudolf Steiner believes that it cannot be carried out, if only because it could be used against them in discussions. He gives the example of Winterthur, where the students were attacked, in front of whom he gave a lecture. He tried to convince the people that the young students hardly had a judgment, and that one must not ignore them. This answer was enough for the workers. You should always answer in such a way that you never advocate a program. The workers may say, for example, that they need economic strikes as long as state life is not detached from the economy. It is difficult to object to that.

The conflicts in Rudolf Steiner's life were rarely objective, but mostly personal. Of course, silence has no value against such attacks.

Party knowledge should be used and hiking speeches should be given. In particular, such friends should also educate the anthroposophists about the parties.

Hermann Heisler: The province would have to be better oriented. Debate requires in-depth knowledge of the subject. It suggests a speakers' and debate school from which those familiar with the topic can be sent out. If the foreign representatives cannot come together for such courses, Stuttgart should send out the speakers.

Karl Stockmeyer believes that one must acquire knowledge oneself. He calls for brisk work and non-centralization. He wants the same federation everywhere, but otherwise local freedom.

Max Benzinger is a member of the U.S.P. and would like to be trained as a speaker to support the appeal. He means training in the art of expression, because many find it difficult to express their thoughts correctly. One must work one's way into the old foundations (for example, of the party) in order to create something new.

Emil Molt: The league was founded on Easter Tuesday with a fixed name. Local groups can be formed outside, possibly independently of the anthroposophical working groups. It is good when foreign elements get involved. Different people are needed to work in different fields. Our working material is Dr. Steiner's book and also the Dornach November lectures. These should be duplicated as soon as possible. One must learn how to speak, but also practice it. You can only learn to swim by actually doing it. Conferences with local groups from other areas would be important from time to time.

Hans Kühn asks Rudolf Steiner for permission to reproduce the lectures to be given in Stuttgart, which is approved by Dr. Steiner.

Roman Boos, Zurich, wants only the book to be distributed. It is too late for speakers' schools. It is better to let Mr. Rudolf Steiner speak through the book than to provide surrogates yourself.

Ludwig Polzer: How should the organization in Vienna be done?

Rudolf Steiner: It cannot hurt if local groups outside of Germany stay in contact with Stuttgart (N.B.: It was later decided that Vienna should found its own federation like Zurich and that the German-Austrian local groups should communicate with the Vienna office).

Karl Stockmeyer suggests that all press releases about the federation or Rudolf Steiner's book be sent to Stuttgart by the local groups so that a picture of the movement throughout Germany can be obtained.

After various other requests - at the request - are dealt with by the committee, a request to adjourn the debate and continue it later is rejected because the most important work of the committee is neglected due to such long meetings. Wilhelm von Blume proposes, in accordance with the rules of procedure, to end the debate.

The chairman closes the meeting at 1:30 pm.

Protocol Record Stuttgart

After various speakers have expressed themselves in the general debate, Rudolf Steiner takes the floor:

Rudolf Steiner: It seems necessary to me that we now move on to the special debate. Mr. Leinhas has already made some comments not to derive things from gray generalities and to bring them into the realm of the necessary. And Mr. Molt has also made certain suggestions. But it seems necessary to me that the following be said in order to give a truly practical side to our endeavors.

First of all, it is necessary for this cultural council to address the task of propagating the whole idea of the threefold social order so that it penetrates into broader sections of the public and is understood there. Without propagandizing for the idea of the threefold social order, one naturally does not get ahead in a single specific area.

But then it would be necessary for this Cultural Council to do a second thing, through which it could actually carry out practical work as quickly as possible. So far, we have tried - just recapitulate what has happened - to create understanding for the idea of the threefold social order. Of course we were told: That is utopian, that is ideology, that has nothing to do with reality! But we did not let ourselves be deterred from continuing to work for this understanding and at the same time to bring it to a certain result: to the propagation of the works council idea.

And now that the idea of works councils has actually been presented to the world as a real thing to be worked out, people are beginning to see the idea of the threefold social order not so much as a utopia. Now they are beginning to take it seriously. The industrialists are up in arms about the works councils, the trade unions are up in arms about the works councils, in short, there is a lot of agitation against them from all sides. I don't know whether they would agitate so strongly against something they found to be completely harmless. This shows the transition from the original germinal idea, which already contains the fact, to real life practice. But the practice of life must then also be maintained with the appropriate strength. The question of works councils also originated in Russia, only it ended in failure there because all sorts of other things poured over it and fought against it. With regard to economic life, it is therefore a matter of the works councils providing the basis for economic life and its members to emerge from the current conditions themselves. I just want to show you that we are moving on to real practical work. First, there must be an understanding of the basic idea, then you can move on to the practical work.

The cultural council should first of all be aware that its first task is, of course, in the field of education in the broadest sense and of those suggestions that must come from the rest of the intellectual life for the education system. Today, it cannot be a matter of taking socialization in the abstract again. Entertainments which have gradually become distinctly capitalist entertainments in modern times – such as the theater and, to the highest degree, the cinema, which is, after all, only a concomitant of the very extreme capitalist-bureaucratic age – will only be able to achieve their socialized form when the foundations of intellectual life are first socialized. I really fear that we will soon also be hearing about the “socialization of purebred dog breeding, the distribution of Christmas trees to families” and the like. If socialization were to be understood in this way, we would not get anywhere.

What we have to deal with first of all, if the Cultural Council is to develop its activities, is, firstly, the elementary school question. Look at the elementary school question from a practical point of view. The Anthroposophical Society itself is a spiritual movement that has emerged from contemporary spiritual life and placed itself on an independent footing – at least in terms of its intentions. It could achieve a great deal if people had the courage to do so and did not rely too much on the forces that stand in the way of such courage. But the important thing is to grasp the right approach from the point of view of threefolding. The School of Spiritual Science has been founded in Dornach. It is certainly not located on any state property; it works independently in one branch of spiritual life. A number of our members have now expressed the wish to educate their children from the bottom up, in accordance with the principles and impulses of true spiritual life. I do not need to emphasize the fact that anthroposophists also have children; so we already had the children. In Dornach we might even have had the teachers. And the parents were highly motivated. We had everything, really. So what did we lack? Why did we not found such a school? Because the state, free Switzerland, does not give us the right to do so, because it does not recognize a school that is not established by the state itself.

My dear friends, the main thing is to fight for recognition of what is achieved in such a school on the basis of purely spiritual and educational principles. It is a matter of abolishing any kind of state school supervision and any kind of law that only allows teaching to be given by this or that teacher appointed by the state, and the like. That is the first thing. And here we have to struggle with the objections that are always raised today, especially by the Socialists, under the banner of the unified school, when it comes to a healthy basis for the elementary school system.

Let us take the example of Dornach again. Dornach is in the Canton of Solothurn. When I first spoke there about the threefold social order, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Arlesheim soon came to me and said: It will be very easy to see in the canton of Solothurn how difficult it is to accommodate such an endeavor, because it took a great effort to wrest the school from the school “brothers” and school “sisters” of the canton of Solothurn, and it took a great effort to secularize the school. If the right to found schools were granted to any kind of endeavor, then clerical schools would probably arise, perhaps even schools for the nobility. In short, people were terribly afraid that these things might take hold.

These are things that must be dealt with first. The discussion must be entered into with the public: How does the Cultural Council, with its idea of the threefold social order, relate to the so-called state-run comprehensive school with compulsory education? This is the issue that must be clarified in public. So the first task is: How does the Federation for Threefolding relate to what a member of the majority socialist party and member of the state parliament in Reutlingen recently said: What do you want then? We have now created a school law that is absolutely in line with the most ideal views! – Then the Federation for Threefolding has to show through its cultural council: Even if you were angel-like beings, we would never accept a school law from the hands of the state! – because the point is to wrest the school from the state. It must be shown that people will not become illiterate again if schools are freed from state control, that new classes of students will not emerge, and so on. That is the first positive question, the elementary school question. And until it is shown [in the cultural council] that there is an understanding of such a question in the face of today's political currents, the cultural council will only be a wild beating around the bush.

The second thing is to show that we can only get rid of the higher schools if we get rid of the awful system of qualifications. Everything that stands between elementary school and university can only be determined by the fact that it is preparation for university. The universities have to say: We want to get these or those people into our ranks, for this we make the demand that the secondary modern schools and the secondary schools – which must also become something completely different according to these or those principles – are managed. Consider that the secondary modern school has long since existed only to prepare students for the one-year voluntary military service by granting them the right to do so, to become future civil servants. So here, too, it is important: Get the schools out of the state!

Then we must fight for the autonomy of the university. It already had that in the old days. We have only just destroyed the last remnants of the university's autonomy in recent times. The university must be an autonomous corporation. It must regain what has particularly ventured in recent times. What the universities used to consider as self-evident was what they awarded when they granted a doctorate in any faculty. That was the expression for it: the university here and there, which is regarded as an autonomous body, gives XY the right to call himself a doctor in a certain field; it therefore awards him the diploma. This meant that the autonomous body had established the right for people, which it could guarantee as an autonomous body. And the state has conquered this whole thing, because today the awards of the faculties are only decorative pieces, titles without any rights, and the states have introduced their state examinations for this, that is, they have extended their tentacles to the universities. They are no longer autonomous. You can't find anything like in the past, where someone could be said to be a doctor who studied at the University of Montpellier; that's a good school! Today everything is abstracted. So the demand is: autonomous universities, abolition of all state exams. If the state needs people, it should test them. If it needs someone for a position, it can test them according to its own criteria. Such a test is only meaningful for the state, not for what must be free from the state in the areas of teaching and education.

The following positive questions arise:

Firstly, a free comprehensive school without state supervision, justified by the demands of the time;

secondly, the abolition of the so-called system of qualification for secondary schools,

thirdly, the reduction of state examinations and the autonomy of universities.

These things must be presented to the world as a clear program. If we start with this, we begin at a similar point as in business life with the question of works councils. If we start with this, the others, who of course need this or that, will follow. The point is to start by tackling things where they are universally human: in lower and higher education, which is generally also universally human.

That is what I wanted to say first about the transition to the special debate, so that this comes out. Certainly a committee should be elected. But it should deal with the most current issues and I wanted to point out to you that the most current issues and positive ones are important. Initially, no value should be placed on the content of the individual worldviews. What matters is not whether Catholics, Protestants and so on want to found their schools, but [that] we achieve the very next practical thing in a positive way – initially in the field of intellectual life, which concerns all people: the position of the school on its own feet.

These are the issues that must be vigorously discussed in the coming days and must crystallize into very specific individual points. And with these individual points, those who are truly able and have the will to do so must then go before humanity to implement these things. For this upheaval in spiritual life is more important than anything else. Because without this upheaval in spiritual life, none of the rest will come about.

Protocol Record Stuttgart

[Carl Unger welcomes the participants. Emil Leinhas then reads the revised text of the appeal. Wilhelm von Blume talks about the difficulties involved in propaganda and the practical implementation of the independence of intellectual life. He is against the distribution of a third version of the appeal, as it would be ineffective. The new text should be used as an explanatory pamphlet.]

Rudolf Steiner: It seems to me, ladies and gentlemen, that if the questions raised at this conference are to be fruitfully discussed, it is necessary to consider the starting point very carefully. When discussing the future realization of independence in intellectual life, I noticed that certain misunderstandings can easily arise in this regard. The day before yesterday, I explained my views on this subject to younger teachers here in this place and saw that the misunderstanding arises when it is claimed that the relationship between the state and school, as it has been practiced until now, should be thoroughly criticized and dismissed, and as if it should be asserted that this relationship between school and state has only produced something fundamentally evil, and that something new must take its place. This is actually how what is meant by the threefold social order in this particular case cannot be grasped. Today, it is not so much a matter of focusing on how the school has got along with the state so far, but rather, it is above all a matter of us really showing ourselves capable of adapting to the great moment of world-historical development today. The idea of the threefold social order can only be grasped by realizing that we are in a time in which, firstly, many things are changing of their own accord and, secondly, new formations must necessarily arise. The question cannot be: Do we or do we not like this or that about the school or the state today? but certain things are happening, want to happen, want to be realized, and we have to seize the world-historical moment. And it is precisely by propagating this threefold social organism that those who profess the idea of threefold social order believe they can grasp this world-historical moment.

Now I do not want to go into economic life in any further detail – I have already done so on numerous occasions – but I would like to focus specifically on what is happening in relation to intellectual life in general and to the school system in particular. It is not news that economic life is being placed on a new footing, that economic life is heading towards a certain socialization. This is not something that can be decided or not decided today; it is already happening of its own accord. We only have to ask ourselves the question: how do we shape what wants to be shaped in the most reasonable way? In such a way that in the future, state life democratizes itself, must democratize itself down to the last detail; that too happens by itself; one only has to consider how to do it most reasonably.

Now comes intellectual life. I do not consider this to be something that runs alongside the current task, but rather, I consider it to be the most important thing of all. For the school system may have been good or bad – we are not concerned with criticism today – but if we have a community that is economically socialized and legally democratized, then we need a different education for the people who want to live within democracy and within the social economic order. So, it is not a matter of asking: How do we get the school away from the present state? but rather: How do we educate people through school who can grow into a new social order that more or less arises by itself? It is of little importance to us whether school thrived under the old state or not, because this old state will simply transition into the new one, and we have to consider how to shape school for the new state.

It will not leave us much time for reflection. There are things that demand that we act quickly, that we rise to the challenges posed by human development itself. And one can often tell from the socialist program what needs to be done. You see, there are socialist economic programs, and there are socialist political programs; both have a number of things to be criticized. But from the same side from which socialist economic and political programs come, also come socialist school and pedagogical programs. People demand that this or that be realized in the pedagogical-didactic field. And anyone who is truly serious about the development of humanity, who has a heart and mind for what should and must happen, will find the pedagogical didactics that emerge from this socialist program to be something terribly horrific. One cannot imagine anything worse than what is depicted in this socialist pedagogical and didactic program coming upon humanity. It demands, for example, that socialization and democracy be forced as deeply as possible into the school. The children are to be socialized and democratized from an early age. The directorates are to be abolished. The teacher is to be forced into a school community with the children in a comradely way, based on democratic and socialist principles. Yes, my dear friends, if you educate in this way for what wants to emerge as the most radical democracy and socialism, then you will not get people into this democracy and socialism, but you will get beings with the most terrible, most elementary instincts, who will truly develop little socialism and little democracy.

That is why we must first make it clear to ourselves: when, on the one hand, socialization and democratization take place, that we then have all the more need to get people used to it at school – as I explained the day before yesterday – firstly, to a dignified imitation of what the child always wants to imitate after the parents in the first years of development , and that we have to accustom the child, above all from the age of seven to fourteen, which is precisely the school years, above all to a sense of authority – to an absolute sense of authority that is cultivated much, much more and much more energetically than it has been cultivated so far. We must not banish the belief in authority from school if we want to socialize and democratize. From the age of six or seven until the age of fourteen or fifteen, we have to get the child to look up to the teacher as if he were a “demigod” or, I would say, so that through the feelings that they develop within themselves during this time, what must be a state in democracy and socialism becomes strong in the soul, if all is not to fall apart into bestiality.

Therefore, we must develop these things all the more through a very thorough immersion in the very, very earliest impulses of human nature, if we want to somehow lead people into the so-called state of the future - and we do want that. So, my dear friends, what must be considered for spiritual life when we speak of the threefold social organism is based on the development of the times. Of course, those who today only want to turn their attention to economic life could not truly consider this; it is precisely those who have already stood on the ground of didactics, of pedagogy, who already have experience in it, who should consider this. It is only right that we talk about things based on the foundations of experience. It hurts so much today: when you come to proletarian assemblies, the proletarians speak their language, and when you talk to the bourgeoisie about the proletarians, you realize that they have no idea what has been going on in proletarian circles in recent decades. The people from different classes do not understand each other at all. And so it is now really a matter of our finally learning to talk in a way that is appropriate, not just in terms of our station and class – then people will understand each other. That is what I ask you to consider; then we will also come to a proper assessment of these three demands.

You see, I have now disregarded the first years of childhood, which are part of the education in the home, because I wanted to address the first stage of primary school. Yes, I think that in the future it is necessary that between the sixth or seventh year and the fourteenth or fifteenth year, education is built entirely on a truly more intimate and better psychological anthropology than we have done so far in our pedagogy. This must become something that really takes place between the teacher, who has his authority, and the child, who allows himself to be guided by this authority, and receives everything he receives in such a way that the source of truth passes through another human soul, so that he learns to have trust by looking up to the other person. And the teacher, in turn, must take into account from year to year the way in which the young person develops between the sixth, seventh and fourteenth, fifteenth years. We have to teach the school subjects in such a way that we take into account how the child's development is internally determined. We have to, so to speak, see the possibility – yes, don't misunderstand me, I mean, we sometimes have expressions that don't quite cover the matter, but we can communicate – we have to be aware of the possibility of seeing a religious act in teaching. We actually have to come to terms with the fact that we are gradually educating the child to free the mysterious spirit and soul from the physical body. This sense of devotion, freeing the spirit and soul from the physical, is what really needs to take hold. And here I think it is really a matter of not thinking that it should only be built piece by piece. I have full enthusiasm for the school that is to be founded here as a Waldorf school, so that we can once give an example of how we imagine anthropological education, through which the human being is truly made human.

But all this remains a mere surrogate. And the point is that everything that is conceived as the threefold social organism is really not so, that one can say: This must be realized slowly and gradually, these are far-reaching developmental ideals, but that one can actually do it right away, if one really wants to. All the explanations that I have given in the book 'The Core of the Social Question' are actually based on the fact that they can be immediately implemented in reality. My main concern is that once we have fully realized what independence of intellectual life means in relation to the tripartite social organism, we can replace everything that is state-run in schools today with objective pedagogy in schools. Why should this not be possible? It is something that only requires a decision and the courage to implement it. External conditions will not improve, but the foundations will be laid for such improvement. We should start at the top.

It would start with placing the administration of the school system on its own feet, on its own ground, that is, wanting the university or college as an autonomous body, and that within the autonomous university, those teachers who sit in the ministry and who are not bureaucrats, but who are themselves part of the living spiritual life, are not concerned with laws that are made in parliaments, but with human advice that goes from person to person, that they are concerned with what has to happen in the school system, they are to be placed on their own two feet, on their own legs, on their own ground, that they are to have their own university or college as an autonomous body, and that within the autonomous university, those teachers who are not bureaucrats but who Thus, a real, human detachment of the school system from the state system. If the question of how schools are paid for cannot be resolved today, transitional arrangements can be created in this regard. If the people who have to teach have no confidence that the nourishing goddess or cow, I don't know what, will come from the economic life, then let the state pay for the school for the time being. What matters is not that much, but that what is spiritual in the spiritual life really becomes independent, that the whole spirit of the pedagogical-didactic also passes through the administration and the structure of the spiritual organism. If one only attacks this, I would say, initially on one point and then works in this direction, then I would say, I have nothing against the “gradually”. But just don't think that it somehow depends on the fact that it is difficult. It is not difficult at all; once you have thoroughly grasped the idea, you will come to it. I once expressed it in the following way.

There is a contemporary philosopher. I value his acumen very highly – I distinguish between acumen and genius, as well as between depth of mind and expertise. So there is an astute man who wrote a book in the 1980s called “The Whole of Philosophy and its End”. In this book, he seeks to prove that, as a result of our scientific way of thinking, which has taken hold of everything, we have come to the point where all philosophical worldviews must cease, and the things that philosophy has done so far must be handed over to politics, science, jurisprudence and also state pedagogy. This is something very significant. This man has thought through to its logical conclusion what actually lies in the habits of thought. He has therefore come to the right conclusion: if we continue to muddle through – and he is in favor of our continuing to muddle through – he is enthusiastic about the dissolution of all philosophical thinking. He proves this very astutely and has therefore also become a professor of philosophy at a university. He talks about state pedagogy. For those who understand how to see the issue as a symptom, this also means a great deal. It means that there is no longer any kind of autonomous pedagogy, that there is nothing that takes the human being as such into account. Rather, the state has become something over the centuries; it demands this and that preparation of the human being for what it has become; the human being who is within the state must look a certain way. Now, if you are a teacher, you have to study: well, so the human being must look like this, we have to turn people into this, so that they look like this. - This is something that must be overcome. And if we want to face up to the historical moment, then we must overcome this. It is not the spiritual life that should receive its directive from the state, but the state that should receive its directive from the spiritual life. The trainee lawyer and the assessor - I am already of the opinion - take it as grotesque, but this opinion will not be long in coming: it is for the university to determine what a trainee lawyer and an assessor should look like in the world, and not the state. It is not the state's place to make laws about how this or that should be, but intellectual life should be the guiding force. It should tell the state: if you are a proper state, your assessor and your trainee lawyer should look a certain way. So, I think to myself: a truly inner autonomy of the whole intellectual life, that is what is most important.

I also think of the authorization system in this way. Isn't it true that anyone who has studied this authorization system in recent times – I don't even want to go into aptitude tests so much – will have seen that time and again, authorizations that arise from the matter itself have been transformed into state examination systems. The state has set its state examinations in place of the earlier diploma examinations at universities and

colleges. This was a move of the times; in many respects it was a justified move of the times, but it must be reversed again, not in the bad sense; we do not want to fall back into the Middle Ages, but we must come to a point where intellectual life is completely autonomous and , because if we are to enter into the material world as much as socialism wants, then we can only do so if we have a strong counterweight, if we have a very strong spiritual life.

Look, let's take things as they are. There's no denying that social democracy, as it has developed over the course of half a century, thinks in a more or less Marxist way. And anyone who does not adhere to Marxism today – that is, to the Marx whom today's party popes consider the real Pope – is considered worthless within the social-democratic party. This is how social democracy has developed over the last half-century. Through so-called revisionism, attempts have been made to blunt all sorts of things, but now they are being emphasized more and more sharply again. But there are also those who draw the ultimate consequences of Marxism. There is no denying it: who drew the ultimate, real conclusion of Marxism, first in theory and then tried to implement it in practice? That is Lenin – Lenin, who actually considers the Scheidemanns or Bindemänner, the Kautskys and whatever their names are – it is said of him – the German socialists, all of them to be scoundrels, Lenin, who with great logical acumen draws the final consequences of Marxism in all areas.

The realization of this is today's Bolshevik Russia. There is an inner necessity in this: Marxism leads to this and, when it is put on its own feet, can lead to nothing else. Now Lenin had written a book, “Revolution and State”. In it, Lenin says: the old state is bad, bad in every respect; there is nothing to be done, absolutely nothing to be done with the state. The state must be overcome, only we cannot overcome it immediately. - So he says: so we will just make a state in which the proletarian dictatorship will rule. We will set that up; there should be equal rights and equal pay for all. That is already the case in Russia today, where sometimes one person is paid six times as much as another. There are people who earn 200,000 rubles as intellectual workers, but still: equal pay and equal rights for all! In reality, things sometimes turn out quite differently, but then people like Lenin – who is very astute, who has really drawn the final consequences of Marxism – says: Let's continue with the old state a little longer, let's continue with the structures that we see in the old state. But if we do it this way, this state, this new state, has a certain task. Lenin actually defined this very strictly and logically in 'The State and Revolution'. He says: This state, which he has now established, has the task of gradually leading itself to its own death. The state has no other task than to lead itself to its own death. That is actually Lenin's definition of the state he established. Because first, he says, and by the way, he starts with things that can be found in Marx himself, because he says: So the present state, in which it is not particularly comfortable - it has not turned out as we wanted it to - the state will revolutionize itself to death, and only then will the new come, where everyone will be treated according to their ability and need.

But now Lenin adds, and I ask you to consider this as decisive: what then emerges from the state that has now killed itself cannot be done with today's people, but for that we need a new kind of people. In other words, we need to look to the future state, for which we first need a new kind of human being. Yes, my esteemed audience, the threefold social organism wants to prevent this world-historical madness, which is extraordinarily logical and methodical, from realizing what can be realized, what can be based on real ground. But above all, one must not be a supporter of the madness, of the idea that, even after everything has committed suicide, in some way or other – yes, I don't know how – the new human race will come into being. But if one does not subscribe to this idea, then one needs a heart and mind for the growing human being. Then one must understand that one needs a reorganization of the spiritual life, then one must above all have a heart and mind for the training of the spiritual life, for the development of an appropriate spiritual life. Then these insane thoughts that a new human race must first be created will disappear from people's minds, and one will take the courage to make people suitable for what they are to develop in democracy and socialism. This is a real thought, that is at issue here. But things are not so – truly not! – that one can prepare to discuss things leisurely and calmly over the next three years. The issues are too urgent and pressing; things must happen. What matters is that we have the good will to grasp things quickly and to do what can really be done. To do this, however, one must have heart and mind for these things, and realize that today's human race does not need to be wiped out for something to happen in the Lenin sense, but that the whole of today's human race is good.

But people need to be educated. Let us look at the present and say to ourselves: the people who are now to grow into what wants to be realized in history must be educated differently. It is now time to tackle the questions on a large scale. That is why I have often said: Above all, the real idea of threefolding must be understood. In relation to intellectual life, this consists of truly placing it on its own ground. For this, nothing is needed but the abolition of the usual school supervision, which is exercised by officials in such a semi-official capacity, as it is called in the new Württemberg constitution, where a contradiction that exists in life is immediately expressed by such a stylization: “officials who work on a semi-official basis”. One can fish where in reality that occurs which should not occur, but the point is to really grasp that only people of intellectual life come into the school, since the minds of people should not be filled with the spirit that speaks out of decrees. What more is needed than for the state to declare: You spiritual life, you shall govern yourselves; we are abolishing the Ministry of Culture and Education and giving spiritual life itself the opportunity to govern itself. I cannot see why it should be better for state officials to govern things than for people who are part of the spiritual life. This is something that can really happen overnight if only there is the strong will to do so. That is what I mean, and what I meant is that today it really depends on winning the masses over to the idea of the times in another area, that today it also depends on having as many people as possible who can understand that spiritual life must be placed on its own ground and who work together in their own way to make this happen.

You can see how we started our work here, initially in the economic sphere. Within three weeks, thousands upon thousands of proletarians from all walks of life had understood what was meant by the threefold social order. They understood it in their own way, of course, but there is nothing wrong with an emotional, intuitive understanding among the masses. On the contrary, it is something natural. Then the selfish leaders came along who thought: “Ah, Mr. Kohl, he speaks for Kohl, he won't make any impression on the people, he has no authority.” Then they saw that Kohl won over thousands of people. Then they became afraid that the reins would be wrested from their hands, and now we are faced with the possibility that the broad proletarian masses, who were already on the path to reason, will swing back because they cannot be disloyal to their leaders, because they are wedded to them. And now the party templates and party slogans want to triumph over reason once again. If you ask: Does it have to be that way? the answer is: the masses are, after all, just voting cattle. But the masses could also be something other than voting cattle, something that really comes from a rational organization of reality. You see, what was striven for there should be striven for to a greater extent in our own time, which can be said to bring terror every week. It should be striven for in the life of the spirit, it should be striven for by the spirit life, which has become independent, that education should be organized in such a way that the human being comes into his own, so that he can also stand in democracy and socialism. But people are so afraid when they see how little feeling there is for what is pulsating through human development today, they are so afraid that what I have so often said at the end of my lectures: What has to happen should actually be understood before it becomes too late. One fears so much that it could become too late; I really fear that if one says: We cannot simply destroy our state – then I fear it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we do not want to destroy it either, because after all, if we were to decide by tomorrow to leave the school system to its own devices until tomorrow, I believe that things would hardly look much different. You would only be making a start on what would gradually make intellectual life more intense. It would not be a matter of destruction at all; it would not look any different in the schools in the next few weeks; but rather so that not people rule over the school who rule from the bureaucracy, but rather those from education. If you didn't look too closely, you wouldn't notice any particular difference when the most important thing happened. And a revolutionary who was expecting that when the revolution came, no stone would be left unturned, would perhaps say: Nice revolution! It doesn't look any different than it did a fortnight ago!

So it can't be about destruction. But it is a different matter if you are too afraid of destruction, because then it could be that we avoid destruction, but that other, elemental forces, which are spreading through Europe with enormous power today, could take care of this destruction quite thoroughly. Therefore, I believe that we do not have the choice to rely too much on slowness, but we must take action. We must actually see what is at stake, and it is important that this threefold structure emerges from the reorganization.

After a lecture, a man once said to me: So the state is to be divided into three parts; whether the Entente quarters us or Dr. Steiner thirds us is completely irrelevant. But that is not the point at all. It is something quite different. For example, there is a man who always follows the lectures I give like a loyal Eckart (I don't know if he is here again today) and who usually says something very apt after the lectures. After some have objected to this and others to that, he says: “But children, just take what has been said quite simply; you just have to take it quite simply as it really is.” He is truly a faithful follower of Eckart, who always follows from lecture to lecture and at the end uses the apt words: “Just take things as they are!” What one sees in this threefold structure is simpler than one might think, and what one considers difficult is often only a difficulty that has been introduced. What I am about to say now, I say so that I am not misunderstood, so that people do not think that I want to belittle the state, the existing state, or that I believe that if the existing state remains, schools will change much. No, I don't think so, but we should recognize that we are in a great moment in world history, that we are grasping what can be grasped with regard to the liberation of intellectual life and especially to the reorganization of the school and teaching system in this moment in world history. We can talk about the rest later.

[The discussion is about the text of the appeal. At the request of Emil Molt, a commission will be appointed to prepare the final version. However, the debate will continue. One participant, Karl Bittel, criticizes Rudolf Steiner's account of the situation in Russia.

Rudolf Steiner, interjection: I did not speak about Russia, I spoke about Lenin's book 'The State and Revolution' and [about] what is directly related to it. This is not a derogatory criticism, it is meant quite objectively.

[Karl Bittel mentions the Württemberg 'Council of Intellectual Workers' towards the end of his remarks.]

Concluding words of Rudolf Steiner: Dr. Bittel has indeed misunderstood many things thoroughly. I myself, however, do not wish to be misunderstood, but would like to make it clear from the outset that I am firmly of the opinion that such objections as those made by Dr. Bittel must be accepted with all gratitude, even if they miss the point in such a way that we actually lose sight of the matter at hand. For example, what was most emphasized in my remarks was completely overlooked, namely that teaching should be based on a healthy psychological anthropology, and that we cannot have any hope that anything will come of an education system precisely because we do not have such a healthy anthropology. I did not make a demand – anyone who has heard me speak often should know that I am not a programmatic person and do not make demands out of the blue – but I simply characterized what must be the case according to the natural laws of human development. I said: If we want to prepare people to really grow into democracy and socialism, then it is simply necessary from the point of view of human nature that between the change of teeth, that is, between the ages of 6, 7 and 14 , 15 years of age, feelings of authority develop in the human being, so that he then has the inner strength that enables him to stand within a democratic state later on, in order to allow democracy and socialism to be expressed in the fullest sense. This view of the matter is conceived from the point of view of a truly real psychology. I ask you to understand this as the difference between what is happening here on the basis of the threefold social order and other programs that are based on demands. Everything that arises in this idea of threefold social order should simply be based on reality.

Another misunderstanding is the following. We would not continually run into dead ends and impossibilities in the whole discussion if we did not counter what is wanted here with all kinds of other program points. Please look at it this way: One may have many concerns about such programs as those of the youth organization, for and against – I do not want to get involved in that. I myself find this program, which has been read here, to be too senile; I do not feel old enough to take this path. But what really has inner youthful power is what I miss in today's youth movements: that they are already so old and cannot relate to the ground of a real youth. I once said to a younger representative who appeared with great emphasis in Bern, I think, “You are 35 years old, I will soon be 60, but from what you have said, I feel much younger than you are.” It depends on whether you can take things as they are meant. The pros and cons should not be considered at all.

The matter itself should simply be discussed – and I would be very happy if I could attend discussions on these questions for days rather than just hours. They are just not on the agenda today because we can only hold fruitful discussions when a real basis for them has been created. Only when the spiritual life is liberated do we have any prospect of penetrating these things and preparing the ground for them. Whether one is more for or against: the idea of threefolding creates a healthy foundation for all these movements, on which they can develop. I can honestly confess to you that I would be overjoyed if not only those movements that I tend to sympathize with would come to life on the basis of the new spiritual life, but also the opposing ones would live freely, because it is not important to me to implement any particular worldview, but to create a basis of freedom in which the individual spiritual impulses can compete. Then, on the basis of this free intellectual life, whatever is able to assert itself will come to pass.

So I ask not to misunderstand the matter of authority. It is meant to be perceived by the student as something selfless above all else. The fact that authority does not exist today is evidenced, on the one hand, by the beer newspaper and, on the other, by the pursuit of the school community. If authority really existed as I imagine it, we would have had school communities long ago. The fact that we have to strive for it today and don't even know where we have to get the teachers from to achieve a reorganization of the school is all the more proof that we long for the liberation of education. It is not enough to say: Those who want something must profess a spiritual revolution, must profess this call and so on. My dear audience, we will get nowhere by constantly emphasizing “radical revolution, revolution, revolution!” I am aware that if what is meant here is realized, namely a free spiritual life, then this is a much more radical revolution than what the gentlemen mean who only ever use the word “revolution” in the sense that the previous speaker used it. Just wait and see how radically different this will be from the liberation of intellectual life as envisaged by the Federation for Threefolding, and what will come out of a free intellectual life. I also agree entirely with what the previous speaker said about the press. But it is only possible to intervene there if we have a free spiritual life. I can see no hope in intervention on a legitimate basis or through some kind of press court. It seems obvious to me that history teaching will not look the same as it has always done.

Then there is the question of adult education. Yes, of course I am very much in favor of it, but we have no science and no art for this adult education. Above all, we need what grows out of a free spiritual life. The popularization of class science and class art that today's universities are tapping into does not produce adult education. For a folk high school, we first need a free intellectual life. I have emphasized this before: I know the difference between what is true, real intellectual property and what is taught by professors today as the thoughts of the folk high schools. Because, you see, I felt this dichotomy when I was a teacher at the Workers' Education School founded by Wilhelm Liebknecht. Few could speak to my students, who were all socialists, in the same way – I could speak in such a way that what I said to them was drawn from the universal human: everyone understood and everyone was included. But when I had to follow the customs and beliefs that prevail, so that I had to look at what was hung in the museums of class art – people often made requests to do so – then I had my anxieties, because there was class art, not what I tried to give to the people from the heart, but what the proletarian could not understand because he was not on the same level – so when you explained things to the people, you had to speak a different language. And I was always glad when I could say: This is what must be replaced by something else if something is to emerge that can actually be the art of the future or the like. Because then you can go right to the heart of the artistic feeling and see how impossible it is to get to the real folk art. Just consider how today's artist has grown out of the bourgeois class; he will paint very beautiful landscapes, but anyone who has not grown out of that same class will never be able to understand them at all, because he cannot make the transition between the much more beautiful nature that the professor can see for himself every Sunday afternoon and what has been daubed on the ham, even if it has been done with great artistic skill.

It is much more radical when it comes to adult education and folk art, when we talk about what is meant by the aspiration of the tripartite social organism. It is about something that those who always talk about it, the “radical revolution”, have not yet even dreamt of. It is about something that goes to the very root of what has been creating the gulf between people for centuries, something that goes to the very core of spiritual life. And here it is really necessary to seek out what is meant by the idea of the threefold social organism before opposing other programs to these ideas, because truly – you can at least take it from me – I have become very familiar with these programs. And the idea of threefolding is not there because I have not become acquainted with these programs, but because I have become acquainted with them. The objections that are raised from these points of view have long since been raised by me; and because I have raised them myself, that is why the idea of threefolding exists. I am quite indifferent to the “programme” of threefolding; for me, the important thing is that today the spirit really comes into humanity, which from the spiritual side can see the great historical moment in the eye. Then, for my part, I leave it to others to understand this or that differently. What matters to me is that there are as many people as possible who carry this new spirit within them. Then those who can do something to help this great historical spirit get on its feet will also be able to promote this new spirit. That is why I am absolutely indifferent to the wording of one point or another – what matters to me is the spirit; the wording may be better or worse. And if we can achieve that as many people as possible are able to place themselves at the service of the spirit, then we will have achieved what I want.

Carl Unger: There are no further requests to speak; I therefore close the meeting.

Lecture at a meeting of members of the Anthroposophical Society

My dear friends! It should be clear that we are living in a time of change, a time that we have to see as a time of transformation, and that it is our primary responsibility to find our task in this time. We will, since we are not today on the ground on which we stood in the consideration that we devoted to the general cultural council, but precisely on our ground, as members of the Anthroposophical Society, we will do well to occupy ourselves a little with our thoughts from this point of view of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement.

You see, when we talk today about a spiritual-scientific understanding of the world, about the real content of spiritual science – you were also able to learn about this in Stuttgart, where spiritual-scientific lectures have been given for many years, which, it can be said, have found an ever-larger audience. When one speaks to people today from these spiritual-scientific points of view in the concrete, one first encounters an audience that corresponds to the conditions of the present. But you have also seen that, even leaving aside the public, we have continued to develop anthroposophy. Many of you have seen how we have applied anthroposophy fruitfully in a wide variety of fields, fruitfully applied from a very specific spirit. Let us imagine how this has been attempted from a particular spirit.

We can start with anything – let's start with the public lectures. These public lectures had to introduce a new insight, a completely new characteristic of spiritual life into the world. There was never any hesitation about this, not even in public lectures, and certainly not in the lectures that were then given to advanced students within the Anthroposophical Society itself. There was never any hesitation about pointing out in a concise and forceful way what should replace this cultural life of the present day, which is in decline. For decades now, it has been made clear that this cultural life is in decline; that the life in which we are immersed is in decline. And it has been pointed out everywhere that an upward development must be fostered from a renewal of the spiritual understanding of the world. It was pointed out very clearly that we must distinguish with the utmost seriousness between what is in a downward movement and what must fulfill humanity so that it can ascend again. Was that not, my dear friends, the spirit of all the lectures given to the public or to a smaller circle? And was not, in essence, what is now being illustrated in an outward way through world-historical events and world-historical misery always contained in these lectures?

Let us look at something else in our specifically anthroposophical field: we have erected a building in Dornach. In erecting this building, we have not followed any of the traditional forms of architecture, painting or sculpture. We have tried to create something out of the consciousness that a complete renewal and regeneration of our spiritual life is necessary, something that is a beginning, but that is also something new. We have not shunned the challenge of striking at the face of all that which we have created and which, out of old conceptions, wanted to judge architecturally, pictorially, sculpturally and so on. Yes, the philistines sometimes stood head to toe in front of the Dornach building; we let them stand head to toe. And we knew: it was precisely that which we had to have, that the philistine bearers of the previous worldview should stand head to toe in front of things. We also did not let ourselves be deterred when all the unsuccessful newer attempts to arrive at some unphilistine art, with all the backgrounds from which artistic creation so often arises, with the backgrounds of hysteria or of inability but of much wanting, when they simply pronounced it 'unartistic' about that of which they, precisely because they wanted to be artistic in a new way in their sense, understood nothing. We did not let ourselves be deterred from being looked at askance and askew by the philistines and, forgive the word, over-philistines.

When we set about cultivating eurythmy, with all that this involves, a recreation of the art of recitation, I said: the sensitive souls who will be involved in performing these things must prepare themselves that once they are brought to the public, they will be thoroughly criticized; but that will be the proof that they mean something; because if they were praised, they would agree with what is happening below, and then they would certainly be of no use. This awareness, which is now being challenged, I might say with blood, by humanity, was brought forth in the anthroposophical movement out of the demands of a new spiritual life.

We have performed our mysteries in Munich, the actual content of which has so far been understood by few people. We have performed these mysteries for four years, many people have seen them; they are buried from the world; since then they have not been spoken of at all. They have been forgotten because they have passed before those to whom they were performed, like a dream that one forgets; one may enjoy it, but one forgets it. These things must be said one day, my dear friends, otherwise we will not get around to what I actually meant last Sunday.

Yes, my dear friends, it would have been nice if we had tackled all the things that have been mentioned here today in 1907. But we are living in 1919, and today we can no longer merely tackle the things that we should perhaps have tackled on the basis of our awakened anthroposophical consciousness in 1907. So what is it about? Please excuse me if, in order to keep this matter from taking too long and to make it as painless as possible, I express myself somewhat sharply: I would like to say, with reference to our anthroposophical movement, that there were two types of people from whom two things could be assumed: those people who were at public events or who could see how the Dornach building is now open to the world, who could see what we wanted simply as - well, let's say, as contemporaries. That was one kind of people. We also experienced them here, when the general anthroposophical truths were specialized for the threefold social order. We experienced them here in the Siegle House. We have experienced people for whom these things are already understandable, as far as they need to be understandable for a general audience. But I have often characterized here how the understanding of people of the present day who actually deal with these things actually is. These people of the present, they do accept some things, they also see some things, but they cannot rise to make that which they see the content of their whole being; to make it not only the content of their thinking and dreaming, or dreaming thinking, but also the content of their will. And so one can experience that perhaps a whole assembly, or the majority of people who are listening publicly, show their clear approval to a certain degree for the things that must now be spoken for the benefit of humanity. But the next day everything is as it was before; it has no other significance for them than that they have heard the things for an hour and a half or two hours; that the things are there for man to take them up into his inner being, for that present humanity has absolutely no disposition. That, my dear friends, is the one kind of people.

The other type was the anthroposophists, a completely different type of person. With the first type of person that I have just characterized, one could hope for nothing other than what I have said, because that is the bourgeoisie of the present, that is the part of humanity that one could believe would have salted meat in its head instead of a brain criss-crossed with furrows. That is what people of the present age are like. But then the Anthroposophists were there, about whom, for decades, people had been talking in terms quite different from those that could be spoken in public. It could not suffice for the Anthroposophists to take these things in; it could not suffice for them to devote themselves to the general inner habits of the present-day human being. One must indeed ask: Is the modern human being seeking a spiritual life? Yes, he seeks it, he seeks a spiritual life, because what the church gives him, what the modern school gives him, is no longer enough for him. He seeks a spiritual life, but what kind of spiritual life is he actually seeking? He basically accepts the highest truths, but accepts them in such a way that, firstly, they bother him little, that, secondly, he needs to claim his inner self as little as possible for co-activity, and that, thirdly, he moves quite well in this outer decaying world, alongside what he takes from it, just as the outer decaying world demands. That is, he finds it perfectly natural, without feeling any inner contradiction in it, that he goes about the business of his life in the sense of the decadent world, in the sense of the destruction that he had to be confronted with head-on by the world war catastrophe and what followed, and then he sometimes feels the need to be uplifted by an anthroposophical lecture or instruction, which he accepts like a Sunday afternoon sermon that offers him a change from what he otherwise absorbs quite well as life within the decaying culture. It sometimes shakes up the people of the present that the things around him, the things he has to go through, are so nonsensical; then he also turns to something like anthroposophy, but not as to something he seeks in it is an impulse for how things should be done in detail for others, but rather seeks in anthroposophy a nice sleeping pill with which he can numb himself to what he can live with after all to externally calm his inner being.

You see, that was the ongoing call to those involved in the anthroposophical movement: to understand that this must not continue in modern humanity, that anthroposophy should not be understood as a sleeping pill and as a Sunday afternoon sermon, but that modern man must absorb his anthroposophy in order to truly embody it in all the details of life, to develop it, to develop the consciousness of self-reflection within himself, that we are in a decaying cultural world.

The adaptability of modern man is enormous. But what does one adapt to? You see, we live in a threefold unnatural environment in the present. We live in the phrase. We live in a mere positive statement of all sorts of commandments and prohibitions, instead of in the original human right. We live in economic egoism instead of in the brotherhood of economic life. All this is accepted by modern man in such a way that he needs to notice it as little as possible.

Yes, you see, anthroposophy, taken seriously, does not let you simply ignore these things, but it is something that I have often said: absorbing anthroposophical truths means a certain danger for life, means that you have to live courageously, means that you have to have the inner resolve to break with many things. In almost everything that has been said, reference has been made to what Anthroposophy seeks to be. The motto given was: 'Wisdom lives only in truth'. But modern humanity lives in lies. For what has gone through the world during the catastrophe of the world wars was only lies. People everywhere said different things about things than they actually were, because in the declining culture, people have unlearned the inner connection between what they say and their inner experience. Humanity needs a strong spiritual substance in its soul to regain this connection. We should be strict with ourselves on this point. One should also understand things in detail. For example, one should understand what led to this misfortune of world war catastrophe; it is necessary to know what the inability of the leading personalities has brought about, and that this inability has been nurtured from the ground up because antipathy towards spiritual life in all areas has been nurtured. But where was it nurtured the most? It was most cultivated in the church, because what is most materialized today is the popular Christianity of all denominations. This popular Christianity of all denominations is supposed to lift man up to the spiritual world, while it only ever attempts to present the spiritual world to man in such a way that it is tangibly material. All these things have often been pointed out in detail, again and again. It is of no use today not to see these things in their true form. Above all, however, it must be realized that what is now coming into the world as the threefold social order is a result of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But one will only understand this in the right sense if, as I have just said, one looks into these things.

My dear friends, it is necessary for the human being to become a self-reliant personality through spiritual science, so that he learns to judge the outside world, including the human outside world, in the right way, precisely because he stands firmly on his own ground as a free personality. The free personality is no longer recognized in the world at all today. We have become accustomed to no longer recognizing the free personality at all. If someone says their own thoughts somewhere, their own thoughts that they have fought hard for, the foolish, stupid world today calls it a presentation. In such things, down to the last detail, it is important to see where things are rotten. This adaptation to the stupidity of the present shows how we are no longer able to stand on the ground of a free, self-creating personality. It is not pedantry to point out such things, for it is in the habitual tendrils of ordinary life that we see where things are rotten on a large scale. And if we want to recover, then this recovery must start from the large and be so strong in the large that the large can intervene in the ordinary smallest tendrils of life. At the moment when the whole world could already see externally that things were going wrong in Central Europe because of the arms race, we named our building in Dornach, which, I might add, stands directly on the border with the Entente, the Goetheanum, so that we could make it clear to the whole world what we believe to be right, never yielding in any way to what one might say: How will it affect people, what should be taken into consideration? and the like.

And in this context, I would like to point out that it would be good if the people of Central Europe in particular would remember that people like Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Herder and similar people once lived in Central Europe, that Fichte spoke there. Because these things, my dear friends, have been forgotten. It is not true that these things are still alive today. It is an enormous lie to say that Fichte is still alive. He no longer lives in people. For he does not live through the fact that his successors in the old, so-called German Reichstag in Weimar have even begun to quote him. These people, who constituted the greatness of Central Europe, became parasites on the life of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They must first be unearthed. And we will have to understand that time is a reality.

My dear friends, I want to tell you the following in a radical way: Suppose Herder or Goethe had written something; you put that down in front of you; and today, whether by karma or by chance, someone writes something without knowing that Goethe or Herder had written it; they write the same thing, using the same words. Most people of the present day would say: Well, that is exactly the same. And yet, the truth could be that what Goethe or Herder wrote would be imbued with the real spiritual, and what a person today writes with the same words would be empty phrases. But from this you may see that when someone brings a piece of paper from this or that community that comes up today with some nice program that one should do this or that socially, and compares it to what appears here as threefolding , some of it may agree word for word; but anyone who sets store by such agreement shows only that he does not really stand within the anthroposophical movement with his soul. For the great difference between us and all these things — and I have repeatedly made this absolutely clear over the decades in the most diverse contexts — the great difference lies in the fact that behind what we proclaim socially stands the world characterized by anthroposophy . That is the substance, and that makes the difference; it elevates what our sentences say beyond the character of mere phrases to real content, while most people today only speak phrases that may sound like the content of reality. What matters is reality, not the phrase. That is what one would like to be understood. If the matter is understood, my dear friends, then it is a matter of being able to grasp our time in reality from this point of view.

I would have liked someone else to have said it, but since no one else is saying it, I have to say it myself: We do have anthroposophy, we do have spiritual science; from it arises the awareness that a transformation is necessary in our cultural world. But humanity does not yet know this, it does not know it enough, it has to be told, it has to be made apparent, and it has to be made as clear as I have just shown. If someone wants to found a school, good, let them do it; if someone wants to tell fairy tales, good, let them do it; one could have done that in 1907 as well. What is at stake today is to convey to humanity the awareness that anthroposophy is here and that anthroposophy must grow. And if it does not grow, nothing will grow, because the other will perish, as is clearly evident in intellectual life. And this must be seriously presented to humanity. Of course, we cannot immediately found any schools on a large scale, but we have to say to humanity: your world is perishing, here is the truth from which you can renew it. You have to found the liberation of the School of Spiritual Science in the sense of the new spirit! It is the awakening of this consciousness that is at stake. I am therefore pleased that my appeal “To the German People and to the Cultural World” in the last issue of the “Reich” was followed by an essay containing the words:

But the forces of self-reflection should ultimately be able to lead to such a common understanding if this self-reflection were directed in the right direction, which must lead to an understanding of the foundations on which alone reconstruction is possible.

The forces of development in the new era must be included in the plan of construction. If one wanted to build without such a plan, then every well-intentioned effort would have to disintegrate due to the lack of a realistic foundation.

Anyone who takes the step towards such self-reflection will realize the significance of the view expressed in the appeal that a real mission of the German people must be inextricably linked with all that the developmental forces of modern times demand. Valid foundations for a structure cannot be created if the inexorably surging developmental forces that have been released over the last hundred years are channelled into the riverbed of old habits of thought. These developmental forces want to carve out a new riverbed. Large-scale spiritual pioneering work is to be done if the future of the German people is to be secured. But the weapons of old habits of thinking are proving too blunt to accomplish this work.

Everyone who has participated in anthroposophical work should think this way, and everyone should make this their work. For what matters today is not what we do tomorrow in detail, but that as many people as possible know what needs to be done, then there will be as many people as possible who can do it. And we must never shrink from the decision to see things as radically as possible today. To see them in such a way that we truly do not remain in the old stupid formulations of the cultural program, but that we see: here is the old culture - here is the one that is to be replaced by spiritual science. The details will follow.

It was just demanded that the children in the lowest classes should play a certain music, that everyone should learn an instrument. Such a thing can be demanded in detail. Was it not our demand from the very beginning to give every child a musical instrument? These things will come about when the work that follows from anthroposophy, the spiritual work, is undertaken on a large scale, initially for the purpose of helping people to find themselves. That is why, when I came here, my main aim was to get as many people as possible to see the things that are most important in social life today. At first people thought, because they were foolish and did not feel the reality of things: these are dreamers, things have grown on anthroposophical soil. At first they were no longer anxious. Then we had thousands and thousands of followers who sealed their allegiance by name, and we had a large, large number of votes in many resolutions. Then those to whom the masses submit have become fearful due to the present-day conditions, and since it has become apparent to them that this is not anthroposophy but realities in the minds and souls, they have denounced it as utopian because the leaders of today's proletarian masses do not think proletarian themselves, but are precisely the most dreadful bourgeois philistines. They are the ones in whom the bourgeoisie is expressed in its most characteristic form. Therefore, it is important that we now grasp our task above all. We can only grasp this task if we know how to rebuild the education system from the ground up. And we have to make it clear to the world that this education system has to be rebuilt, that it has to be built from the spirit of spiritual science. We have to make it clear today that the universities that exist now serve the downfall of humanity; that our grammar schools, our secondary modern schools, our middle schools serve the downfall of humanity; that in our primary schools, people are not educated, but state cripples. But if we allow anthroposophy to be a Sunday afternoon sermon that we let go on alongside our lives as far as possible, and then we grovel and dare not tell anyone outside that the things that other people set such great store by contain nothing but impossible stuff, then we need not be anthroposophists. We must imbue ourselves with the spirit of the truly new age, not with the catchphrases of the new age. Therefore, if we are to work as anthroposophists, our first task is to ensure that people first know what needs to be done; that they learn to know what needs to be done. I would like to test the anthroposophists who are here, they are all individual personalities. I would like to ask you: Imagine, instead of you, instead of the fact that you are sitting there and I am speaking to you, there were a bunch of Jesuits, and one of the Jesuits was encouraging the others to action. I would like to know what these Jesuits, if they were here in such numbers, would do for Jesuitism – that is what I would like to know. They would work for what they are supposed to do. They do not need to do this or that in detail, they would just limit themselves to working on a large scale to create the consciousness they want to instill in people. Basically, the only important thing is the personality that we develop, because there is nothing else, my dear friends, that will achieve anything in the present situation except by permeating as many people as possible with the truth and daring to speak that truth. We are constantly experiencing how little courage there is for the truth and how little will there is to see things through. How is a cultural pest like Johannes Müller treated in the present day? Just today I received an essay that I believe a great many people consider extraordinarily clever. The Frankfurter Zeitung, that depository for all the current nonsense and fawning of those people who also want to participate in the redesign, the Frankfurter Zeitung even prints it as a feature, an essay by Johannes Müller, in which he talks about the fact that the German people had confidence in their generals, but the generals did not have confidence in the German people, and that this is the source of the misfortune. It is pure nonsense, it is pure brass, but people today follow this brass. And one must dare to confront this brass with all one's might, because anthroposophy should not be something that is received like a Sunday afternoon sermon, but something that pours fire into our blood. What matters first of all is that we say to the world, in the most comprehensive sense, what I pointed out at the end of last Sunday's reflection: we are here as anthroposophists! If we were to found a university today, what would be the result? Well, let us assume that we get students – I will leave aside whether we would have the teachers for them – we get students; I do not think that we would get students under today's conditions, because no matter how well these students were trained, even if the socialist state system, which is praised by many, continues to exist or comes into being in a different form, it would not be recognized by the state. They would have studied for the outside world, so to speak, for their own pleasure. That is not the point, but the point is that we make the world understand: the whole spirit that prevails in our public science today must become a different one. And we have a right to demand that everyone do it – that is what matters.

Do you see why I am saying these things? Yes, I am saying them for the following reason: We have been working on this for decades; much of what I have discussed from this platform only came before my mind's eye in these last decades; I know what some of them were a harrowing experience; I know how I have to look at them; but I also know how little willpower has been developed to see things as they really are in terms of their spiritual content.

The new issue of Reich contains a very interesting essay by Hermann Haase, a contribution to a phenomenology of consciousness. This interesting essay shows something very curious. The author points to an investigation by a psychiatrist, a pathologist, who examined schizothymia and its connection with dementia praecox, a certain form of mental deficiency. Through the examination of an imbecile, the psychiatrist in question came to the conclusion that there are four types of layers of consciousness in man: the superconscious (called sup.), the experiencing subconscious (called exp. sub.), the ordering subconscious (ord. sub.) and the deepest subconscious (d. sub.). There we find the modern researcher, who has emerged from the modern university. He establishes four levels of consciousness in individuals with mental deficiencies, in which this is reflected in a negative mirror image, and it is not realized that this matter has been proclaimed to the world in a healthy way by telling it: the ordinary object consciousness, the imaginative consciousness, the inspired consciousness, the intuitive consciousness. If something is said today in the light of sound spiritual work, it is not accepted. If a psychiatrist comes along and takes something out of the morbid states of morbid individuals, the world falls in line to receive the thing in a caricature. That is what we have come to. Such an abyss exists between what can and must be proclaimed today out of the spirit and what the world is willing to accept. We must make an effort to recognize this mission of ours in the present day and not give in to the thought: “Yes, but it can't be that bad after all, people want the best.” No, we have to recognize that the world is in decline and that it needs to be rebuilt. That is what we have to make it aware of first. If we do not make it clear, then nothing we put into the world will be of any use, and the world would not understand it at all if it were not first pointed out that it is necessary to replace contemporary state science with something else. This is how the world must experience it. And if we do not rise to this challenge, then we as anthroposophists are not working to transform modern culture. Anything else is wishy-washy. We must therefore seek the forms in which we can communicate this to the world, in which we are really always talking about spiritual science. We do not need to concern ourselves today at this important historical moment with whether or not we have fairy tales to tell; that may be a nice task, but today it is about how we present the spiritual wealth of spiritual science to the world. We must not always protect and patronize what is different, but really stand on the ground of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We have to represent spiritual science. That is what I meant last Sunday. And we should courageously represent this spiritual science wherever we can, in whatever profession we are active. This spiritual science can send its reforming and revolutionary power into every profession. We must not be deterred when something is possible, such as a first-class university of the old declining times producing an individual like Max Dessoir, who lies, lies scientifically. We must have the courage to present these things in their truth. But now we must be alert to the fact that slimy figures are creeping out everywhere, attacking what should have come from here. The things these slimy figures come up with! In addition to everything else that has been slime, a new slime has emerged that has added a slur on Dessoir and that produces the slimey lie that Dessoir has justified himself in the new edition of his book. We must be alert to the slime in today's culture, as it emerges particularly in the public press. If we do not aspire to clarity, all our confused thoughts will not help us. For that we need both courage and the humility to limit ourselves in our abilities and in our powers to do what we can do. You see, I just wanted to tell you these things to make you understand what I actually meant last Sunday. I did not mean that one should think one should now do what one should have done in 1907; then it would have developed in some way by 1919; but I meant that one should now seize the great historical moment and make it clear to the world that there is an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It does not know that. It does not know that at all, because people are not listening to these things, because they are not being transformed into deeds. I could give you countless examples of how things are not being transformed into deeds, how things mean nothing more than a passing sensation. That is not what anthroposophy is meant to be. Anthroposophy is meant in such a way that action can arise from each of its words, even if this action can initially only consist of words. But these words must not be empty phrases, they must not be formulated in an unctuous way, like the unctuous speech of ancient or contemporary Christianity; these speeches must be grainy. We must make it clear today that those who come out of our universities are stupid, and we must not tire of showing that this is a cultural-historical phenomenon, that all four faculties (or however many are newly established) are institutions of stultification in the sense of real human development. If we do not take a stand and speak out, then anthroposophy will have to work for a long time before it can fulfill its true calling. Then you see, do you believe that what I told you the other day, that for example what is described in our anatomy and physiology as “human” is actually not a human being but Lucifer, described by Ahriman, which is expressed by the fact that today's physiology distinguishes between two types of nerves, sensitive and motor nerves; do you think that it is easy to find? If it is found, it is a truth today that should not be taken as a sensation, as idle gossip, but that it could unhinge an entire system of science, as well as many other systems of science that are taught today at our universities by the boards of trustees, and how this spiritual science could unhinge many other things. But as long as we are not aware that anthroposophy is everything, that the other things cannot exist alongside it, that it is wrong of us to let ourselves be beaten down as soon as we are out of this door, then of course we cannot achieve what I spoke of last Sunday. We as anthroposophists should make it clear to the world that we are here. That is what matters. Above all, we must grasp that. The world must know that anthroposophy can advocate for its cause. Think about it: if there were only Jesuits sitting here and they were admonished to work, how they would work, then you would get a yardstick for what people who want to advocate for their cause do for their cause. But one must be able to look at things this way, not as a Sunday afternoon sermon. I believe that this is the most practical thing at the present time, and we would like to agree on this: how we can really bring the anthroposophical spiritual heritage into the world today, when the time is right for it, when it is high time for it. We have begun by saying that we were always embarrassed at the beginning, when this movement began here in Europe; we were always embarrassed; we wrung ourselves out, how we say this or that, but just not where it comes from, just not on what soil it grew; we have considered that as our task. We should think back to this time, and when we think back, we should learn the right lessons from it. Then we could, above all, be a community of people who practice the right, but now productive criticism of the unculture of the present. And this productive criticism, this emphasis on the fact that what is there must be replaced by something else, that the whole of the present school system is not worth a shot of powder, this productive criticism, that is what we have to do first. Then everyone can add what they can add from their own particular knowledge, and in doing so they can make fruitful use of what they are as individuals. But wanting to make all kinds of things fruitful without putting them at the service of the greater good will achieve nothing today, because today humanity is not facing small, but great reckonings, and this must always be said again.

Address to an Assembly of the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism Protocol Record

[Emil Molt first gives an introduction about the state of the work of establishing works councils, which is not making much progress. Ernst Uehli presents the new weekly newspaper “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefolding of the Social Organism).]

Rudolf Steiner: If the threefolding of the social organism is to become what it must become, then it must work as a whole. It will not be possible, for example, to take any part, any link out of the whole structure of the threefold social order. It would not be possible, for example, to realize the economic part of this impulse at some time or other - in about the way it is contained in the so-called “program” - and to introduce it into the world in itself. That would not be possible. It is imperative to strive simultaneously for the three parts of the social organism to develop side by side. Just as in a natural organism one could never speak of creating the head or the chest first and then waiting for the other part to arise from the other limbs, so too can no part of the three-part social organism be tackled on its own. Therefore, just as the seed - which you have heard today has not yet borne very hopeful fruit - had emerged, but as the seed of the economic program through the idea of the works councils had emerged, it had to be borne in mind that the work should not be done only in the economic field in our sense, but that the universality should be taken into account. Therefore, while working for the works councils, the leadership of the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism decided, on the one hand, to gather around them personalities who were believed to be interested in creating and preparing for another link in the social organism: the spiritual link, the cultural link. And we tried to start by setting up a kind of cultural council – or whatever you want to call it. You will find a detailed account of what is actually being sought with this establishment of a cultural council in the call to establish a cultural council, as it has now been provisionally published and as it will probably be in your hands. So I will have little more to say to you about the matter today.

It was really possible to organize a kind of collaboration, a collaboration between a larger number of people. Those interested in the most diverse areas of intellectual life were repeatedly here together, and the ideas of such a cultural council were discussed. But then they also went into the individual work. Everyone tried to contribute, to gather the thoughts that had occurred to them in these smaller meetings – the thoughts that had occurred to the individual about reforms, about the transformation of intellectual life. And from this collaboration, like a final editorial board, the first version of this appeal for the establishment of a cultural council emerged.

The next step was to win over a larger group of people who, out of a sense of the needs of contemporary culture, would have joined in the call: Something must be done in the field of intellectual life in our very difficult times. - We then tried to approach this or that representative of intellectual life. It would be a very sad, indeed a very depressing chapter if one were to describe the details of the negotiations that took place in connection with the first figure of this call. Now, in these difficult times, it should be recognized that, above all, a renewal, a reorganization of intellectual life is necessary in the deepest sense, that is, insofar as it belongs to the social organism. This must be recognized, on the one hand, by the fundamental character that the intellectual life of cultured humanity has gradually taken on. It must be recognized, secondly, by how this intellectual life is administered today. That this intellectual life is the basis of what is actually happening today, which is presenting itself as confusion in the chaos of our culture and our entire civilization – this should actually be recognized.

We should recognize what fruits it has borne that for three to four centuries our intellectual life, especially in the form of schooling and education, has been repeatedly and repeatedly absorbed by the state organization. We should recognize that today we have hardly any sense of the innermost needs of intellectual life, which can only exist in the urge for a free shaping of this life. No feeling has been aroused by the fact that the absorption of spiritual life by the state was a decisive factor not only for the filling of posts and for external administration, but also for the content of this spiritual life itself. This could not be shown as clearly in the past as it is today, at the great turning points in the development of humanity that we are currently facing. Over the past three to four centuries, as important branches of our intellectual life have gradually been absorbed into state life, a form of our intellectual life has developed that is no longer capable of producing ideas that would have been a match for the facts, which are asserting themselves more and more powerfully, more and more extensively.

Thus it has come about that, wherever they were locked out of these or those foundations of intellectual life, thoughts were too short to control the facts, that these facts went their own way, came into their own momentum, and in the end it was the thoughtless facts into which man was no longer able to send thoughts, have brought about our terrible world catastrophe, in which we are still very much involved, and with regard to which we are only now entering decisive points, decisive stages.

Nothing shows the decline of our intellectual life more than the state of the proletariat, which is so significant for the movement of today's people. The leading circles, who have been leading up to now, feel with horror what revelations, what programs, what party maxims are emerging from the proletariat. In my book 'The Key Points of the Social Question', I wanted to point out the crucial point. I wanted to point out that the state of mind of the leading members of the proletariat today is nothing other than the legacy of the intellectual life of the bourgeoisie, of the leading, guiding circles.

Recently, two members of the Federation for the Threefolding of the Social Organism who belong to workers' circles gave a lecture at a public meeting. This was followed by a discussion in which prominent figures of the proletariat, who were far to the left, intervened. I then spoke a few words, which amounted to saying that, in my opinion, these personalities, who were far to the left and belonged to communist circles, had nothing but the worst offshoots of the intellectual heritage of the leading and governing circles – which they were until now – in their speeches. I would like to say that one has never heard such bourgeois talk as was the case with these independent and communist personalities. They have learned this from their bourgeois ancestors. They had to learn it. And anyone who can look more deeply into the official development of our intellectual life, into the administration of our intellectual life, knows that this intellectual life has finally led to the complete withering away of intellectual production and that, where intellectual matters are concerned, nothing is left but empty phrases. We live in a world of empty phrases. There are still people who do not want to see these things. There are still people in Central Europe – it is hard to believe – who do not want to see these things, who still want to indulge in the illusions that have allowed them to numb themselves for so long, about rushing into self-inflicted destruction. Self-inflicted because they do not want to face what is without prejudice, because they only want to hold on to old habits of thinking and feeling.

The aim of a cultural council as it is conceived today must be a complete reorganization of the entire education and teaching system. I would like to say that something like this can be tackled on a small scale. It is to be tackled by setting up the so-called 'Waldorf School' here. This Waldorf School is to be brought into being by our friend Mr. Molt, initially for the children of the workers at Waldorf-Astoria. This school should be set up in such a way that the children between the ages of six and fifteen are taught not in the way that teaching has been conducted at this school level so far - out of the mere needs of the template state - but in a way that is appropriate to human nature between the ages of seven and fifteen, according to a thorough understanding of that human nature. What people have in mind as a so-called unified school that is not born out of anything other than human nature, which is a unity for all people, especially in these years, should underlie the entire structure of the Waldorf school. The whole structure of the Waldorf school should be based on this knowledge of what should grow with the human being in the world, and on this knowledge of how teaching should be structured. Teachers should work seriously to receive a pedagogy that is based on real anthropology, on a comprehensive anthropology. The task of these teachers is to educate the human being to develop the powers that lie within the human being, which must be cultivated during childhood, so that something can be avoided in the future that every observer of human nature, who has a knowledge of psychology, can see so clearly today.

Indeed, what is the most important and essential characteristic in the life of our time? What is it that weighs so heavily on our minds today as a major cultural concern? If we look at what prevails among people today, we find that most people today are what I would call “bent natures”: those people whose will and feeling and thinking are “bent” by the vicissitudes of life. Why are they “bent”? The reason is that our school education for children is such that the most important powers of the soul are not strengthened to such an extent that they can no longer be “bent” later on, that the human being is able to cope with life. This should be the concern when setting up a Waldorf school: to prepare the human being for life in such a way that the soul and emotional forces that can only be developed in childhood are developed so that the human being can cope with life. Everything that is to be taught in so-called subjects is only secondary. Everything that figures as a so-called subject will always be asked: How does it contribute to the development of the powers of the human soul? When is this and this, at what age should this or that be introduced to the child? Lessons should be taught from a comprehensive understanding of the human being. Then the people who come out of such a school will be able to stand strong in life. Not less, but more effort will be needed by the human being in the age that hopes for social organization - in contrast to the divisions into class differences and the like that existed before. Of course, what is today the middle school, grammar school, secondary school and so on would also have to be reorganized, and what should be completely different for the future if one wants to have people who are good for life; it would have to be raised to a higher level than the lower level of elementary school, and the reorganization would have to extend up to the highest levels of teaching, at least to the college level. You can find more details on how this is to be achieved in the appeal to found a cultural council.

As I said, you can do something on a small scale, like the Waldorf School, with someone who really has such a deep understanding, like our friend Mr. Molt, for what needs to be done in terms of threefolding. The individual can have a beneficial effect by doing such a foundation. But with such an individual foundation today, the necessary is not yet done. Today it is a matter of awakening the consciousness in people in the widest possible circle: that which can be intended for such a particular thing should become the common property of humanity if we do not want to sail into the downfall of European culture. Today it always looks as if one is merely putting some kind of fantasy before the world when one says: we are faced with the “either/or”. Either we must decide on great things, or we must familiarize ourselves with the thought that European civilization is sailing towards its destruction. Anyone who still does not believe in this “either/or” today simply does not understand the times. Today's call is not for our timidity, but for our courageous will. And here I must say: in view of everything that has been said about the transformation of spiritual life in the sense of threefolding, it is truly one of the most serious disappointments that now, after weeks of efforts, nothing more is available than the attempt at such an appeal, which has indeed found a number of signatures, but of course not nearly enough. Because what is to be done today must be well-founded in the broadest sense of the mass judgment. Only in this way can we move forward.

The negotiations have shown time and again that the old problem is also occurring in this matter: one person wants this, the other that; one person did not like a sentence, another did not like the stylization; one person finds it necessary to spend weeks discussing a matter. Yes, it must be said: the concerns that have been expressed, especially by this or that personality on whom we had counted in this cultural appeal, were of such a nature that they really proved how necessary the transformation of our intellectual life is. – There is nothing that shows the poor state of our intellectual life more than the intellectual life that has produced such objections as those that have been raised against us. That is why this cultural appeal must be discussed today.

You see, when we talk about what concerns humanity as a whole, what is so clearly shown by the whole configuration of our time that it concerns all of humanity, what do we learn? These days, I read in various Stuttgart newspapers a description of what the Waldorf School wants. This description was also contained in the local Social Democratic paper of the USPD, the “Sozialdemokrat”. The “Sozialdemokrat” could not help but make the following comment on this description, which was [objective]: The matter would be all very well, but it comes from factory owners, and we will not put up with that.

This is the state of mind of contemporary humanity. But this state of mind of contemporary humanity is particularly evident in what has been encountered in so-called “bourgeois” economics, namely the most enlightened economists at our university, the leading economists at our university.

I ask you to buy this issue, which is entitled “Das gelbe Blatt” (The Yellow Sheet) – the current issue. You will find an article by Professor Lujo Brentano about the entrepreneur. Of course, today the newspapers are everywhere reporting on Professor Brentano's article about the entrepreneur, as they are accustomed to doing based on their belief in authority. For our time, which according to its illusion is not one of blind faith in authority – it is more blindly faith in authority than Catholics ever were in relation to their church leaders in earlier times. But try to read this article by Professor Brentano on entrepreneurship with your common sense, emancipated from all this blind faith in authority. It is to be hoped that as many people as possible today will apply common sense to such things.

First of all, there is a definition of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is characterized in three points. And a concept of the entrepreneur is created, a concept that the luminary of economic science, Professor Brentano, ultimately uses to such an extent that the concept of the entrepreneur also includes the ordinary proletarian worker; because, according to Professor Brentano, the ordinary proletarian worker is the entrepreneur of his own labor, which he brings to market at his own risk and expense. Today our intellectual life is such that pure nonsense enjoys the greatest fame. Until we can fully grasp the full weight of this fact, we will not develop a sense of what is necessary. And until we develop this sense, we will not understand how much inner courage is required for this transformation of our intellectual life; how much is demanded by a truly fundamental renewal of our intellectual life, especially of our education and teaching.

Oh, I would give anything to have the gift of very different words and word coinages to make today's humanity aware of what one really had to achieve through a bloody struggle for life. Do you think it is easy to say such things as I had to say against a so-called luminary of today's science? If you say such a thing, everyone sees you as an angry rabble-rouser, as a person who must be silenced. And only the most sacred sense of duty can lead one to tell the truth about these things today. And this truth is serious, very serious. For what have we already achieved in the details?

I would like to recall the lecture I gave in Heilbronn on the threefold social organism, which Mr. Molt has already mentioned today. In the review of the “Heilbronner Zeitung” that Mr. Molt reported on, there are many things that do not interest me, because I am highly indifferent to what a line-pushing writer writes about what is spoken out of today's seriousness of life. But if this wordiness becomes a symptom of what lives in today's hearts and minds, then it needs to be considered a little. There it has yet such a wordy windbag managed to say that I have resorted to “the three old hits Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”. Well, this is how far this generation has come, that today one can freely say that these three great goods of humanity – freedom, equality, fraternity – are “hits”, that one can mock what is most sacred to people. One is reminded of the words of Hamlet: “Writing tablets, writing tablets, that one may write down, that one may smile and always smile and yet be a villain.” And one would like to say: writing tablets, so that one can be considered an educated person in the face of contemporary humanity and even be allowed to write in newspapers and still be allowed to mock the highest ideals of humanity in the most stupid way!

These things are rooted in our present-day culture; that they be seen, that what everyone who takes today's world seriously longs for, and that out of this longing develops that which in turn can result in a recovery of our social organism!

We are really on the verge of the catastrophe that is looming in the most diverse areas of life. What we need is to find the strength to draw upon our inner resources. We need to do everything we can, especially in view of the impending danger to Central Europe, to draw upon our innermost human powers. We need to let the danger to Central Europe become the impetus to do everything we can from our innermost being. Much will be taken from this Central Europe, it will be made very, very poor. And truly, one is repeatedly reminded of what one has already had to let sink in again and again from life, very, very bitterly: It was always a painful sight for me to see a young child here and there in more intimate circles during these war years, because then one had to feel: The old have at least something behind them, have a memory of something; but those who are now children are growing up in terrible times. And today, this feeling does not only come to mind through the general world situation; today it also comes to mind when one has to notice how sleepy humanity is in the face of what can be observed today. It must be observed how we are absolutely sailing into destruction if we do not start from such points of view, which I have been able to characterize here today, albeit very imperfectly, in just a few words.

Let me say it once again: Much will be taken from this Central Europe; it will be made very poor. It can only be saved if it draws on something that cannot be taken away: the innermost powers of the soul. And it is precisely the folk forces of this Central Europe that are capable of cultivating this innermost power of the soul. We have not cultivated it in Central Europe in recent decades – that is our great fault. Let us learn from necessity to cultivate it.

This is what comes to mind today when one wants to speak about something like the founding of a cultural council. It is from such serious foundations that this appeal for the founding of a cultural council is written. May its individual sentences be found good or bad; I do not care what these individual sentences are called - it is the spirit behind them that matters! And one would like to see this spirit recognized; to see how it cannot be grasped merely in the mind, but how it must be grasped as a stimulus to real action for a renewal, a transformation, a new creation of our spiritual life.

Lecture at an Assembly of the Federal Council for the Threefold Order of the Social Organism

Rudolf Steiner: I don't want to interfere with the debate for too long, because I think it is better if suggestions come from the most diverse sides today, which can then lead to further fruitful work. But I would like to say a few words at least to suggest what is needed to summarize what has already been very gratefully put forward by various speakers today and what will hopefully continue to be put forward in the course of this evening. Above all, it is a matter of such small circles, which, I might say, can work out of expertise, that such small circles, more or less small or large circles, are formed. But then it is a matter of ensuring that a certain merger of these circles, which must be organized, really does give rise to the cultural council, if we want to call it that; that the cultural council as such performs a kind of work, that small circles do not merely cause a fragmentation of the work. The words I have just spoken are not meant to be in any way opposed to the active work of the small groups, but I would just like to draw attention to the fact that a network of connections of the most diverse kinds must exist between these individual groups. We must never lose sight of the great tasks that actually have to occupy us in the whole threefold social order and in particular in one part of this threefold order, in the work of the cultural council.

You see, in order to really organize the work, we have to focus our attention on the main thing that matters at the present time. This main issue can be described symptomatically by this or that. In his introductory remarks, Dr. Unger emphasized a very harsh symptom, “the school compromise,” and similar compromises, but we actually have the opportunity everywhere to observe how such symptoms of a fundamental decline in our intellectual culture in particular are etched on people's faces. We are suffering today only from a very significant moment of decline in our intellectual life – that is the fragmentation, the atomization of our intellectual life. I beg you: there is actually not so much lack of people today who know the worst damage to our intellectual cultural life and also scourge it, but they remain alone, their circle does not care.

Take one case: it is indeed the case that the constitution of our technical universities, for example, has been castigated in a truly magnificent way by individual lecturers at these technical universities, who have pointed out how the constitution of these technical universities is actually something other than what they should be. There are some really excellent critiques of this impossible university system in the trade journals. But let's ask ourselves this question: Who is taking care of these things from the general public? - Something that should be known in the widest circles is written by individuals, and not even those who are fellow professionals read it. They subscribe to the journals, have them bound, put them in libraries – if they are industrious, they might make a card index so that they can find individual items when they need them – but on the whole these things are not written today to be read, but to gather dust in libraries. In this field, we have intellectual production, but no intellectual consumption. And so it happens that only the narrowest circles are aware of the damage to our cultural life, but that one is powerless to do anything to improve it.

There is an essay – I believe it is by Professor Riedler of the Technical University in Charlottenburg – that severely criticizes the damage caused by the technical universities in particular. Yes, once again, for the umpteenth time, something is being pointed out that is not only harmful with regard to the structure of the technical university, but is detrimental to our entire moral life. It is said that freedom of teaching and learning prevail at universities. People get carried away by the idea that when they move from secondary school to university, they enter the realm of freedom of teaching and learning. What, for example, does freedom of learning consist of? Well, it consists of buying the university program and finding in it: If you want to become an engineer, or if you want to become this or that, then you need this timetable; if you want to become a mechanical engineer, then you need this timetable, which you have to follow, otherwise you cannot pass the exam. — That is to say: on the one hand, the phrase 'freedom of learning' is elevated to a cultural element, but on the other hand, the most terrible learning compulsion is made reality. I could go on telling you how these people actually know what the damage to our cultural life is, and how they also express it, but there is no common ground for a, I would say, human discussion of the question, and people in the broadest circles do not care about it.

In general, I had to say that there are people in bourgeois life who do not know that trade unions exist and how they have worked, so there is no common field of discussion about our cultural damage. The cultural council would have to create something like that. That is, we would have to take care of what those who understand it have said about our cultural damage. We would have to collect all the criticism that exists, and we would be convinced: the most terrible criticism exists, for example, of how the economy is encroaching in a terrible way into intellectual life.

I will illustrate this with an example. You know that there are doctors of theology, doctors of medicine, doctors of philosophy, and now even doctors of engineering. But the technical colleges have invented a very special doctorate; they whisper this doctorate from ear to ear – it is the “Dr. mammoniae”. How does it come about? It comes about because the professors at the technical college, at the colleges in general, are paid extremely poorly, and because the state has very little money to pay its cultural workers. You can find them everywhere if you just look for them. In particular, the technical colleges and those colleges that have somewhat emancipated themselves from the old - yes, how should we describe them, with an “epithet ornans” - from the “old respectability”; they have their honorary doctor, for which you don't need to take an exam, very often set it up so that they send this honorary doctorate to the room of this or that rich man, an industrialist or commercial, on the condition that he makes an endowment in one direction or another for this university. And such doctors are called “doctores mammoniae” from mouth to ear. These “doctors of mammon” clearly show that something immoral is even crossing over from economic life into our intellectual life.

I could give you countless examples of this if only people wanted to be bothered with such things. The fact is that there is a terrible lack of interest in what is going on in the broadest circles, that it is necessary to ensure above all that people really get to know the damage. If people get to know the damage, then they will become open to the only solution to the problem. And for this solution to the problem, we must indeed win people over. That is our primary concern.

You see, one of those who has written quite strong reviews about the damage of the technical colleges shows how students come from secondary school with only a philological education – which was only aimed at a certain training of intellectual life, but not at a real education of the mind - so that the university has to take over the young people and use the first year, and sometimes even longer, to unlearn what they have absorbed in secondary school, so that they are better trained for what they will have to learn later in the actual technical colleges. A man like that, who sees this, wonders: how can this be remedied? Yes, he says to himself: those who know what the damage is, the technicians themselves, are not seen. You don't see them in parliament, you don't see them in public life. At most, they write for trade journals. They do not give their expert opinion for the public to see - nor does the public ask for it. You won't find the technicians where an expert opinion should be given. For example, one of the sighing people writes: “You don't find the technicians there, you only find the lawyers.” These are the stragglers of the old state system.

Some people are already aware of these issues and also highlight them, but there is currently no inclination to summarize them. And where does this critic, who actually has a fairly good knowledge of the prevailing problems, at least in his field, in the field of technical colleges, where does he summarize his judgment? He says: We, as professors at the technical colleges, are already sighing for the days of enlightened absolutism in the state. - Then he says: Yes, but who is enlightened, and who still puts up with absolutism today? - You see, that's where the saddest thing begins: people see that the conditions are untenable; they sigh for change. But they still look to the unitary state; and if they do not like the present form of the unitary state, they long for the restoration of the enlightened absolutism of the eighteenth century. There they believe in what they call the “strongmen” - this expression had somewhat penetrated into the audience during the war. Yes, and that is why it is important to show, starting from what we find today if we only look for it, that the only remedy is to break away from the state and really find our way into the threefold social organism. That is the answer to all these things.

The questions are being asked and have been asked – we just need to collect the material, so to speak. Therefore, it would be good if, above all, the positive material that is already available were collected, and small groups also looked at how people have already recognized and repeatedly criticized the situation here and there. From there, the starting point should be taken to justify the threefold social order. The only way to make progress is to say: Why we want the threefold social order is almost whistled from the rooftops, even if people plug their ears. But that is precisely what our public life is like today, our life spoiled by the plague of newspapers, we plug our ears to this, we know nothing of the world, we do not care about what is really there. That is what it is about, to gain interest in what is there, and then show people: we no longer need criticism, we only need to repeat the criticisms that are there. But we know the means that the others do not come up with: that is the threefold social organism, that is the position of intellectual life on its own ground and so on - how things are has been emphasized often enough here and in other places, so that you recognize them.

That, my dear friends, is what the organization must provide. This must lead to a situation in which what can be found by one group is communicated to the other groups, so that there is a lively exchange and unity among the groups in that they are all imbued with it: this is how today's historical answer to the big question must be given – which actually flows from the judgments that have always been there.

Then it is indeed the case that we are in a somewhat different situation with regard to the questions that arise here in the area of the cultural council than we are, for example, in the area of economics with works councils. In the economic sphere, the works councils are to be elected from the individual companies and are to create, so to speak, what can be called the socialization of economic life. So in the first phase, we will have to deal primarily with a works council made up of producers. This does not have to be the case with the cultural council. This is a matter concerning all of humanity. We might even do better if we don't just make the individual producers or the people who currently have the initiative in this or that field the main focus of this cultural council, but if we really proceed on a broader basis here, if we say: Fine, we listen to the small group of doctors on the one hand, but on the other hand to the other group that comes together, the group of patients. —So here, perhaps to a much greater extent, consumers come into consideration, especially in the field of cultural life.

You see, ultimately we have already had the most diverse experiences. We have approached teachers' circles, and one question keeps coming up: who will pay the teachers in the future? Yes, who pays them today? It really does not depend on the path that the money takes, which comes out of people's pockets, but on the fact that it only ends up with the one who has to eat from it. We will also find this in a different way than through the detour of the present state, the unitary state. Today, anyone who is involved in a profession is to a high degree biased in that profession. This must be corrected by those who are, so to speak, the consumers of that profession. And so I believe that if a large number of our intellectual consumers would pull themselves together, something much better would come out in some individual fields than if, in turn, those who are the producers pull themselves together. For this reason, Dr. Herberg's proposal is to be welcomed, because it may allow the consumers to have their say to a greater extent than the producers. That is how it will turn out in practice. The realization of the proposals will be quite good.

It would only be bad for certain professions – we have to be clear about that – to hear the producers, for example, the newspaper writers. You see, we could say some very strange things today to show how great the damage is in this area. For example, at a meeting this year, where it was a matter of considerable things, but which were not treated in a considerable way, there was also talk of how to remedy the slander of the press. During these deliberations, when the slander of the press was discussed, someone also stood up and said that a very strong correction of the press damage was indeed needed. For example, a large number of people tried to get to the bottom of the real events surrounding the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Berlin. A manifesto was written that – I don't want to say how many – signatures bore, with a description of this event. It was sent to the newspapers. No newspaper wanted to take it, no newspaper of the reactionary direction, no newspaper of the Social Democracy or the Communist Party and so on – it was simply not taken. That is a matter in itself, it is a mundane matter. But there was someone at this meeting who was a newspaper writer and he said: “Yes, that's not how it was.” And when he was cornered, he said: “Well, a journalist doesn't need to be braver than the government itself. The government itself didn't publish it – why should a journalist publish it?” There are many, many such stories. It is not very helpful to ask a newspaper writer about what should be happening in the press; instead, we should ask the people who are supposed to be reading it. Once again, it is the consumers who are concerned.

I do believe that we should draw attention to the fact that the Cultural Council is a matter for all of humanity. But above all, it is important that we do not place ourselves in this cultural council in order to “have also signed”, but that we also work in it, above all working on the development of that which has been most neglected and whose neglect has driven us most into the present situation.

In Berlin, a professors' association has been founded; a professor said in a speech: Oh, if only the time would come - those are roughly his words, they are not exaggerated - if only the time would come back when one did not have to worry about German politics, when one could just devote oneself to professorial work, when German politics was taken care of by the Hohenzollerns, who cared for us so fatherly, and the Prussian state. That is roughly the gist of a speech made by a group of professors at the University of Berlin. And the person who spoke in these terms is not some obscure individual, but the first professor of German literary history at the first German university, Gustav Roethe. And this was spoken in a circle chaired by Wil amowitz, the famous Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, admittedly the blasphemer of the Greek tragedians, but the Welt says, the one who first incorporated the Greek tragedians into the German language.

What I would particularly like to point out is that this interest in the whole of cultural life should not be neglected. Today you are a painter, today you are a professor or a shoemaker or a laundress or an Egyptologist or a lawyer or a pastor and so on, but you are only interested in what is pastoral, what is in the field of laundry, what is coffee gossip and the like, and not in the general affairs of humanity. They are happy if they don't have to deal with it. If we continue in this mood, we will not achieve a real cultural council. A real cultural council can only come about if we open the windows to the whole of human life as wide as possible, if we can really understand it, otherwise we will look at all the monstrous things that happen in the same way as we look at them now. Such monstrosities occur that two groups of people, the Social Democrats and the Center, unite, and that people look at this without being outraged by this monstrosity. They take it with a certain indifference, even though it means that nothing could be more strongly ridiculed than what would be a recovery of German intellectual life. Such things are quite simply there.

We have a nice example in the special edition of our newspaper that is at least symptomatically significant. You see, the current great man is Herr Erzberger. Well, some people already seem to be starting to care a little about this man, about this individual swarming around in today's political sky, but this concern does not go deep enough. It is said that the Landjäger (a special police force in the German state of Württemberg) appeared in Weimar and demanded Mr. Erzberger. When they were asked, “What do you want with him?” they replied, “We want to hang him.” A Württemberg newspaper responded somewhat brashly, although brashness is otherwise popular in other parts of Germany: “We want to hang him too, but a little lower!” The matter is beginning to dawn a little; people are beginning to realize what Germany has in this man. But anyway, take a look, there is a nice symptom described in our current special edition of the Federation for the Threefold Social Order. There you will find a record of the entry that Mr. Erzberger made in a kind of family album on June 14, 1919, the day it was announced that the terrible Treaty of Versailles had to be signed. On that day, this German “government furniture” wrote in a family album: “First get your act together, then drink and laugh!”

You see, I do not want to criticize these things here, because I want others to criticize them, but I want to point out that we will not make progress if we do not take care of these things, if we do not take care of them, especially if we do not go deep enough into our souls. We have to look deeply enough into our soul. If we just let these things pass us by like the images in a kaleidoscope – that soon the political kaleidoscope will be thrown together in such a way that there were images like Bethmann, Ludendorff and Hindenburg, then you shake a little, and other stones come, and if we now observe these kaleidoscopic images, if we behave like this, then we will never have what we need in the Cultural Council: a real power of transformation, a real power of renewal. But we can only get that into it if we overcome this terrible lack of interest around us, if we open the windows wide and take an interest in what our fellow human beings are doing. What is going on in this or that field? That is not difficult if you just don't shut yourself away in that terrible selfishness that can't get beyond what you're forced to take an interest in. If you can develop a little sense of freedom within yourself, then this sense of freedom will very soon be able to extend to opening the windows wide to what is happening in the world. And only by doing so is it possible to make progress.

That is what I wanted to draw attention to. Only when you pay proper attention to this will you find the organizational plan we need for a cultural council. But this organizational plan can only arise out of life itself, and this life will show that if we look at the individual damages, we will find from them a concrete observation of what is there. Those who want to do this or that must be particularly open to this. Today we must not swim in abstractions, but we must engage with the concrete. We have to get involved, for example, in saying to ourselves: how terrible it is that the denominations do business and conduct their various horse-trading with other groups of people, and so on and so forth. We have to concern ourselves with these things and bring them so deeply into the inner reaches of our soul that our inner emotional experiences are involved, that we do not pass by them indifferently.

Rudolf Steiner's request to speak at a teachers' conference, Protocol Record

If the Cultural Council worked properly, it would replace these terrible establishments with reason, and everything would be better. Then you could also teach sensible astronomy. But you cannot stand up to brutal power. The Cultural Council could do what should have been done from the beginning: really take up its program and work towards taking over the entire school system. The Waldorf School is set up as a prime example. But it can't do anything about the brutal power. The cultural council would have the task of transforming the entire education system. If we had ten million, we could expand the Waldorf School. These are just “small obstacles,” this lack of ten million.

Rudolf Steiner's notebook entry, between December 26 and 29, 1919.

Cultural Council = members do not attend.