| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Double Dome Room and Its Interior Design
16 Oct 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| Those approaching this building from the outside will at first perceive a kind of duality: a larger dome structure as an auditorium; a smaller dome structure, which to a certain extent cuts through the larger one , as a space for performances, also conceived as the space towards which everything in the auditorium tends, and from which, in turn, everything that the auditorium is inclined to absorb should radiate. |
| With everything that is made of wood, it is that which withdraws from the surface, that which is thus, as it were, cut out, hollowed out of the wood. Therefore, it is necessary – and I ask you to visualize the whole type, let us say, of the Roman Caesar heads, which can be seen everywhere in casts in museums, in relation to what I am about to say – therefore, when you sculpt the human form out of a stone-like material, you have to work the whole thing out from the face, from the head, and the rest of the human form that is not the head is actually, artistically speaking, just an appendix to the head. |
| They do not want to close off, but want to be artistically transparent. And just as the wood here is cut in such forms that make the wood artistically permeable, so it is suggested in these windows, I would say in a more natural material way, how what is here inside should be connected with the outside. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Double Dome Room and Its Interior Design
16 Oct 1920, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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It may be clear from the two observations already made here about the building idea of Dornach how this building idea has arisen out of the same life from which that is to arise which is meant here as spiritual science. But this building idea did not arise in such a way that, in the building, what lives in thought form, in idea form, in spiritual science, is to be found again, only in outwardly symbolic pictorial form. Rather, the building was to arise out of the feelings and perceptions that can be harbored by someone who feels inspired by this spiritual science. To some extent the intention was there: on the one hand, the spiritual-scientific impulse wants to express itself in the form of ideas. But that is not enough, that does not reveal its life in a complete way, and another branch must sprout from the common root. That is precisely the artistic branch, that is what manifests itself out of feeling and perception in the building idea of Dornach. Those approaching this building from the outside will at first perceive a kind of duality: a larger dome structure as an auditorium; a smaller dome structure, which to a certain extent cuts through the larger one , as a space for performances, also conceived as the space towards which everything in the auditorium tends, and from which, in turn, everything that the auditorium is inclined to absorb should radiate. Our future development will depend on whether humanity is able to commit itself to a truly essential development in all its soul-forming aspects, to commit itself to development in such a way that one says to oneself: What one has inherited or acquired through ordinary life does not yet lead to what gives the human being a truly dignified existence. From a certain point onwards, the development of the inner life must be taken up in order to lead beyond what the outer consciousness alone can bring. But there must be something to meet what one is approaching and which one expects, as it were, from unknown depths of the spirit. And it is the feeling of this interaction between the receiving human being and the creating human being within himself that was then able to be lived out in the building idea of Dornach. From the outset, wherever domed rooms of different sizes adjoin or even intersect, one cannot help but feel that a close interaction is taking place between the person to whom the one part is dedicated and the person to whom the other part is dedicated. To a certain extent, the aim was to evoke the sensation of a rhythm that exists between the larger and the smaller component. This lively sensation, or perhaps it would be better to say this invigoration of sensation through the forms of the building, could hardly be evoked by two rooms adjacent to one another in a different way. But now that is adapted to what interior design is and from which I would like to start initially. You know that in the case of all the buildings that are actually designed to enclose something, we are dealing with a completely different architecture. Perhaps we can reach an understanding if we point to older building forms that draw their style, their architectural concept, from completely different premises. The Greek “temple is conceived as the dwelling of the god, and a Greek temple in which there is no statue of the god, of Zeus, Apollo or Athena, would not be a complete work of art. But how did this style actually come about? It arose, so to speak, from the idea of God acting from a specific point in the universe. It is intended to envelop the activity of this god; it is therefore conceived in its entirety as a covering, as an enclosure. If we go a little further, skipping other architectural styles, to the architecture of the later Middle Ages, to the Gothic cathedral, we have to say that anyone entering a Gothic cathedral cannot feel that this building is complete if it is empty. A Gothic building that is not conceived as a temple but as a cathedral, that is, as a gathering and confluence of the faithful, is only complete when the faithful are assembled in it, when they are inside, just as a Greek temple is only complete when the statue of the god is inside. Accordingly, the entire Gothic architectural style is conceived in this way. And now, penetrating into our times, one is led to say: the internalization of the human being is what must be the essential impulse of the present and the near future. Man himself, with his inwardly divine-spiritual essence, is at the center of all striving, but he kills this inner impulse of his modern striving if he does not find his way into the development in a living way. And it is from this feeling of the modern human being that the building idea here has arisen. The mere all-round principle of symmetry of Greek architecture, the enclosure, had to be dissolved, and the abstract idea of the upward striving of the crowd gathering in the cathedral also had to be dissolved. Closure had to be found, so to speak, in the upward infinity of the spherical form, development in the complete feeling for that which animates the individual form. It is perhaps partly due to external motives that part of this building is a wooden structure; it could just as easily be a concrete structure, but not, for example, a marble building. Now that it is a wooden building, I only need to speak about the peculiarity as a wooden building, which essentially presents the interior design. When working with wood as a material for architecture, for sculpture, one notices that this work in wood is something quite different from working in marble, for example, or in any material that reveals itself on the surface like marble or stone. This will be particularly apparent when the central group in the right light is seen standing in this small domed room on the east side (Fig. 92). It has become a sculptural wooden group in keeping with the overall interior design. So it was worked in wood. Of course, it was he who made a model first, since no single person can work on a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group. I would not have been surprised if the people who saw this model, which was made in plasticine, had actually found it hideous, especially the central figure, the representative of humanity himself. For it goes without saying that the final design in wood must already have been present in the plasticine version.  But now, when working on stone – or on a surface that can resemble stone – one is obliged to carve out the form from the raised parts, from what bulges out of the plane, what confronts one from the plane; one is therefore obliged, so to speak, to place it on the plane, on the surface. When working with wood, you have to avoid working on the wood itself and instead work out of the wood. One must work not towards the convex but towards the concave. With stone and everything that resembles stone, it is that which emerges from the surface, the convex, that is effective. With everything that is made of wood, it is that which withdraws from the surface, that which is thus, as it were, cut out, hollowed out of the wood. Therefore, it is necessary – and I ask you to visualize the whole type, let us say, of the Roman Caesar heads, which can be seen everywhere in casts in museums, in relation to what I am about to say – therefore, when you sculpt the human form out of a stone-like material, you have to work the whole thing out from the face, from the head, and the rest of the human form that is not the head is actually, artistically speaking, just an appendix to the head. One must not, so to speak, sin against the natural forms of the human head, and one must shape the entire organism of the limbs and trunk out of what is laid down in the head. All this is required, for example, of marble, all this is required of stone. If one works in wood, then one has the necessity to work in the opposite sense. You have to work from the whole human figure, from the movement of the limbs, from the feeling of the torso. You can dare to shape an upward arm movement, a downward arm movement in such a way that it continues in an asymmetrical forehead, as was attempted with this group. This was only possible because it is a wood group, because when you work in wood, you bring out the hollows in the material and do not place what is raised on the surface. Only by being completely immersed in the material, with all one's feelings, especially in the human form, can such a treatment of the material emerge. And what is most vividly apparent when the human form is sculpted is apparent in the overall treatment of the wood here in this interior design. In stone, the progression of the columns from the simplest capital and pedestal forms to the more complicated middle forms, and then back to the simple forms again, would represent the dissolution of the symmetry on all sides into a developmental metamorphic progression. In stone, all of this would be nonsense; because stone demands to be more comprehensive, stone demands symmetry on all sides. Only wood allows for the development that was attempted here. As I said, it could also have been done in concrete, which, due to its nature, overcomes stone; only the form would look somewhat different. But wood allows for the introduction of development into the shape of the capital. And here I would like to say that the underlying idea was to implement Goethe's concept of metamorphosis in the purely artistic. One must, however, completely immerse oneself in the creative powers of nature and create forms out of the creative powers of nature if one dares to attempt to progress from the simplest capital forms, which you can find here at the two columns at the entrance, to ever more complicated forms. But that came about all by itself, that came about for the senses, that was not contrived. Those personalities who in earlier times were often led here in this building were told: this column means this, that column means that; they were spoken of Mercury, Mars columns and the like, and in these things, which actually only serve an abstract understanding, one has seen the main thing. The main thing is not in that. The main thing is how the second capital motif - but now for artistic perception - emerges from the first with the same necessity as the higher-lying leaf or blossom emerges from the lower-lying leaf according to the principle of natural growth, or the petal from the leaf. When forming such a concept, one looks at nature theoretically. Here it is a matter of having nothing to do with theory, but of experiencing the development as one form arises from the other. I may say: everything that you see here in the way of capitals and architraves is felt to be absolutely pure, and anyone who speculates about it, who makes symbolic interpretations about it, misunderstands the whole thing. But it is strange how, when you are working, this interweaving with the creative powers of nature brings surprises. When I was working on the model for this building (Fig. 22), I merely had the feeling that one capital would emerge from the other, that the next architrave motif would always emerge from the previous metamorphosis, and so on with the base motifs and so on. It soon became clear to me that this developmental impulse does not lead to a progression from the simpler to the more complicated, but that the most complicated is achieved right in the middle, as you can see here on the central columns, and that, in turn, when you have taken complexity to its ultimate height, to its culmination, you are compelled to move on to something simpler. Therefore, you do not see here, for example, an abstract development that starts with the simplest and progresses to the most complicated, so that the last would be the most complicated, but you see the greatest complication of the motifs in the middle.  And then I may also reveal to you here that it was certainly not intended from the outset to be a staff of Mercury entwined by snakes (Figs. 41, 42). No, that arose out of the artistic experience as something that cannot be otherwise if one ascends to the complicated in development and then has to turn around in order to descend again into the simpler. Likewise, I was surprised, for example, when – having arrived at the seventh column – I found that the sublimities of the first column, if you think of it as being turned inside out like a glove – not geometrically, but artistically turned inside out — fit exactly into the cavities of the last column; how, in turn, the same is the case with the second and sixth columns, as it is with the third and fifth columns, and the fourth column is in the middle.   It was not a case of pursuing some abstract, mystical principle of seven from the outset; rather, just as the tone scale is a seven-part entity, here the columns had to be formed in such a way that, so to speak, an octave of feeling in the form is fulfilled in a seven-part structure. For the eighth would be the octave; there it has to merge into the other kind of feeling, which one then finds in the small domed room, which contains something that accommodates development as an absorption. Therefore, the capital motifs of the small dome (Figs. 58-63) are not presented in their developed form as they are here, but are rather presented as a single entity, so to speak, opening its arms to what hastens towards it as a development.       But all this is not said beforehand, because beforehand one is dealing with something else, with life in form, with life in the plane itself. This is said afterwards, to give some indication of what has been created. Nothing here has grown out of any newer theoretical world view, not even out of the world of ideas of spiritual science itself. And I believe that it can be achieved, at least to a certain extent, that those who enter this building have the feeling: here, for the time being, one can forget everything one has absorbed in one's head in the way of spiritual-scientific ideas and thoughts. There is no need to talk about it, but one can feel it, feel it from the forms and from the treatment of the forms. So that one can feel something like this: When you enter a Greek temple, you feel the encompassing nature of this Greek temple. The stone form reigns in wisdom. From the macrocosm comes the wisdom that builds this macrocosm, pushes through the wall, as it were, and works in the stone's sublimity, in the convexities, and there encompasses the externally resting God, who is only active in the spirit for the world. One could feel in a similar way that which is striven for in a Gothic building. It is the community with its group soul, which, by being gathered in the cathedral, actually has around it that which it itself has built, bricked, chiseled, carpentered, and so on. When one enters a Gothic cathedral, one always has the feeling that, in contrast to the Greek temple, which arose from a purely aristocratic way of thinking, the Gothic cathedral is the product of a class-conscious thinking, of the structure of medieval life, which expresses itself through the search for humanity, which also expresses itself in its forms in this search for humanity. Those people who cannot bring themselves to look at it impartially speak of the Temple of Dornach. What has been built here is the opposite of any temple. There is nothing temple-like here, nothing that can be related to a church or a cathedral. And anyone who speaks of the temple of Dornach is only expressing how they have remained with Greek architecture in their whole feeling, not even having progressed to the Gothic. Here, however, what had to be tackled was that which creates forms that are basically only the continuation of what is spoken here, what is played here, what is declaimed here, what is artistically presented here. And just as the speaker stands here at the lectern, just as the organ sounds from above, just as the recitative tones vibrate through the room, so that which originates from the word, from the sound, from the thought must continue to speak through the framing, through the enclosure, which is not an enclosure but only continues the spoken, the sounded word. In the Greek temple we are dealing with an enclosure; here we are dealing with a self-expression. Therefore, above all, the whole form must be such that it lovingly embraces what is happening here, but that it does not close it off, but that this building stands as a symbol that what is being worked on here in Dornach should reach out to all of humanity. If you study the columns here, together with the back wall, which signifies enclosure, you will see that The whole can now be felt in such a way that nowhere does one have the feeling of being enclosed and speaking only to the wall; rather, one has the feeling that one is speaking and the forms of the wall, these capitals, these architraves, these column forms absorb the vibrations of the word and actually want to carry them out into the world. They do not want to close off, but want to be artistically transparent. And just as the wood here is cut in such forms that make the wood artistically permeable, so it is suggested in these windows, I would say in a more natural material way, how what is here inside should be connected with the outside. These windows are not works of art in themselves; these windows, whose technique is essentially a glass etching technique, are only works of art when sunlight shines through them, when a connection is created between what has been scratched out of the glass and the sunlight shining through. That doesn't close, that lets the sun in, that is the living mediator with the whole, with the light that floods the cosmos, and is only something if you look at it in connection with this light. If you approach it in such an artistic way, then you can also dare to develop the motifs that are in these windows. I cannot go into details, of course, but I would refer you to that blue window there (Fig. 111), where you can see the human form in both casement windows, the human form in two situations. In one case, all the qualities that live in the hunter when he aims at the animal he wants to shoot live in the person. In what has been scratched out of the glass, you will find the entire inner life of the person depicted, you will find everything that lives in him poured into the figurative. When you come to a certain stage of inner experience, you cannot help but give shape to what lives inside as passion. And if you then think of the metamorphosis as having progressed, the whole picture shows the following in the right-hand window: the person has progressed from intending to shoot the bird down to actually doing it: he has taken aim and is shooting. What happened earlier is transformed into the other part, which is then scraped out of the glass and together with the sunlight gives the work of art. In this way, each individual window could be treated. But the point here is not to come up with more interpretations, but to surrender to what is on the glass, to feel it. Precisely when one strives for the art of interpretation, one overlooks the actual artistic intention therein.  And when you look at this dome painting (Fig. 57) and see how everything that is painted in the small dome is brought out of the color, then you will also have the aspiration there to feel your way out of the closed space into the cosmos. It is painted in such a way that the painting on the surface is suspended, as if you are entering through a portal into a living thing. If you have a vivid sense of color, you can draw that out of the color. Of course, there are people who would prefer to see naturalistic figures up there; that would spare them the discomfort of first having to feel things. Because what you can feel in a beautifully—what we call “beautifully”—painted naturalistic human figure is something you have felt since childhood, and it is comfortable to see it again. But when you come here, you don't have the opportunity to rediscover what you have felt since childhood and say that it resembles this or that, but rather, here you have to, so to speak, go through all the that you have gone through in your entire life, in order to grasp in a lively way what emerges from the colors and the forms – which are, after all, the work of the color; they want to be nothing else – and to have the feeling: it does not shut you out, it carries what you feel here out into the whole world, it connects you with the world. Nothing about this building is conceived as anything other than an organic formation.  It was certainly a daring move to transfer mechanical forms of construction into the organic. If you want to develop something organic, everything has to be so that it could not be any different at the place where it occurs. Take something as insignificant as a human earlobe, which is certainly something very insignificant in the human organism. But according to the nature of the human organism, this earlobe, with its very specific shape, must form at this location here, and of course a similar organ could not develop, say, at the tip of the little finger or elsewhere. Each has its shape in its own place. This has been developed here as a building idea. Everything you see formed here (Fig. 27) has been thought out from the whole, has been thought and felt into the place where it stands. The column is dissolved in such a way that one can see the supporting function of the dissolved column in its form. If you see any motif outside at the entrance, you will see from its forms: This is towards the entrance. If you step a few steps further inside, what the column has to bear is no longer there in the same way. But if you go from the outside world into what such a column structure has to bear, the load-bearing and pushing of the whole structure against each column structure should be felt and, in turn, the relief against the outside world. What we are seeking here is an inner dynamism that strives towards life. And we live in a time when such a metamorphosis must be striven for in all fields of human endeavor, as was rightly felt in the past.  I am reminded of Schlegel, who, looking at the past forms that the “Renaissance men” repeatedly wanted to bring back, coined the beautiful phrase: “Architecture is frozen music.” It is a beautiful phrase for everything that has gone before in architecture, and an extraordinarily apt one. One has the feeling that music lives in these building thoughts. How could one see more beautifully than in the building forms of the Greek temple! How could one feel Bach, prophetically foresaw, differently than in the forms of the Gothic cathedral! The fugue already lives in the pointed arch. There it was frozen, and Friedrich Schlegel was right to call architecture, which he knew, frozen music. But today we live in a momentous moment of human development. We live in the moment when all creativity must take on a different form. And so we must also thaw and melt the frozen form of architecture. But it would dissolve into the indefinite if it were not imbued with soul in the melting process. And so we must have, alongside the frozen music, a thawing music that looks at us and demands: Give me soul! That, you see, is something of the building idea at Dornach, which spoke out of the development of humanity: thaw me, I am the frozen music! But I would melt into nothingness if, in thawing, the soul, the soul that is intensely moved within, did not lead into all forms. Not mere symmetry-proportionality should live in the forms, not merely that which one capital places in symmetry and proportionality next to the other, but living, intense movement, which allows one capital to grow out of the other like one petal of a flower out of another, metamorphosically transforming the form. I know all the arguments that can be used against this transfer of the idea of construction from the dynamic-mathematical to the organic-living, and I understand every one of the artists who cling to the old in this direction; I feel for them. But a start had to be made sometime with what time, from its depths, demands of us humans in the present and for the near future. And so only those who experience it as a need of their own soul, which has struggled to meet the demands of the present and the near future, will feel this structure. Of course, there is still a lot that is imperfect, and if it were to be performed a second time, this building would look quite different. But nevertheless, you can see from the attempt, at least, how the attempt has been made down to the smallest detail to transfer the dynamical-mathematical into the organic. Take a look at the radiators (Fig. 26). See how they are created from an organic, living elementary form, as if certain forces, which mysteriously work in the earth's interior, wanted to continue to work over the earth's surface. A few days ago, you were given a hint here as to how electricity continues to work in a mysterious way in the earth, when what is only transmitted through a wire is closed to the power circuit through the earth line, as it were, the whole earth replaces in its powers what would have to be there in a second wire line. Oh, there is much that is mysterious in the earth. But what is mysterious in the earth can be unraveled, not intellectually but intuitively. When it is shaped into forms, which should not be slavish imitations of animal or plant forms, but which are quite independent forms, then one perceives them as being alive. You can then form a wide, low stove screen and make the shape differently than if you were making a narrow, tall stove screen. You have the metamorphosing principle within you; it passes into the creative hand.  Of course, these are all things that people of the present day may still find repulsive. Let them do it. Those who cling to the old have always found what has emerged as something new repulsive. But such an experiment must be ventured some time. Here it was not even ventured out of the abstract, but it was undertaken because a second, an artistic branch wanted to emerge from the same roots from which spiritual science itself emerged. And I would like to emphasize once again: you will not find a single symbol in this room. If anything here appears to you as a symbol, it could at most be the five-petalled flower leaf at the back in the small domed room (Figs. 55 above, 57), which could appear to you as something that is meant to be symbolic when the curtain is raised later. Just as the five petals do not symbolize a pentagram, nothing here is meant to be symbolic. But everything has been so carefully thought out that every detail, every artistic line, is derived from the form of the whole.  If I have been permitted to characterize the building idea of Dornach in this way, it must be understood that I must at the same time add that what I have said is only the beginning of an attempt. And you can be sure of this: those who are working on this building, those from whom this building idea has arisen, do not think of it in an immodest way. They think about it in such a way that they would certainly retain the impulse, principle and style, the essentials, but create something completely different after they have learned what can be learned in the process of creating this building. A lot could be learned here. Because you truly do not learn more thoroughly than when you are forced to let what lives in your soul flow into concrete action. It is relatively easy to contrive abstract ideals with great perfection. But if one is compelled, already at the very first steps that an idea, an impulse inwardly takes in the soul, to shape this idea, this impulse in such a way that it can weave in the outer material, so that the work in which it embodies itself, does not become allegorical, then it requires something quite different in inner experience, then it requires a growing together with the world thought, with the world impulses, with that which lives in the world. Therefore, the Greeks, who were able not only to think about the world but also to feel it, took the word “cosmos”, with which they designated the universe, not from theory but from feeling. In the word “cosmos” lies the sense of beauty that is aroused in us when we look at the outer universe. But today, anyone who carries the thought of building in reality in their soul must be able to experience and grasp human development itself in a cosmic artistic way. We place ourselves in the sight of the portal of a Greek temple. We enter the temple. We experience the forms that surround us as a fence around the image of the god. We feel something like wisdom cast in form, that wisdom that flows through the whole world and that once had to emerge artistically in external forms, that had to be felt and that was felt in the highest way when the temple was created as the dwelling place of the Greek god. We must have a different material from the stone that allows us to shape world wisdom in its sublimity; we must have a different material when we work from the innermost being of the modern human being; for a different force must radiate out into the universe than wisdom is. We receive wisdom; it radiates towards us from what we place on the surface in terms of sublimity, of convexities. When we stand before the soft wood, we hollow into it that which lives in us, and we give something of ourselves to the cosmos. But as human beings, if we do not want to sin against the whole spirit of the world, we must carry nothing into it but what is carried into the universe on the stream of love. And anyone who can feel artistically, feels when he shapes the marble out of the flat surface, how wisdom comes over him in his consciousness when he carries out the building idea of the marble. The person who executes such a building idea as the one here feels that he must create what can be created by carving into the soft wood, what can live in the concavity, in true devotion to the greatness of the universe. One may only carve into it if one carves into it with love for the universe. No one should actually be able to form a surface with a relief without being overwhelmed by the wisdom of the universe. No one should dare to commit the sin of imprinting their own human essence on the material, of hollowing out the material, who does not do it with love for the universe. These, however, are the two poles of all human development: idea or wisdom and love. When we read Goethe's sayings in prose, it sounds to us like a fundamental solution to the riddle of the world when Goethe says: The highest that man can feel is the harmony of idea and love. We are aware that this harmony has been achieved here, for the time being only, I would almost say haltingly, in what we have now been able to do. But according to the intentions from which its idea has flowed, this structure does not want to be anything other than a germ. But a germ must not be judged only by what it initially presents itself as; a germ must be judged by what can grow out of it. These courses have been organized to help get this germ growing. And we have called you here because you are part of this building idea from Dornach. For whatever I might relate to you about the building idea of Dornach, it would all have to be unfinished, because this building idea can only be completed by those who have felt it going out into the world and - each in his own place - accomplishing that to which this building idea, with all that can be cultivated in the building, is to be the germ. I can only speak to you of something unfinished. To complete what is intended here, that cannot be done in Dornach, not by those who would work here, however fully; that can only be done effectively by you, by going out into the world and completing what can be hinted at here but must remain unfinished. You are not called upon to admire or evaluate the building, but to complete it, to be the further material in which the world spirit itself works, in which it is freely grasped by you so that in today's social distress, in today's decisive moment in world history, something may be done for the further development of humanity that leads not to barbarism but to a new, luminous ascent of human development. We would like the walls, columns, windows and domed spaces to speak to you: become the fulfillers of the architectural vision of Dornach! For it is in this sense that we have truly counted on you. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Idea of Building in Dornach
28 Feb 1921, The Hague Rudolf Steiner |
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| Figure 21 Original model, cut vertically in the middle (Fig. 22). I originally had to work out the whole building as a model, so that even the building plan, ground plan and elevation, as they were based on, were formed according to this model. |
| Figure 106 The glass house in which the glass windows have been cut (Fig. 103). These windows are located in the auditorium. They are cut out of monochrome glass panes, i.e. glass panes tinted with a single color. |
| Figure 103 The idea is that the motif is now cut out of the single-colored glass pane using special machines. The pane is then inserted and the work of art is created in the sunlight that passes through. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Idea of Building in Dornach
28 Feb 1921, The Hague Rudolf Steiner |
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My dear guests! I must ask you to excuse me for speaking in German and not in Dutch; however, I will have to show you a number of photographs to illustrate today's lecture, and they will not be in German, but international. The anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement from Dornach has been working on this for the last twenty years or so. In the early years, however, the Anthroposophical Society was a member of the general Theosophical Society, but I never put forward anything other than what I currently represent. And when, after this anthroposophy had been tolerated for a while within the Theosophical Society, it was then found to be too heretical and was to a certain extent expelled, the Anthroposophical Society was founded as an independent society. The anthroposophical movement definitely wants to reckon with the scientific attitude of the contemporary civilized world, it does not want to be anything sectarian or the like, but it wants to have a serious stimulating effect on the various sciences of our time, on the religious consciousness and also on the artistic and social life of the present. By around 1909, the anthroposophical movement had grown to such an extent within Central Europe that it was impossible for it to work without its own building, and so a number of long-standing members came up with the idea of erecting their own building for anthroposophy. And when I was approached with the intention of erecting such a building, a very specific impulse immediately arose from the nature of anthroposophical work. Otherwise, if one had been forced by some spiritual movement to construct a building of one's own, one would have gone to some master builder and had him construct a Renaissance building or a Gothic building or a Greek building or something similar. It would have been impossible for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to proceed in such an outward manner. For this is not something that merely seeks to spread a theoretical culture, but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science emerges from the source of the full human being. I have taken the liberty of explaining how it emerges from this source of full humanity in the two previous lectures here in this hall. But because this is so, because anthroposophy is not merely a one-sided theoretical science, but because it is something for the whole of human life in all its forms of activity, this anthroposophical movement also had to create its own architectural style out of its sources at the moment when it was faced with the necessity of erecting its own building. And we have succeeded in creating such a building. It is not yet finished, but it is already finished to such an extent that courses were held in it last fall and will be held again at Easter. We have succeeded in erecting such a building on the Dornach Hill near Basel in Switzerland. I said that the style of this Goetheanum, the attempt at a new style of building, was also formed from the same sources from which spiritual science was born, naturally with all the dangers, with all the shortcomings with which such a first attempt at a new style must be associated. Anthroposophy really emerges from the sources of being, not from thoughts or mere experimental and intellectually extended investigations, from the sources of existence itself. Therefore, in all its work, it must connect itself with the creative forces that are active in nature itself, for example, because the ultimate creative forces in nature are, as I have explained in the previous lectures, themselves of a spiritual nature. I may perhaps use a comparison. Take a nut. It has a nut kernel; this nut kernel is formed in a lawful way. But there is also the nutshell; it could not be otherwise as it is, since the nut is as it is. The same force that shapes the nut kernel also shapes the nutshell in a unique way. Just as the nut kernel is shaped by natural law, so is the nutshell. In Dornach, anthroposophical spiritual science is taught from the podium. The results of anthroposophical spiritual science are explored. Artistic representations are offered which are an outward expression - artistic, not symbolic or straw allegorical, but artistic - of that of which spiritual science itself is the expression. Therefore, around all this, around the kernel, so to speak, the shell must also be formed, which is [formed] precisely out of the same laws. Therefore, an architecture has been cultivated in Dornach that is [designed] from the same sense, from the same spirit as anthroposophical spiritual science itself. Sculpture is done there out of exactly the same spirit, painting out of the same spirit. When someone stands on the podium and speaks in ideas, it is just another form of expression of what the pillars speak, what the paintings on the walls speak, what the sculptures speak. Everything is, if I may put it this way, cast from a single mold. People are so afraid that nothing artistic would be created in this way, but only something symbolic or allegorical. Well, ladies and gentlemen, in Dornach there is not a single symbol, not a single allegory, but everything is attempted to be given in artistic form. The aim is not to somehow embody the ideas that are presented through images, that would be inartistic. Rather, the one spiritual life that underlies it can be shaped artistically at one time, and at another time it can be shaped ideally, in thought, scientifically. Art in Dornach is not a didactic expression of a science, for example, but it is one representation, and science is the other representation of the same great spiritual unknown from which anthroposophical spiritual science draws everything it wants to give humanity. The entire external design of the Dornach building had to be accordingly. Anyone who looks at this Dornach building will see a double-domed structure, with two circular cylinders standing side by side, but interlocking, and two hemispherical domes above them, which are joined together in the circular segment by a somewhat difficult mechanical construction. Since in Dornach what can be researched through spiritual science is to be brought to the world, this must be reflected in the building itself. The small domed building is a kind of stage in which mystery plays and the like are performed. Eurythmy is also performed, but many other things are planned. The podium for the speaker is located between the small and large domed rooms. The large dome room is the auditorium or audience room for almost a thousand people. This double-domed building expresses the fact that anthroposophical spiritual science has something to say to the world of the present and the future in spiritual, general human and social terms, which I took the liberty of discussing in the two previous lectures. If you approach the building from the west [and] come towards the main portal, which is oriented to the west, you will first see the following view (Fig. 5). The bottom of the building is made of concrete; at the top is a terrace that leads around the building in a stylized curve. This wooden structure stands on this concrete foundation. The domes are covered with that wonderful Nordic slate that is found in the slate quarries that can be seen on the journey from Kristiania to Bergen, from the Vossian slate quarries. This slate fits in wonderfully with the main idea of Dornach. Concrete and wood are both processed in such a way that an architectural style emerges which can be characterized as the transformation of the existing geometric, symmetrical, mechanical, static, dynamic architectural styles into an organic architectural style. Not as if any organic form had been imitated in the architectural forms of Dornach, that is not the case, but rather I tried, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, to become completely integrated into the natural creation of organic forms and to obtain organic forms which, by metamorphosing them, could then form a whole in the Dornach building; organic forms which are such that each individual form must be in the place where it is.  Imagine the nature of organic forms. Think of something seemingly quite insignificant in the organic form of the human organism: an earlobe. You will have to say to yourself: This earlobe, in the place where it is, could not be otherwise, as it is, if the whole organism is as it has just revealed itself. The smallest and the largest thing in an organic context has its very specific form at its place in the organism. This has been carried over into the building concept of Dornach. I know very well how much can be objected to this organic principle of building from the point of view of the old architectural styles. But this organic building style was once coined in the Dornach building concept. It may be rejected from the old point of view, but after all, everything new was rejected from the old point of view. In any case, however, if one can make friends with the transformation of static-dynamic, geometric building forms into organic ones, then one will find that all transitions from one organic form to another - not organic [natural] forms, for nothing is naturalistically imitated - [can be experienced] with the same inner regularity as, say, the plant leaf that is at the bottom of the stem, metamorphoses when it appears further up the stem, always [is] the same form, but alternating with the greatest variety. So in Dornach you will find certain organic forms carried into the building concept everywhere, as they are carved out of the wood here, as they appear here on the entrance pillars as capitals. Here on the side windows (Fig. 4, 12) you can see the same motif, on the windows of the side wing (Fig. 13) too, apparently no longer similar, but nevertheless the same metamorphosed, just as the motif of the green leaf reappears in the flower petal.   If you look at the building from the inside and the outside, you can get the impression: If any motif is near the gate, it is worked differently, so that you can see that the motif has less to bear against the gate, while it has to brace itself against the whole weight of the building. All of this, as it is taken into account in nature in the formation of the bones and muscle shapes, is definitely carried out in Dornach's building concept. Take a look at the bone form within the formation of the knee, it is designed in a wonderfully natural and ingenious way so that certain bones, which form the foundation bones, carry what lies on them. They are expanded and retracted in the right place. Feeling one's way into the forms of organic formation, of carrying, of weight, that was necessary in order to build Dornach. Here (Fig. 5) you enter. Here is a room to put down your clothes, here is a staircase inside, through which you walk up. You can walk around this terrace and at the same time have a distant view over the countryside, the Swiss Jura. The same picture, slightly shifted and closer (Fig. 6).  Here (Fig. 7) you can see the building as it presents itself to you from the southwest. Here the gallery, below the concrete building.  The building as you see it when you approach it from the north (Fig. 1), so that you have the large dome in front of you, [here] the small dome. Here the two domes are joined together.  From a point in the north, the building (Fig. 2). Here you can see a strange structure. This is the one that is most criticized. It is the building that stands near the building. I started by looking at the lighting and heating machines as if they were the kernel of a nut, and constructing a shell over it out of concrete, which is extremely difficult to work with artistically. Those who still criticize this building today don't consider what would be standing there if no effort had been made to create something artistic out of the artistically brittle concrete material: there would be a red chimney. I would like to ask people whether that would be more beautiful than what is certainly a first attempt to stylize something out of concrete, which has some shortcomings, but is nevertheless a first attempt to create something artistic in these things.  Here (Fig. 3) the building seen from the northeast. Here is a house that was already standing when we were given the building plot. A house that we very much hope we will be able to buy one day. You can imagine for what purpose we would like to acquire it; of course it disturbs the whole aspect of the building.  Here is the interlocking of the domes (Fig. 17). Here the main wing, here the main entrance (Fig. 10).   Here is the studio where the stained glass windows were made (Fig. 103). It was listed as a studio for grinding the stained glass windows.  Behind it is the boiler house again (Figs. 106, 107). In a neighboring village, Arlesheim, there is a particularly tastelessly built church. I have nothing to say against it, but it is honestly tasteless. Nevertheless, the Swiss Association for the Beautification of Swiss Buildings has managed to say that this [our] building disfigures this part of Switzerland: just take a look at the beautiful church in Arlesheim.   The ground plan (Fig. 20). Main entrance, organ room, auditorium. Here is the lectern. The stage area. Here are the two side wings with the individual rooms for the performing actors and other artists. Here you can see seven columns on both sides. Here in the curve six columns. These seven pillars are not formed out of some mystical urge in the number seven, but purely out of artistic feeling. Just as the violin has four strings, so the artistic feeling here has resulted from inner reasons that a certain artistic development and in turn an artistic conclusion can be achieved by developing just seven motifs. With these pillars, the risk was taken not to design the capital and architrave motifs as repetitions, but in a lively development. When you enter from the west portal, you come across the first two columns. However, they are symmetrical. But if you move on from the first to the second column, the capital of the second column, the base, the architrave above the second column is designed in a way that must be organic. It is designed in such a way that one had to live into the creation and creation of the forces of nature if one wanted to artistically shape the second pillar motif out of the first, the third again out of the second and so on, until a certain conclusion was reached in the seventh pillar motif.  Many visitors come to Dornach and ask: What does the individual chapter mean? You can't ask that at all about art. The essential thing is that one pillar emerges artistically and formally from the other pillar. Whereas in the static architectural style we are actually only dealing with symmetry, with repetitions of the same motif, here we are dealing with a living evolution from the first to the seventh column. I will show the columns later, then you can see this. Section through the building (Fig. 21).  Original model, cut vertically in the middle (Fig. 22). I originally had to work out the whole building as a model, so that even the building plan, ground plan and elevation, as they were based on, were formed according to this model. This whole model is precisely the embodiment of the Dornach building concept, is conceived in the same way as spiritual science itself is conceived, is to a certain extent another expression for that for which the one expression is spiritual science itself. Right next to the main entrance, the main portal in the west (Fig. 15). The pictures were taken at a time when construction was still in full swing.  A little further on from the main entrance (Fig. 12). Here the part containing the stairs to go up. Here is a house nearby. This house was built in a very special way. After all, we built the entire structure through the understanding of our anthroposophical friends. The fact that the Dornach hill was used to build this house is explained by the fact that a friend in Basel, near Basel, bought this building plot a long time ago to build a summer house for himself; he then gave us this plot as a gift. We were then able to build there. The friend also wanted to have his house here. And that's when I was given the task - various conditions made it necessary - to stylize a house, a family home with fifteen rooms, out of concrete material. It was a bit of a gamble. There are certainly still flaws in this house, which is formed out of the artistic nature of the brittle concrete material. But such things have to be done for the first time. A side wing (Fig. 17). These two side wings are inserted like a crossbeam. Here the main motif is again metamorphosed. Everywhere the same and yet again something different, one could say, is contained in the building forms. Front façade of a side wing (Fig. 14). Here again the motif that is at the main entrance, very widened, designed with rich material, here once more sparingly designed in the same metamorphosis. A certain law of symmetry is observed everywhere, but this is combined with asymmetry. This asymmetry gives the building an artistically pleasing effect and great variety.  Taken somewhat larger, the motif of the façade of one such side wing (Fig. 11).  We enter through the concrete entrance in the west, imagine (Fig. 23). Then we first come to the stairs leading up here. This would be the room where you put your clothes. Then you go to the front, here you enter the auditorium. Here I have dared to make the column shape organic.  [Then] for example this shape here (Fig. 24): There are three motifs standing perpendicular to each other. How did this form come about? Not through any kind of philosophizing, but purely out of feeling. You can say to yourself: anyone who has first entered through the main portal and then wants to come into the auditorium must be able to move in a certain way towards the thought and feeling of what he wants to hear in Dornach from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual view: Here you may enter for the security of your soul, to gain a firm foothold within yourself. Here you may enter in such a way that no illusions of life shall beguile you; that no kind of wavering shall come over you. This has been sensitively expressed here in this motif.  Then you see here a pillar supporting the staircase (Fig. 25). The staircase motif itself is designed in such a way that it is organically braced against the building, in this case against the exit. Here it is carried by a column that does not imitate organic motifs in a naturalistic way, but is just as organically shaped as the forms of living creatures in nature are shaped by the creative forces of nature. How this pillar stands up, how it supports something on one side, where the load to be carried is lighter, how it braces itself against this side, where the main load of the building lies, is expressed in the smallest things in the same way as the earlobe shape expresses the affiliation to the whole human organism. Every form in Dornach must be perceived as a necessity in its place.  Here (Fig. 26) is a motif that I have executed in the various metamorphoses. Here it is made of concrete, in the upper section of wood. It's a front piece for a radiator. As I said, in Dornach the individual forms emerge from each other in a metamorphic way, and there are no abstract forms that are merely appropriate to the underground art, but everything is realized in a strictly organic artistic way. Here (Fig. 27) you can see the room that you enter when you climb the staircase that has just been built. This is a wooden building. Here is a pillar supporting the ceiling. Everything that immediately follows in the interior is handcrafted by a large number of our friends. It must be emphasized again and again that a large number of friends have gathered in Dornach over many years, all of whom have worked out these individual sculptural forms, which were given to them in the model, by hand. In a sense, the entire wooden structure is the handiwork of the anthroposophical friends. And that is something that could have been exemplary at the same time for the loving cooperation of a group of people. If you now enter and look backwards in the auditorium, you can see the organ loft here. This is the model (Fig. 30). The idea is not to place the organ in a cavity, but to take the organ and shape the architecture accordingly. Additional motifs were then added during the elaboration.  Here is the interior (Fig. 29). When you enter the interior, you can see the organ porch where the singers stand. Here are the first three columns. I will explain the picture of the column formation in a moment. Above the columns are the architraves, which also show progressive motifs.  Here is the organ loft (Fig. 28).  Here is the space above the organ, sculpted out of wood (Fig. 33). Please take a look at the chapter. It is composed of simple forms. We will make the transition to the next and next capital and architrave forms. You don't have to think about how one capital emerges from another, but it is simply perceived like a leaf on the stem of a plant from which others now emerge metamorphically. Thus the next motifs here are always formed quite sensitively from the previous ones.  Here you have the simple capital motif of the first column (fig. 34).  The first column and the second column (Fig. 35). If you think of the simple motif from top to bottom, from bottom to top, you can imagine how it grows. The drops from above grow into this form, and from below the forms grow to meet them in more complicated shapes. It is the same with the architrave motifs.  Second column motif (fig. 36): already more complicated.  Second and third columns together (fig. 37): Again organically metamorphosed, the third column is obtained from the second column.  The third column on its own (Fig. 38).  Third and fourth pillars together (Fig. 39). What is still simple here has become more complicated. You make very special discoveries in the process. I simply let one motif emerge from the other according to artistic feeling. In doing so, I realized that it is only through this artistic approach that one can really understand the essence of evolution in nature. One usually imagines that the first forms in a developmental process are the simpler ones, which then become more and more complicated. This is not the case. If you work artistically, allowing one to emerge from the other, then you end up shaping the simpler into the more complicated, but when the complication has reached a certain level, things become more harmonious, but simpler again. This is how evolution works: from the simple to the complicated and then back to simplification. This discovery is surprising at first. You create something like this from the purely artistic and then find that it actually corresponds fully to the artistic creation of nature.  Consider the human eye: it is the most perfect, but not the most complicated. Certain organs of lower beings, the fan in the eye, the xiphoid process, are absorbed by the human eye. You come to that by yourself if you shape purely artistically. Something very strange also happened to me. I said I had to form seven pillars, really not out of any mystical inclination. The seventh pillar turned out to be the end; you couldn't go any further, the motifs had been fulfilled. But later I discovered that if I took the convex shape of the seventh pillar and reshaped it a little artistically, it went straight into the concave, hollowed-out shape of the first pillar. I wasn't looking for that. It was the same with the sixth and second pillars, and also with the third and fifth pillars. I discovered that the capitals and the pedestal figures were something that emerged naturally from the work in the sense of an evolution. This is not something I was looking for. Even in nature itself, such surprising formal relationships arise. When you create artistically, you get these things that confront you from the individual forms, and you come to a deep respect for the mysterious working and weaving firstly in nature, but secondly in the world of forms itself, which you can penetrate imaginatively and artistically and by looking at it. A column on its own has become relatively complicated (fig. 42). But you will see that by thinking of this motif in such a way that it grows from top to bottom, from bottom to top, something emerges that I did not aim for; but when people look at it, they will say: He has formed the staff of Mercury. I didn't want to form that, but it came out like that. It spreads out, grows, thus creating this complicated motif (fig. 41), then the motifs become simpler. Here you can see this motif (Fig. 43). Now I couldn't go any further in the complication. By thinking of it as growing and perceiving it as growing, I created this simpler motif.  The last two columns with their architraves above them (fig. 45). The column directly in front of the stage entrance (fig. 46).   In this way, you can see how the individual capitals came about, how the entire column motifs developed artistically in their evolution. Here we are in front of a plinth (Fig. 48). I wanted to show these pedestals in turn, one after the other, how they develop apart in the same way as the capitals.  All pedestals (figs. 48-54). First becoming more complicated, then simpler again.       Here you can see from the auditorium into the stage area (Fig. 57). Here you can see the painted interior of the stage dome. Here the architrave above the columns of the auditorium. Here the auditorium closes off the stage area. Still in progress is the gap that connects the auditorium with the stage area (Fig. 56).  Another view from the auditorium, whose last columns you can see, into the stage area (Fig. 55). Here the painted stage dome. With regard to the painting of the two domes, however, I cannot give you such pictures, or rather I cannot give you pictures that speak as clearly as I can about the other. For with regard to the painting of the Dornach building, what I once described as the essence of modern painting has been very seriously striven for and followed, at least in the small dome room. Everything that is created in painting must be extracted from color. The world of color is a world unto itself. The person who immerses himself in the world of color learns to recognize the creativity of each individual color; he learns to recognize the creativity that lies in the harmony of colors. Those who know how red affects human perception, how red speaks from within, those who know that blue has a formative, creative effect, come to shape the painterly world out of the colors This is roughly what they tried to create when painting the small domed room in Dornach. The essential thing is always, if I may put it this way, the spot of color in a certain place. Although the figurative is born out of color, everything is originally conceived out of color. Light, dark and colors are actually the only things that are justified when you depict something painterly with the help of the surface; drawing is actually a mendacity. Take the horizon line: the blue sky above, the greenish sea below. If you paint it like this, then the horizon emerges by itself as the creature of the color encounter. And so it is with all lines in real painting. In painting, form is the work of color. This is what was attempted in Dornach. There (Fig. 64) you first see what is under the dome, the architrave motif, directly above the group that is to be placed in the east of the building as the sculptural center of this building, so to speak. A motif from the small domed room (Fig. 66). I ask that these motifs be judged in the same way as those of the large domed room, except that six columns are intended on both sides; thus the whole shapes and designs are “ben other.  A capital motif of the small domed room (fig. 58-63). The first thing in the painting of the small domed room when you enter it (Fig. 73). Of course, you will only get a real sense of what I can show you now when you feel this [photographic] reproduction in its defects, when you say to yourself: What is this actually? There should be color! Of course it is also color, everything is taken out of the color.  Here is a child flying towards a kind of fist figure (fig. 69). The child is red-yellow, the fist figure in blue.  Here fist (fig. 70), [here] the child (fig. 69). This fist figure roughly represents the civilization of the fifteenth, sixteenth century, in which we are actually all still immersed. However, that which takes shape from that civilization in external theoretical science is basically only a surface. The person who lives into the world view that has emerged through the newer natural sciences with his whole human being feels death strongly on the one side and budding, germinating life on the other. These two polar opposites confront us precisely from the present-day view of nature. Just take the following: The way we describe nature, we use terms that are basically taken from the dead, the mineral. Our natural scientists see an ideal in thinking of plant and animal life along the lines of the mineral, perhaps even being able to work experimentally in this direction. The idea of death is very strong (Fig. 71). On the other hand, if we delve into our self-consciousness, there is that life which is polar opposite to death, which we feel in particular when we allow the life of a child to affect us uninfluenced by knowledge. It is entirely in keeping with the feeling that a fist figure appears here, painted out of the blue. [Here] the only word you will find in the entire structure: ICH (Fig. 72).  It is at this time, when this fist figure enters modern civilization, that we first really get to know the ego as the abstract content of self-consciousness. As you know, older languages still have the I in the verb. In this age, the ego is peeled out, set apart, when at the same time this culture appears, the political contrasts of which I have just described. This is the first motif that confronts us in the painting of the small dome. Here Faust (fig. 70), here Death (fig. 71) as the contrast to the child. It is precisely the most modern cognitive and spiritual life that is to emerge in this motif, but out of the color, out of the yellow-reddish tone of the child, the blue tone of Faust, the brownish-blackish tone of this skeleton.  An angel-like figure above Faust (fig. 74). In a sense, everywhere below is a figure representing the more human, above it a spirit figure, the inspirer, the inspiring figure.  Here (fig. 75) is an image born out of the sensibility of Greek culture, i.e. more in the past. The fist figure was conceived out of modern culture, which we are still part of. Here is a kind of Pallas Athena figure, perceived from Greek culture, with the inspiring figure above it (Fig. 76).  Also such an inspiring, spirit-like figure (fig. 77).  Here (fig. 78) going further back an initiate of the Egyptian culture, above him the inspiring figure, so that everything worked out of the color is really intended here as figurative, which even represents the successive cultures and their evolution.  Here again two figures (fig. 79), and below them the figure that I will show you in larger size later. This is a kind of man of more recent times, a man of the present Central European culture. That which is ambivalent in this man of the present is expressed in his inspiration, which is above him. Here is a Luciferian figure. In this Luciferic figure there is to live all that which lives in that human nature, that through which man wants to go beyond himself, through which he falls into the rapturous, mystical, theosophical. The other, the Ahrimanic, through which he falls into the philistine, the intellectual-materialistic. These two opposites are in every human being today. Man seeks a balance between this duality. Everything in him that leads pathologically to fever, to pleurisy, is in this Luciferic form; everything that leads to sclerosis, to calcification, is in this Ahrimanic form.  Here (Fig. 81) you see one thing, in a sense the human being with those forces that age him, drive him towards sclerosis, drive him mentally towards intellectuality, towards materialism. Man would be like this, despite the fact that no one desires it so much, so Mephistopheleanahrimanic, if he had no heart, if he were merely a man of intellect. He is in all of us, but we also have a heart.  This (Fig. 80) is the one who represents us if we only had a heart and no mind. The Luciferic figure: rapturous, mystical, theosophical, everything that wants to go beyond the human being. Here is the human being who, with the help of these two again polar, contour-like opposing effects, really feels duality and can only bear it if the child is placed by his side. The man of the present in his ambivalent nature. Here (fig. 82) still somewhat larger, the same man who feels conflict within himself.  Here (figs. 83, 84) we come somewhat closer to the center. Here two figures, one painted more light, the other more dark. I have always taken the view that the Russian people's soul contains the man of the future. Today, only in the East is everything distorted. Today, through Lenin and Trotsky, the East is working towards the death of culture, towards the most terrible destruction. For all that which is at work in the East as forces of decline in the most terrible way can only lead to the destruction of all culture. But that is not what corresponds to the Russian national soul. And if nothing else would bring down Lenin and Trotsky, the Russian people's soul would one day bring them down. But the Russian people's soul is such that every Russian has his own shadow next to him. There is not only the ambivalent man as in Central Europe, who carries Lucifer and Ahriman within him, the enthusiastic and the materialistic, there is a man who has a second man beside him. This shadow must first be absorbed by the man of the future, but then he will also become the man of the future.   Here (Fig. 83) the inspiring angel, above it a centaur figure. When the man of the future will have attained his maturity, this figure will be that which may be put forward as the actual inspirer next to the angelic figure; today he is still centaur-like. Here (Fig. 84) this centaur figure, the starry sky in between, so rightly sensing that evolution in the spirit which hovers between the angelic and the animal. Man stands, as it were, between the animal, which has assumed a human form in its passions and instincts, and the angelic, in which the ahrimanic is transformed into the spiritual and thereby receives its cosmic justification. Here (fig. 85) from the other side, symmetrically situated, the angel, the centaur figure, carved out of the yellow.  Here you can see what is painted in the middle: a kind of representative of humanity (fig. 86). Anyone who sees this representative of humanity may feel as if it were an embodiment of the figure of Christ. This Christ figure in the middle is shaped as I had to place it according to my supersensible view of the Christ figure, which I believed, as this being really lived in Palestine at the beginning of our era. The traditional figure of Christ with the beard was only invented in the fifth or sixth century. Today we have to go back through spiritual scientific research to the time when Christ lived in Palestine in order to be able to discover his form through extrasensory vision. I make no claim to be believed authoritatively that this is the true figure of Christ, but I see it this way and I hold from the depths of my being that this is the figure of Christ. Below it, carved into a rock, is the figure of Ahriman. From the right arm of the  The figure of Christ emanates lightning bolts that snake around the ahrimanic figure. The Ahrimanic figure is everything that man would be if he had only reason, only intellect, only a materialistic attitude, not a heart. Above it is the figure of Lucifer, carved out of the red, all that which in man tends to rapture, to fantasy, to one-sided theosophy, to mysticism. Here (Fig. 87) you see this figure of Lucifer, the face painted entirely out of the red, above the figure of Christ.  The Ahrimanic figure (fig. 88), the countenance - the wings are bat-like in the Ahrimanic figure - bound by the lightning bolts emanating from the hand of Christ. Of course, it all depends on how you perceive it from the color.  Here is the head of the Christ figure (fig. 90). This is what is painted into the dome at the very east end of the small dome room. Below this painting - Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman - is a nine and a half meter high wooden group (Fig. 93); again in the middle is the representative of humanity, who can be perceived as Christ. Twice above it is the Lucifer motif, twice below it the Ahriman motif. And then out of the rock an elemental being, which looks at the Christ in the midst of Lucifer and Ahriman like a natural being.   Here (fig. 91) the first model of the Christ figure in profile, as I made it in order to base the wooden group, the sculpture on it.  En face the first model; it is somewhat defective (fig. 92). A model of the Ahriman figure (Fig. 99). A Lucifer figure (Fig. 101), at the side of the wooden figure in the middle.   Another Lucifer (Fig. 98). Above it, carved out of the rock, an elemental being bending its head, as it were, and looking at Christ in union with Lucifer and Ahriman. I have dared to form a face quite asymmetrically, so that it is carved out of the composition. This is usually done in such a way that the composition is made up of the individual figures. Here in the wooden group, the individual figure is always created from the meaning and spirit of the whole composition, hence this asymmetry. It is a completely asymmetrical face, but it has to be like this at the point in the composition where it is in the group.  Here you have the heating and lighting house (Fig. 106) standing on its own, the rear front completely adapted to the machines that are inside. The whole thing is only finished when the smoke comes out of the top. Then these extensions will also be perceived as justified. Artistically, one creates from the form and cannot give an abstract explanation as to why it is this way or that. Some people think they are leaves, others think they are ears. That's not the point, it's the form that matters, which adapts on the one hand to growing out of the boiler house and on the other hand to what happens in the boiler house. The glass house in which the glass windows have been cut (Fig. 103). These windows are located in the auditorium. They are cut out of monochrome glass panes, i.e. glass panes tinted with a single color. They have a certain history: We had first ordered glass panes from a factory near Paris in the spring of 1914, but the shipment was so delayed that it simply disappeared on the battlefield; we never saw anything of it. We had to buy the panes a second time. The idea is that the motif is now cut out of the single-colored glass pane using special machines. The pane is then inserted and the work of art is created in the sunlight that passes through. This is connected with the whole idea of building in Dornach. In buildings everywhere else, you have to deal with walls that close off the room. In Dornach you have walls that don't evoke the idea at all: You are closed off. Everything I have now shown you is actually designed to make the walls artistically transparent. The viewer or listener has the feeling in the building that the wall is transparent, artistically transparent through its form, and that he is in contact with the whole wide universe. This is expressed artistically and physically through these glass windows, which are actually only a kind of score, as they are worked out as glass etchings. They become works of art when the sunlight shines through them. In other words, what is inside the building expands into the outer, sunlit nature. The glass cutting had to be done in this studio, which now serves as the building office. The door to the glass house (Fig. 104). Not even philistine door handles, but completely new door handles (Fig. 105).   [Now] a small sample of the stained glass windows. All kinds of motifs cut out of the single-colored glass pane, but they only make sense to enjoy when you are standing in front of them. Here (Fig. 112) a pair of people, the feelings of this pair of people carried out in what is around them.  Another window motif, scratched out of the glass (fig. 110). The glasses are not all of the same color, but one color is always followed by another. So that when you enter the building, you can see the different colors from the various windows. The whole room is then illuminated with a symphony of colors, which is artistically perceived as being composed of the most diverse colors. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have taken the liberty of presenting to you the architectural concept of Dornach in the eighty pictures I have shown you. I have also taken the liberty of explaining to you how this Dornach building concept aims to replace merely static, geometric, symmetrical building with organic building. This had to happen because this spiritual science, as I have represented it here in my lectures, is not merely a one-sided science, but full of life; because it wants to draw fully from the source of world and human life. Therefore, it is not merely a phrase when it is said that religion, art and science and social life should be united with one another, but that the building in its new architectural style simply had to express the same thing out of the whole essence of this spiritual science that is expressed in the spiritual science itself through thoughts or laws.  My esteemed audience, through the willingness of a large number of understanding friends to make sacrifices, we have brought the building so far that last fall we were able to have about thirty experts, people of practice, hold courses in this building, and shorter courses are to be held again at Easter. However, the building is not yet finished. We can only express the hope that we will be able to complete this building, from which a spiritual-scientific movement, which will also bring the social liberation that is necessary for the people of the present and the near future, will emanate. For this, however, it will be particularly necessary to have the international understanding that I described yesterday as the basis for a world school association that works towards the liberation of spiritual life as one member of the tripartite social organism. It will be necessary for this spiritual life to be promoted and supported by the World School Association in an international way. With regard to the building of Dornach, I know very well what can be objected to from older points of view, from old architectural styles. But if we never dared to do anything new, the development of humanity could not progress. And the impulse to move forward has to do above all with that which wants to emanate from Dornach as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Forward in the development of humanity, according to the goals that I indicated yesterday at the end of the lecture. We know, in that we have also formed this outer shell of anthroposophical spiritual science in the building of Dornach, the Goetheanum, what all can be criticized about this building, what all can be objected to it. We have only one justification for ourselves, which is ultimately decisive for everything new: we must dare to try this new thing. And we always remember what is true: that what is justified will work its way through against all resistance if it is justified. If it is not justified, it will be eliminated and will do little harm to humanity. In the face of all opposition, it will become clear whether the building idea of Dornach is justified as an outer shell for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We can only say: we think it is justified, and that is why we dared to do it! |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Building Idea of Dornach
07 Sep 1921, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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| Figure 21 The next picture (Figure 22): Here I have taken the liberty of showing you the model, cut in the same section as the one I have just shown you. This is the first model of the structure, which I made in Dornach during the winter of 1913–1914, partly out of wood and partly out of wax. |
| It had to be built originally because the glass windows for the building were cut inside it. These glass windows came about in such a way that what is otherwise only artistically executed – that the wall is artistically transparent – is formed in these glass windows right down to the physical level. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: The Building Idea of Dornach
07 Sep 1921, Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear attendees! It is my task today to speak about the place that is to be a center of activity for everything that can radiate from the work in which you have participated here in such a deeply satisfying way over the last eight days. I may say in a deeply satisfying way, for the reason that you will believe me when I say that I am connected with this work in the deepest sense and therefore may express the deepest satisfaction about the course of this congress. Now, my dear attendees, the Goetheanum is, so to speak, a physical manifestation of that which, in the most diverse ways and in the most diverse fields, would like to emerge as the result of anthroposophical spiritual science in the world. When it first emerged in the world, anthroposophy naturally did not immediately have its own place of activity, and it could not even be thought of, not even remotely, to build a place of activity for it. After about a decade of activity, a number of people who believed in the anthroposophical worldview came up with the idea of creating such a center for anthroposophy. The idea had initially come from the impressions gained from the performance of the mystery plays, which we started in Munich in 1910. It struck a number of our friends how unsuitable the architecture of an ordinary theater, such as we had to use to stage the mysteries at the time, is for what is actually artistically intended by anthroposophy. And so the plan arose to found a kind of college for anthroposophy. The first attempt was to build in Munich. Land had already been acquired in Munich. But now the question was that precisely because anthroposophical spiritual science wants to be what has been spoken of here again in these days, the same could not be said for such a building as is otherwise the case. You have a society or an association, as you will, that has set itself some goal and believes it needs its own building. You get in touch with some master builder, an architect, and receive his suggestions. The building is constructed in the antique, Renaissance, Gothic style or similar, and then the events of the respective association or society are held in such a building. Those who are thoroughly connected with their own soul life, as it should be, with an anthroposophical worldview, can never agree to such an outward agreement for a framework, for a wrapping of that which is to be created through anthroposophy. Because it has been emphasized over and over again: Anthroposophy is, on the one hand, a science of the spirit, of the supersensible, arising from the deepest sources of human knowledge. But it is not a theory, it is not a sum of abstractions, it is not something about the world and about life; it becomes, as it develops, life itself, it takes hold of the deepest inner impulses of the whole, of the full human being, and pursues everything from the inner being of this full human being, whatever it can be for him. In this way, it not only stimulates the impulses for scientific research, but also for artistic creation. Not as if out of the true anthroposophical spirit – I have already mentioned this in my evening lectures – not as if out of this spirit an allegorizing or symbolizing art wanted to arise; that would not be art at all. Not ideas are to be transformed into symbolic or allegorical forms. No, anthroposophical spiritual knowledge penetrates into the depths of the human soul and takes its origin from sources that can flow into the world in other currents than in the field of the presentation of ideas. And so the one stream of the presentation of ideas arises as the one, and the other stream, the stream of artistic creation, in addition to many others, from the same source. But it is not about the translation of spiritual science into art or into sham art, but rather about an elementary, very original, I would say, expression of the artistic. In Dornach today, one can see how nothing symbolic or allegorical is striven for, but how what is intended to be art is conceived as art and created out of the artistic. I would like to express myself with an image: if the relationship between the anthroposophical worldview and art is really as I have just described it, then this anthroposophical worldview must not allow itself to be built a place from the outside, in some style that for the Greek, for the Renaissance, for the Gothic worldview. Instead, the anthroposophical worldview must be housed in a building that has arisen out of the most original impulses of anthroposophy. Then the matter must be such that, for example, speaking takes place from the podium, singing or reciting or acting in eurythmy takes place on the stage, and so on; that which emerges in this way to the people must, so to speak, be the one language, and the other language must be the building forms, must be the architecture that envelops that which wants to reveal itself within the space. Anthroposophy must not accept a style from outside; Anthroposophy itself, being intimately related to the artistic, must appear as a creator of style. This is what was there, I would like to say, with the same inner spiritual necessity as - now I would like to express myself through an image - as the nutshell cannot be different in its formation, in its design, than it is. The nut fruit and also the nutshell arise from the same lawfulness, from the same forms and life forces. He who sees the one can judge the other. This must also be the case with the structure for the anthroposophical world view. Therefore, what was to become the style for such a structure could arise out of all that was alive in the ideas of anthroposophy. It is understandable that this met with resistance at first from all those who cling to the old, who cannot imagine that the development of humanity can only come about through the constant emergence of new and new metamorphoses of human labor, human creativity and human insight, and so – and I emphasize this – it was not the police or the government that rejected us at first, but the art world rejected our styles for Munich. It is not our fault that the building was not built in Munich, where it was originally intended to be. Of course, in the end people grew tired of submitting, I might say, to the yoke of what would have been dictated to them from the old ways of thinking. Those who knew what kind of architectural style must arise from the anthroposophical worldview were not allowed to have their wings broken. And so it happened that through the donation of a friend, our project on the hill near Basel, in Dornach, in the northwestern corner of Switzerland, could be realized, and that the foundation stone could be laid in the fall of 1913. Of course, we fell into the most difficult period of Western cultural development. But we have at least already come so far that a whole series of university courses have been held in the building since last fall, which is still far from completion. Now I would like to characterize in just a few words how that which lives in anthroposophy has poured out into an architectural style. That, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the essence of anthroposophical research, of anthroposophical knowledge: that the concepts, that the whole forms of knowledge live, unfold in free activity, and this led, I would like to say, in a very elementary, naive way, to transferring the old architectural styles, which are based on the geometric, symmetrical, mechanical-static, into the organic. And so the previous architectural styles are, I would like to say, external images of that which can live in the static, in the carrying, in the load-bearing and in the symmetrical, in the geometric. Of course, the Dornach building and my words here are not a criticism – it would be foolish towards these architectural styles – but it is a matter of drawing on progress. In this case, it could only consist of the geometric, the symmetrical, the static being transferred into something that, in all its forms of expression, in all its formation, also represents the organic, just as the inorganic is otherwise represented in architectural styles. I am well aware, esteemed attendees, of all the objections that can be raised against such a thing; but it had to be done at some point, based on the fundamental impulses of an anthroposophical attitude. There had to be a building idea that is lived and woven through the contemplation of the organic. And consider what that actually means in terms of the human body itself. Take the smallest organ, perhaps it will be most illustrative. Please take your earlobe, a very small organ, it has a certain shape and size. If you feel the whole meaning of the human organic structure, feel it artistically, then you will say to yourself: firstly, this earlobe could not be in any other place in the human organism than where it is, and secondly, in the place where it is, it could not be other than it is. The same had to be achieved with all the individual forms in the construction of the Goetheanum. One had to connect inwardly with the metamorphosing formative forces that otherwise live in the organic, and one had to experience what must of course be observed as the basis for every building idea: the geometric, the symmetrical, the static. One had to experience this through what can be experienced in this way in harmony with organic creation. Every single shape, every door, every window, every column, every detail [of this building] had to be individually felt. And the whole, in turn, had to be the one that, as a unified organic building idea, could absorb these individual organic building elements. One difficulty arose from the fact that the matter was initially conceived for Munich in such a way that, in fact, only interior design would have been considered in the main. The building was to be surrounded by houses that anthroposophical members wanted to acquire, so that the exterior architecture would have been of little consequence. When the building had to be moved to Dornach, the space available was a completely open field on a hill, on a Jura hill, in a Jura configuration. There were unobstructed views in all directions and a clear view of the building. The mountain formations were there, and the whole thing had to be adapted to them. Since the interior design could not be changed much due to the haste with which I promoted the matter at the time, it was necessary to design the exterior in accordance with the finished interior. That is the thing that still leaves me somewhat dissatisfied today, because the person who will fully appreciate the whole can already see a certain discrepancy between the exterior and the interior design. However, every effort has been made to overcome the difficulties as far as possible. And in such a matter, basically only something incomplete can be created in the first attempt. But that is also the only reason for the Dornach building, to start a new architectural style, which cannot arise from any other foundations than those that can be made at all for modern civilized life from the knowledge of the spirit of the world. The way the Goetheanum presents itself to the observer when approaching from afar is connected with the overall task: one is dealing with something that arises in the depths of the human soul, be it art or science, and that the person who has fathomed it has a duty to communicate to others. We are dealing with something that comes from the bottom of the heart, with something that is taken from the whole soul by someone who truly understands. This can be felt. And it may be demanded of the one who can feel it that this is now translated into contemplation. As I said, nothing should be thought up, no idea should be cast into form. But what I have just hinted at can be felt, can be experienced inwardly, this relationship of an intimate unity to a receptive other unity and the union of the two. By feeling this, it arose for me quite naturally only in contemplation, not as an allegory or as symbolism, a double-domed building, designed in such a way that two domed spaces met in a segment of a circle. And it seems to me that in this form of construction one can feel everything that a soul can feel in relation to anthroposophy and the world, as it must actually be felt as the ideal relationship, as the blissful relationship. And I believe that, just by looking at the outer form, one can feel this when approaching the hill at Dornach, just as one feels the inner necessity of the form of the nutshell compared to the form of the nut fruit; one can feel that there is something in the two juxtaposed domes of a large and a smaller dome structure that should be explored in the most intimate way, and yet at the same time wants to openly communicate with the world. That is what is expressed first in the external forms that I will take the liberty of showing you. Yes, please, now the first picture (Fig. 5). You see, dear attendees, here is the road that leads to the west side of the building. The building is a concrete structure down to the upper terrace. From here on, it is a wooden structure. You first enter the concrete structure. In the concrete structure - we will see later - is stored. Then you go up the stairs and come to a foyer and from there to the actual auditorium. You can see here in this motif how an attempt has been made to transfer the otherwise existing forms of construction, which, as I said, are based on the purely geometric, symmetrical, static or dynamic, into organic forms, but not in a naturalistic sense, not in such a way that natural forms would have been imitated. No one can ask what something depicts, just as one cannot ask what a plant leaf or a human ear depicts. It is something that has its inner form of life and vitality and life force within itself; something that justifies itself through its own form and its own unfolding of life. When you create such a form, you do not feel that you are imitating something, but rather you feel, as a human soul, inwardly connected to that which lives metamorphosing in the plant from leaf to flower to fruit, shaping and reshaping everything, if I may use this Goethean expression. And that is what we have here, not something copied, but something formed in such a way that is otherwise only formed in the organic world. Those who then see the building itself may perhaps be able to see how we have tried to sense artistically from the material all around. It was rather difficult – I will have to come back to this later – to find forms for the concrete, a new material. The next picture (Fig. 6): You can see the entrance to the west portal again. Here you go in, here left and right up, then you enter a vestibule, then the actual auditorium. The second, smaller dome is now completely covered by the larger dome of the auditorium. All the individual such secondary forms are in complete harmony, and in fact in organic harmony with the larger forms. The next picture (Fig. 7): Here you can see the building from the southwest side; here the entrance, here the west portal; here the south side, here a transverse building, which we will see in more detail; here the entrance from the south side. You can see how this main form reappears here in some window forms, but actually in such a way that the main form is formed quite differently than the window forms. It is really the case that, when designing in this architectural style, one has to form organic shapes in such a way that, let us say, at the bottom of the plant there is an entire unnotched leaf, further up the leaf is notched, becomes of a very different shape, then in the sepal again something else. One must have the possibility, so to speak, to slip with one's feeling through all the possible forms that arise within, which are quite different according to external sensuality, but are inwardly spiritual and yet quite the same. Here the large dome, there the small one. One of the issues, for example, was to find the right roofing for this building. The building had to appear as a unified whole, and, I would say, fate brought it about: While I was still occupied with the idea of building, I had to undertake a lecture tour in Norway, from Kristiania to Bergen, and from a train I saw the wonderful slate quarries of Voss. And just as this Voss slate presented itself to me in brilliant sunlight at the time, I said to myself at that moment: this belongs to the covering of this building. And indeed, a certain necessity for it will be felt by anyone who comes to Dornach and sees the wonderful grey-blue of this slate, shining and radiant in the sunlight. The next picture (Fig. 8): Here you see the building from the south side. I emphasize, here would be the entrance, here is the side wing, as there is one on each side of the building. Here are the storerooms for the equipment, dressing rooms for performances, here the dome of the stage area. This is where the two domes meet. And it is precisely at the point where they meet that these side wings are located.  The next picture (Fig. 2): Here we have the construction from the northeast, and you can see the stage area, the dressing room, the storage room, [the large dome partially covered by the small dome]. Here is the so-called boiler house, which is completely made of concrete, and it is perhaps the one that is most [challenged by individuals], and that is because, firstly, an attempt was made to find a form out of the concrete material with a real sense of the material, but then to find a form in the way that is only possible for utility buildings. The lighting and firing systems had to be accommodated in it. It was important to see what the whole thing looked like and how it would appear. That was the nut to crack, so to speak, and the concrete shell had to be built around it according to the same principles. And I tried to think it through to the point where the whole shape of this building is only complete when the smoke comes out here, when it is in full operation. The shapes of the smoke clouds actually belong to the whole shape. The next picture (Fig. 3) offers a completely different view. There is a small domed structure nearby that had to be built for a reason that I will explain later. This composition of a building with two domes is intended to be another metamorphosis. Here the domes are intertwined, intersecting, while there they are separate, on the adjoining building. But this then means that all the details of the structure had to be designed differently. The next picture (Fig. 20): Here you can see the floor plan. Here is the entrance; below that would be the room for storing clothes. Here are the stairs. You go up these stairs and come into the vestibule, which we will see in a moment. Now you enter the auditorium. Here is the space below the organ, which is slightly elevated, with the other musical instruments. Here are the rows of benches for about a thousand spectators, here on each side are seven columns. These seven columns are, as we shall see, only symmetrical in relation to the only axis of symmetry that the whole building has, and which runs from west to east. The whole building is symmetrical in relation to this west-east direction, so that the capital of the second and third column is not a geometric repetition of the first column, but the capitals are progressive, metamorphosing forms from the first to the seventh column, and only this column is symmetrical with this one, the second with the second here and so on, so only symmetrical in relation to the one axis of symmetry. The rest in the course of this axis of symmetry is perceived in organically progressive transformation. The next picture (Fig. 21): Here is an average in accordance with the axis of symmetry. Here are the storerooms, the stage rooms, the smaller domed room, the large domed room, here is the floor of the auditorium rising, here the entrance, here then the anteroom, here you come in, put your things down here, here is the staircase. You come into the anteroom here and go into the auditorium under the organ here. The next picture (Figure 22): Here I have taken the liberty of showing you the model, cut in the same section as the one I have just shown you. This is the first model of the structure, which I made in Dornach during the winter of 1913–1914, partly out of wood and partly out of wax. The structure was then built according to this model. The model contains the essential building idea. The next picture (Fig. 10): Here we have the west portal, the main entrance, seen in more detail. The next picture (Fig. 12) shows a detail. If you approach from the south side, you will see a similar detail here. You saw it earlier at the building itself. But here you see a concrete house, the house of the friend who provided us with the land back then. An attempt has been made to design this house as a concrete mold for the residential building in the style that it must have next to the building. The next picture (Fig. 13): This is a side wing. You can see here the window forms in more detail, that is, the forms that the main form, which is on the west portal, takes on in metamorphosis. The next picture (Fig. 11): Here is such a metamorphosis of the main form above the west portal at one of the side entrances.  The next image (Fig. 14): Here, isolated so that it can be seen better, is a motif of one of the side entrances, and the concrete walkway, a gallery, a terrace. The next picture (Fig. 23): Imagine, dear attendees, that you have now gone down through the gate in the concrete building that I have often pointed out to you. You enter; here are the stairs leading up to the auditorium, here is the stairwell. You see, I have dared to replace the usual pillars or columns with something that is organically designed, and in such a way that, artistically speaking, it can only be in the overall organism of the building as it is, tapering outwards with reference to its curves towards the gate, where it has little to bear, bracing itself here, as a muscle braces itself where it has to bear, because here the whole weight of the building rests. But it was not attempted to make it out of thoughts, so that one can say that something is meant to express something. It does not express anything other than, for example, the human thigh expresses in its architectural structure. It expresses itself, that is, what it is for the organism as a whole. And one must have the feeling that it cannot be otherwise. Of course, when people with habitual ways of thinking approach something like this, their desire to ridicule is stirred up. And since they can usually only think in a naturalistic way, they don't really know what to imagine by it. It seems organic to them, but they can only imagine the organic in naturalistic terms, as an imitation. Then along came an obviously very clever critic who noticed, as it seems, that it represents a certain strength. It has to bear weight, it has to represent a certain strength. But since he can only think in naturalistic terms, an elephant's foot occurred to him. But then again, it seems to him that something of an artistic-critical conscience has arisen, and he felt that it does not look like an elephant's foot. But now he already has this idea of the elephant's foot, it was already on his mind. He thought, but it must be an elephant foot. But now it was not as thick and clumsy as an elephant foot, and he thought it was rachitic, and now, in order to do justice to both these impressions, he said it was a “rachitic elephant foot”. The next picture (Fig. 24): You see, at this point I felt how it must be for someone who enters our auditorium via these stairs. They must, so to speak, receive the feeling that Inside, my spiritual powers will be balanced by spiritual insight. Now, the whole feeling was realized for me in such a way that I had to make three such perpendicular forms, which stand perpendicular in the three directions of space. Believe it or not, it is still true: only when I had already done it in this way, when I had the model, did it occur to me that it reminds me of the three semicircular canals that are perpendicular in the ear and that, when injured, cause people to faint. One must unite one's own experiences of the soul with the sense of the creative forces of nature, then one discovers things that are by no means – I must keep saying it – symbolic or allegorical, but that come entirely from artistic feeling and yet have an inner necessity in themselves. It is true that I actually prefer it when what I say about the building tonight is not expressed at all, but only felt when looking at the building, because the building should speak for itself. I don't really like talking about the building the way I am doing tonight. But not everyone can see the building over and over again; in art, one speaks of artistic works, and so perhaps one may try to talk about the building through a surrogate. The next picture (Fig. 23): you can see here the staircase that was only hinted at there, here the form just discussed, here the “rachitic elephant foot”. You can see here, for example, this curve. I hope that whoever enters the building will feel the necessity of these forms at this point from the sense and view of the entire building. The next picture (Fig. 26): Here you see a concrete mold – formed out of the wood above, it is somewhat different – for a radiator cover. This is also a form that arises from the feeling of saying to yourself, what do I have to put in front of a radiator, which grows out of nature like an organic thing, but which does not bring it to life, only the conclusion is for a radiator. The next picture (Fig. 27): Now we have gone up the stairs and are here in the anteroom, which is only the anteroom, which is already quite in the area of timber construction. Here you see a column, and quite distinct from the sense of space in this place, you see this one column capital with its various curves, which reach out in the most diverse ways in the most varied directions in space, formed out of the sense of space itself. When you come to Dornach, I would ask you to see that in this room which is perhaps most clearly visible because it is the simplest. You will see that the whole thing is carved out of wood and it must be said again and again wherever there is an opportunity, that friends have devotedly worked for many years to bring about this building, because all of it is carved by hand after very crude carpentry work, all of it is carved by hand by our friends themselves, including this wall, which is individually designed in a variety of curves in different directions. What I would particularly ask you to see is precisely the treatment of the wall. The whole building idea of Dornach resulted from the fact that the wall had to be conceived differently than one has been accustomed to, always thinking of walls. Walls are something final and limiting for the old architectural styles. Here they are not, here the thought should not arise: when you are inside the Dornach building, you are in a closed room. This thought should not arise. You come in and you should feel all the walls as if they were designed in an artistic way that actually makes the walls artistically transparent, so that you feel inside as if the wall does not close you off, but through its own form, which artistically makes the wall transparent, connects you with all the secrets of the macrocosm, allows you to look out, to look out inwardly, spiritually and soulfully into the vastness of the world. The next picture (Fig. 28): We have entered through the space below the organ, are standing in the auditorium, looking back and see here, somewhat elevated, the organ space. The next picture (Fig. 30): But this is not yet the finished organ motif, rather it is the model, which you can see here is still unfinished. The framing of the organ should also be developed in such a way that one has the feeling that the organ has not been placed in some corner or on some side, but that one has the feeling that the organ grows out of the whole organic structure as a necessary element. This motif would then have to be added later, in keeping with the height of the organ pipes. That was the first wax-wood model. The next picture (Fig. 29): Here is the organ motif, here you enter. This is directly above the organ. These are the two columns to the right and left of the axis of symmetry. There you can see the sequence of columns. This sequence of columns with the architrave-like structure above it, I was already able to show in the first model earlier. But here I may draw attention to the fact that you see here the simplest capital motif; now the following capital motif is somewhat more complicated, the third again more complicated and so on. It is the case that the same formative forces, the same formative maxims that can be seen in nature, ascending the plant stem, metamorphosing the leaves, are at work here. The leaves are outwardly different in shape, but inwardly, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, they are ideally or spiritually the same. If you now feel this form, descending, this ascending, but not in thought, but in artistic contemplation, and then connect with the creative forces of nature in such a way that you can really can deduce one from the other in the same way that the next plant leaf, which is shaped differently, emerges from the previous one, then you get these following forms; but, as I said, they are meant artistically. And it follows from this that it is actually of no particular value to focus attention on only one capital; what is important is that each capital emerges from the one that precedes it. For it is precisely this living transformation of one into the other that brings life to the building. And the same applies to the architraves. I might say that you make some astonishing artistic discoveries. When I had designed the capitals according to the same principles as the advancing bases and architraves, I was able to follow a line of development. The idea of development has become a central tenet of modern knowledge. But one has – just look at this in the works of Herbert Spencer or others who have developed the idea of development in an abstract form, not in an inwardly living form – one has always believed that development progresses in such a way that first there is the primitive, simple form, then comes the complicated and so on and more and more complicated, and the last form is the most complicated. You can think that up if you think abstractly, but you can't express it artistically. If you express it artistically, the most complicated form is in the middle, then it becomes simpler again. One is simply pushed by artistic feeling to ascend to a middle most complicated form, and then to pass into the simpler one. Then, however, one comes to realize that nature itself does it that way. The human eye is indeed the most perfect in the series of living beings, but not the most complicated. In its simplification, it no longer has the organs, for example, the fan and the xiphoid process, which are found in certain animals that have less perfect but more complicated intermediate forms of eyes. That is what I would particularly like to emphasize here. Nebulous mystics, people who want to ramble on about everything, naturally ask: Why are there seven pillars on each side? There is no other answer to that than: Why are there seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones and the octave as a repetition of the prime in the tone scale? It is an inner necessity. And precisely when one feels this inner necessity quite objectively, then one does not lapse into nebulous mysticism. That something was done in nebulous mysticism in the Dornach building is simply a calumny. The next picture (Fig. 33): Here I present to you – here the organ motif – the two first forms, the simplest with the architrave motifs above them. I will now show the following in such a way that I always show a column, then this column together with the next, then the next in turn together with the next, and so on, so that you can see how the lively sense of progression from one column capital to the next and from one architrave motif to the next takes place. The next picture (Fig. 34): Here, then, the first column, isolated, leaning down, rising up, but the whole thing sensed in its polyhedral spherical form. The next picture (Fig. 35): The first and second columns, progressing from a simpler motif to a more complicated one, as well as with the motifs above them. The next picture (Fig. 36): The next is the second column by itself. The next picture (Fig. 37): The second and third columns continue. The next picture (Fig. 38): The third column by itself. The next picture (Fig. 39): the third and fourth columns. It is becoming even more complicated, and from these motifs one gets one such that any observer will believe that it was actually conceived as a single entity. However much it may seem familiar to you, if you have heard anything about mysticism – I hope not in a mystically nebulous way – it is simply obtained here by a metamorphic transformation of this motif. You can see it here, I would say, already in the forms. The next picture (Fig. 40): This is the column still by itself, which was the fourth here.  The next picture (Fig. 41): Here you have the column that we just had. From this, then, by simply letting this motif continue to grow through metamorphosis, not by actually only developing this motif, this motif emerges. I believe that someone who had formed this concept intellectually, not emotionally, would have placed the same motif here [on the architrave above the fourth column] over the motif [on the fifth capital]. This did not occur to me because here [on the capital] I am dealing with columns in which the motifs that enclose a polyhedral shape can be felt. These motifs arise differently than those [of the architraves], where the surfaces are mounted; there they are distributed differently in space, and can only be understood from a sense of space. The next image (Fig. 42): This [fifth] column on its own. It looks like a caduceus, but is simply the metamorphosis of the previous chapter. The next picture (Fig. 43): This column and the one that emerges from its metamorphosis. When you have arrived at this most complicated one, the motif simply wants to become simpler again. It discards certain complications, it becomes more perfect, but simpler. The next image (Fig. 44): This is the [sixth] column capital by itself.  The next picture (Fig. 45): So it has jumped over from one side to the other, it is this motif and then it becomes this through transformation. The next picture (Fig. 46): This is the last motif. The next picture (Fig. 47): Here you have the last column of the auditorium, here is the slit between the auditorium and the stage, here is the first stage column. Here you can see into the stage area. Here is the dome of the stage area seen from the inside. It is still equipped with scaffolding. It is under construction.  The next image (Fig. 48): I will now take the liberty of showing the metamorphosis of the pedestal figures in quick succession, so that it does not take us too long. You will see how one pedestal motif – for the columns of the auditorium – develops into the other. The next picture (Fig. 49): So it gets more complicated. The next picture (Fig. 50): The third pedestal. The next picture (Fig. 51): Next picture. The metamorphosis advances in this way. It is always the case with this metamorphosis, when it is felt through, that it tends to slope downwards again and new forms arise, expanding. The necessity for further development can only be felt artistically, not speculated upon. The next picture (Fig. 52): The fifth base motif. The next picture (Fig. 53): The sixth motif. The next picture (Fig. 54). The seventh motif. The next picture (Fig. 55): Here you can see into the stage area from the auditorium. This is the painting of the small dome, below it the stage area. The auditorium would then be here. You can see here into the small stage area from the auditorium facing east. This is the end of the auditorium. It is a motif; here the auditorium, then comes the curtain, which then belongs to the small stage area. It is the conclusion to the east. Below it will be the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which I will talk about later, covered here by a wooden roof, which, in its various forms, synthesizes everything that is distributed over the other forms of the capitals and architraves. I would also like to show some columns from the small domed room, i.e. the stage area. These columns are made according to the same principle, but because of the small size of the room, because of the whole complex, the capital forms are different again, but they are asymmetrical in relation to the west-east axis. The next picture (Fig. 58): Another column from the small domed room. The next picture (Fig. 59): Yet another. The next picture (Fig. 60): Yet another. The next image (Fig. 57): Once again, the view from the auditorium into the small domed room. Here are the columns of the stage area. Performances will take place here. I have redesigned the bases of these columns in the small domed room as twelve seats. This was possible because this room can also be used as a meeting room. And because a meeting of twelve people was not intended to be mystical, but arose from the overall architecture. The next picture (Fig. 67): Here you can see what I just called the roofing. The columns of the small domed room would be here. Carved out of the wooden wall in various forms, these forms synthetically summarize the others. Below that is the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group (Fig. 93).  Now I come to the painting of the small dome. In this small dome, what must be aimed for in painting is gradually, perhaps, already achieved, despite all imperfections, not in the sense of artistic perfection, but in the sense of artistic intention. In one of my mystery dramas, I have a character suggest how painting should actually develop, so that gradually one no longer seeks the pictorial motif from the drawing, from the forms, but that one seeks it from the color and color harmony. That is how I had the character express it, that “form becomes the work of color”. Now, since everything depends on the color in this painting of the small dome, it cannot be shown in these black-and-white afterimages, what is meant. But I think you can gain something from the fact that you might feel that something is wrong with these reproductions, that what you see is actually nonsense. And this feeling that it is actually nonsense is just an expression of the fact that one actually feels the necessity, it must be created from the color everywhere. And the human form, no matter how individualized it is, is thoroughly felt from the color. The next picture (Fig. 72): Here this child, which – here would be the first column, the other column of the auditorium here, here the curtain, here this orange-reddish-yellowish child painted – which stretches out its hands and its gaze towards this fist figure [Fig. 70]. Of course one can see a fist-like figure; but for the person painting, what matters is the blue bruise and how it relates to the other spots, that is, to the orange-yellow spots and so on. The colors represent a whole world, a cosmos in itself, with something creative in it; one can extract the form from what the colors speak to one another in the universe. It is the conversation of color, the color word, the creative color word. If one really feels all this artistically, then, just as the world is rightly described as emerging from the word, human, superhuman, and subhuman figures arise from color as it intensifies into the color word.  The next picture (Fig. 70): This is where the child would be, here the only word in the entire structure, here a kind of fist figure emerging out of the blue. As I said, the feeling arises from the color, and we are transported to the sixteenth century, to the culture of the sixteenth century. It is the dawning of that culture which we ourselves still carry within us in our spiritual life, the culture that rushes towards abstract knowledge. Those who do not experience it as it is largely experienced today by people, but who experience it with the whole, with the whole human being, feel the Faustian struggle within our modern knowledge. This Faustian struggle has led to the fact that only in recent times has man come to the full feeling of the I, and now of the unformed, inartistically written I, which is experienced darkly within. What can be borne is only that which one has in knowledge, when one feels it out of the fullness of the human being in the proximity of the child; for that which we will see in a moment, what is painted here, is linked from the brownish blackness below the fist, it is linked to the danger of modern knowledge for those who feel from the fullness, it is linked to death, because our knowledge only delivers the dead to us. And whoever not only thinks through theoretically, but inwardly experiences that our concepts themselves are corpses as concepts, always feels death standing beside him out of the Faustian striving, and so he longs for birth, which shows itself on the other side in the child. The next picture (Fig. 71): Below Faust – here it would be Faust – [Death] is taken out of the black-brownish area. The next picture (Fig. 73): Here the fist figure is merged out of the blue as a larger area, here the child, stretching out its hands, arms, and gaze, with Death below. Above it, a kind of inspirer, as these figures, which have been tried to be created out of colors, always represent - one can feel that, it is always initiated quite instinctively from the color harmony - the initiates, who receive the secrets of the world from inspirers. Here, then, is Faust, and above him is his inspirer. The next picture (Fig. 74): This is the inspirer of Faust; below it, Faust would be taken out of the blue, yellowish, reddish colors. The next image (Fig. 75): A Greek figure as you go further into the dome. Here there would be Faust with his inspirer, here a Greek figure with the inspirer above. The next picture (Fig. 76): The inspirer; yellow and yellowish-white, sunny like an Apollo countenance, here below somewhat like an Athena countenance; but all this is drawn from the color word. The next picture (Fig. 77): These are inspirers, spiritual beings that do not incarnate in the flesh, but who have an inspiring effect on those who live on earth in the flesh as human beings. The next image (Fig. 78): An Egyptian person, inspired by the two preceding ones. An Egyptian initiate, brought out of the brownish-bluish-blackish coloration. The next picture (Fig. 79): We are moving more and more towards the east, towards the center of the dome, so to speak. Here below is a type of human being that lived as an intellectual being in the whole zone from Persia north of the Black Sea in ancient times, and then developed in Central Europe in the Germanic being; here, in the arms of the child, is the aging human being who carries within himself the memory of the boy. The ambivalence, the dualism that manifests itself in the Germanic nature when it becomes knowledge, reveals itself, precisely in this Germanic nature, always reveals itself by confronting powers: the Luciferic, which you see here, taken out of the yellowish-reddish, the Ahrimanic taken out of the brownish-yellowish. The Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, we shall see again later in the central figure, they are the two essential ingredients of the human being. Man can only be understood as a kind of state of equilibrium, which must be continually striven for, but which is continually in danger of falling out of itself, of falling towards what would present itself on one side, and on the other side, if the extremes were to develop one-sidedly. This is what man would be like if he had only a heart and no intellect. Then the rest of the human form would adapt to what the heart makes of the human being. This is how man would look if he only had reason and no heart: the Ahrimanic, ossified in himself. This secret of human existence can be expressed in three ways: physically, psychologically and spiritually. In the luciferic form, which man does not become, but which he contains latently within him, towards which he always strives as towards one side of his nature, what is expressed is that which develops into pleurisy, which constantly places man in danger of fever. On the other hand, man carries within himself the forces of aging; he is always in danger; in morbid cases he succumbs to the physiological pathology of sclerosis, calcification. Between these two states man lives. Here dualism is depicted, as it does not yet extend to the complete interpenetration of forms, in a kind of physiology that extends down to the animal kingdom, a kind of centaur. But then, something like this has been done before. I have just tried to reproduce the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in these figures, so that what is contemporary, what was particularly annoying in this period, is also immortalized to some extent. The next picture (Fig. 81): Here we see the ahrimanic figure just discussed; that is, what the human being tends towards: physiologically in sclerosis, in calcification; psychologically, it is all that in man tends towards pedantry, towards moral intellectualism, and so on; spiritually, all that is actually most alive when man awakens and returns to his physical being. The next picture (Fig. 82): the Luciferic figure all to itself. I have just discussed it physiologically. The psychic — that which drives people to enthusiasm, to wanting to go beyond themselves with their heads, so to speak, to falling into mysticism, into false theosophy — is something that can be found particularly in mystics and mystical societies. People are often in this mood of enthusiasm, of soulfulness, so that they are always half a meter above their physical head with their soul head, and with a certain inner arrogance - I have already spoken of this - they would then like to look down on their fellow human beings. Spiritually, this is the human being in the moment of falling asleep, of dreaming. These forces, to which the human being tends one-sidedly, are strongest in the moment of falling asleep, while the others, the Ahrimanic ones, are strongest in the moment of waking up.  The next picture (Fig. 82): The Germanic initiator, above him Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. He is holding the child by the arm, shining next to his dark figure. The next picture (Fig. 83): Here we are already quite close to the eastern side of the small dome. Here is the Russian man, who actually always has his own shadow beside him. The one who sees spiritually actually always sees a real Russian twice, because the Russian always has the second man, the other, the double, with him spiritually. This is something that will only develop in the future; now it is rushing towards destruction, devastation and ruin. But out of this terrible devastation, out of this murder of human civilization, the good core of Russian-ness will one day develop. As here the Germanic has been shown, here is the Russian. Here the inspirer, out of the blue. The next picture (Fig. 84): Here, if you note this point, you will find above the Russian – there is only one, as I said – the inspiring stars, above which there is a kind of cloud that forms the centaur, which, via the stars from the cosmos, stimulates that which is still present in the Russian today in an embryonic state of soul and spirit. The next picture (Fig. 85): I will show you that from the other side in a moment. So over here [far right of the image] would be what I have just shown. Here is the actual central motif [directly to the right of the image], and here is the same inspiring angel from the north side; but it is created out of the orange and then, accordingly, this centaur figure. Below, there is again the one Russian who appears in two. The next picture (Fig. 86): We are now in the middle. Here you see the Russian and here the inspiring blue angel and here the orange one, here in the middle the representative of humanity. Those who feel can feel the Christ in him. He stands there as the representative of human equilibrium; from his right side he sends out the rays of love, which, like serpents, entwine the ahrimanic form – that is, the sclerotic, pedantic, materialistic-intellectual human being; here above is the luciferic figure, which is physiologically, psychologically and spiritually what I have indicated. This will be in the far east. This is painted on the inside of the dome, and below it, though differently designed, as it must be for the sculpture, is the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which also has the Representative of Humanity in the center, who brings balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. It so happened that the famous and influential Frohnmeyer wrote a pamphlet, a defamatory pamphlet about anthroposophy, and in this pamphlet he makes the monstrous claim that “when one comes to Dornach, one can see, as Steiner claims, that this is what the Christ looked like in objective reality.” I don't say to anyone else that I see him that way and don't impose him dogmatically on anyone, but I could only shape him as I saw him, he is the one who walked in Palestine according to my vision. Above that is the Luciferic-Ahrimanic. Frohnmeyer now says that he depicts a Christ there as objective, who has Luciferian traits above and animalistic traits below. He [supposedly] saw it that way. Lucifer is above, the Christ is shaped entirely humanly, below is Ahriman, here is still a piece of wood, it is not yet finished in the wood. But someone writes it down who doesn't feel the slightest obligation to research the truth, just as in the other case, as Mr. Kolisko told it today, someone writes down the objective untruth and then apologizes by saying that he didn't have time to research the truth. Pastor Frohnmeyer was confronted with the matter. He then said that he had not seen it himself, but had copied it from another pastor, and since it had already appeared a long time ago, he simply believed he could copy it. We did, in fact, send a correction from Dornach, but it was not included. This is how things are spread today; it is the level of conscientiousness with which people work today. But one must keep saying: what should a theology look like that is shaped only in this way? The person in question was also a lecturer at the University of Basel. The next picture (Fig. 87): the figure of Lucifer in itself – here the figure of Christ would be underneath – this has been brought out of the red. The next picture (Fig. 88): the Ahrimanic figure by itself. You see here the head, which is as it should be in a being that has only intellect and no powers of the heart. The next picture (Fig. 90): the painted representative of humanity, the Christ. The next picture (Fig. 91): Here is my original model of the plastic Christ, seen in profile, who is thus a wooden figure. And in the middle again this Representative of Humanity; above it, repeated twice, the Luciferic figure; below it, twice, the Ahrimanic figure. And then, on the side, an elemental being growing out of the rock, which I will show you in illustrations so that you can see how asymmetry has been attempted in the Dornach sculpture. The next picture (Fig. 92) is my original model for the Christ of the wooden figure. The asymmetry is taken so far that, because the left arm is directed upwards and the right downwards, and the whole figure, not just the face, should have physiognomy, the whole figure should be soul, that the held-up arm on the left corresponds to the forehead, and the held-down arm corresponds to the forehead. This asymmetry, which is only subtly hinted at in humans, has been attempted here. Such things had to be dared because the sensual should not be imitated, but on the contrary, the spiritual, concrete [forming] behind the sensual should be observed, which underlies the sensual formation. The next picture (Fig. 98): This is a piece [of the execution model]. Here would be Christ. Here is Lucifer, who aspires to the right hand of Christ. Here is this being, growing out of the rock as an elementary being in complete asymmetry. You see, here it is attempted to overcome the usual way of composing. Usually, one composes figures that one puts together. Here, the whole group, which consists of a series of figures, is conceived as a unit, and the individual figures are taken out of the whole down to their fingers, noses, eyes and eyebrows, so that, of course, when the left is at the top, an asymmetry results, but one that is taken from the life of the whole. The next picture (Fig. 101): once again the striving Lucifer. Here would be the second Luciferian figure, here the Christ figure. The next picture (Fig. 99): This is my original Ahriman-Mephistopheles model. Mephistopheles is, of course, only a later metamorphosis of Ahriman, who signifies physiologically, psychologically and spiritually what I have said. This model underlies all the Ahriman figures. It was originally designed by me for the wood group in 1915. The next picture (Fig. 106): Now I come back to showing you this heating house, here in profile, so to speak, since I have already told you how it came about. It is often perceived as annoying; but people do not consider what would be there if one had not tried to shape something out of the concrete material, out of this brittle material, which might be more perfect later on. There would be a red chimney here! I wonder if it would be more beautiful in reality. The next picture (Fig. 107): the boiler house, seen from the front. As I said, it is only when the smoke comes out that you feel a certain necessity for these outgrowths. The next picture (Fig. 103): This is the house that was built nearby, the glass house that is now used as a construction office. Some eurythmy practice rooms are inside. It had to be built originally because the glass windows for the building were cut inside it. These glass windows came about in such a way that what is otherwise only artistically executed – that the wall is artistically transparent – is formed in these glass windows right down to the physical level. The motif that had been specified was engraved with a diamond pencil from monochrome glass panes by friends who worked on it for years with tremendous dedication and devotion. This had to be done first in this house. The glass panes are large and a separate studio building had to be erected for this purpose. But it is designed entirely in the style of the whole. Two domes, standing apart from each other, determine the very different shape of the building up to the gate; the whole asymmetry, so down to the stairs, everything is individualized. Those who come here will see that the lock and the door handle are individually designed. The next picture (Fig. 104): the gate lifted out. The staircase individualized so that it can only be as it is at this location. Here (Fig. 105) the lock, which also returns in various metamorphoses on the building, then the gate. The next picture (Fig. 112): Here you see a sample of windows, engraved out of a [same-colored] glass pane. One could allegorize and symbolize many things from these colors; but what the person who feels the matter artistically likes best is to simply stand in front of it and let this whole interplay of the light color tone with the dark color tone take effect on them because the interplay – the glass panes are, after all, arranged in succession in different colors – this entire play of colors undulates in the building, but in such a way that it does not make anyone nervous, but on the contrary = as has been attempted – has a healing effect. The next picture (Fig. 110): other motifs. Such Ahrimanic figures, scratched out. Now, dear attendees, that was what I took the liberty of bringing to you as a single image from this Goetheanum in Dornach. It is precisely the place where we should find the center of what has been cultivated here for a week, through this week, which was actually dedicated to Goethe's name, Goethe's essence and Goethe's work. And everything that the Goetheanum stands for should be dedicated to this. Perhaps it will have emerged from what I dared to say in the course of these discussions, that what wants to come before the world in anthroposophy can work both artistically and cognitively. Unfortunately, we are not yet finished; a great deal of effort and, in particular, a great deal of sacrifice from our friends is still needed; unfortunately, it cannot come from the central states at the moment because of the currency difficulties. The sacrifice of other friends is needed if the building is to be completed. It cannot be completed otherwise than by this spirit of sacrifice being renewed. But it must be said that for a long time this spirit of sacrifice has been revealed in the most beautiful, significant and understanding way for Dornach. And from the feeling of the cultural significance of our cause, we cannot thank enough – I would say, from the genius of this anthroposophical sense, we cannot thank enough – those who have been able to possess this spirit of sacrifice. May it continue to exist so that Dornach does not remain a torso, but can be completed. In the past week, a worthy and beautiful contribution has been made by our friends in Stuttgart and those who have joined them, and this is also intended to serve Dornach; and since I do not belong to the organizing committee, but am only an invited guest, it will not out of place if I also include myself – one knows how much effort a congress committee has, how it has to consider all the details and the big picture and prepare them over a long period of time – to express my heartfelt thanks to this committee, even now that we are at the end of this event. And then, we must indeed consider, my dear attendees, what calls are going out into the world today. Everywhere we hear, in the broadest circles, the ethical needs - if only in words - of what, in deepest reality, spiritual science wants to bring to the world. Do we not hear everywhere the yearning and speak of world brotherhood, which is to come about through all kinds of world covenants in the most diverse areas of life, but unfortunately out of the old? World brotherhood is sought; it is believed that this or that external event could lead to it. But, my dear attendees, this world brotherhood cannot be found unless one has the deepest conviction that it actually exists, but is hidden for our time in the deepest subconscious depths of the human soul. But that is where it must be sought. That which is in the depths of the human soul must be sought and realized in the outer life, in social life. Then there will be world brotherhood, then this world brotherhood will be able to create the outer institutions that belong to it. But this world brotherhood cannot be brought about through external institutions. This world brotherhood, however, can only be found if man searches his deepest inner being in the spirit, at the point where his own being is bound together with the world spirit. Knowledge and art, so they should arise from anthroposophical attitude and anthroposophical insight, as we tried to show in this week. Then, when knowledge and art emerge from human spirituality, which experiences world spirituality within itself, then this experience will also be a deeply religious one, one that will arise in man, entirely in the spirit of Goetheanism, that Goetheanism that sought in Goethe himself the harmony of the three most ideal fruits of life: science, art and religion. If these fruits of life are there, then social life can also flourish for the benefit of humanity. If we speak less of the religious, it is perhaps precisely out of true religious experience, out of that religious experience that arises when science is sought in a spiritual way, art in a spiritual way. And in this sense, esteemed attendees, the conclusion may well sound as the beginning sounded! Our dear friend Uehli began with Goethe, and may this event end with Goethe, with his words, through which he expressed his attitude towards science, art and religion; for he said what can also be our motto, which only must be developed further, in accordance with the insight that we do not have before us the Goethe who died in 1832, but the one who has developed with the world, whom we want to serve with his further education and development. But as a shining motto, everything that comes out of this work in the spirit of Goetheanism will be able to draw on what lies in his words, with which this event should come to an end:
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