The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

No notes of the speech given by Rudolf Steiner before the performance have been preserved, but the newspaper report gives some of its contents.

Report from the Cannstatter Zeitung, November 23, 1920

Eurythmic Art

To come straight to the point; because the rush could not be met by far, today, Tuesday, the 23rd, there will be a repeat of the eurythmic art performance at the Wilhelmatheater. The performance on Sunday evening, which originated from the 'Freie Hochschule für Geisteswissenschaft', Goetheanum in Dornach-Switzerland, thus had a full house. Dr. Rudolf Steiner introduced the performance with a remarkable address, in which he emphasized the most essential aspects of the nature and aims of the eurythmic art. It is not some kind of dance, not some kind of mimicry, not gestures as a means of expression, but a real, visible language; the movements take place in strict accordance with the law. That which lies in the poem, in the song, in the piece of music, becomes visible to the eye through a different kind of expression, through a kind of formal language, just as the sounds of music become visible to the ear. In a poem or a piece of music, it is the 'how' that is art, not the 'what'. Before Schiller wrote a poem, he always had an indefinite melody in his soul, and that was the main thing. The actual artistic aspect of poetry only becomes a true revelation when the human being makes himself an artistic instrument, when the lawful movements are intended to express his soul life, his entire spiritual existence. This is the artistic side of eurythmy. However, this is juxtaposed with the pedagogical-didactic element. This is why the Freie Waldorf School in Stuttgart was founded. Here everything that has been developed from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is to be cultivated. First and foremost, the will initiative that is so necessary for our time and the striving for truth. Eurythmy is still in its infancy, but it can be perfected and should ultimately place the human being at the pinnacle of nature, so that he makes himself a work of art. Then it will be able to stand alongside the older arts as a fully-fledged, younger art. These words, which were received with enthusiastic applause, were followed by 22 performances, which all went extremely well and were, in some cases, highly artistic. The simplicity, appropriateness, and functionality of the costumes were very pleasing, and yet the changing of the colored lights created very charming effects. From the wide range of performances, just a few were selected: the very first number, Forest Concert, with the soft, melodious singing of Ms. Olga Leinhas. Nietzsche's “The Sea's Ever-Changing Song” was vividly presented by Ms. L. Maier-Smits, as was “Autumn.” The renditions of “To the Cicada” by Miss Ilona Bögel, “To Brother Kronos” and “Mahomet's Song” by Miss Edith Röhrle, and “Song of the Night” by Miss Erika Schilbach were admirable. As teacher and at once champion, Ms. Baumann gave the masterpiece Salome in the final number, along with many others. Dr. Steiner, who presented the poems with great creativity, played a large part in the success. The children who participated were a source of great joy. The cute little ones had to be seen performing The Ducks Ice Skating. The older children also received plenty of applause after every number and had to repeat. Mr. Baumann accompanied them skillfully on the piano. We are sure that the theater will be full again on Tuesday.

In 1887, the painter Karl Stockmeyer (1857-1930) built the “Waldhaus” on the outskirts of the village of Malsch, not far from Karlsruhe. It was run as a guest house by his wife Johanna (died July 22, 1923), from 1908/09 on mainly for friends of the movement seeking rest and recreation. Since the death of Karl Stockmeyer, the Waldhaus has become a curative education home.

The oldest Stockmeyer daughter, Hilde (1884-1910), who had found Rudolf Steiner first in 1904 (and through her in 1906/07 also her parents and siblings), founded and ran the Francis von Assisi branch at the Waldhaus until her early death. The younger daughter, Waldtraut Stockmeyer-Schöpflin-Döbelin (1888-1951), later made a significant contribution to biodynamic agriculture in Norway. Their son E.A. Karl (1886-1963) was not only a pioneer in the development of the Waldorf school movement, but was also involved in Rudolf Steiner's architectural ideas from an early stage. As a twenty-one-year-old student, he took part in the Munich Congress with his parents and siblings. Deeply impressed by the new forms of the capitals, he asked Rudolf Steiner in 1908 about the bases and the architecture belonging to the columns. On the basis of the information given to him by Rudolf Steiner, he developed the idea for a model, which he built with the help of his father in 1908/09 at the Waldhaus.

Rudolf Steiner came to Malsch three times in this context: the first time in the summer of 1908; the second time at Easter 1909 for the laying of the foundation stone of the model and the inauguration of the Francis of Assisi branch.¹ The laying of the foundation stone took place at the rising of the first spring full moon in the night from April 5 to 6, 1909. In addition to Rudolf Steiner, Marie von Sivers and the Stockmeyer family, a number of other friends of the movement were present. The address by Rudolf Steiner reproduced on the following pages was written down from memory afterwards by Hilde Stockmeyer. Rudolf Steiner dedicated an impressive obituary to her (in library no. 261 “Unsere Toten” [Our Dead]), who died just one year later. A brief description of the situation and of Rudolf Steiner's address at the laying of the foundation stone was given by the actor Max Gümbel-Seiling in his memoirs 'With Rudolf Steiner in Munich', The Hague 1945. This description precedes Hilde Stockmeyer's account of the address. Rudolf Steiner came to Malsch for the third time in October 1911, immediately before his trip to Stuttgart for the inauguration of the Stuttgart house. Stockmeyer's son and father were both also involved in the underground domed room in the Stuttgart house, which was built according to the Malsch model.

At that time, the model in Malsch could only be built and plastered by E.A. Karl Stockmeyer in the raw. It was only when he retired to Malsch in his old age and already ill that he again became active in the model building in 1956/57, together with other interested friends – in particular the architect Albert von Baravalle, Dornach, and Klara Boerner, Malsch. In 1959, the Malsch Model-making Association was founded and the small building was handed over to it for renovation, completion and further maintenance. The renovation work and the artistic design were carried out by Albert von Barayvalle and completed in 1965.

Hella Wiesberger

• 1. This lecture of April 6, 1909 can be found in Library No. 109/111 “The principle of spiritual economy in connection with questions of re-embodiment”.

Rudolf Steiner is one of those figures who appear at critical moments in human history, and whose contribution places them in the vanguard of the progress of mankind.

Born in Austria in 1861, educated at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, where he specialized in the study of mathematics and science, Steiner received recognition as a scholar when he was invited to edit the well-known Kurschner edition of the natural scientific writings of Goethe. Already in 1886 at the age of twenty-five, he had shown his comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications of Goethe's way of thinking by writing his Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung (Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's Conception of the World). Four years later he was called to join the group of eminent scholars in residence at Weimar, where he worked with them at the Goethe-Schiller Archives for some years. A further result of these activities was the writing of his Goethes Weltanschauung (Goethe's Conception of the World) which, together with his introductions and commentary on Goethe's scientific writings, established Steiner as one of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's methodology.

In these years Steiner came into the circle of those around the aged Nietzsche. Out of the profound impression which this experience made upon him, he wrote his Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit (Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against his Time), published in 1895. This work evaluates the achievements of the great philosopher against the background of his tragic life-experience on the one hand, and the spirit of the nineteenth century on the other.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte, and is further evidence of Steiner's ability to evaluate the work of men whose influence has gone far to shape the thinking of the modern world. In somewhat enlarged form, this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Science), as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, 1894. Later he suggested The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the title of the English translation of this book.

At about this time Steiner began his work as a lecturer. This activity was eventually to occupy the major portion of his time and was to take him on repeated lecture tours throughout Western Europe. These journeys extended from Norway, Sweden and Finland in the north to Italy and Sicily in the South, and included several visits to the British Isles. From about the turn of the century to his death in 1925, Steiner gave well over 6,000 lectures before audiences of most diverse backgrounds and from every walk of life.

First in Vienna, later in Weimar and Berlin, Steiner wrote for various periodicals and for the daily press. For nearly twenty years, observations on current affairs, reviews of books and plays, along with comment on scientific and philosophical developments flowed from his pen. Finally, upon completion of his work at Weimar, Steiner moved to Berlin in 1897 to assume the editorship of Das Magazin fur Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by Joseph Lehmann in 1832, the year of Goethe's death.

Steiner's written works, which eventually included over fifty titles, together with his extensive lecturing activity brought him into contact with increasing numbers of people in many countries. The sheer physical and mental vigor required to carry on a life of such broad, constant activity would alone be sufficient to mark him as one of the most creatively productive men of our time.

The philosophical outlook of Rudolf Steiner embraces such fundamental questions as the being of man, the nature and purpose of freedom, the meaning of evolution, the relation of man to nature, the life after death and before birth. On these and similar subjects, Steiner had unexpectedly new, inspiring and thought-provoking things to say. Through a study of his writings one can come to a clear, reasonable, comprehensive understanding of the human being and his place in the universe.

It is noteworthy that in all his years of work, Steiner made no appeal to emotionalism or sectarianism in his readers or hearers. His scrupulous regard and deep respect for the freedom of every man shines through everything he produced. The slightest compulsion or persuasion he considered an affront to the dignity and ability of the human being. Therefore, he confined himself to objective statements in his writing and speaking, leaving his readers and hearers entirely free to reject or accept his words.

Rudolf Steiner repeatedly emphasized that it is not educational background alone, but the healthy, sound, judgment and good will of each individual that enables the latter to comprehend what he has to say. While men and women eminent in cultural, social, political and scientific life have been and are among those who have studied and have found value in Steiner's work, experience has shown repeatedly that his ideas can be grasped by the simplest people. His ability to reach, without exception, all who come to meet his ideas with the willingness to understand, is another example of the well-known hallmark of genius.

The ideas of Rudolf Steiner address themselves to the humanity in men and women of every race and of every religious and philosophical point of view, and included them. However, it should be observed that for Steiner the decisive event in world development and the meaning of the historical process is centered in the life and activity of the Christ. Thus, his point of view is essentially Christian, but not in a limited or doctrinal sense. The ideas expressed in his Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums (Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity), 1902, and in other works, especially his cycles of lectures on the Gospels (1908-1912), have brought to many a totally new relationship to Christianity, sufficiently broad to include men of every religious background in full tolerance, yet more deeply grounded in basic reality than are many of the creeds current today.

From his student days, Steiner had been occupied with the education of children. Through his own experience as tutor in Vienna and later as instructor in a school for working men and women in Berlin, he had ample opportunity to gain first-hand experience in dealing with the needs and interests of young people. In his Berlin teaching work he saw how closely related are the problems of education and of social life. Some of the fundamental starting-points for an educational praxis suited to the needs of children and young people today, Steiner set forth in a small work titled Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswssenshaft (The Education of the Child in the Light of the Science of the Spirit), published in 1907.

Just forty years ago, in response to an invitation arising from the need of the time and from some of the ideas expressed in the essay mentioned above, Rudolf Steiner inaugurated a system of education of children and young people based upon factors inherent in the nature of the growing child, the learning process, and the requirements of modern life. He himself outlined the curriculum, selected the faculty, and, despite constant demands for his assistance in many other directions, he carefully supervised the initial years of activity of the first Rudolf Steiner Schools in Germany, Switzerland and England. The story of the successful development of the educational movement over the past forty years cannot be told here. However, from the opening of the first Rudolf Steiner School, the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany, to the present time, the success of Rudolf Steiner Education sometimes referred to as Waldorf Education) has proven the correctness of Steiner's concept of the way in which to prepare the child for his eventual adult role in his contribution to modern society, existence in seventeen countries of the world, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America.

In 1913, at Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner laid the foundation of the Goetheanum, a unique building erected in consonance with his design and under his personal supervision. Intended as the building in which Steiner's four dramas would be performed, the Goetheanum also became the center of the Anthroposophical Society which had been founded by students of Rudolf Steiner in 1912. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1922, and subsequently was replaced prepared by Rudolf Steiner.

Today the Goetheanum is the world headquarters of General Anthroposophical Society, which was founded at Dornach at Christmas, 1923, with Rudolf Steiner as President. Audiences of many thousands come there each year to attend performances of Steiner's dramas, of Goethe's Faust (Parts I and II in their entirety), and of plays by other authors, presented on the Goetheanum stage, one of the finest in Europe. Eurythmy performances, musical events, conferences and lectures on many subjects, as well as courses of study in various fields attract people to the Goetheanum from many countries of the world, including the United States.

Among activities springing from the work of Rudolf Steiner are Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening, which aims at improved nutrition resulting from methods of agriculture outlined by him; the art of Eurythmy, created and described by him as “visible speech and visible song”; the work of the Clinical and Therapeutical Institute at Arlesheim, Switzerland, with related institutions in other countries, where for the past thirty years the indications given by Rudolf Steiner in the fields of Medicine and Pharmacology have been applied; the Homes for Children in need of special care, which exist in many countries for the treatment of mentally retarded children along lines developed under Steiner's direction; the further development of Steiner's indications of new directions of work in such fields as Mathematics, Physics, Painting, Sculpture, Music Therapy, Drama, Speech Formation, Astronomy, Economics, Psychology, and so on. Indeed, one cannot but wonder at the breadth, the scope of the benefits which have resulted from the work of this one man!

A full evaluation of what Rudolf Steiner accomplished for the good of mankind in so many directions can come about only when one comprehends the ideas which motivated him. He expressed these in his writings, of which the present volume is one. Taken together, these written works comprise the body of knowledge to which Steiner gave the name, the science of the spirit, or Anthroposophy. On page 249 of this book he writes of the benefits of this science of the spirit:

“When correctly understood, the truths of the science of the spirit will give man a true foundation for his life, will let him recognize his value, his dignity, and his essence, and will give him the highest zest for living. For these truths enlighten him about his connection with the world around him; they show him his highest goals, his true destiny. And they do this in a way which corresponds to the demands of the present, so that he need not remain caught in the contradiction between belief and knowledge.”

Many of the thoughts expressed in this book may at first appear startling, even fantastic in their implications. Yet when the prospect of space travel, as well as modern developments in technology, psychology, medicine and philosophy challenge our entire understanding of life and the nature of the living, strangeness as such should be no valid reason for the serious reader to turn away from a book of this kind. For example, while the word “occult” or “supersensible” may have undesirable connotations for many, current developments are fast bringing re-examination of knowledge previously shunned by conventional research. The challenge of the atomic age has made serious re-evaluation of all knowledge imperative, and it is recognized that no single area of that knowledge can be left out of consideration.

Steiner himself anticipated the reader's initial difficulties with this book, as he indicates on page 112: “The reader is requested to bear with much that is dark and difficult to comprehend, and to struggle toward an understanding, just as the writer has struggled toward a generally understandable manner of presentation. Many a difficulty in reading will be rewarded when one looks upon the deep mysteries, the important human enigmas which are indicated.”

On the other hand, a further problem arises as a result of Steiner's conviction regarding the purpose for which a book dealing with the science of the spirit is designed. This involves the form of the book as against its content. Steiner stressed repeatedly that a book on the science of the spirit does not exist only for the purpose of conveying information to the reader. With painstaking effort, he elaborated his books in such a manner that while the reader receives certain information from the pages, he also experiences a kind of awakening of spiritual life within himself. Steiner describes this awakening as “...an experiencing with inner shocks, tensions and resolutions.” In his autobiography he speaks of his striving to bring about such an awakening in the readers of his books: “I know that with every page my inner battle has been to reach the utmost possible in this direction. In the matter of style, I do not so describe that my subjective feelings can be detected in the sentences. In writing I subdue to a dry mathematical style what has come out of warm and profound feeling. But only such a style can be an awakener, for the reader must cause warmth and feeling to awaken in himself. He cannot simply allow these to flow into him from the one setting forth the truth, while he remains passively composed.” (The Course of My Life, p. 330)

In the present translation, therefore, careful effort has been made to preserve as much as possible such external form details as sentence and paragraph arrangement, italics, and even some of the more characteristic punctuation of the original, regardless of currently accepted English usage.

The essays contained in this book occupy a significant place in the life-work of Rudolf Steiner. They are his first written expression of a cosmology resulting from that spiritual perception which he described as “a fully conscious standing-within the spiritual world.” In his autobiography he refers to the early years of the present century as the time when, “Out of the experience of the spiritual world in general developed specific details of knowledge.” (Op. cit. pp. 326, 328.) Steiner has stated that from his early childhood he knew the reality of the spiritual world because he could experience this spiritual world directly. However, only after nearly forty years was it possible for him to transmit to others concrete, detailed information regarding this spiritual world.

As they appear in the present essays, these “specific details” touch upon processes and events of extraordinary sweep and magnitude. They include essential elements of man's prehistory and early history, and shed light upon the evolutionary development of our earth. Published now for the first time in America, just a century after Darwin's Origin of the Species began its transformation of Man's view of himself and of his environment, these essays clarify and complement the pioneer work of the great English scientist.

Rudolf Steiner shows that the insoluble link between man and cosmos is the fundamental basis of evolution. As man has participated in the development of the world we know today, so his achievements are directly connected with the ultimate destiny of the universe. In his hands rests the freedom to shape the future course of creation. Knowledge of his exalted origins and of the path he followed in forfeiting divine direction for the attainment of his present self-dependent freedom, are indispensable if man is to evolve a future worthy of a responsible human being.

This book appears now because of its particular significance at a moment when imperative and grave decisions are being made in the interests of the future of mankind.

Paul Marshall Allen
Englewood, New Jersey
June 1959

Now we have come to the end of our university courses. We have heard lectures from various individuals who have worked in our anthroposophical spiritual science for some time. We have also had a number of seminars which were intended to fill out what the lectures only sketched as a framework. In spite of the fact that all the participants in these lectures have worked hard, we must also consider the quality of the time spent together given the nature of such an event. All we were able to do was to let some light come in, as through individual windows in a building—that light which we believe is present in our anthroposophical spiritual science. Please consider what is contained in this room, the openings into which we are describing symbolically as windows of the spiritual-scientific movement. The contents of the room are various subjects that are just at their beginning; a richer work will exist ultimately. If you take this into account, you can understand why we could present only a small amount of what we might hope to give in such courses on similar occasions.

With such an event we hoped to draw students from all directions, and to our joy they have in fact appeared in great numbers. It is very gratifying to us and meaningful for the movement. For first and foremost, we would like to show, no matter how sketchily, that a genuine scientific attitude prevails in the anthroposophical movement. No doubt there are other spiritual intentions at work also, but these will have to be shown in other ways. Above all, these lectures are meant to demonstrate at the very least the will to strive toward real scientific knowledge. However, considering present-day conditions, anyone who understands the situation must feel: If we speak of a scientific attitude, a scientific spirit that plays directly into the living conditions of the modern human being, then it must be able to prove itself in the social sphere.

It is really necessary that the scientific spirit of our day shall give rise to ideas that can bring strength and healing into our social life. It is not enough today to have a scientific spirit that calls the human being into an existence estranged from life. We need a scientific spirit that will give us real health in our social life. The social situation confronts us full of riddles and urgent demands, even in a certain way threatening. If we have a feeling for these times, we can sense the need for real solutions—solutions that can be found only by those who grasp the social life with scientific understanding. We believe we are able to recognize this necessity from the most significant signs of this time. It is out of this recognition that our anthroposophical movement is artistically, scientifically and culturally conceived; this includes the building in Dornach called the Goetheanum, the Free University for Spiritual Science. Our wish is that out of a genuine scientific attitude these impulses can come to life in us and become really socially active.

We have attempted in the very structure of our lectures and seminars to make possible a recognition of the truly scientific spirit to which we aspire in our anthroposophical movement. Attacks from various directions accuse us of sectarianism or the desire to found a religion, but they come from those who don't know us, or—in some cases—from a malicious desire to slander us. The scientific spirit cannot of course be seen in the factual content of what is presented. Whoever would exclude empirical content, whether physical or super-sensible, shows that he himself is not imbued with the scientific spirit. It can only be seen in the treatment of the facts, in the striving to follow a definite method. And the real test of its validity—whether its results originated from sensory or supersensory experience—is based on the nature of this striving. Do we strive toward the scientific spirit that rules in the recognized sciences?

Is this striving demonstrated in our methodology, in our thinking with scientific accuracy? This is a justifiable question. It is also a worthwhile point of discussion inasmuch as this scientific spirit, as it prevails among us, is in need of improvement. One can determine whether our movement is scientific or not, not on the content we present but by how we proceed. Let it be shown in any instance that we have proceeded illogically, unscientifically, or in a dilettante fashion and—since we are serious about the correct development of our spiritual-scientific endeavors—we will make the necessary improvements without argument. We do not wish to deny this principle of progress in any way. So, enough about the underlying elements for discussing the scientific status of our endeavors.

We have striven to prove in the social realm, in life itself, what results from our knowledge of the world. In our discussions we have tried to present what we believe to be the truth regarding knowledge of the human being and the world. In the seminars we showed how the Waldorf School movement arose out of the anthroposophical movement. The lively manner of teaching in the Waldorf schools raises the question whether what is found in spiritual science will also prove itself in the shaping of today's young people. We don't want to exhaust ourselves in fruitless theoretical discussion: we want to let reality itself test what we believe is the truth toward which we should strive. Goethe said, “What is fruitful, that alone is true.” Even those far removed from modern philosophical pragmatism or the “as if” school must have their truth proven by its fruitfulness. We can declare ourselves in full agreement with the Goethean principle that only what is fruitful yields proof of its truth before reality—particularly where social truths are concerned. If what flows livingly out of spiritual science can return again into life, and if life can show that the result of recognized truth, or supposed truth, can send a human being out into life with ability, vigor, sureness, and enthusiasm and strength for work, then this is a proof of the truth which has been striven for. At the same time we have attempted something else, but it is really still too much in its infancy to be outwardly demonstrated.

In Der Kommende Tag, in Futura, we have put forth economic ideas which are intended to show that what is derived in a spiritual way, out of reality, also enables us to see the affairs of practical life in the right light. The time has not yet come when we can speak of these things becoming manifest, of fulfilling the conditions for a real proof. However, even in the economic realm, one may grant us the fact that we have not been afraid to extend something that was won purely in the spiritual out into practical life. This is actual testimony that we do not shy away from the tests of reality. How things develop in this region is perhaps not fully within our own will to determine. In such cases, even more than in the field of education, one is dependent on the practicalities of life, as well as how one is understood by the world and one's own circle.

In this way, we try to take into account the signs of the times. We have recently seen in some of our lectures that these signs point directly to spiritual-scientific demands; they also confront us with great social questions. But above all we seek to take into account the inner soul needs of the human being. For someone who is familiar with one area, for example the natural sciences, it is very easy to believe that we are already in possession of an infallible scientific method. Ultimately, however, what arises as science can only be fruitful for the whole evolution of humanity if it joins human evolution in a way that sustains the life of man. With this essential condition in mind, I ask you: Isn't there something in today's universities or in similar circumstances that can cause the soul to come somewhat into error? One can, of course, enter a laboratory and work in the dissection room, believing that one is working with a correct method and that one has an overview of all factors involved, grasping them in accord with present conditions and the level of humanity's evolution. But for humanity's evolution something else is necessary. Something is necessary which perhaps occurs very rarely, and the significance of which is not properly appreciated. It would be necessary that someone who has worked seriously and conscientiously with scientific spirit in the chemistry lab, observatory, or clinic, could then step into a history or aesthetics classroom and hear something there that would live in inner conformity with what he had learned in his technical courses. Such unity is needed—for the simple reason that regardless to what degree individuals may specialize, ultimately the things achieved in separate disciplines must work together in the process of general human evolution, and must spring from a common source.

We believe it is impossible today to experience a unity directly between, for instance, present historical pronouncements and the teachings of natural science. For this reason we strive toward what stands behind all scientific endeavors: the spiritual reality, the source that is common to them all. The aim of our striving is to come to know this spiritual reality. With our feeble powers we are striving to establish the validity of such knowledge of the spirit and its right to exist. In this lecture series and similar events, we have striven to show you what we are doing and how we do it, and we are grateful that you joined us.

May I touch on one additional subject: A short time ago, a coworker of long standing in our movement spoke with me. He knew that for spiritual-scientific reasons I must speak about two Jesus children. Until recently he hadn't told me of his intentions to follow this matter up in a conscientious manner studying the external aspect. His recent conversation with me was after he had finished his investigations. He said that he had compared the gospels thoroughly with one another, and had discovered that they don't begin to make sense until they are regarded from this spiritual-scientific viewpoint.

May research proceed thus in all realms! If it does, we know that our spiritual science will be able to stand fast. We do not fear the testing, no matter how detailed the examination may be. We have no fear of the request to verify. We only worry if someone opposes our viewpoint without proof, proof of all the individual details. The more carefully our spiritual research is tested, the more at ease we can be about it. This consciousness we bear deep within us. It is with such awareness that we have taken the responsibility of calling you all here, you who are striving to build a life of science and of scientific spirit. Today, my honored students, it is impossible to offer you the things of the outer world. In the places where this is done, our efforts are sometimes rejected in a surprising manner. Even so, your appearing here allows us to feel we are correct in saying that there are still souls among today's youth whose concern is the truth and striving toward the truth. Therefore we wish to say—I speak from the fullness of my heart, and I know I am also speaking for the coworkers of these courses we have truly enjoyed working with you. This is particularly gratifying because at the same time from other quarters attacks are raining down on us from ill-will, and we are called upon again and again to refute these attacks. We do as much as we can to make the refutations—as much as time permits. But really, the burden of proof lies with the one who makes an assertion; he should bring evidence of its truth. Otherwise, one could blithely throw assertions at anyone, leaving him to refute everything.

I only wish to indicate how the opposition operates toward us, personally attacking us rather than attempting to understand our ideas by discussing matters seriously with us.

What is most strongly held against us is that in one important area we have to insist upon setting ourselves against the well-intended strivings of the times. We cannot just go along with the general attitude to take what traditional science represents in the various fields and simply let it be carried in a popular way throughout the world. Rather, from our own knowledge we believe there is another need. Something must be brought into those quarters which consider themselves infallible these days. It is generally believed that such authority is held in those quarters that their ideas can be taken unaltered and be disseminated among the masses.

We believe, however, that certain scientific elements still lacking must enter those quarters to fructify their scientific work. The fact that we do not merely want the scientific spirit disseminated from certain quarters into the wide world but also want to bring a different spirit into science—this, I believe, is why we are confronted by such frightful opposition. It would be good if these matters were considered in a calm and objective way. For we must not hide the fact that we are in serious need of the collaboration of wider circles, even though every one of us is convinced of the scientific value of our endeavors. What worries us most is that we have so few coworkers who can really stand their ground. This is why it means so much to us that you, the university youth, have been coming to us now for some time. We have faith in you young students. We believe that what we need can sprout out of your youthful energy. Therefore, my honored fellow students, we would particularly like to work together with you in our field, as far as time and conditions permit.

It is with this spirit that we sought to permeate the work in these courses. Perhaps you can carry away with you the conviction that it has at least been our aspiration to work in this direction. I began today by comparing what we are offering to a closed room, opening out through windows to the surrounding world of spiritual science. Through these windows we have wanted to let fragments shine in of a world of knowledge, which we want to apply in a spiritual-scientific way. Now we are at the end of the course, and I wish to say a heartfelt “goodbye till we meet again” in similar circumstances.

But I would still like to return to the comparison with which I began the course. It is not generally my habit to pay homage to fine phrases, even when they are time-honored; rather, I like to return to just a simple expression of truth. In our cultural literature, a high-sounding phrase is often quoted as being Goethe's dying words, “Light, more light!” Well, Goethe lay in a tiny room in a dark corner when he was dying, and the shutters on the opposite window were closed. From my knowledge of Goethe I have every reason to believe that in truth his words were simply: “Open the shutters!” Now that I have dealt with that lofty phrase of my beloved and revered Goethe in an heretical manner, I would like to use my version of it as we end our work. My honored students! As we feel ourselves together in the room whose windows open out to spiritual knowledge, windows through which we have sought in a fragmentary way to let in what we believe to be light, I call to you out of the spirit that led us to invite you here: I call out to you, “Open the shutters!”

Saying from the soul calendar (5.) by Rudolf Steiner Saying from the soul calendar (6.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Limits of Humanity” by J. W. v. Goethe
Opening “Look within” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“To the Moon” by J. W.v. Goethe
Opening “Look within” with music by Leopold van der Pals A saying from the Calendar of the Soul (7th) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening “We seek ourselves” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“My goddess” by J. W. v. Goethe
Elven opening with music by Jan Stuten
“Erlkönigs Tochter“ J. G. v. Herder
Elegischer Auftakt
Stummer Auftakt ‘Flammen’
”Napoleon im Kreml“ von C. F. Meyer
Stummer Auftakt ‘Flammen’
”Das Göttliche” von J. W. v. Goethe
Children's performances with and without singing
“Five Things” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Life is a Bad Joke” by J. W. v. Goethe
“On Seeing a Goose” by Fercher von Steinwand Children's performances
“The Waistcoat and the West” by Christian Morgenstern
From the Davidsbündlertänze by Robert Schumann
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Unicorn”; “The Magpie”; “Question”; “Answer”; “Draft for a Tragedy”
Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

With the art of eurythmy, of which we are once again able to present a sample to you today, we would like to make a contribution to the spiritual development of humanity that can be judged from three points of view: firstly, from a purely artistic point of view; secondly, from a pedagogical-didactic point of view; and thirdly, from a hygienic point of view.

As art, eurythmy is something that represents a kind of silent, visible language. However, although it appears in the form of gestures, in the form of movements of the human organism in groups or in individual people, it must not be confused with facial expressions or something pantomime-like, nor with a mere art of dance. Rather, as a language, eurythmy uses the whole human being as its means of expression, and in such a way that this visible silent language has been acquired through the study of the laws of spoken language.

Speech is, first of all, a means of expressing what lies within the human being. It is true that Schiller said: “When the soul speaks, alas! the soul no longer speaks.” In a sense, this is true. Language, in addition to the fact that it carries the soul of the human being to the outside world, is at the same time a means of communication from person to person and thus something conventional, and thus also the carrier of the thoughts through which people are to communicate. Language is in a sense a social phenomenon. And the more language has to serve as a means of communication and as a means of expressing thoughts, the less language is actually a means of artistic expression. For the artistic must come from the human being, from the whole human being, must arise from it.

Language has two sides. Firstly, the social side: the human being must give himself to the social world by speaking. And only through this does language retain something that has an intimate, an inner relationship with the whole human being, that language is not learned by the adult, [but is learned] I would say from childhood dreams, from the time when the human being, with all that he is, wants to adapt to his surroundings. And through this self-evident adaptation to the environment, language is preserved from being a mere means of communication.

But when the poet, the artist, wants to express himself in words, then he needs [another] - I would like to say all that which is always floating behind the language: he needs the image and, above all, the musical element. It is not at all the actual poetic or artistic content of the poem that is literal, but rather the way in which the content is shaped that is the essence of the poem. More than with anything else, one must take into account what Goethe expressed in the beautiful “Faust” word: “Consider the what, more than the how.” The way in which the poet shapes the material is what matters most, especially in poetry.

This can be much more clearly perceived if one does not use the means of expression that must absorb the thought too strongly in order to reveal itself purely in an artistic way, but if one uses the whole human being, the whole human being as a means of expression. To this end, studies were carried out using sensory and supersensory observation to determine the movement tendencies of the human larynx, tongue and other speech organs when a person expresses themselves in spoken language. These movement tendencies, which are then transformed into sounds, vibrations and oscillations in the air when actually speaking, are studied. They are then transferred to other organs of the human being, especially to those organs of the human being that can best be compared with the primitive organs of movement of the speech organism: they are transferred to arms and hands.

Sometimes, when first encountering the art of eurythmy, it is surprising to see that the individual human being makes more use of the arms than of the other parts of the hands. One would understand that this is a matter of course if one considered that even in ordinary speech, when a person wants to give more than the conventional in language, when he wants to express his individuality, his feelings, his emotions at the same time as his words, he then already feels compelled to enter into these freely moving organs, into these more spiritual organs, I might say, so that the arms and hands - compared to the other organs they are more spiritual, they are the arms and hands of expression-movement possibilities. Now, of course, in eurythmy the whole human being is taken into account - not just arms and hands. Above all, movements of expression in space are drawn upon, especially in groups, but also in individuals.

But the essential thing here is that these movements in groups are not arbitrary, but rather the same movements in lines, which otherwise underlie what is produced by spoken language, are transferred to the whole human being. I must therefore say again and again: on the stage we see, in principle, an entire larynx, presented by the whole human being. This shapes order, rhythm, tact, the musical, but also the pictorial as well as the actual poetic, where the poetic is art. This is really brought out of the whole group of people.

We then accompany what is presented in eurythmy in silent and visible language through music or recitation. In doing so, we are obliged – music and speech are, after all, only means of expression for the human soul life other than eurythmy – we are obliged, especially in the art of recitation, to fall back on the good old recitation that Goethe had in had in mind when he not only rehearsed the literal content in the drama with his actors, but, like a conductor with a baton in his hand, rehearsed the rhythm of the iambs with them.

We are obliged to disregard what an unartistic age, such as our own, is accustomed to regarding as important in recitation, namely the emphasis on the literal content. We are obliged to go back to what is shown to be artistic even in primitive recitation. Today, this is hardly visible anymore, especially city dwellers hardly see it today – but there are still some living memories from people my age from their childhood years, of traveling reciters who could be seen reciting such “Moritaten”; they had them written on tablets, and then they spoke the text to them. But they never spoke it in any other way than by tapping the beat with their foot, marching back and forth in a spirited place, thus indicating that it was not just a matter of explaining the content to you, but that it was important to them to particularly focus on the step of the verse, the inner form.

You will see that we therefore try everywhere to emphasize this deeper artistic aspect. When we try to express the poetic in the humorous, the grotesque, the droll, through eurythmy, we do not, for example, use sign language or pantomime , but in the forms that are developed as musical forms - only in space, not in time. We do not give the content of the poem, but what the poet, the artist, has made of the content.

These are some of the ideas I would like to give about the artistic element in eurythmy. The fact that the human being is the tool – not the violin, not the piano, not colors and shapes and so on – makes this eurythmy particularly suitable for, I would say, shaping that out of the driving forces of the world that is present in the human being itself through these driving forces of the world, as in a small world.

The second side of eurythmy is the didactic-pedagogical side. It is my conviction that mere gymnastics, which has developed in a materialistic time, takes too much account of the mere anatomical-biological in man in terms of its laws. Later, when we have a more objective approach to these things, we will recognize that, in a certain way, the human being is strengthened by it, but that this strengthening is not at the same time a strengthening of the soul and will initiative.

In a didactic and pedagogical sense, eurythmy became a kind of soul-filled gymnastics, a soul-filled movement game. And in the small beginnings that we can show you with children today, you will see how each movement is then also carried out by the children in such a way that it is soul-filled. In this way, in addition to the physical training, what I would like to call initiative of the soul life, initiative of the will, that which we need so much and which mere gymnastics does not develop in the growing human being. — It is extremely important that this is recognized. We have conducted experiments at the Stuttgart Waldorf School: one hour of gymnastics - one hour of eurythmy. It is then entirely interwoven with gymnastics.

We are obliged here when we show you children's exercises to say: the children are taught eurythmy in the few hours that remain to them during school hours – but that is not right at all. The education that underlies these efforts, which originate here in Dornach and have been realized to a certain extent in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, is precisely that they aim to introduce children to nothing outside of actual school hours. That is why it is so important that the significance of eurythmy is fully understood in terms of its pedagogical and didactic aspects, so that it can simply be woven into the school curriculum. Then it will be the case that children have everything that can serve normal spiritual, soul and physical development, especially from this eurythmic point of view.

And the third thing is a hygienic element. The human being is a small world, a microcosm. And basically, all unhealthiness is based on the fact that the human being tears himself away from the great laws of the universe. All unhealthiness — one would like to depict it pictorially by saying to oneself: If I take my finger away from my whole organism, it is no longer a finger. It withers; it has only its inner lawfulness in connection with the whole organism. In the same way, the human being has only attained his inner being in connection with the whole world. He is really connected with what happens in him with the whole world. If you just consider the very extreme, which shows how man is connected to the world, how he is not just this being enclosed within the boundaries of his skin, just consider: the same air that you now have directly within you was previously outside of you. But now, after you have inhaled it, it forms a part of your organism in its entirety. And what you have inside you will be exhaled again and will be outside again as soon as you have exhaled it. You cannot peel yourself out [...] as if we only lived within our skin, only had what was enclosed within our skin. We do not live in our environment with only the air, but we live with everything that fills the universe.

Now, all that is unhealthy in a person can be attributed to the fact that what is done by the person themselves, if it is not adapted, if it is not appropriate to the age or to the whole human being, cannot contribute to the harmony and complementarity that must prevail between the person and all other people and the whole rest of the world. But precisely because every movement in eurythmy is so naturally drawn from the whole human organism, like the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs for ordinary speaking, for phonetic speech, what is carried out in eurythmy is something that will and can bring the human being into harmony with the whole world, with the whole macrocosm.

It is therefore essentially a healing element, one can say that, which a person can have, which he can acquire as a child from the eurythmic movements, which may only be performed naturally and appropriately and not in a dilettantish way. This is something that can certainly be considered from such a point of view - from the point of view of mental, spiritual and physical health care.

These are the three aspects from which we can view eurythmy, and from which it will be honestly integrated into our spiritual movement. Nevertheless, it must always be said – even if there are spectators who have been there before and have seen how we have tried to make progress in recent times – that eurythmy must appeal to people's forbearance with regard to everything we can offer today.

Eurythmy is only just beginning, it is an attempt at a beginning, but it represents an attempt that, we are convinced, can be perfected more and more, even if others may have to come to further develop what we have taken up with our limited powers. Despite everything, however, we can already see today, from what is being shown in terms of intention, that this eurythmy, because it opens up artistic sources in their originality, because it uses the whole human being as a means of expression and because it works didactically and pedagogically for the development of the soul-spiritual-physical of the child, because it places the human being in a movement or in movement systems that are essentially healthy, that it will indeed be able to stand fully equal with the other, partly older sister arts, especially when contemporaries show an interest in eurythmy. Taking all this into account, it will be possible to see today how hard we are trying to move forward with this eurythmy, even if we still have to ask for the audience's forbearance for our performances.

From April 3 to 10, 1921, the second Anthroposophical University Course took place at the Goetheanum, during which several eurythmy performances were also given.

“Melody” by Ludwig Jacobowski with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Bird” by Edward Grieg ‘Forest Concerts’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
Saying from the soul calendar (1.) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening ‘Fateful Question’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Lonely” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Drunken Song“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Three Gypsies” by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “St. Expeditus”; “The Unicorn”; “The Shoes”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it (artistic work must explain itself), but to say a few words about the sources and the special forms of expression in which this art moves and from which it flows. What we call eurythmy here is by no means — although it expresses itself through the moving human being or through the movement of groups of people — it is not just any kind of gestural art, not just anything mimic or pantomime. Nor should it be confused with what is called the art of dance and the like.

Nowhere is an attempt made to find a gestural expression for any content of the soul in an instant, as one might say, but rather the aim is a real visible language. So that every single movement and the sequence of movements, the conformity of the movements to natural law corresponds to the inner soul experience, just as the individual sound of the spoken or sung word and the sequence of sounds and tones in speech and song correspond to the inner soul experience. If I may use the expression, it has been investigated through sensuous-supersensuous observation in which movement tendency the larynx and the other speech organs find themselves when speech or song is produced. And that which is only present in the potential when speaking or singing, in the potential for movement, is metamorphosed into the movements of the whole person or even of groups of people.

It can certainly be said that the whole person is brought onto the stage in such a way as if it were a moved larynx as a whole. And only someone who, at heart, does not have the right joy and the right feeling for the artistic can object to such an expansion of the artistic. It is precisely this that makes it possible for what is expressed on the one hand through poetry and on the other through music to be revealed in this moving language or in moving song. In this way, that which, I would say, in music and in language is what transforms the two human contents into artistic form, becomes particularly expressible in this visible language or in this visible song.

What lies in the poetry, purely artistically, is, I would like to say, hidden song, hidden musicality or also hidden plastic imagery. What is merely the literal content of a poem is basically only the outer work of the real artistic element. What constitutes the artistic element is already eurythmic in poetry and song.

On the one hand, the human being expresses his or her nature through thought. It is undeniable that in the activity of thinking, in the formation of thoughts, lies that through which man first experiences himself as the most perfect creature within the visible creation in which he finds himself. But when man merely moves thought within himself, he moves in a prosaic way. To move towards the artistic, towards the poetic, it is necessary that the element of thought passes into the creation of form. And it is remarkable how we can see that through the most significant forms of the poetic – through the epic element, through the lyrical element, through the dramatic element – thought seeks to lose itself as thought, to give up its unartistic element and merge into the form.

Take the epic. We see how, let us say, in one of the most exquisite epic creations, in Homer, we see how the conceptual element even in the telling of the story passes over into the shaping: the fleet-footed Achilles or the hero with the billowing helmet. Thought will always attempt to lose itself and metamorphosically transform into form. When we follow it, we only really have a drama before us when we do not limit ourselves to its literal content, but when we recreate in our imagination what the literal content only indicates, I might say like a musical score. We see the life that has been shaped. And perhaps this is just as true for lyric poetry. All lyric poetry that is divorced from the human being always has something uncomfortable about it for the artistic sense. What really goes to our hearts in lyric poetry is that there can be soul in the artistic, but it is presented, shaped, and placed before our mind's eye only individually and uniquely. The more we are gripped by the feeling, the sensing, the experiencing of a person in a song, the more genuinely, originally, and elementarily we also feel the lyric. And so we can say: in that thought wants to become artistic – even in the purely intellectual element of poetry – it strives out of its element of thought, it strives to transition into form.

And anyone who has an understanding of this will be able to feel how, if one wants to approach the human being with comprehension and understanding, how, in the sense of our present-day science of man, one can think, how one can unravel what is before us in the human being. We then cannot manage. If we want to retain the thought and yet understand the human being, we actually fall into an absurdity. When we stand before the human being, we must penetrate to the artistic in order to understand the thoughts. We must penetrate so far that the thought loses itself in the contemplation of the human being, that the inner soul life becomes artistic and the thought passes over into the intuitive apprehension of the human form. This is a stimulating inner task. And it is precisely in this task that we see how, in the end, every genuine true knowledge in the Goethean sense leads to an artistic understanding of the outer world.

On the one hand, it is thought that leads to form and ultimately to the human form. A second element that we perceive in human experience is movement, movement that goes back to the will. You don't have to be a Schopenhauerian to feel that the human essence seeks to pass through the striving will to its purest image, to the musical and song-like. In the musical-singing element, one can already feel that into which the will also wants to flow, just as the form of the thought wants to flow into the thinking. And then one has the second element, that which, as movement, belongs to the human being. But when one stands face to face with the complete human being, one will feel the belonging together, the flowing into one another of form and movement in the human being. We cannot help but, when we look at the details of the human being – let us say the hand or the arm with the hand, for example – we look at the shape, we cannot help but, when we look at the shape, we see in the shape, I would say, the movement that has come to rest. We cannot help but imagine in the shape of the hand that which is directly connected with the movement, with the mobility of the hand.

And so we can only fully grasp everything that is revealed in man if we understand it in its transition into movement, if we approach and understand man as his form arises from movement, from movement that has come to rest, and how, on the other hand, form everywhere wants to transition, expand, flow into movement. Then one has before one that which expresses in the whole human being the same thing that lives in speech and song in terms of inner sound, I would say in terms of possibility, in terms of ideality, to speak in the Goethean sense. And so the same thing can be represented through the moving human being as through speech and song.

One can see how the basis of true poetry can come to light through this eurythmy, precisely because the declamatory, recitative accompaniment gives rise to demands that do not correspond to the purely prosaic demands on recitation or declamation that exist so prominently in our time. Today, the prose content of a poem is particularly emphasized, and this is considered appealing. Attention is paid to the fact that this or that nuance of prose, this or that nuance of content is expressed in this or that way when reciting or declaiming. The actual artistic element is overlooked, which consists in the rhythmic, in the metrical, or also in the pictorialization that underlies the poetry. And it remains an important psychological fact that true great poets such as Schiller, for example, first had an indefinite melody in their soul, on which he then strung the words; or that Goethe had an image in his inner vision, as is the case in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in order to then shape the poetic in such a way that he strung together the plastic, pictorial image of what the previous content is.

These things come to light particularly through the art of eurythmy. But since we have music to accompany the eurythmy on the one hand and the recitation of the poetry on the other, it will become clear during recitation and declamation that one cannot simply recite and declaim prosaically, but must always seek in recitation and declamation for the underlying rhythm and beat - or perhaps also for the underlying rhythmic form and emphasize it in particular, that in other words, in eurythmy one is compelled to go back to the actual artistic in the poetic.

With that, dear attendees, I have briefly touched on the essence and formal language of eurythmy. There is also a second side to eurythmy, which I will only mention here: the medical and therapeutic side. Since what is inherent in the human form, in the human organization, is conjured up by the eurythmic movements, these movements, which are carried out, must also be shaped in such a way that they appear as healing movements for the human organism, so that one can develop a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy. But that should only be mentioned in passing.

I would like to point out a third element that this eurythmy contains: the didactic-pedagogical element. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me, we have made eurythmy a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In this sense, eurythmy is a form of animated gymnastics. It does not merely create what gymnastics already does, namely, movement of the human being based on physiological observation. Rather, it creates something that brings to light the body, soul and spirit of the human being in unified movement. And that this can really be felt, that one might say that which lies in the human being passes over into his natural movement, is shown by the successes that have been achieved in Waldorf schools, especially with eurythmy. From the earliest school age, children perceive this soul-inspired movement as something natural, because what they carry out in movement does not merely follow from the physical, but from the whole, from the full human being. We shall see how, in particular, the will initiative can be developed in the child through this element of eurythmy and how many other aspects of the child's soul, spirit and physical life can be fostered if this teaching can be developed more and more. In this way, eurythmy can also provide a fruitful element for pedagogy and didactics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was the intention of this eurythmy. One can only say, as Goethe once said, that in relation to his entire environment, man stands in art, that this eurythmy adheres entirely to these Goethean intentions. Goethe says so beautifully: When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, they feel a deep yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art. The deepest secrets of nature are hidden in the human being itself; they reside in the human form. When this form moves, nature reveals its manifest secret. So that one does not have to grasp it in an inartistic way with thought, but can look at it in a directly sensual way, the secret of nature.

But that is precisely how life is created in the artistic. And eurythmy uses the human being itself as its tool. It does not work with external tools and means of expression, but with that which lies within the human being. Goethe says so beautifully: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a summit, takes in measure, order, harmony and meaning, and rises to the production of the work of art. Should we not be able to rise to the production of a work of art in the most beautiful way, when we make the human organism itself, which is a small world, appear in its own right, in accordance with its own laws, like an excerpt from the whole great world, a tool and means of expression for what we artistically intend?

However, it must be said again and again: we are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we are already able to do today. But we have tried in a certain way to advance what was originally intended with eurythmy to a certain extent. Today you will see how we bring to life what resonates in the mood of a poem in forms that are accompanied neither by music nor by poetry, so that the mere moving person or group of people can strike the mood of the poem, or that in such mute forms the poem can end in its mood or the music in its mood.

You will also see how we endeavor, if you have the patience, to compare what is achieved in more serious poetry with what is attempted in humorous and picturesque poetry. You will see how eurythmy follows the style forms, how, on the one hand, Fercher von Steinwand's extraordinarily convoluted poetic images, which follow the secrets of the world and mysterious cosmic forces, want to be expressed through forms; on the other hand, you will see how Christian Morgenstern's humoresques have been attempted in the second part, also through special forms, to be captured in eurythmy in the style . What Morgenstern wanted to achieve – which was led to his humorous poems, the “Galgenlieder”, the “Palmström-Lieder” and so on – through what he experienced in the depths of his soul, I would say through humorously experiencing and suffering at the hands of philistinism – can be followed in the eurythmic forms , without resorting to mime or pantomime. Christian Morgenstern felt very strongly what philistinism, which is spreading all around us in our prosaic times, lives out. I would like to say that the narrow-mindedness, the spears that philistinism sends out in all directions, hurt a sensitive nature like Christian Morgenstern's everywhere, and that is how his thoughts came to dance. They were repulsed everywhere by the spears of philistinism, especially by that philistinism which today wants to appear ingenious, which, precisely because it wants to appear ingenious, behaves so ingeniously. This quivering back, this dancing of Christian Morgenstern's thoughts through the spears of philistinism, that is what, I would like to say, in turn challenges a particular sub-form of eurythmy.

In all of this, however, what we can already offer today remains a beginning. We must ask for forbearance in this regard. We are our own harshest critics, but we believe that, after what we have taken as our starting point for this eurythmic art and after the forms in which we develop it, which are thoroughly grounded in the human being, that this younger sister art will one day be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts, provided it continues to be developed.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum auditorium, the second, more cheerful part in the Carpentry.

Part I (Goetheanum)
Mercury prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Seventh picture from the Pforte der Einweihung by Rudolf Steiner
“Prooemion” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (3.) by Rudolf Steiner
“With a painted ribbon” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (4.) by Rudolf Steiner
From the ‘Chymischen Hochzeit’ by Valentin Andreae with music by Max Schuurman

Part II (Joinery)
“The Three Gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau
“The Castle by the Sea” by Ludwig Uhland “Erlking” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude” “Good Night” (children's group)
“Guests at the Beech” (children's group)
Humorous poems by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Sniffles’; ‘Under Times’; ‘The Priestess’; ‘The Dog's Grave’; ‘Moon Things’

Distinguished attendees!

When a person speaks, they leave to the air what is happening in their throat, which they evoke through their speech organs. Certain tendencies of movement lie in these speech organs. These tendencies can be studied by means of sensory and supersensible observation, and in this way we can, as it were, discover the foundations of the human organism when it reveals its soul and spiritual nature through one of its organ systems.

We can now say that the human being is actually concentrated in such an organ system at the moment when the person speaks through it. Perhaps the best way to express what is involved in terms of the human being is to recall Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, that work of Goethe's that is still far too little considered today, but that will one day, when we see these things more impartially, play a great role in our understanding of the living. In the individual plant leaf Goethe sees an entire plant, only simply formed. And in the whole plant he sees a more complicated leaf. What Goethe so fruitfully applied within his view of the living in the plant world can be extended to all living and also to all soulful, spiritualized things, and one gets the following as knowledge for that which can then be of interest here for the human being.

In a language organism, the whole human being is, as it were, concentrated during the activity of speaking – just as the whole plant is in the individual leaf. This can certainly be noticed in the experience of speaking. When we speak, we are, so to speak, immersed in what we are saying with our whole consciousness, with our whole soul life. But just as Goethe sees in the whole plant only a more intricately formed leaf, so too can what we see through sensory-supersensible observation as the actual, essential inner activity of the human speech organs be transferred to the whole human being. One can bring the whole human being into movement in his limbs and his movements, and also in space, so that he becomes, as it were, a speech organ that expresses itself visibly – not audibly, as with the ordinary speech organ.

That, dear attendees, is what has actually happened to shape our eurythmic art. It is not based on some kind of random gestures, or on arbitrary pantomime or facial expressions — or even dance movements — in connection with an experience of the soul. Rather, it is based on the fact that a visible language has been gained through research into what goes on invisibly in the human speech organs when we speak audibly. This has been applied to the human being as a whole. And now you will see, so to speak, a whole human being here on the stage in eurythmy – larynx, other speech organs – and you will hear a real visible language, shaped just as much by inner laws as spoken language.

What appears in recitation, in declamation, and in poetry in general – and our presentation will be accompanied by recitation and poetry – can be portrayed by the visible language of eurythmy, without there being anything arbitrary in the individual movement. as one can arbitrarily utter speech sounds in order to reveal something that is formed by the soul through language. In eurythmy, as in other arts, the main thing is not the individual movement but what emerges when the individual movement accompanies the formed word or sentence, when these movements unfold. Just as one can accompany the spoken word, one can accompany music. Just as one can sing through the speech organs, one can sing with this visible language of eurythmy. It can accompany the musical work just as well as the audible tone itself. So here we have what makes the whole human being an expression of what is experienced spiritually and mentally, like tone and speech or like singing itself.

When we direct our gaze to another person in life – perhaps we do not always notice it in our busy lives, but it is there – when we direct our gaze to another person, when we become aware of this human form: we feel our own inner being in the sight of the other person, and that is, after all, what makes us feel connected to other people. It is something like a glimpse of the self when you see another person. And if the other person expresses what moves his soul through speech, then there is an intimate absorption in the being of the other person.

The same can now be achieved by looking at, perceiving this visible language of eurythmy. It is, so to speak, absolutely that which we can feel in the shaping of the poet, the real artistic poet, in his poetry; there is really something in these lawful movements of eurythmy which, in a different way from our speech sounds, enriches our whole observation and can express poetry and the musical. And anyone who can feel joy at an expansion of the field of art will certainly not oppose the attempt to seek precisely such an expansion of the field of art through a particular artistic medium, which consists in setting the human form itself in motion, and in a particular artistic formal language.

You will then also see, dear attendees, groups of people in motion in their mutual relationships in space. What is expressed is also the inner emotional experience in groups of people in relation to one another, not only in the individual. In a sense, we see ourselves and our own emotional life. This emotional life is actually such that it is also a reflection of the whole external world: what people experience with each other, how people can be in harmony or disharmony with each other, all this is reflected, if I may put it this way, at the bottom of our emotional life. All this can in turn be expressed through poetry and music. And then it is better if we express this inwardly moved soul life, which lives in its relationship to a majority of people, if we want to express that, that we use the human groups. The human group has something more natural in itself for eurythmy. You will see that, without the accompanying speech or music, it is possible to speak or sing, as it were, in introductory and concluding forms, through what has been found as the eurythmic form itself. In the introductory form, we will have to strike the mood of a poem or a piece of music, or we will breathe out the mood in a silent form. This means that there are certain possibilities for developing our eurythmic art that we have so far only exploited to a very limited extent.

Today, you will perhaps be able to see from the first part of our presentation how the eurythmic art can be used for drama, not just for lyric and epic poetry. Admittedly, so far we have only succeeded in expressing in eurythmy the right way that which, so to speak, presents itself in the drama as supersensible, as a revelation of the inner human soul. For example, it is really possible to express those scenes in Goethe's “Faust” where the supersensible is drawn upon by Goethe, where the representation rises from the earthly-sensual to the spiritual-supersensible, to express this intrusion of the supersensible into the sensual in such a way through eurythmic forms that the dramatic progression is particularly enlivened. I do hope, however, that we can also find special forms for the realistic-dramatic, which we still have to present today as if it were ordinary realistic stagecraft, with mere gestures to accompany the words, these things must be presented.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one aspect of eurythmy. That is one side. There are two others. The first is the therapeutic and hygienic aspect, which I will mention only briefly. The movements that are drawn from the human form are entirely in keeping with the same currents that lie in the human powers of growth and creativity, in which lies everything that is contained in human circulation and human breathing as normal movements, as health-promoting, health-preserving movements. Therefore, by expanding the paths that are artistically expressed here, by further developing the movements, one can also develop a therapeutic-hygienic eurythmy. And it will be developed. There is no doubt that it will be able to enter our lives as a healing factor.

The third aspect is the educational-didactic side. At the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is led by me, we have introduced the art of eurythmy as a compulsory subject. There it is a factor within pedagogy and didactics that can be called an inspired, spiritualized form of gymnastics. One day people will think about these things more impartially than they do today. Gymnastics is purely shaped by physiological rules. It is that which relates to the laws of the human body. In contrast, what is represented in this soulful gymnastics - eurythmy - is a meaningful and natural movement of the whole person, body, soul and spirit. This is why we see – and this is clearly demonstrated by Waldorf school eurythmy lessons – that we see that the child perceives it as something completely natural to live out their entire humanity in these eurythmic movements. Every movement is imbued with meaning, carried by the soul. The child feels this, it knows that it does not need to hold back the soul and spirit as it would in gymnastics.

Above all, one sees that one element in particular is developed in an educational way: this is the initiative of the will, which will be so necessary for our generation and the next. And many other things can be achieved if eurythmy is introduced at the earliest stages of education and teaching. No other educational method can achieve the same degree of inner mobility in the living out of the spiritual, the same skill in the organism, and so on.

The main thing here is, of course, the artistic expression of eurythmy. And in this respect, I would like to say that the fact that the human organism, with its range of movement and its inner laws, is the tool of this eurythmic art justifies it in itself. Goethe says so beautifully: “To whom nature reveals her manifest secret, longs for her deepest interpreter, art.” The deepest secrets of the existence of the world are contained in the human being, this microcosm. But the human form, which expresses so much, so infinitely, does not express the whole, the full human being. When we see a human hand in its resting form, we do not have it in its fullness. We have it only in its fullness when we consider every shape of the individual finger of the arm and so on, and see how the shape is tinged to merge into the movements, how the shape is, so to speak, the main movement that has come to rest, how the movements that are carried out by the hand or arm are driven out again from the particular shape. And so in the whole person. Truly, it is so that in the truly artistic one sees the deepest secrets of nature, which is why, according to Goethe, it is the deepest yearning of man to look at these secrets in the artistic sense.

Then, at another time, Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn regards himself as a whole nature, takes in order, harmony, measure and meaning through appearances and rises to the production of the work of art. This work of art will be a truer one if the human being does not use external instrumentation, but uses himself in his inner lawfulness, his inner essence, in such a way that he seeks order, harmony, measure and meaning from his own form and movement and thereby rises to the production of the work of art.

In all this, I must also today, as always, ask my dear audience to consider what we call the eurythmic art in such a way that there is always a beginning. It will be further developed, and we are only just beginning today, but our strictest critics know what possibilities for development lie in it and what can be expressed further and further. What has already been thought in eurythmy in a certain respect – the individual scenes from my mystery drama – will show you that eurythmy arises as if by itself. In all that is really artistically shaped in the poetry itself, it flows as if by itself, as it were, over what is poetry, into the eurythmic movement. Therefore, one cannot recite or declaim in the way that is popular today for this eurythmic performance, but it must be emphasized not only the literal prose - as it is today as audible when reciting - but it must be the voice, the tone when reciting the eurythmic, the pictorial, which is already in the poetry, the rhythmic, the beat-like, the rhythmic, that which is actually artistic and subtle in a real, true poem - not that which is literally prosaic - must be emphasized.

All this must be taken into account, because it is actually a new field that we are entering with this eurythmic art. If we take all this together with what I have said, that we are only at the beginning, but that we will continue to develop the eurythmic art further and further, then we can perhaps also sense what possibilities for development are available and that it is to be hoped that this eurythmic art will be further developed - not so much by us, but by others - so that one day it can establish itself as a fully valid younger art alongside the older sister arts.

Today we will present the first part here – up to what will take place as a “Chymical Wedding” – in this room. Then there will be an intermission, and the second part after the intermission will take place over there in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop, where the eurythmy performances have usually been held up to now.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

Part II (carpentry)

Music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Erlkönig” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude”
“Papillons” by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Ländliches Lied“ by Robert Schumann
“Offne Tafel” by J. W. v. Goethe
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Häschen“ by Christian Morgenstern
“Frohsinn” by Ferdinand Hiller

Dear guests, dear friends!

Allow me to introduce myself with a few words as usual in these eurythmic attempts. Such introductions are not intended to explain the artistic aspect in any way, that would be inartistic; art must speak for itself. But they are done because this eurythmy attempts to reveal itself from artistic sources that are still unfamiliar and in an artistic formal language that is also still unfamiliar. And allow me to say a few words about this source and this formal language.

What will appear on stage is the human being in motion, the human being moving in his limbs, namely in his arms and hands, the human being moving in space, and also groups of people moving in space. But none of this should be understood as dance or pantomime; rather, it is a real, visible language that has come about in such a way that, through sensual and supersensory observation – I deliberately use this Goethean expression – the movement tendencies of the larynx and other speech organs when a person sings or speaks have been researched.

I say: movement tendencies. For in the actual speech and singing organism these movement tendencies do not come to real expression, but are transferred to air movements, and these convey them to the hearing of the sound and the tone. It is not actual air movements that are transmitted to the human speech and song organism, but the movement tendencies that are, as it were, captured in the process of their formation, but which, precisely as an expression of human will, underlie speaking and singing. And these movement tendencies are transmitted to the whole person according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. So that what you see on the stage as individual people or groups of people is, in a sense, a moving larynx, language made visible.

Goethe's theory of metamorphosis is something that, according to the current state of our scientific views, cannot yet be fully appreciated today. In the future, it will certainly be seen in a much more positive light than it is today. In the simplest terms, we can express Goethe's theory of metamorphosis in such a way that, in everything, the individual organ – for example, a leaf in the case of a plant – is the transformation of the other organ. All organs are, in a sense, ideally one, only outwardly shaped differently. And again, the whole plant is only a more intricately shaped leaf.

If we apply this theory of metamorphosis, which Goethe, I would like to say, intuitively applied scientifically to the whole plant, if we apply it to the movement tendencies of the human speech and singing organs, then we can say: that which exists in a single, separate organ complex when speaking or singing as movement tendencies, as an expression of the human will, can be transferred to the whole person or even groups of people. However, the sound is only slightly lost as a result. You see the movements, which are then not held in their creation, but are actually performed; you see them in front of you and they reveal themselves as a real visible language.

So it is not about pantomime, not about facial expressions, not about dance. It is about the artistic design of a real language. It must be said: precisely because of this, one is able to bring out what underlies a poem, for example, the artistic quality of the poem, to a very special degree, even beyond human language.

However, one must really take into account what is artistic in a poem, for example. The literal, the prosaic in a poem is not the artistic. Schiller, before he even approached the literal side of his poetry, first had an indeterminate melody in his soul. Goethe rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors as a conductor would with a baton. Both these examples show that the poet, the real poet, is not concerned with the prosaic and literal, but with what actually lies behind the words: the rhythm, the beat, the musical theme that underlies the words or the way they are formulated. Or, as is more the case with Goethe, the pictorial element that lies behind it. This can now be brought out by, as it were, translating it through the tool of the human being himself into a moving sculpture.

It can be said that when a person moves in the ordinary course of life, his movements are adapted, firstly, to his worldly purposes and, secondly, to what is expressed in the form of facial expressions and pantomime. The fact that a person is in motion also expresses something that a person experiences in his motion when he is simply involved in moving and still life. This is, I would say, the one pole: pure purposeful, appropriate motion.

The other pole is language, which is also purely functional and serves human communication or the imparting of knowledge. While through his movements, which primarily serve a useful purpose, man expresses himself outwardly like a member of outer space or at least of necessary life, through language he expresses himself inwardly. The inner self reveals itself. If one wants to shape language poetically, one seeks what should lie behind language. In ordinary spoken language, as well as in scientific language, one aims at what should be expressed through thinking. But thought is something that should never actually play a special role. Because thought as such, as we have it, in ordinary life or in scientific communication, is eminently inartistic. That is why everything that is allegorical or symbolic in art is actually inartistic. The real poet as an artist therefore goes back to the musicality of language or the pictoriality of language in the way he forms language, which is actually already movement behind language.

And indirectly, if poetry is to be expressed through language, one must try to have movement, rhythm, and tact in what is heard. What one tries to develop indirectly by bringing movement into speech in the formation of sounds and tones, what one tries to develop indirectly, the musical element, can now come to fruition in the movement of the human being, which one draws from the cosmos. So that the soul of a poem can actually be expressed through the moving human being, as one can also add to the musical, instead of a song, I would like to say song through the movement of the human being. One can express the musical element through this visible language in the movements of eurythmy just as one can express the musical element through song, through tones. In this way one is indeed able to push back the conceptual element in the poetry, which the poet only needs to use in order to, I would say, string together the actual artistic element.

And the other element contained in every form of poetry, the will element, which comes from the whole human being, not just from the human head, is more fully revealed through the visible language of eurythmy.

Those who have a truly artistic feeling will therefore have no objection to such an expansion of the artistic as it wants to occur in eurythmy, because they will rejoice in every expansion of the artistic. And whoever says, for example, that Goethean poems should not be presented in eurythmy, what would Goethe himself say about that? - would be missing the point entirely. For it is precisely that which is truly significant in poetry that arises from the whole human being, not merely from what can be expressed in words. And it is precisely this fully human aspect that can be expressed through eurythmy. So that much of what, I would say, lies in the deep secrets of poetry can be brought to the surface, can be looked at, precisely through this visible language of eurythmy. And it is on looking, after all, that everything that really constitutes the artistic impression is based.

You will therefore see these eurythmic performances accompanied on the one hand by recitation and declamation – the formed speech sounds are, I would say, only another expression of what is to come to the surface in eurythmy in the human soul – or you will also see them accompanied by music.

With regard to recitation, it must be said that it is particularly necessary to go back to what is actually hidden in the mystery of poetry. And in the future, accompaniment through recitation and declamation must also enter into and return to a better form of recitation and declamation, and return to conditions that no longer exist in our so unartistic time. Today, people particularly love the pointed, and consider that which brings something to light from the surging depths of the soul to be particularly effective, while the truly artistic is based on form, rhythmic composition, and the treatment of language. And it is basically the present-day form of declamation, which really only wants to emphasize the prosaic, the literal, that has emerged from an unartistic point of view and from an inability to appreciate the truly artistic. This is probably why, when a position has been taken in a non-objective way towards eurythmy in recent times – which cannot even be called negative, because one can see its non-objective way – when a position is taken against it, as here, again, with complete reliance on emphasizing the artistic that lies in the musical, pictorial, imaginative, must be [recited]: First of all, there is the artistic element, which is the main thing here.

But there are two other sides to eurythmy: a hygienic and therapeutic side, which is already being developed in training. The movements that are sought in eurythmy arise from the whole organization of the human being in a way that is elementary and natural. So one might say that the movements a person makes when doing eurythmy are movements that the human form, including the inner form, the whole human organization itself, calls for. Therefore, one cannot work directly, as in the art form, which you will see here, but in a metamorphosed, transformed form, one can achieve healing and hygienic effects through these forms. Doctors have already taken up the cause, and this second aspect will therefore also be cultivated.

The third aspect of eurythmy, its educational and didactic side, has already been introduced into the Waldorf School in Stuttgart as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. Ordinary gymnastics — one day it will be judged more objectively than today. It is based on human physiology and is founded on the idea that the physical body of the human being should be trained in particular. I fully recognize its legitimacy, but I would not go as far as a physiologist who is very famous in the present day, who once told me that I had not gone far enough for him, because he regarded banal gymnastics, ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool but as barbaric; as a physiologist, he saw eurythmy for children as having to stand alongside ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool, but as barbarism.

I myself would like to recognize it, so that one can see that [one] will think in a different way about not just physiological gymnastics, which only focuses on the physical body. So gymnastics should not be abolished by us, but alongside this purely external gymnastics there should be an inspired gymnastics that goes not only to the body but to the body, soul and spirit of the human being. And in the lessons, which have been taught in the Waldorf School for two years now, you can see how children from the age of entering primary school until the age of fourteen or fifteen really feel their way into the movements that come from the body, soul and spirit - not just from the body - how they find something else that is fully appropriate to human nature in eurythmy and take part in this feeling with the most heartfelt joy, because they can reveal their whole human being there. With this feeling, this inner joy, the children devote themselves to these exercises, which I would like to call, from a pedagogical-didactic point of view, soulful, spiritualized gymnastics.

Now, my dear attendees, this pedagogical-didactic side of eurythmy also has the effect, not only, I would like to say, of strengthening muscles and the like in children, but also of developing willpower as a soul element. Therefore, it is a pedagogical tool first and foremost, in that it strengthens the will, the will initiative in the child, which is so necessary in our age.

Thus, eurythmy is a tool that uses the human being as a tool, not external tools, but the tool that lies within the human organization itself. And if Goethe uses the expression: “To whom nature begins to reveal its manifest secret, longs for its most worthy revealer, art” – then one might say: “In the human organism, what is otherwise spread out as secrets of nature, of the world in general, is also united in the cosmos. Therefore, anyone who feels the human organization with all its secrets, with all its laws in a natural way, will also feel the deepest longing for the most worthy interpreter, namely for the artistic interpretation of what is inherent in the human organism itself.

Goethe says very beautifully at another point: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, takes order, harmony, measure and meaning together and ultimately rises to the production of the work of art. If we do not use external instruments, but the human being himself with the secrets of this organization, if we bring order, harmony, meaning of the human being himself and thus rise to the perfect, to the creator of the work of art, then we may say that something artistic in the most comprehensive sense must come about as a result.

Therefore, this eurythmy - although I always apologize to the esteemed audience because we are only at the beginning of the development of this art and many things still need to be perfected - may say that it works from artistic sources and in an artistic formal language that is so capable of perfection - perhaps still through us, or more likely through others - that this eurythmic art will one day be able to present itself as a youngest, alongside the other fully-fledged art forms.

I have only to add that the first part of the performances will take place here in this hall.

One spring day in 1860, an autocratic Hungarian magnate, a certain Count Hoyos, who owned several large estates in Austria, dismissed his game-keeper, because this game-keeper, Johannes Steiner wanted to marry Franziska Blie, one of the Count's innumerable housemaids. Perhaps the old Count had a foreboding as to what a great spiritual revolution would be born of this marriage. (The baroque palace of Hom, where it happened, is still in the possession of the Hoyos family, and stands today just as it was one hundred years ago.) So Johannes Steiner had to look for another occupation, and got himself accepted as a trainee telegraphist and signalman by the recently opened Austrian Southern Railway. He was given his first job in an out-of-the-way request stop called Kraljevic (today in Yugoslavia), and there his first child, Rudolf, arrived on February 27, 1861. On the same day the child was taken for an emergency baptism to the parish Church of St. Michael in the neighboring village of Draskovec. The baptismal register was written in Serbo-Croat and Latin, and the entry still can be read today as of one Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius Steiner. “Thus it happened,” Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography, “that the place of my birth is far removed from the region where I come from.”

In later life, particularly in his lectures on education, Steiner frequently made the point that the most prodigious feat any man achieves at any time is accomplished by him in the first two or three years of his life, when he lifts his body into the upright position and learns to move it in perfect balance through space, when he forms a vital part of his organism into an instrument of speech and when he begins to handle and indeed to fashion his brain as a vehicle for thought. In other words, when the child asserts his human qualities which set him dramatically apart from the animals.

This initial achievement the boy Rudolf performed in Kraljevic. Kraljevic (meaning King's Village) is situated in the western outskirts of the vast Hungarian plain, the Puszta. Even today endless fields of maize and potatoes extend in every direction, and the solemn monotony of the country is more enhanced than relieved by the lines of tall poplars flanking the primitive, dead straight roads. It is basic three-dimensional space at its severest, domed over by the sky, which local people say is nowhere else so high nor so blue as over the Puszta. One might almost say that nature provided laboratory conditions in which the boy learned to stand, to walk, to speak and to think. One could justifiably say of Rudolf Steiner what the biographer, Hermann Grimm, said of Goethe: “It seems as if Providence had placed him in the simplest circumstances in order that nothing should impede his perfect unfolding.”

From the severity of the Puszta the family moved, when the boy was two years old, into one of the most idyllic parts of Austria, called “the Burgenland” since 1921. Comprising the foothills of the eastern Alps, it is of great natural beauty, very fertile, and drenched in history. It takes its name from the many Burgen, i.e. castles which at different times of history were erected on nearly every hill. During recent excavations coins bearing the head of Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, have been found near Neudörfl, where the Steiners now settled, and where a daughter and a younger son were added to the family.

The management of the Austrian Southern Railway seems to have taken a sympathetic view toward the promising boy, and agreed to move father Steiner as stationmaster to several small stations south of Vienna, so that the eldest son was able to attend good schools as a day student, and finally in 1879 could matriculate at the Technical University of Vienna, then one of the most advanced scientific institutions of the world. Until then Rudolf Steiner's school life had been fairly uneventful, except that some of his masters were rather disturbed by the fact that this teen-ager was a voracious reader of Kant and other philosophers, and privately was engrossed in advanced mathematics.

In his first year at the University Rudolf Steiner studied chemistry and physics, mathematics, geometry, theoretical mechanics, geology, biology, botany, and zoology; and while still an undergraduate two events occurred which were of far-reaching consequence for his further development.

In the train in which the young student travelled daily to Vienna he frequently met a curious personality, an herb-gatherer, who turned out to be a latter-day Jacob Boehme. He was filled with the most profound nature lore to which he had first-hand access. He understood the language of plants, which told him what sicknesses they could heal; he was able to listen to the speech of the minerals, which told him of the natural history of our planet and of the Universe. In the last winter of his public life, in December 1923, Steiner provided something of a historic background for this wisdom, notably in his lectures on the Mysteries of Eleusis. Steiner immortalized the herb-gatherer in his Mystery Dramas, in the figure of “Father Felix.” But “Father Felix” was instrumental in bringing Steiner together with a still more important and mysterious personality.

“Felix was only the intermediary for another personality,” Steiner tells us in his autobiography, “who used means to stimulate in the soul of the young man the regular systematic things with which one has to be familiar in the spiritual world. This personality used the works of Fichte in order to develop certain observations from which results ensued which provided the seeds for my (later) work ... This excellent man was as undistinguished in his daily job as was Felix.”

While these fateful meetings occurred on the inward field of life, a very consequential relationship developed on the outward field. The Technical University of Vienna provided a chair for German literature, which was held by Karl Julius Schröer, a great Goethe enthusiast and one of the most congenial interpreters of Goethe. Schröer recognized Steiner's unusual gifts, and anticipated that he might be capable of doing some original research in the most puzzling part of Goethe's works, i.e. his scientific writings.

Only two years ago, Dr. Emil Bock, of Stuttgart, Germany, one of the most eminent Steiner scholars, discovered the correspondence between Professor Schröer, Steiner, and the German Professor Joseph Kürschner, who was engaged in producing a monumental edition of representative works of German literature from the 7th to the 19th century. In the first letter of this correspondence, dated June 4, 1882, Schröer refers to Steiner as an “undergraduate of several terms standing.” He says that he has asked him to write an essay on Goethe and Newton, and if this essay is a success, as he thinks it will be, “we have found the editor of Goethe's scientific works.” Steiner was then twenty-one years of age. Schröer's letter is reminiscent of the letter Robert Schumann wrote to the great violinist Joachim, after he had received the first visit of the then twenty-one year old Brahms: “It is he who was to come.”

The introductions and explanatory notes to the many volumes of Goethe's scientific works which Steiner was now commissioned to write were much ahead of their time. They blazed a trail into the less familiar regions of Goethe's universal genius which only today begins to be followed up by other scholars.

The young Steiner wrote these, his first works, in outward conditions of great poverty. The family lived in two rooms, which are still shown today. The larger one of the two was kitchen, dining, sitting and bedroom for the parents and his younger brother and sister, and off this larger room a few steps led into a narrow, white-washed, unheated cubicle where the young Steiner worked as in a monk's cell. No wonder that a Viennese celebrity of the time refers to him in his memoirs as one “who looked like a half-starved student of theology.”

However, this first literary success led to Steiner's call to the central Goethe Archives at Weimar, where despite his youth he now became one of the editors of the great Standard Edition (Sophien Ausgabe) of Goethe's Complete Works. This concentrated occupation with Goethe, continued for seven years in Weimar, from 1889 to 1896, had a profound effect upon the unfolding of Steiner's own mind and philosophical consciousness. Goethe was the catalyst which released new mental and spiritual energies in Steiner s own personality. It was during these years that Steiner's fundamental philosophical works were conceived and written.

In 1886 he published An Epistemology of Goethe's World Conception. In 1891 his small concentrated thesis on Truth and Science earned him his Ph.D. In 1896 his comprehensive Philosophy of Spiritual Activity opened a completely new approach to the understanding of the human mind and the nature of thought. It represents the first really fresh step in philosophic thought and in the philosophic interpretation of the human consciousness since Kant. It is no wonder that in those years Steiner began to be looked upon in Germany as “the coming philosopher” upon whom before long the mantle of the dying Nietzsche would fall. But his genius led him a different way.

In his thirty-sixth year—“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,” as Dante calls it, Steiner moved to Berlin, and the next seven years were perhaps the most dramatic period in his life. His new position in Berlin was that of editor of the weekly, Das Magazin für Litteratur, founded in 1832 (something equivalent to the London Saturday Review). He wrote the leading article and the dramatic reviews, occupying in Berlin a position somewhat similar to that of Bernard Shaw (who was five years his senior), with his weekly dramatic criticism in the Saturday Review. This assignment brought Steiner into close social contact with the intellectual and artistic élite of Berlin at the time, and for some years he pitched his tent among them. In the last years of his life, during rare moments of relaxation, he would at times tell stories of this exciting and often amusing period.

Side by side with these literary circles, or perhaps in polarity to them, Steiner was also drawn by objective interest and personal attraction into the camp of Haeckel and the militant monists. To move in this manner abreast of the spirit of the time would be a most interesting experience for anyone. For Steiner it was more. And I must now touch upon that side of his life about which I shall have to speak presently in greater detail. From childhood while for others such “being involved in this or that fashion of thought would be no more than an ideology,” for anyone standing in the spiritual world it means, as Steiner says in his autobiography, that “he is brought close to the spirit-beings who desire to invest a particular ideology with a totalitarian claim.” Steiner refers to his experience as a “Soul's Probation” which he had to undergo. (He later chose The Soul's Probation as the title of one of his Mystery Dramas.) He speaks of the “tempests” which during those years in Berlin raged in his soul, a rare expression in the otherwise very even and dispassionate style of his autobiography. At the end of those “forty days in the wilderness”—which were in fact four years—the thunderclouds lifted, the mist cleared, and he stood, to use his own phrase. “in solemn festival of knowledge before the Mystery of Golgotha.” He had come to a first-hand experience of Christ and His active presence in the evolution of the world.

We have now reached the point where we must venture into the great unknown: Steiner the seer, the Initiate.

It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture of the old form.

The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained through certain organs in the “subtle body” of man, to borrow a convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanscrit these organs are called “chakrams,” generally translated into English as “lotus flowers.” They fulfill a function in the “subtle body” similar to our senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation which were employed in the Mystery Temples of the ancient world, and confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man, through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.

Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say, flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is “pale thought,” as Shakespeare called it.

This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however. If the living thoughts filling the Universe were to enter our consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.

Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he attempts to break this spell, is “Erkraftung des Denkens.” It means putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking. All his basic philosophic works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.

This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely. Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: “Thinking itself becomes a body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.”

This is a stage which, broadly speaking, Steiner had attained at the point of his biography which we have reached. Now he made a discovery which was not known to him before. He discovered that this “living thinking” could awaken the chakrams from “above,” just as in the old way they could be stimulated from “below.” Thought which at first in the normal and natural psychosomatic process “died” on the place of the skull, but which through systematic exercises had risen again to the level of cosmic reality, could now impart life to the dormant organs of spiritual perception which have been implanted into man by Him who created him in His image. From about the turn of the century Steiner began to pursue this path with ever greater determination, and gradually developed the three forms of Higher Knowledge which he called Imagination: a higher seeing of the spiritual world in revealing images; Inspiration: a higher hearing of the spiritual world, through which it reveals its creative forces and its creative order; Intuition: the stage at which an intuitive penetration into the sphere of Spiritual Beings becomes possible.

With these unfolding powers Steiner now developed up to his death in 1925, in twenty-five momentous years, that truly vast and awe-inspiring body of spiritual and practical knowledge to which he gave the name “Anthroposophy.” (Incidentally, this word was first coined by Thomas Vaughan, a brother of the English mystical poet, Henry Vaughan, in the 17th century.) Anthroposophy literally means wisdom of man or the wisdom concerning man, but in his later years Steiner himself interpreted it on occasion as “an adequate consciousness of being human.” In this interpretation the moral achievement of Steiner's work, his mission, his message to a bewildered humanity which has lost “an adequate consciousness of being human,” to which Man has become “the Unknown,” is summed up. This monumental work lies before us today and is waiting to be fully discovered by our Age—in some 170 books and in the published transcripts of nearly 6,000 lectures.

Three characteristic stages can be observed in Steiner's anthroposophical period. In a lecture given at the headquarters of the German Anthroposophical Society at Stuttgart (on February 6, 1923) he himself described these stages. Stage one (approximately 1901-1909): to lay the foundation for a Science of the Spirit within Western Civilization, with its center in the Mystery of Golgotha, as opposed to the purely traditional handing down of ancient oriental wisdom which is common to other organizations such as the Theosophical Society. Stage two (approximately 1910-1917): the application of the anthroposophical Science of the Spirit to various branches of Science, Art and practical life. As one of the milestones for the beginning of this second stage Steiner mentions the building of the Goetheanum, that architectural wonder (since destroyed by fire) in which his work as an artist had found its culmination. Stage three (approximately 1917-1925): first-hand descriptions of the spiritual world. During these twenty-five years of anthroposophical activity, Steiner's biography is identical with the history of the Anthroposophical Movement. His personal life is entirely dedicated to and absorbed in the life of his work.

It was during the last of the three phases that Steiner's prodigious achievements in so many fields of life began to inspire a number of his students and followers to practical foundations. Best known today are perhaps the Rudolf Steiner Schools for boys and girls, which have been founded in many countries and in which his concept of the true human being is the well-spring of all educational methods and activities. There are some seventy Steiner schools in existence with well over 30,000 pupils. A separate branch are the Institutes for Curative Education which have sprung up both in Europe and Overseas, and whose activities have been immensely beneficial to the ever increasing number of physically and mentally handicapped children and adults. Steiner's contributions to medical research and to medicine in general are used by a steadily growing number of doctors all over the world, and his indications are tested and followed up in a number of research centers and clinics. Another blessing for humanity flowed from his method of Biodynamic Agriculture, by which he was able to add to the basic principles of organic husbandry just those extras which, if rightly used, can greatly increase both fertility and quality without those chemical stimulants which in the long run poison both the soil and its products.

In the field of Art there is hardly an area he did not touch with the magic wand of creative originality. The second Goetheanum which replaced the first one destroyed by fire shows the massive use of reinforced concrete as a plastic material for architecture a generation before this use was attempted by others. Steiner's direct and indirect influence on modern painting with the symphonic use of color, on sculpture, on glass-engraving, on metal work and other visual arts is too far-reaching for anyone even to attempt to describe in condensed form. Students and graduates of the Steiner schools for Eurythmy and for Dramatic Art have performed before enthusiastic audiences in the cultural centers of the world, ably directed by Marie Steiner, his wife.

To those who have been attracted to this present publication by its title and its reference to Christianity, it will be of particular interest to hear that among those foundations which came into being during the last phase of Steiner's anthroposophical work was a Movement for Religious Renewal, formed by a body of Christian ministers, students and other young pioneers who had found in Rudolf Steiner “a man sent from God,” able to show the way to a true reconciliation of faith and knowledge, of religion and science. This Movement is known today as “The Christian Community” and has centers in many cities in the Old and New World. Apart from the inestimable help this Movement received from him in theological and pastoral matters, Rudolf Steiner was instrumental in mediating for this Movement a complete spiritual rebirth of the Christian Sacraments for the modern age and a renewal of the Christian priestly office.

Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity holds a special place in the story of his remarkable and dedicated life. The book contains the substance of a series of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in the winter of 1901–1902 in the “Theosophical Library” of Berlin at the invitation of the President, Count Brockdorff. This series had been preceded by another on the German mystics from Master Eckhardt to Jacob Boehme (published in the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner under the title Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age) in which Steiner had ventured for the first time to present publicly some measure of his spiritual knowledge.

After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude, Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in Steiner's own life.

Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and unfold so masterfully in his later years.

Steiner considered the phrase “Mystical Fact” in the title to be very important. “I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content of Christianity,” he says in his autobiography. “I attempted to show that in the ancient Mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events, which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of Golgotha as a Fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth.”

It will not be out of place to round off this biographical sketch with a few personal reminiscences of the last four years of his life when I met Steiner as man and Initiate among his friends and students, and saw quite a good deal of him.

What was Rudolf Steiner like?—In the first place there was nothing in the least pompous about him. He never made one feel that he was in any sense extraordinary. There was an astonishing matter-of-factness about him, whether he spoke at a business meeting of the Anthroposophical Society, presided over faculty meetings of the Waldorf School^*, lectured on his ever increasing discoveries in the spiritual field, or spoke in public discussions on controversial subjects of the day.

I attended small lecture courses of less than fifty people, heard him lecture in the large hall of the first Goetheanum, was present at large public meetings when he expounded his “Threefold Commonwealth” ideas in the electric atmosphere of the Germany of 1923, during the occupation of the Ruhr and the total collapse of the German Mark. He was always the same: clear, considerate, helpful, unruffled. In those days he could fill the largest halls in Germany, and his quiet voice was strong enough to be heard without artificial amplification in the last rows of the gallery.

His hair remained jet black to the end; I cannot remember a strand of grey in it. His brown eyes, they sometimes had a shimmer of gold in them, looked with sympathy upon everything. And he possessed a wonderful buoyancy of carriage.

From 1913 Steiner lived permanently at Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland, in a house known locally as “Villa Hansi.” However, he spent most of his time in his studio, which was really nothing but a simple wooden building adjoining the large carpentry-shop where much of the woodwork of the first Goetheanum was prefabricated. In this studio he received an unending stream of callers. One would, perhaps, be shown into the room by a helping friend, but at the end he would always conduct one to the door himself. He put one at ease with such courtesy that one was in danger of forgetting who he was. And he gave the impression that he had no other care nor interest in the world than to listen to one's immature questions.

He would sit on a simple wicker chair, his legs crossed, perhaps occasionally moving one foot up and down. On the lapel of his black coat one might see a slight trace of snuff, because he indulged in the Old-World pleasure of taking snuff, but he neither drank nor smoked. I have never met anyone, and I am sure I shall never meet anyone who seemed so constantly at rest and in action simultaneously, all the time perfectly relaxed and absolutely alert.

The last summer of his life, in 1924, was the most prolific of all. He gave specialized courses on agriculture, on curative education, on Eurythmy. Then followed a summer school in August at Torquay in England; and when he returned to Dornach in early September, he increased his activities still further and gave as many as five, sometimes six different lectures each day. There was a daily course on the New Testament Book of Revelation for the priests of the Christian Community, another on pastoral medicine for priests and doctors combined, another on dramatic art, where I remember him one morning acting singlehanded the whole of Dantons Tod, a drama of the French Revolution by the German writer, Buchner. On another morning he acted the Faust fragment by Lessing. And in addition to all this, he also held lectures for the workmen of the Goetheanum.

Besides these specialized courses, the general lectures and other central activities of the Goetheanum School for the Science of the Spirit continued without interruption.

But the inevitable moment approached when even his resilient body showed the strain of his immense work. Sometimes for the period of a whole week he would hardly sleep more than two hours each night. I believe that he knew what he was doing. He well knew why he burned the candle not only at both ends but also in the middle.

My last memory of him is of the night when I was privileged, together with another friend, to keep vigil at the foot of his bed on which his body was laid out. It was the night before his funeral. The bed stood in his simple studio where he had been confined during the last six months of his life. Looking down on him was the great wooden statue of Christ which he had carved and nearly finished. Even in the literal sense of the word he had laid down his life at the feet of Christ.

The dignity of his features was enhanced by the marble whiteness of death. In the stillness of the night, with only a few candles burning, it was as if ages of human history converged to do homage. With a deep sense of reverence I wondered who he was. I am wondering still.

ALFRED HEIDENREICH

London, England
August 1961

• *. The first Rudolf Steiner School was called the “Waldorf School” because it was sponsored hy the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory in Stuttgart, Germany, and its managing director, Dr. Emil Molt.

A teacher: I tried to schedule all the language classes for the same time. However, it was not possible because there are not enough language teachers. I then tried to do that at least for groups of classes. There were also other things that were not possible.

Dr. Steiner: Have you discussed the schedule? It would be desirable not to change teachers for the individual classes. We need to see if we really need Tittmann here as a new teacher. That would be reasonable if we want to unburden the present faculty.

(Dr. Steiner looks at the completed schedule.) The first thing is that the schedule must be correct. Miss D. gave English in class 3b, and Mr. N. gave French. If N. were to take French here, would that be a problem here? This schedule is not comprehensible the way it is, you can’t find your way in it. You get dizzy. If only people knew what they were doing. We need some room to write notes. It would be best if language class directly followed main lesson. The main thing is that in general, language instruction should be given from 10:00 until 12:00.

On Monday, language class for the first through fifth grades from 10:00 until 11:00. It would not be good to assign the classes to different teachers. Changing teachers would not now be possible. So, now we have languages on Monday from 10:00 until 11:00. That would be every day, Monday through Saturday from 10:00 until 11:00. That can stay as it is. What you need to realize is how it will be now. Mr. N. also has the 7a class. How much French and English do we have in 7a? One hour each on Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 until 12:00. We need a class schedule for the present situation. That would work. We need to take the present situation into account. What I’m asking is, is there a list of what is now happening? (Dr. Steiner takes a piece of paper and writes the names of all the teachers on it.) Now I want you to write down where you are teaching. It is hard to believe we are holding a meeting about the best class schedule. A teacher makes some other suggestions.

Dr. Steiner: I just said it is not desirable to change the teachers for the classes.

A teacher: We also talked about arranging the language classes so that we can move the children around.

Dr. Steiner: We could do that later. For now, I only want to see if it is at all possible to hold the language classes in the morning and, when possible, directly after main lesson. We will be able to see that after we put everything together. I see no reason why a division into groups would not be possible if we do it right after main lesson. I do not know why that would not be possible. Dr. Steiner then takes the list of teachers and goes through the language classes in detail, class for class, in order to see whether languages can all be taught at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: We should divide them into groups. We need to begin somewhere. In general, the result will be that, with the exception of Latin and in some of the higher grades, the division into groups would be according to class. The majority of the students will remain with their class. We can achieve our goal by making the group the class. There can be only a small number of children who would need to move from one group to another.

A teacher: It will be difficult to find a plan that is not somewhat arbitrary.

Dr. Steiner: I am clear that I do not know what is happening.

A teacher: Perhaps we could ask you to give some guidelines.

Dr. Steiner: First, foreign languages should be taught immediately after main lesson when possible. Second, the language teachers should, in general, remain with their present groups. Third, after we have accomplished that for the foreign languages, the subjects we previously discussed should be taught in the morning, also. We would not need anything more than a division of things. Now, it makes no difference whatsoever whether it is classes or groups. We can use groups if we can do that. The lower grades have the least need for other groups. Of course, we have a problem when the Protestant and Catholic ministers cannot come at another time. We have fourteen teachers for English and French. There are nineteen classes, so each teacher would have seven periods. I am against overburdening the teachers and in favor of getting an additional language teacher. However, aside from that, it would be inefficient to divide the language classes into so many groups. That all came about because there was a desire to divide the languages by class. Pedagogically, there is no reason to hold to that principle past the third grade. Until that time, I admit that the main lesson teacher should also have the students for foreign languages. But there is no need to strictly follow that later.

A teacher: Partly, the question concerned grouping students according to their knowledge.

Dr. Steiner: We have too many class groups for modern languages. We do not need to have so many.

A teacher: The students in the eleventh grade want a middle certificate, and for that reason need complete instruction in English and French. Only three or four students would remain in Greek if they had to give up French and English.

Dr. Steiner: That is a radical change from when the students want to pass the humanistic examinations.

A teacher: Most of them do not want to give up modern languages.

There is a discussion about the different kinds of final examinations. There must be some clarity about which ones the students want.

Dr. Steiner: That was not the original perspective of the Waldorf School. The ancient languages were included to the extent necessary for inner reasons. Now the situation has changed, since the students want to take final examinations. We have tried to take that perspective into account in Greek and Latin by preparing the students for their final examination. We spoke about dividing things and that those taking Greek and Latin also want French, and that those taking English and French could also take Latin. That was our perspective.

A teacher: We need to know only whether the student wants to take the humanistic or the business final examination. Both would be possible through a division in our curriculum.

Dr. Steiner: I would go still further. I would say that for those students who want to take the humanistic examination, we can certainly have Latin and Greek in the morning. We could have it as part of main lesson, and we could give the classes in natural science at a later time.

A teacher: There is not much interest in Greek.

Dr. Steiner: The parents would have to decide whether the students are to take the humanistic examination.

A teacher: If there are only four or five students, should we still give Greek for them?

Dr. Steiner: Occasionally, there is the situation when a teacher works only for a few students.

A teacher: There seems to be a desire for the Middle School examination. Would it be responsible of us to allow them to leave school without English, like it is at the college prep high schools?

Dr. Steiner: We could take that responsibility if we had students who wanted to take the final examinations.

A number of teachers talk about the difficulties of dividing the students. Some students want to learn Greek, but they do not intend to take the humanistic examinations.

Dr. Steiner: We could have saved ourselves this whole discussion. We began with the assumption that we could not continue Greek and Latin in the present way simply because it is not possible to prepare the students for their final examinations. Today, though, the discussion is that there is no need at all to prepare them for that examination. We began with the assumption that we needed this terrible Greek and Latin in our curriculum so that some students who have sufficient talent might eventually be able to pass their final examinations. As I said, I thought that would be possible. Then you said it is not possible without undertaking some changes. Now, it seems that its not at all necessary to offer Latin and Greek for the examination.

What we need here is some sort of compromise. Until now, the opinion was that it was absolutely necessary to provide what a number of students would need to pass their humanities examinations in spite of the fact that for their age, they are insufficiently prepared. From that standpoint, we wanted to include Greek and Latin in the best possible way.

A teacher: The students do not want to give up English.

Dr. Steiner: Those who want to take the humanities examination will have to drop English. If they do not want to drop English, they will not be able to take the humanities examination.

Are there really only four or five who want to take the humanities examination? If we want to continue Greek, we must arrange things so that those four or five can take their examinations.

Two things are interwoven here: the requirements for the examination and whether we want to provide an opportunity for the children to learn Greek. Latin is not so important to me. We could arrange the division so that the children begin Latin and Greek together in the sixth grade and continue into the seventh, but that in the eighth grade and afterward, we have a division so that those who decide later would no longer have Greek. They would have had it, however, in the sixth and seventh grades. What is important is that what we provide is pedagogically sound. Until the end of the seventh grade, we would try to provide so much Greek as we believe is pedagogically necessary. A split would then occur in the eighth grade, and they could choose. Those who choose the humanistic direction would no longer have English, and those who decide to go in the Middle School direction would no longer have Greek.

A number of teachers raise objections to dividing the class too early.

Dr. Steiner: Then we could do it this way. Greek until the end of the eighth grade and Latin and Greek together would be required in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. But some students might drop these subjects if their parents find them unimportant. Our general goal was to teach what people think is necessary. No one would think that students must decide at the age of ten whether they should have one subject or not. We would divide the ninth grade into either Greek or English, and at that time we would separate the Latin and Greek class. I think we would come back to the basic Waldorf School principle of giving Greek and Latin in the fifth through eighth grades, along with modern languages, and that there would be a division only in the last grades. And then the children would not be prepared for final examinations!

If we use that principle, we need to say firmly that if you want English, you can’t have Greek, but you will have Latin. Greek can conflict with English, all kinds of conflicts could arise.

There is nothing else to do other than move away from having the eleventh-grade main lesson in the first two hours of the day. We will have to have the main lesson at a later time.

There is no school that completely takes into account both the eminently important pedagogical principle of having these two periods one after another, and also preparation for the examination. That is something I have seen in English schools. Everywhere, subjects arbitrarily follow one after the other. Sometimes it is really grotesque.

We need to schedule modern languages so that we can group the children. That will be possible only if you were to—in London, when they had the election there, people had a similar line of thought. On election day the students at Oxford got together and publicized that a Mr. Bohok had been elected with twelve million votes. That was published everywhere. The city council gathered to congratulate him, but there was no such man. It is just like your class schedule—Tittmann does not exist. They even made a mannequin there. There was quite an uproar about it in England.

We said we wanted to have voice and eurythmy lessons in the morning, but we did not want to be pedantic about that. In that case, of course, we can form groups, and in the event we can form a group only at the cost of having some voice lessons in the afternoon, that is what we will do. (Speaking to a Latin and Greek teacher) How many hours do you have?

A teacher: Seventeen.

Dr. Steiner: You have one too many. You should not have more than sixteen hours in Greek and Latin. For the more scientific subjects in the higher grades, where experiments are done, you could have twenty hours. That is not possible in subjects that require real concentration.

A teacher: Perhaps we need to have some of the shop classes in the morning.

Dr. Steiner: Then we will have a mess in our class schedule again. It would certainly be desirable if we could have a different perspective. That is what is so difficult, you always bring this schematic bureaucratic perspective to the fore, and put the really important things on the back burner. This kind of thinking really has no content. I would need to have both the teaching plan and the meeting plan in front of me. They should have been here today. The problem is that we moved the division of the classes up to the ninth grade.

I once considered work on a class schedule as the opposite of pedantic. If we had it, we could see which class had which subject at what time. We would know where all the classes are, and that each class had such a schedule. From those two things, we could see where we are. We would have nineteen sheets from which we could see that one class has this and from a different sheet we could see that at the same time, one or another class is doing something else. If you have to do something like this occasionally, you can accept that you might have a light fainting spell. But when you have to spend a whole evening on it, you become dizzy. Imagine how simple it would be if I had one schedule for each class and a timetable from which I could see that this or that class is here from two until four.

The problem is that we are not doing what would actually be right, namely that we do not consider the elementary school alone, but recognize that the language teachers move throughout the different grades. If we were to make a radical change, which is not the case, and some teachers would only work in the upper grades, and those who worked there would not work in the lower grades, it would be easier. The whole problem has become quite difficult since we have lost a language teacher because he took over a class. It is really a problem that we are missing one language teacher.

Is there a student here by the name of D.L.? Is there some problem with him? Why did you write a letter?

A teacher: He caused an explosion in the physics room. We gave him a warning and wrote his mother.

Dr. Steiner: There shouldn’t be anything in the physics room that could cause an explosion. It is, in any event, troubling that something like that could occur. I once knew of a student in an upper grade who poisoned himself because the chemistry teacher was not paying attention to things. In any event, you should have left it at giving the student a warning. You should not have written anything. You never think how difficult it is when I have to fight against these things, and that people say, “That’s quite some leadership when a ten-year-old is allowed to create an explosion.” Do you think you can still do that, considering the situation we are now in? It is horrible how people think only about how they can protect themselves, but never about what the school looks like publicly. This is really astonishing. His mother is really a nice woman, but you need only imagine what kind of an impression it would make upon her to learn her boy caused an explosion. Everyone she tells this to would say, “Don’t send you child to the Waldorf School.” That is obvious. We cannot have many such occurrences.

Always feel responsible. Didn’t you think about how it would affect the school? If you provide the material for an explosion, then any boy would cause problems. I do not want to ask who was responsible for this, but someone must have left the material there. It was in the physics and laboratory rooms. The doors need to be locked.

A teacher: No one should be in the physics room when a teacher is not there.

Dr. Steiner: Thus, the room was not locked up?

A teacher: The error was that the student had permission to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: I do not understand why the laboratory is not locked. This is a really beautiful situation. Explosives and poisons are kept in the laboratory, but it is not locked so the students have easy access to them. It is quite apparent that it is not sufficient to agree that students should not be in there. It is also clear that no laboratory teacher was there when the boy was. These kinds of things are always happening.

A teacher: It was my fault. I allowed him to remain in the physics room.

Dr. Steiner: But we must have principles in such things! Then we could say that a teacher was there, and the boy did it during that time. That would show that the teacher would have to be fired. When such things happen, we have a fear that something more will happen.

(Replying to an objection) It is horrible that that word could be used here. Who cares what happens in Buxtehude? It’s still worse that it could be said here. That is no position to take. Such things simply must not occur here.

The gymnastics teacher talks about holding class outdoors. Problems could arise for the school because the students catch cold.

Dr. Steiner: If there are such complaints, we can do nothing more than wait until we have a gymnasium.

A teacher asks whether they should yield to the parents.

Dr. Steiner: The parents want their children to be here with us. In individual cases, we will have to give in to the desire of the parents. There is nothing more we can do than wait until the gymnasium is complete. It is disgruntling that it is always being put off. In the first grade, there is a boy in the first row in the corner, R.R. He needs some curative eurythmy exercises. He needs to consciously do the movements he now does for a longer period and at a much slower speed. Have him walk and pay attention to how fast he moves, and then have him do it half as fast. If he takes twenty paces in five seconds, then have him take twenty paces in ten seconds. He needs to consciously hold back. He needs to do some curative eurythmy, then these exercises, then curative eurythmy again.

You also have that boy in the yellow jacket, E.T. That is a medical problem. He could certainly do the “A, E, I exercise.” Also, he should eat some eggs that are not completely cooked. He needs to develop protein strength. In many cases, it is possible to know what we need to do to heal something. People cannot say something untrue about us if what we say needs to be done cannot be done. We need to take up a collection so the boy can have two eggs a day, at least four times in a week. He would need eight eggs. The Cologne News costs twenty-five marks, but it does not have the same nutritional value.

The school doctor asks a question concerning medicine. He needs to see quite a number of students.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to speak about the principles. That is hardly possible before Christmas. Our English visitors will come on the eighth or ninth of January and be here for a week. If only we could at least have gymnastics then! Perhaps I could speak about medical questions in that connection. Now, we have to speak about individual students. In the future, I would like to handle that in principle. In every class, there are undernourished children. The children in the first grade were born in 1915. The health of the children born in 1914 has suffered some. That was a shock. Now we have those who are undernourished. People should have seen this coming in 1916. The war went on too long. I would like to give a basic overview of this topic, the basis of school health.

A teacher: A mother is complaining that her children do not sleep enough.

Dr. Steiner: You need to ask when the children go to bed. She should try having them go to bed a half-hour later. Concerning K.P. in the 4b class.

Dr. Steiner: He is anemic. The boy does not have enough metabolic residues. Due to the tea, he has used more of himself inwardly, and now he needs a strengthening diet. Before, he looked bad because of the bad food, and that is having an effect now. Try to get him some bread every day. If you give him malt for fourteen days, he would get used to it, and then it would be difficult to feed him normally. It would be better to give him a good piece of bread. It is quite clear that he is undernourished. In curative eurythmy, he could do the bright vowels, A, E, and I. A comment about E.V.M. in the 3b class who has headaches.

Dr. Steiner: We can easily help that through the diet. Give her some cooked cranberries every day for three weeks.

An eighth-grade teacher: Twenty-five children will be leaving at Easter, but they have not really reached the goals of elementary school. Perhaps we should take them aside and teach them the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Dr. Steiner: I would agree with that. Do it. It would also be nice if Graf Bothmer could help you.

A teacher asks about W.S. in the tenth grade. Her thyroid glands are not functioning properly.

Dr. Steiner: I once said something about this. She was in a eurythmy performance and looked as though she would not be able to complete it. The way she seems now, I think that we need to give her a preparation: 0.5% agaric (extract of amanita muscaria), then 5% berberis vulgaris, the juice of the fruit, and a little hyoscyamus niger (henbane). Thus, this berberis vulgaris 5%, 0.5% agaric, a homeopathic amount of hyoscyamus niger, 5X. There is a danger that her glands might degenerate because there is something wrong toward the back of her head.

A teacher asks about two students in the seventh grade who are misbehaving.

Dr. Steiner: It is difficult to do anything because the problem can be traced back to an abnormal growth of the meninges. It is difficult to do anything. It is too bad that our physicians do not pay more attention to such special cases. There is hardly anything more we can do other than have one of the doctors from the Therapeutic Institute come up here every week and really undertake some systematic exercises. Otherwise, we would have to put them into an institution. These are problems with the meninges. You could try to get them more interested in school.

A teacher: I cannot teach the seventh grade properly. I have too much to do for foreign languages.

Dr. Steiner: We will have to be patient until we have an additional person. I do not think you should allow your courage to wane. Things went quite well recently, particularly in that subject. The children were really interested in the perspective that you presented. I would not want you to get depressed.

A teacher asks about some particularly weak children.

Dr. Steiner: Try to include them more during class. Call upon them more often so that they remain attentive.

A teacher asks about a performance by the children in Holland.

Dr. Steiner: I only meant that you should agree upon the age of the students. We cannot drag ten-year-old children to The Hague. The very young children cannot go, only those children about whom we can say it would be responsible. Otherwise, there is nothing to say against it.

A teacher presents a request for a seminar.

Dr. Steiner: If we were to hold such a course, it would be much more reasonable if you formulated your questions and uncertainties during your meetings. Perhaps you could find two dozen pedagogical questions that would provide the basic content and theme. You already know what needs to be said. You have not studied the seminar sufficiently. It is not reflected in the way school is being held. Occasionally, one thing or another occurs, but in general, it is not visible. I would like to give such a course, but you must have specific questions. The course would include a number of things I have already addressed.

A teacher asks about the Oberufer Christmas play and whether Dr. Steiner could help.

Dr. Steiner: I cannot help you since I have not been at the rehearsals. My wife told me about it. The story is this: We were sent something from Brietkopf and Härtel that X. had printed. It states that the rights of performance are reserved. X., who knew the plays here, published the things he stole from us. People are used to such things from social parasites. He may have gone secretly to Schröer’s heirs. The Malatitsch family in Oberufer has the performance rights. Schröer bought the printing rights in 1858. I always assumed we would present it publicly before it was stolen from us. People have often asked me to publish it, but I did not think it would be responsible today. Today, the text would have to be completely revised from beginning to end. I would not have taken the responsibility of publishing something like that without a careful revision. I think it is silly to perform Brietkopf’s text. Most of the things I corrected during the rehearsals in Dornach. I made a number of important corrections, but people are like that.

A teacher asks about parents who pay no tuition.

Dr. Steiner: Why don’t you send somebody to them. We need to do this kind of work efficiently. There would be an impossible amount of work if the school association had three thousand members. We should send the secretary of the school association.

A teacher asks whether children whose parents do not want to pay should remain at the school.

Dr. Steiner: It may be that their parents do not know how to write. The school association has a secretary, and he certainly does not have much to do. Nothing is being done to increase membership.

I wish there was as much enthusiasm for the school as there is for the performance. People’s attention is diverted from the teaching. If the children were to perform something, it would not be so dangerous. I think it would be best to let it go, otherwise, you will get even deeper into the problem.

I have not really said anything against the performance. I actually believe that the better the performance is, the worse it will be for the school. I think you are as enthusiastic about it as a roly poly is about standing up.