The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Notes by Ida Knoch with additions by Lidia Gentilli-Arenson-Baratto and memories by Karl Rittersbacher

Father on a chair wreathed with roses and greenery; Gretchen, Paula and I beside him.

One to seven hammer blows at the beginning and end, otherwise always seven instead of the usual three. Prayer and so on as usual.

I know that I speak from the heart and feelings of all when I first address these words to our dear brother Günther Wagner. (Reading of the mantric lines):

The soul's pilgrimage on earth
leads to steep mountain peaks
where the sharp stones of life
They are her words, nothing else
But riddles and questions,
Which awaken longing mightily:
Only when in the soul's mountain huts
Where a calm spirit reigns
The solution to the riddles beckons
And calm the forces of desire:
Then spiritual fruits ripen
Into seeds for the eternities.

In your pilgrimage of life
Directing the spiritual eye
These words appear to me
As a sign of your being.

Many weeks ago I was already quite certain that such an intimate ceremony would take place today, but I did not know what I would say until this morning, when I opened my heart to the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings to ask for their blessing for our dear brother Günther Wagner. Before what was seen there is related, I know that I am one with you, my dear sisters and brothers, in the expression of the love and loyalty we feel for our dear and loyal brother Günther Wagner.

Dr. Steiner emphasizes how Father advised and helped everyone who approached him seeking comfort, strength and courage, how he worked everywhere in harmony, seeking harmony, with the same love and faithfulness as his soul, how he radiated all that he had gained through a long, hard, truth-seeking life as love; how he consecrated his strength to our Theosophical Society. Dr. Steiner fondly remembers many moments when he was able to be close to Father — and so on, and so on.

It was not so much words that came to Dr. Steiner from the wise masters of the East when he opened his heart to them in meditation this morning, but more images, indirect images, so to speak. In a community like the one gathered here, he could tell something like what he would say now.

First, images appeared, from which others emerged. There Dr. Steiner saw a member of the Order of St. Benedict, surrounded by other members of the same order; these were the abbot - Sinibald - and the elders of this monastic order. They were sitting together, as rarely happens, not absorbed in exercises or other prescriptions, but exchanging more personal thoughts. And the abbot, who became abbot of this order in 1227, told his elders about his father, how much he had clung to him, that this father had gone to Palestine with the leader of the Third Crusade, how the father had told of the many hardships, how he had gone through privations and suffering, how he had fought; but the father also told of life in the Orient, and for example how glass was made there, how the color purple was produced. And these stories of life in the Orient and its peculiarities made a great impression on the listening boy, even more than the stories of the battles.

The father of the abbot also spoke of the fact that he and his fellow fighters had a strong feeling that what Frederick Barbarossa did in the crusade meant more than just the outward events would suggest. The father, who was a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, stood by as the body of the red-bearded emperor was pulled out of the Saleph River, and he knew that even though three distinct parts of the body were buried near Tyre, near Antioch, and near Tarsus, the birthplace of Paul, his soul had nevertheless flown back to Europe. The father had been a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, and the abbot always had a great affection for them, as well as for the Teutonic knights, although his uncle, his father's brother (?), was opposed to the order.

During his theological studies, the abbot often wondered whether the idea was behind things, about this Aristotelian idea, or whether the idea existed before things, as Plato says. — He entered the Order of St. Benedict, prompted by long-standing family connections, and was also destined from the outset for a leading position in it.

During the exercises, which lasted from four o'clock in the morning until sunset, it was very rare for the abbot and the elders of his order to come together for such a personal exchange of ideas, and everyone left, reflecting on what they had heard. The abbot sat alone for a long time, pondering what had been said. And when he then walked back along the path, the meditation path, with a look of kindness and love, he met an eight-year-old boy who also wore the robe of St. Benedict. Perhaps the boy was inspired by the mild gaze he saw in the abbot's eyes to ask a question that we can only describe as impertinent. — The image is strongly emotional at this point. — This eight-year-old boy in the robes of St. Benedict said to the abbot: “Reverend Father, I cannot form a mental image of God.” The abbot looked kindly at the boy after this bold speech; he did not answer, but walked away in silence. And only when he was so far away that the boy could no longer hear him did the abbot say, as if to himself: “It will take a long time before one can form a correct mental image of God.”

My dear sisters and brothers, this is what occurred to me when I turned to the wise masters of the East, asking for blessings for our dear brother Günther Wagner. Everyone can now think of what they believe to be right according to their disposition.

When the Rosicrucian conclusion was reached, Dr. Steiner placed three red roses next to the box with the blessed water and so on, and at the end he waved the censer over them several times extra. Then he said: “Now our dear Sister Helene Lehmann will take these three roses to our dear brother Günther Wagner as a token of our love and loyalty.”

When Dr. Steiner had finally carried the box away and then passed by father again, he kissed him on each cheek.

In a transcription of Ida Knoch's notes by Lidia Gentilli-Arenson-Baratto, the following additional personal comment can be found at the end:

The red book from which Dr. Steiner read was a red book that Paula Hübbe-Schleiden had given him (said Gretchen Wagner). She then asked me who the boy would have become, which she never knew. I asked her in return whether she believed or had heard who the boy would be in this life. She replied very firmly that everyone knew at the time, and it was generally said that it was Dr. Steiner himself, only she would like to know who the boy had become, she didn't know, and no one told her at the time. That concluded our conversation, which took place today. - February 27, 1960.

In addition, the following personal memories of Karl Rittersbacher of conversations with Günther Wagner are available, which he added to his typewritten transcription of Ida Knoch's notes of this hour by Nelly von Lichtenberg:

I had several personal encounters with Mr. Günther Wagner through Miss Mathilde Hoyer, who founded the first class of the Freie Waldorfschule Hannover (1926) at Easter 1926 (I have written a report about this in the newsletter of the General Anthroposophical Society “What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society”, No. 43 and 44 of October 21 and 28, 1928, following a suggestion by Mrs. Marie Steiner).

Mr. Wagner had founded a paint factory in Hannover. During a visit to his home in the fall of 1927, he told me that the colors were still rubbed by hand and that he had 20 employees. I also learned that at the age of 50, he handed over the factory, which had grown to around 200 workers, to his son-in-law, who had been his senior traveler: Fritz Beindorff, who later became a senator in Hannover. This grand master of a freemason association had no time for the newly founded Free Waldorf School. I learned this drastically during a personal visit to his office.

Mr. Günther Wagner, as he told me, lived on a pension he received in Berlin and Lugano. In Berlin, he worked as a librarian for the Theosophical Society, translating literature from Indian into German. He and some friends became aware of Dr. Rudolf Steiner and reported how he was instrumental in helping the Theosophical Society in Germany come into being. To do so, seven branches had to exist, each with at least seven members. This was achieved by recruiting in Leipzig. Then Dr. Rudolf Steiner was appointed as Secretary General. When Günther Wagner and his nurse, Paula Hübbe-Schleiden, née Stryczek, separated in 1912/13, it was clear to them that they could only go with Rudolf Steiner (literally to me!).

After the above conversation – as Günther Wagner said during a visit – Rudolf Steiner asked him into the next room and said: “You were the abbot and I was the boy, your student. And so we meet again. And I then went from Monte Cassino, where this happened, to Cologne later.

Günther Wagner added: “I went to Monte Cassino, but I had no memories whatsoever. I told Emil Bock all this. He said to me: But Mr. Wagner, you should have put on a Benedictine robe and climbed up the old serpentine paths to remember something.”

Mr. Wagner had a calm, bright look in his eyes that radiated kindness and bore witness to a deep inner peace. Even in old age, he still enjoyed playing the piano (Schubert, Impromptu by heart). He had a package of letters from Rudolf Steiner.

In a late lecture on karma, Rudolf Steiner called him the “doyen of the Anthroposophical Society” (literally: “... and perhaps the oldest member of the Anthroposophical Society, who is here today to our great joy – Mr. Günther Wagner, whom I would like to warmly welcome [like a kind of senior of the Anthroposophical Society here] – will remember how strong the resistance was at the time for much of what I incorporated into the Anthroposophical Society from the beginning. —- It was particularly about “practical karma exercises”. - See the karma lecture of September 5, 1924, beginning, volume IV, esoteric considerations, complete edition!).

Rudolf Steiner is said to have given several members karmic hints earlier on the 70th birthday.

Günther Wagner regretted that he could not financially support the newly founded school, since he only had the pension granted to him by his son-in-law. He also lived in the Black Forest in Frauenalb, where Fräulein Hoyer and I also visited him.

When Mrs. Marie Steiner visited the then small school (two classes) in September 1927, Günther Wagner and Paula Hübbe-Schleiden were present. (See report in the newsletter!)

Marie Steiner invited the small college to lunch at the hotel.

A personal word: the content shared here, especially regarding karmic facts, meant for us at the time a concretization of our thinking about destiny and the laws of destiny. It sounded simple and seemed unmythically realistic.

This lecture, the 9th of 12 lectures published under is: A Living Knowledge of Nature, the Fall of the Intellect into Sin, the Spiritual Resurrection.

You have seen from these lectures that I feel duty bound to speak at this time about a consciousness that must be attained if we are to accomplish one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society. And to begin with today, let me point to the fact that this consciousness can only be acquired if the whole task of culture and civilization is really understood today from the spiritual-scientific point of view. I have taken the most varied opportunities to try, from this point of view, to characterize what is meant by the fall of man, to which all religions refer. The religions speak of this fall of man as lying at the starting point of the historical development of mankind; and in various ways through the years we have seen how this fall of man—which I do not need to characterize in more detail today—is an expression of something that once occurred in the course of human evolution: man's becoming independent of the divine spiritual powers that guided him.

We know in fact that the consciousness of this independence first arose as the consciousness soul appeared in human evolution in the first half of the fifteenth century. We have spoken again and again in recent lectures about this point in time. But basically the whole human evolution depicted in myths and history is a kind of preparation for this significant moment of growing awareness of our freedom and independence.

This moment is a preparation for the fact that earthly humanity is meant to acquire a decision-making ability that is independent of the divine spiritual powers. And so the religions point to a cosmic-earthly event that replaces the soul-spiritual instincts—which alone were determinative in what humanity did in very early times—with just this kind of human decision making. As I said, we do not want to speak in more detail about this now, but the religions did see the matter in this way: With respect to his moral impulses the human being has placed himself in a certain opposition to his guiding spiritual powers, to the Yahweh or Jehovah powers, let us say, speaking in Old Testament terms. If we look at this interpretation, therefore, we can present the matter as though, from a definite point in his evolution, man no longer felt that divine spiritual powers were active in him and that now he himself was active.

Consequently, with respect to his overall moral view of himself, man felt that he was sinful and that he would have been incapable of falling into sin if he had remained in his old state, in a state of instinctive guidance by divine spiritual powers. Whereas he would then have remained sinless, incapable of sinning, like a mere creature of nature, he now became capable of sinning through this independence from the divine spiritual powers. And then there arose in humanity this consciousness of sin: As a human being I am sinless only when I find my way back again to the divine spiritual powers. What I myself decide for myself is sinful per se, and I can attain a sinless state only by finding my way back again: to the divine spiritual powers.

This consciousness of sin then arose most strongly in the Middle Ages. And then human intellectuality, which previously had not yet been a separate faculty, began to develop. And so, in a certain way, what man developed as his intellect, as an intellectual content, also became infected—in a certain sense rightly—with this consciousness of sin. It is only that one did not say to oneself that the intellect, arising in human evolution since the third or fourth century A.D., was also now infected by the consciousness of sin. In the Scholastic wisdom of the Middle Ages, there evolved, to begin with, an ‘unobserved’ consciousness of sin in the intellect.

This Scholastic wisdom of the Middle Ages said to itself: No matter how effectively one may develop the intellect as a human being, one can still only grasp outer physical nature with it. Through mere intellect one can at best prove that divine spiritual powers exist; but one can know nothing of these divine spiritual powers; one can only have faith in these divine spiritual powers. One can have faith in what they themselves have revealed either through the Old or the New Testament.

So the human being, who earlier had felt himself to be sinful in his moral life—‘sinful’ meaning separated from the divine spiritual powers—this human being, who had always felt morally sinful, now in his Scholastic wisdom felt himself to be intellectually sinful, as it were. He attributed to himself an intellectual ability that was effective only in the physical, sense-perceptible world. He said to himself: As a human being I am too base to be able to ascent through my own power into those regions of knowledge where I can also grasp the spirit.

We do not notice how connected this intellectual fall of man is to his general moral fall. But what plays into our view of human intellectuality is the direct continuation of his moral fall.

When the Scholastic wisdom passes over then into the modern scientific view of the world, the connection with the old moral fall of man is completely forgotten. And, as I have often emphasized, the strong connection actually present between modern natural-scientific concepts and the old Scholasticism is in fact denied altogether. In modern natural science one states that man has limits to his knowledge, that he must be content to extend his view of things only out upon the sense-perceptible physical world. A Dubois-Reymond, for example, and others state that the human being has limits to what he can investigate, has limits to his whole thinking, in fact.

But that is a direct continuation of Scholasticism. The only difference is that Scholasticism believed that because the human intellect is limited, one must raise oneself to something different from the intellect—to revelation, in fact—when one wants to know something about the spiritual world.

The modern natural-scientific view takes half, not the whole; it lets revelation stay where it is, but then places itself completely upon a standpoint that is possible only if one presupposes revelation. This standpoint is that the human ability to know is too base to ascend into the divine spiritual worlds.

But at the time of Scholasticism, especially at the high point of Scholasticism in the middle of the Middle Ages, the same attitude of soul was not present as that of today. One assumed then that when the human being used his intellect he could gain knowledge of the sense-perceptible world; and he sensed that he still experienced something of a flowing together of himself with the sense-perceptible world when he employed his intellect. And one believed then that if one wanted to know something about the spiritual one must ascend to revelation, which in fact could no longer be understood, i.e., could no longer be grasped intellectually. But the fact remained unnoticed—and this is where we must direct our attention!—that spirituality flowed into the concepts that the Schoolmen, set up about the sense world. The concepts of the Schoolmen were not as unspiritual as ours are today. The Schoolmen still approached the human being with the concepts that they formed for themselves about nature, so that the human being was not yet completely excluded from knowledge. For, at least in the Realist stream, the Schoolmen totally believed that thoughts are given us from outside, that they are not fabricated from within. Today we believe that thoughts are not given from outside but are fabricated from within. Through this fact we have gradually arrived at a point in our evolution where we have dropped everything that does not relate to the outer sense world.

And, you see, the Darwinian theory of evolution is the final consequence of this dropping of everything unrelated to the outer sense world. Goethe made a beginning for a real evolutionary teaching that extended as far as man. When you take up his writing in this direction, you will see that he only stumbled when he tried to take up the human being. He wrote excellent botanical studies. He wrote many correct things about animals. But something always went wrong when he tried to take up the human being. The intellect that is trained only upon the sense world is not adequate to the study of man. Precisely Goethe shows this to a high degree. Even Goethe can say nothing about the human being. His teaching on metamorphosis does not extend as far as the human being. You know how, within the anthroposophical world view, we have had to broaden this teaching on metamorphosis, entirely in a Goethean sense, but going much further.

What has modern intellectualism actually achieved in natural science? It has only come as far as grasping the evolution of animals up to the apes, and then added on the human being without being able inwardly to encompass him. The closer people came to the higher animals, so to speak, the less able their concepts became to grasp anything. And it is absolutely untrue to say, for example, that they even understand the higher animals. They only believe that they understand them.

And so our understanding of the human being gradually dropped completely out of our understanding of the world, because understanding dropped out of our concepts. Our concepts became less and less spiritual, and the unspiritual concepts that regard the human being as the mere endpoint of the animal kingdom represent the content of all our thinking today. These concepts are already instilled into our children in the early grades, and our inability to look at the essential being of man thus becomes part of the general culture.

Now you know that I once attempted to grasp the whole matter of knowledge at another point. This was when I wrote The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and its prelude Truth and Science although the first references are present already in my The Science of Knowing: Outline of an Epistemology Implicit in the Goethean World View written in the 1880's. I tried to turn the matter in a completely different direction. I tried to show what the modern person can raise himself to, when—not in a traditional sense, but out of free inner activity—he attains pure thinking, when he, attains this pure, willed thinking which is something positive and real, when this thinking works in him. And in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I sought, in fact, to find our moral impulses in this purified thinking.

So that our evolution proceeded formerly in such a way that we more and more viewed man as being too base to act morally, and we extended this baseness also into our intellectuality.

Expressing this graphically, one could say: The human being developed in such a way that what he knew about himself became less and less substantial. It grew thinner and thinner (light color). But below the surface, something continued to develop (red) that lives, not in abstract thinking, but in real thinking.

Now, at the end of the 19th century, we had arrived at the point of no longer noticing at all what I have drawn here in red; and through what I have drawn here in a light color, we no longer believed ourselves connected with anything of a divine spiritual nature. Man's consciousness of sin had torn him out of the divine spiritual element; the historical forces that were emerging could not take him back. But with The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I wanted to say: Just look for once into the depths of the human soul and you will find that something has remained with us: pure thinking, namely, the real, energetic thinking that originates from man himself, that is no longer mere thinking, that is filled with experience, filled with feeling, and that ultimately expresses itself in the will. I wanted to say that this thinking can become the impulse for moral action. And for this reason I spoke of the moral intuition which is the ultimate outcome of what otherwise is only moral imagination. But what is actually intended by The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity can become really alive only if we can reverse the path that we took as we split ourselves off more and more from the divine spiritual content of the world, split ourselves off all the way down to intellectuality. When we again find the spirituality in nature, then we will also find the human being again.

I therefore once expressed in a lecture that I held many years ago in Mannheim that mankind, in fact, in its present development, is on the point of reversing the fall of man. What I said was hardly noticed, but consisted in the following: The fall of man was understood to be a moral fall, which ultimately influenced the intellect also. The intellect felt itself to be at the limits of its knowledge. And it is basically one and the same thing—only in a somewhat different form—if the old theology speaks of sin or if Dubois-Reymond speaks of the limits of our ability to know nature. I indicated how one must grasp the spiritual—which, to be sure, has been filtered down into pure thinking—and how, from there, one can reverse the fall of man. I showed how, through spiritualizing the intellect, one can work one's way back up to the divine spiritual.

Whereas in earlier ages one pointed to the moral fall of man and thought about the development of mankind in terms of this moral fall of man, we today must think about an ideal of mankind: about the rectifying of the fall of man along a path of the spiritualization of our knowing activity, along a path of knowing the spiritual content of the world again. Through the moral fall of man, the human being distanced himself from the gods. Through the path of knowledge he must find again the pathway of the gods. Man must turn his descent into an ascent. Out of the purely grasped spirit of his own being, man must understand, with inner energy and power, the goal, the ideal, of again taking the fall of man seriously. For, the fall of man should be taken seriously. It extends right into what natural science says today. We must find the courage to add to the fall of man, through the power of our knowing activity, a raising of man out of sin. We must find the courage to work out a way to raise ourselves out of sin, using what can come to us through a real and genuine spiritual-scientific knowledge of modern times.

One could say, therefore: If we look back into the development of mankind, we see that human consciousness posits a fall of man at the beginning of the historical development of mankind on earth. But the fall must be made right again at some point: It must be opposed by a raising of man. And this raising of man can only go forth out of the age of the consciousness soul. In our day, therefore, the historic moment has arrived when the highest ideal of mankind must be the spiritual raising of ourselves out of sin. Without this, the development of mankind can proceed no further.

That is what I once discussed in that lecture in Mannheim. I said that, in modern times, especially in natural-scientific views, an intellectual fall of man has occurred, in addition to the moral fall of man. And this intellectual fall is the great historical sign that a spiritual raising of man must begin.

But what does this spiritual raising of man mean? It means nothing other, in fact, than really understanding Christ. Those who still understood something about him, who had not—like modern theology—lost Christ completely, said of Christ that he came to earth, that he incarnated into an earthly body as a being of a higher kind. They took up what was proclaimed about Christ in written traditions. They spoke, in fact, about the mystery of Golgotha.

Today the time has come when Christ must be understood. But we resist this understanding of Christ, and the form this resistance takes is extraordinarily characteristic. You see, if even a spark of what Christ really is still lived in those who say that they understand Christ, what would happen? They would have to be clear about the fact that Christ, as a heavenly being, descended to earth; he therefore did not speak to man in an earthly language, but in a heavenly one. We must therefore make an effort to understand him. We must make an effort to speak a cosmic, extraterrestrial language. That means that we must not limit our knowledge merely to the earth, for, the earth was in fact a new land for Christ. We must extend our knowledge out into the cosmos. We must learn to understand the elements. We must learn to understand the movements of the planets. We must learn to understand the star constellations, and their influence on what happens on earth. Then we draw near to the language that Christ spoke.

That is something, however, that coincides with our spiritual raising of man. For why was man reduced to understanding only what lives on earth? Because he was conscious of sin, in fact, because he considered himself too base to be able to grasp the world in its extraterrestrial spirituality. And that is actually why people speak as though man can know nothing except the earthly. I characterized this yesterday by saying: We understand a fish only in a bowl, and a bird only in a cage. Certainly there is no consciousness present in our civilized natural science that the human being can raise himself above this purely earthly knowledge; for, this science mocks any effort to go beyond the earthly. If one even begins to speak about the stars, the terrible mockery sets in right away, as a matter of course, from the natural-scientific side.

If we want to hear correct statements about the relation of man to the animals, we must already turn our eye to the extraterrestrial world, for only the plants are still explainable in earthly terms; the animals are not. Therefore I had to say earlier that we do not even understand the apes correctly, that we can no longer explain the animals. If one wants to understand the animals, one must take recourse to the extraterrestrial, for the animals are ruled by forces that are extraterrestrial. I showed you this yesterday with respect to the fish. I told you how moon and sun forces work into the water and shape him out of the water, if I may put it so. And in the same way, the bird out of the air. As soon as one turns to the elements, one also meets the extraterrestrial. The whole animal world is explainable in terms of the extraterrestrial. And even more so the human being. But when one begins to speak of the extraterrestrial, then the mockery sets in at once.

The courage to speak again about the extraterrestrial must grow within a truly spiritual-scientific view; for, to be a spiritual scientist today is actually more a matter of courage than of intellectuality. Basically it is a moral issue, because what must be opposed is something moral: the moral fall of man, in fact.

And so we must say that we must in fact first learn the language of Christ, the language ton ouranon, the language of the heavens, in Greek terms. We must relearn this language in order to make sense out of what Christ wanted to do on earth.

Whereas up till now one has spoken about Christianity and described the history of Christianity, the point now is to understand Christ, to understand him as an extraterrestrial being. And that is identical with what we can call the ideal of raising ourselves from sin.

Now, to be sure, there is something very problematical about formulating this ideal, for you know in fact that the consciousness of sin once made people humble. But in modern times they are hardly ever humble. Often those who think themselves the most humble are the most proud of all. The greatest pride today is evident in those who strive for a so-called ‘simplicity’ in life. They set themselves above everything that is sought by the humble soul that lifts itself inwardly to real, spiritual truths, and they say: Everything must be sought in utter simplicity. Such naive natures—and they also regard themselves as naive natures—are often the most proud of all today. But nevertheless, during the time of real consciousness of sin there once were humble people; humility was still regarded as something that mattered in human affairs. And so, without justification, pride has arisen. Why? Yes, I can answer that in the same words I used here recently. Why has pride arisen? It has arisen because one has not heard the words “Huckle, get up!” [From the Oberufer Christmas plays.] One simply fell asleep. Whereas earlier one felt oneself, with full intensity and wakefulness, to be a sinner, one now fell into a gentle sleep and only dreamed still of a consciousness of sin. Formerly one was awake in one's consciousness of sin; one said to oneself: Man is sinful if he does not undertake actions that will again bring him onto the path to the divine spiritual powers. One was awake then. One may have different views about this today, but the fact is that one was awake in one's acknowledgment of sinfulness. But then one dozed off, and the dreams arrived, and. the dreams murmured: Causality rules in the world; one event always causes the following one. And so finally we pursue what we see in the starry heavens as attraction and repulsion of the heavenly bodies; we take this all the way down into the molecule; and then we imagine a kind of little cosmos of molecules and atoms.

And the dreaming went further. And then the dream concluded by saying: We can know nothing except what outer sense experience gives us. And it was labeled ‘supernaturalism’ if anyone went beyond sense experiences. But where supernaturalism begins, science ends.

And then, at gatherings of natural scientists, these dreams were delivered in croaking tirades like Dubois-Reymond's Limits of Knowledge. And then, when the dream's last notes were sounded—a dream does not always resound so agreeably; sometimes it is a real nightmare—when the dream concluded with “Where supernaturalism begins, science ends,” then not only the speaker but the whole natural-scientific public sank down from the dream into blessed sleep. One no longer needed any inner impulse for active inner knowledge. One could console oneself by accepting that there are limits, in fact, to what we can know about nature, and that we cannot transcend these limits. The time had arrived when one could now say: “Huckle, get up! The sky is cracking!” But our modern civilization replies: “Let it crack! It's old enough to have cracked before!” Yes, this is how things really are. We have arrived at a total sleepiness, in our knowing activity.

But into this sleepiness there must sound what is now being declared by spiritual-scientific anthroposophical knowledge. To begin with, there must arise in knowledge the realization that man is in a position to set up the ideal within himself that we can raise ourselves from sin. And that in turn is connected with the fact that along with a possible waking up, pride—which up till now has only been present, to be sure, in a dreamlike way—will grow more than ever. And (I say this of course without making any insinuations) it has sometimes been the case that in anthroposophical circles the raising of man has not yet come to full fruition. Sometimes, in fact, this pride has reached—I will not say a respectable—a quite unrespectable size. For, it simply lies in human nature for pride to flourish rather than the positive side.

And so, along with the recognition that the raising of man is a necessity, we must also see that we now need to take up into ourselves in full consciousness the training in humility which we once exercised. And we can do that. For, when pride arises out of knowledge, that is always a sign that something in one's knowledge is indeed terribly wrong. For when knowledge is truly present, it makes one humble in a completely natural way. It is out of pride that one sets up a program of reform today, when in some social movement, let's say, or in the woman's movement one knows ahead of time what is possible, right, necessary, and best, and then sets up a program, point by point. One knows everything about the matter. One does not think of oneself at all as proud when each person declares himself to know it all. But in true knowledge, one remains pretty humble, for one knows that true knowledge is acquired only in the course of time, to use a trivial expression.

If one lives in knowledge, one knows, with what difficulty—sometimes over decades—one has attained the simplest truths. There, quite inwardly through the matter itself, one does not become proud. But nevertheless, because a full consciousness is being demanded precisely of the Anthroposophical Society for humanity's great ideal today of raising ourselves from sin, watchfulness—not Hucklism, but watchfulness—must also be awakened against any pride that might arise.

We need today a strong inclination to truly grasp the essential being of knowledge so that, by virtue of a few anthroposophical catchwords like ‘physical body,’ ‘etheric body,’ ‘reincarnation,’ et cetera, we do not immediately become paragons of pride. This watchfulness with respect to ordinary pride must really be cultivated as a new moral content. This must be taken up into our meditation. For if the raising of man is actually to occur, then the experiences we have with the physical world must lead us over into the spiritual world. For, these experiences must lead us to offer ourselves devotedly, with the innermost powers of our soul. They must not lead us, however, to dictate program truths. Above all, they must penetrate into a feeling of responsibility for every single word that one utters about the spiritual world. Then the striving must reign to truly carry up into the realm of spiritual knowledge the truthfulness that, to begin with, one acquired for oneself in dealing with external, sense-perceptible facts. Whoever has not accustomed himself to remaining with the facts in the physical sense world and to basing himself upon them also does not accustom himself to truthfulness when speaking about the spirit. For in the spiritual world, one can no longer accustom oneself to truthfulness; one must bring it with one.

But you see, on the one hand today, due to the state of consciousness in our civilization, facts are hardly taken into account, and, on the other hand, science simply suppresses those facts that lead onto the right path. Let us take just one out of many such facts: There are insects that are themselves vegetarian when fully grown. They eat no meat, not even other insects. When the mother insect is ready to lay her fertilized eggs, she lays them into the body of another insect, that is then filled with the eggs that the insect mother has inserted into it. The eggs are now in a separate insect. Now the eggs do not hatch out into mature adults, but as little worms. But at first they are in the other insect. These little worms, that will only later metamorphose into adult insects, are not vegetarian. They could not be vegetarian. They must devour the flesh of the other insect. Only when they emerge and transform themselves are they able to do without the flesh of other insects. Picture that: the insect mother is herself a vegetarian. She knows nothing in her consciousness about eating meat, but she lays her eggs for the next generation into another insect. And furthermore; if these insects were now, for example, to eat away the stomach of the host insect, they would soon have nothing more to eat, because the host insect would die. If they ate away any vital organ, the insect could not live. So what do these insects do when they hatch out? They avoid all the vital organs and eat only what the host insect can do without and still live. Then, when these little insects mature, they crawl out, become vegetarian, and proceed to do what their mother did.

Yes, one must acknowledge that intelligence holds sway in nature. And if you really study nature, you can find this intelligence holding sway everywhere. And you will then think more humbly about your own intelligence, for first of all, it is not as great as the intelligence ruling in nature, and secondly, it is only like a little bit of water that one has drawn from a lake and put into a water jug. The human being, in fact, is just such a water jug, that has drawn intelligence from nature. Intelligence is everywhere in nature; everything, everywhere is wisdom. A person who ascribes intelligence exclusively to himself is about as clever as someone who declares: You're saying that there is water out there in the lake or in the brook? Nonsense! There is no water in them. Only in my jug is there any water. The jug created the water.

So, the human being thinks that he creates intelligence, whereas he only draws intelligence from the universal sea of intelligence.

It is necessary, therefore, to truly keep our eye on the facts of nature. But facts are left out when the Darwinian theory is promoted, when today's materialistic views are being formulated; for, the facts contradict the modern materialistic view at every point. Therefore one suppresses these facts. One recounts them, to be sure, but actually aside from science, anecdotally. Therefore they do not gain the validity in our general education that they must have. And so one not only does not truly present the facts that one has, but adds a further dishonesty by leaving out the decisive facts, i.e., by suppressing them.

But if the raising of man is to be accomplished, then we must educate ourselves in truthfulness in the sense world first of all and then carry this education, this habitude, with us into the spiritual world. Then we will also be able to be truthful in the spiritual world. Otherwise we will tell people the most unbelievable stories about the spiritual world. If we are accustomed in the physical world to being imprecise, untrue, and inexact, then we will recount nothing but untruths about the spiritual world.

. You see, if one grasps in this way the ideal whose reality can become conscious to the Anthroposophical Society, and if what arises from this consciousness becomes a force in our Society, then, even in people who wish us the worst, the opinion that the Anthroposophical Society could be a sect will disappear. Now of course our opponents will say all kinds of things that are untrue. But as long as we are giving cause for what they say, it cannot be a matter of indifference to us whether their statements are true or not.

Now, through its very nature, the Anthroposophical Society has thoroughly worked its way out of the sectarianism in which it certainly was caught up at first, especially while it was still connected to the Theosophical Society. It is only that many members to this day have not noticed this fact and love sectarianism. And so it has come about that even older anthroposophical members who were beside themselves when the Anthroposophical Society was transformed from a sectarian one into one that was conscious of its world task, even those who were beside themselves have quite recently gone aside again. The Movement for Religious Renewal, when it follows its essential nature, may be ever so far removed from sectarianism. But this Movement for Religious Renewal has given even a number of older anthroposophists cause to say to themselves: Yes, the sectarian element is being eradicated more and more from the Anthroposophical Society. But we can cultivate it again here! And so precisely through anthroposophists, the Movement for Religious Renewal is being turned into the crassest sectarianism, which truly does not need to be the case.

One can see how, therefore, if the Anthroposophical Society wants to become a reality, we must positively develop the courage to raise ourselves again into the spiritual world. Then art and religion will flourish in the Anthroposophical Society. Although for now even our artistic forms have been taken from us [through the burning of the Goetheanum building on the night of December 31, 1922], these forms live on, in fact, in the being of the anthroposophical movement itself and must continually be found again, and ever again.

In the same way, a true religious deepening lives in those who find their way back into the spiritual world, who take seriously the raising of man. But what we must eradicate in ourselves is the inclination to sectarianism, for this inclination is always egotistical. It always wants to avoid the trouble of penetrating into the reality of the spirit and wants to settle for a mystical reveling that basically is an egotistical voluptuousness. And all the talk about the Anthroposophical Society becoming much too intellectual is actually based on the fact that those who say this want, indeed, to avoid the thoroughgoing experience of a spiritual content, and would much rather enjoy the egotistical voluptuousness of soulful reveling in a mystical, nebulous indefiniteness. Selflessness is necessary for true anthroposophy. It is mere egotism of soul when this true anthroposophy is opposed by anthroposophical members themselves who then all the more drive anthroposophy into something sectarian that is only meant, in fact, to satisfy a voluptuousness of soul that is egotistical through and through.

You see those are the things, with respect to our tasks, to which we should turn our attention. By doing so, we lose nothing of the warmth, the artistic sense, or the religious inwardness of our anthroposophical striving. But that will be avoided which must be avoided: the inclination to sectarianism. And this inclination to sectarianism, even though it often arrived in a roundabout way through pure cliquishness, has brought so much into the Society that splits it apart. But cliquishness also arose in the anthroposophical movement only because of its kinship—a distant one to be sure—with the sectarian inclination. We must return to the cultivation of a certain world consciousness so that only our opponents, who mean to tell untruths, can still call the Anthroposophical Society a sect. We must arrive at the point of being able to strictly banish the sectarian character trait from the anthroposophical movement. But we should banish it in such a way that when something arises like the Movement for Religious Renewal, which is not meant to be sectarian, it is not gripped right away by sectarianism just because one can more easily give it a sectarian direction than one can the Anthroposophical Society itself.

Those are the things that we must think about keenly today. From the innermost being of anthroposophy, we must understand the extent to which anthroposophy can give us, not a sectarian consciousness, but rather a world consciousness. Therefore I had to speak these days precisely about the more intimate tasks of the Anthroposophical Society.

[Except for the abbreviated general report by Albert Steffen and Guenther Wachsmuth, there are no complete minutes of all the discussions that took place. The two general meetings with all the delegates and members of the Anthroposophical Society on July 21 and 22 were recorded in shorthand. However, the two stenographers, Helene Finckh and Walter Vegelahn, only transcribed Rudolf Steiner's comments from their shorthand into longhand. The special discussions that took place alongside these two general meetings were not recorded, or only partially in note form, again with the exception of Rudolf Steiner's comments during the discussion with the German friends in the early morning of July 22. Otherwise, there are a few private reports. The complete report by Steffen and Wachsmuth is followed by a chronological overview of the days of the meeting with the verbatim reproduction of Rudolf Steiner's votes as recorded by the stenographers.

Abbreviated report of the International Assembly of Delegates of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach from July 20-23, 1923, as well as some preliminary remarks for the founding of the International Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923 in Dornach.

The loss of the Goetheanum through the fire on New Year's Eve 1923 was the most devastating event in the history of the anthroposophical movement and had to awaken the activity of the members more than ever. The year 1923 should show to what extent a new building can become reality from the united will of the society. During the months since the fire at the Goetheanum, the firm wish of so many people in all countries of the world to rebuild the Goetheanum had been conveyed in telegrams, letters and other messages. An international committee had therefore convened the present assembly of delegates in the shortest possible time in order to give representatives from the various countries the opportunity to consult with each other regarding the action needed to realize the construction.

At the preliminary meeting of the national delegates on Friday, July 20, the Congress Committee was elected: Mr. Albert Steffen as Chairman, Mr. George Kaufmann as Vice-Chairman, Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth and Mr. Heywood-Smith as Secretaries. This working committee was complemented by Dr. Ita Wegman, Mr. Scott Pyle, Mr. Leinhas, Mr. van Leer, Mr. de Haan.

8 o'clock, Glass House: Meeting of the German friends in the presence of Rudolf Steiner. At the end of yesterday's general meeting, a German member asked when the German friends would meet to discuss their particular tasks. Dr. Carl Unger replied that the next day, from 8 o'clock in the morning, there would be a report for all friends who had come over from Germany.

This early Sunday morning meeting of the German friends was introduced by Dr. Carl Unger, who set out the three points to be discussed: 1. the appeal for funds, 2. the Swiss resolution, 3. the moral fund.

Steiner then took the floor. (Stenographic notes by Hedda Hummel.)

Dornach, July 22, 1923, 8 o'clock in the morning.

I will not be speaking for too long, as I want to leave the details to you. I would just like to say a few words: I would like to take this opportunity, when only German representatives are here, as it seems to me, to say something that should perhaps be known, or known about, only among the German representatives. For of course, the times are such today that the things that should actually be known are misunderstood in the most diverse ways. I would like to say the following, but I expressly note that, of course, there is not the slightest bit of national or similar opinion behind it, but only facts.

The Anthroposophical Society is only justified if it takes into account what can arise from anthroposophical knowledge from time to time, and, I would say, in relation to direct life. You will see what I mean from the following suggestions.

You see, it was of course a kind of naivety to believe that the weak forces of Central Europe could physically hold out against the whole world. I look back on the past times. It was naive to believe that when the coalition of the whole world outside Central Europe came into being. And it was clear from the beginning, since 1914, that it would be naive to believe that there could be any talk of an external victory for Central Europe. Central Europe has not really abandoned this belief until now. It always falls back on certain areas and will not be deterred from extending this belief, at least in the economic sphere, as long as the same is not experienced in the economic sphere as in the political sphere.

It is, therefore, naive to believe that somehow, let us say, within the realm of the physical plan of Central Europe, the means of power of the whole world will be opposed. On the other hand, it must be realized that what the Central European, especially the German spirit has to say to the world has not yet been said and done, that Central Europe still has an enormous amount to accomplish for the world in spiritual terms, and that Central Europe should finally acquire an eye for the fact that in the, if I may put it this way, in the Maja, things sometimes even appear contrary to reality. So that what is currently happening in the world, both in the political and state and in the economic sphere, is actually the opposite of what is happening in the spiritual sphere. It is the true opposite. Because in reality the victories that are being won – and the economic victories will be too – are actually defeats; defeats in the face of evolving humanity. And it will be experienced that in spite of all striving for political and economic preponderance, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of all this, in spite of The spiritual must be taken from Central Europe! And there will arise in the world a longing to take the spirit from the place where one is actually enslaved in an outward way. And this will be intimately connected with the future shaping of the world.

But I do not want it to be forgotten that such things are in many ways connected with human freedom in our present cultural epoch; that it is therefore simply not possible to miss the right moment; that in view of this, vigilance is necessary. And the Anthroposophical Society, above all, would have the task of being alert to what is happening in the immediate present. It would be very easy to miss the moment, which, one might say, is predetermined in history, when the view emerges from numerous centers in the periphery surrounding Central Europe: Yes, we have indeed achieved tremendous external power over Central Europe; but if we do not want to perish spiritually on earth, we must regard Central Europe as the source of spiritual life.

Just imagine the unimaginable possibility that these judgments, more or less emotional judgments, would flare up in the various centers of the world and in Germany all the people would stand around selling their mouths and would not understand what is happening and what actually needs to be done.

These things are the real basis for the formation of thoughts that underlie what is called, so to speak, exoterically — if I may put it that way — “the moral demand”. In our Anthroposophical Society, things must not remain empty words — of course, every idealistic phrase-maker also speaks of moral demands — but for us they must be supported by spiritual reality.

Therefore, to give direction and strength to the spiritual muscles, I wanted to preface these few words.

[The following discussion was about the organization of work in German society, the possibilities of contributing to the financing of construction, and the question of opponents. The continuation was postponed until 3 p.m. It was about the Lempp case, see page 596 for more information.]

10 a.m., carpentry workshop: Second General Assembly of the delegates and members of the Anthroposophical Society. (See the abbreviated general report by Albert Steffen and Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth.)

According to the shorthand notes, the speakers were Albert Steffen, Herbert]. Heywood-Smith, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Wachsmuth, William Scott Pyle, George Kaufmann, Lieutenant-Colonel Seebohm, Jan Stuten, Miss Henström from Stockholm, Miss Woolley from London, Baron Walleen from Denmark, Miss Henström, Lina Schwarz from Milan about a circular letter to the Italian members about the work in Dornach and asks Rudolf Steiner for a meditation to be done together. Dr. Steiner's reply: I can only discuss things of this kind in lectures, not in meetings that actually have a different character. Things of this kind belong in lectures. Then Margarita Woloschin speaks for the Russian friends, Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz, Albert Steffen, Dr. Blümel.

George Kaufmann provides a summary in English.

Rudolf Steiner: It seems to me as if we are now at the end of the conference and I would like to say what I still have to say at the end of the lecture (his evening lecture).

Albert Steffen now closes the meeting, pointing out that there are still many unresolved questions in the air, “for example, the most important one, that of a journal that would have to be formed for the exchange between the periphery and the center. But we have already discussed this question, and there are really major difficulties here that I alone cannot possibly resolve here... And so, as far as I am concerned, I would like to close the meeting today if no one else speaks,

Rudolf Steiner: Regarding the newsletter — I do not consider the conference to be closed, so I do not want to say any kind of closing words, so to speak — but regarding the newsletter, which is often discussed, I would like to make the following comment. It is one thing to do many things; but it is quite another to recognize the necessity for something in a certain abstractness or to really get things going. We had to start somewhere and we really started with good reasons to found the magazine 'Das Goetheanum' here.

Yes, dear friends, but for such a thing one needs the interest of the membership first. The “Goetheanum” is still an “inactive” magazine, as they say, which means that it has to be paid for. And it can be said that this is certainly connected with the lack of interest that has already been discussed. We here are always faced with the question: we have to start somewhere, at the beginning. But often the demand is then made to start at the end. That just can't be done.

We have tried to give a picture of the ruined Goetheanum in the Goetheanum itself. Yesterday, Mr. Leinhas rightly emphasized: nothing has been done — the essays were, I believe, also printed in Anthroposophie in Germany — nothing has been done to make these things known. Apart from everything else that has to be considered when publishing a brochure, where is the prospect of such a brochure being received with any great enthusiasm and being supported in any way, other than what we have just described as the beginning? I believe that just as the Goetheanum magazine has a difficult existence here, so too does anthroposophy have a difficult existence out there in Germany. And a brochure that would be written in such a way that it would emerge from the heart of the matter — because, of course, you can't just fabricate an advertising brochure for anthroposophy —, well, that which would arise from the heart of anthroposophy would today again weigh heavily without there being any interest in it.

Now, a newsletter requires a tremendous amount. It is easy to say that such a newsletter should be made; the reasons are, of course, hundreds that can be put forward for it. But what is needed above all is a revival of interest in the things that are being done. And it is not responsible to continue doing things when the old things are always left lying around. True, a brochure has been produced in Italy, but it has remained, I would say, in a small group of people in the Anthroposophical Society.

We really need more support from our members for these things, because it is truly not an encouraging business to always have to talk about this. But it is all too often made necessary by the fact that things are talked about that really cannot be carried out in the way one imagines them, before one sees how taking by the hand develops for the beginning.

Of course, one could even greet it as a good fact if every lecture given here were to multiply itself and then be carried everywhere by pigeon post. Of course it would be a very good thing. But in thought things cannot be carried out in this way; what would be necessary first is to go into the way in which the attempt to spread the things is made out of the matter itself.

Just think about it: Mr. Steffen actually undertook to report much of what is going on here to the outside world – you can't speak of an attempt in this case, because what is complete in itself can also be considered an independent literary achievement –. Yes, of course, an educational course has been printed. But there was no response to these things from the membership, as there should have been; and there is no possibility of moving on to something more esoteric if we do not start by stimulating more interest among the membership in what is actually being done. It is the lack of interest in things that ultimately underlies the fact that everyone feels more or less unsatisfied with what is being done. But actually, perhaps one could, from the fact, for example, that within society there is someone like Mr. Steffen, who was rightly said at the last Swiss meeting here to be roughly the person who writes the best German style today; it is something that should at least be included as a positive thing.

But really, this fact, for example, which means a great deal for the whole anthroposophical movement, that the anthroposophical movement includes the best German stylist in Mr. Steffen, should be an occasion for the journal “Das Goetheanum”, of which Mr. Steffen has given the Anthroposophical Society the gift of being editor, to would be received in a completely different way than it actually is. I notice so little response from the Society to what is actually in the Goetheanum. I could, when, I think it was a fortnight ago, an attempt was made to see if an echo could be evoked by challenging people to solve the riddles; you could see that at least people wanted to find out what was meant by these riddles.¹ But otherwise far too little of what is in this 'Goetheanum' lives in society. Far too little lives in it. And really, do you believe that it is really extraordinarily difficult for Mr. Steffen or possibly for myself to stand up and say what the 'Goetheanum' actually is for a magazine. You can already... [space in the shorthand].

But you see, I have often heard the judgment: Yes, the “Goetheanum” is just not enough for us. But to this day I have [doubts] whether the journal “Das Goetheanum” means anything to the anthroposophical movement according to the Anthroposophical Society. For us here today, there is still the possibility that the magazine “Goetheanum” is seen as something highly unnecessary by the membership. This possibility still exists, after all. There is no real participation in such a thing, in which something of the best forces is actually put in here every week. Yes, it is not an invective that I would like to deliver here; but it is something to which I would like to draw attention when it is said: We cannot have enough of the “Goetheanum”, that is exoteric, people in the outside world can read that too, we need something much more esoteric. — Yes, just wait and see what fruits come when you first tend to the roots. But the roots must first be cultivated. That is already the case.

We still have the whole afternoon ahead of us, and I will say what I want to say in conclusion in my lecture at the end of the conference.

Emil Leinhas returns to the question of how to distribute the transcripts of Rudolf Steiner's lectures and says that it should also be considered “that Dr. Steiner repeatedly expressed his displeasure at the transcripts and also at their indiscriminate distribution, that it is not at all to his taste. One can well understand the desire for the transcripts, but one should also take into account Dr. Steiner's wish that the transcripts not be distributed in this way.

Albert Steffen: So before I adjourn the meeting until 3:00 this afternoon, Rudolf Steiner: It would be very difficult to meet here in this hall this afternoon.

Albert Steffen: We can immediately feel the difficulties that exist as long as there is no Goetheanum. The Germans wanted to meet in the Glass House, as far as I know, at three o'clock. This hall can only be used until four o'clock at the latest, because there is to be eurythmy at five o'clock.

Rudolf Steiner: I did not want to schedule anything earlier, but just wanted to say: According to the program, the events at five and eight o'clock are also still part of the conference. Therefore, I did not want to say any closing words before the conference ended.

Albert Steffen: I just have to thank Dr. Steiner for what he said about me as a writer. I must say that I see myself as a complete beginner in this respect, so that if I practise with words, I may perhaps achieve something to some extent. In any case, I am only just beginning. And I would at least like to thank the person who addressed me for the remark, who has the best command of the word in the present and in the past, for that person's trust.

3 p.m., Glass House: Continuation of the morning assembly of the Germans (no minutes).

One participant, Hans Büchenbacher, reported on this in “Mitteilungen, herausgegeben vom Vorstand der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland” No. 7, Stuttgart, September 1923, as follows:

At the meetings of the approximately eighty Germans present in Dornach, the friends from the Rhineland were in the foreground. They were convinced that they had significant contributions to make to the Society and that something important for the course of the entire conference had to come from them. At the same time, however, they were in a certain combative mood and particularly in an oppositional attitude towards the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. But the following arose from this. At the beginning of the plenary assembly of the Germans on Sunday morning in the glass house, Dr. Steiner spoke in a deeply moving way about the spiritual task of the German people in particular. [Page 585] The fact that Dr. Steiner's words could not be discussed in the following debate was not so much due to the chairmanship of the meeting as to the attitude of the Rhenish friends, as characterized above. The whole discussion took on a chaotic course as a result, and Dr. Büchenbacher was forced to compare the situation with that at the Stuttgart delegates' conference in February. They did not even want to discuss the draft of a statement for Dr. Steiner, which Dr. Unger presented on the occasion of the Lempp affair.²

It was decided to hold another meeting in the afternoon to hear only the Rhenish friends at length, as they requested. They demanded that a Rhinelander should also preside over the meeting. The executive committee did not agree to this, which was entirely justified, and Mr. Leinhas, as chairman of the afternoon meeting, gave the Rhinelanders ample opportunity to say everything they had to say. The fact that the result that emerged was very modest would not have been a problem in itself. But, one may ask, was it necessary to talk to and fro fruitlessly for hours, sometimes in a rather testy manner, so that no time was left for Dr. Steiner's words, for the manifestation for him? Would that the discussions in September, which are so important for the Society, might not be conducted with an attitude that, as the Stuttgart delegates' conference has already shown, seriously endangers the existence of the Society, despite all the emphasis on one's own point of view. So much of the time available for discussion had passed before Mr. Leinhas was able to give the German friends an account of the Lempp affair. Dr. Steiner intervened with great sharpness and certainty, for which we can only be grateful to him, and presented this matter in its fundamental significance. The result was an understandable agitation of the assembly. Now people were urging a show of support for Dr. Steiner. He had already left, as the eurythmy performance was about to begin. There was no longer time for an orderly discussion...

5 p.m., Carpentry Shop: Eurythmy performance with introductory address by Rudolf Steiner (in CW 277).

8 p.m., carpentry workshop: 3rd lecture by Rudolf Steiner on “Three Perspectives on Anthroposophy” (in CW 225) with the announced farewell words to the conference participants:

• 1. Article by Rudolf Steiner: The Philosopher as Forger of Riddles. In: “Das Goetheanum”, 2nd year, no. 48, July 8, 1923, now in GA 36. This article presents four riddles taken from the booklet “Aenigmatias. Neue Rätsel” by Franz Brentano, 2nd edition, Munich 1909.
• 2. For more information, see page 596.

Today I have heard ¹ that anthroposophists are carrying around all kinds of superfluous anecdotes, which, I might say, are being stirred up perhaps by this or that feeling about our great misfortune, the catastrophe of the Goetheanum. But as much as I dislike doing so, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that membership of the Anthroposophical Society imposes certain obligations, above all the obligation not to provide a target by spreading such rumors. ²

I must emphasize, because it is for the sake of the matter, not for the sake of the personal, that all the things that are done in this way by the members fall back on me and thus on the matter of the anthroposophical movement.

We must exercise the utmost restraint in making accusations and, as Anthroposophists, we should really be able to develop such seriousness that we do not even do so in anecdotal form. For you can see from what you can find in the “Basler Nachrichten” today what terrible things we are involved in and what attacks we are exposed to.

Of course, these things are the most unjustified attacks imaginable; but on the other hand, may I ask that, little by little, each individual member of the Anthroposophical Society practice the seriousness that is required there, and not tell all sorts of anecdotes that are then exploited by opponents. And the blame is usually laid at my door.

I am always reluctant to preach morals in this way, but it is necessary from time to time. As I said, I have heard again today that such anecdotes have been spoken by anthroposophists. I would ask you, for the sake of the matter, for the sake of the holy matter, not to apologize for this seriousness and to carry around all kinds of anecdotes. Leave that to other people! In a certain way, being a member of the Anthroposophical Society obliges.

• 1. Upon returning from the first negotiations in Stuttgart.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner was surely objecting to rumors being spread about the arsonist or arsonists.

Those who join this school as members are in a completely different position than those who join the Anthroposophical Society. You become a member of this school after being a member of the Society for a sufficiently long time. You have come to know what anthroposophy wants, what it truly is. You have been able to form an opinion about what it can be worth to you. However, this means that the intention to join the school can be associated with the assumption of a range of duties and the awareness that one wants to be a representative of anthroposophical work.

In contrast to the way in which Anthroposophy is presented within the Anthroposophical Society, it is not only absurd, but also quite tasteless when the opposing side repeatedly makes the defamatory accusation that Anthroposophy wants to exert a suggestive influence on anyone. Anyone who is in Anthroposophy knows this very well, or at least can know it. When members who have left the Society claim this, they usually know themselves that what they claim is objectively untrue. In the Society, no one is led to anthroposophy with blinders on. Therefore, they cannot become a member of the School without fully understanding the context of what anthroposophy sees as its task.

Everyone should judge for themselves whether they want to become a member of the school based on what they have come to know as a member of the Anthroposophical Society. When the school's leadership speaks of the duties that its members take on, they can be completely clear about what is meant. It is not intended to imply anything other than that the school's leadership cannot fulfill its tasks if such duties are not taken on. The relationship between each member of the school and the leadership remains completely free, even if such duties are taken on. This is because the school leadership must also enjoy the freedom to act in accordance with the natural conditions of their work. They would not have this freedom if they were not allowed to say to those who are free to join or not to join the school: If I am to work with you, then you must take on the obligation to fulfill this or that condition.

This should actually be self-evident and need not be stated. But it must be said, because all too often we hear: Those who join the school must give up some of their “human freedoms”. When this is said by members of the society, it is not surprising when malicious opponents spread the slander that Anthroposophy is gradually turning its adherents into will-less tools of what some people with bad intentions want. Anyone who has taken an interest in the Society's work for a sufficiently long time knows that Anthroposophy would lose all meaning the moment it undertook anything that went against the independent, level-headed, insightful will of its members. Anthroposophy cannot truly achieve its goals with will-less tools. For, in order to truly come to it, it requires precisely the free will of those involved. (Continued in the next issue.)

This newsletter is titled “What's Going On in the Anthroposophical Society”. This title was given to it to suggest that in the future individual members should take a lively spiritual interest in everything that happens in the Society. This will only be possible if these members write to the editor of the journal, Albert Steffen, with everything they believe should be known not only to the individual member but to the whole Society. And this should know where anthroposophy is being worked on, how it is happening, how the work is being received, etc. The life that takes place in the individual groups should be able to come to life before the consciousness of the whole society. Letters in which members filled with interest for the life of the groups turn to the editorial team with their messages will then be processed by them. This will help to create a common consciousness in society. Only when members in New Zealand can find out what is happening in a group in Vienna will such a common consciousness be possible.

But this should not be the only thing. What is happening in the spiritual life of the present day outside of the Society should also be included in the common consciousness. There is spiritual life around every group in society. This or that view of the world and life is expressed, this or that great or small artistic, scientific, social, educational, etc. achievement comes to light. Much else will happen that must interest spiritually striving people. All this can be better judged from close quarters than from afar, according to its conditions, its nature, its implications. In their letters, the members of the groups should speak of what they can perceive from this point of view in the vicinity of their groups. Members whose profession takes them around the world should look with open eyes at “what is going on in the world”. They should then communicate this to the editorial team of the newsletter. In this way, “what is going on in the world” can become “what is going on in the Anthroposophical Society”. And we need a broad outlook. We need a keen interest in all the phenomena of life in the world. We need a healthy judgment in the Society about these phenomena.

In this respect, we in society must learn to think differently than has been done so far. By its very nature, anthroposophy does not tolerate any kind of sectarianism that narrow-mindedly shuts itself off from everything that others think and want. Anthroposophy only tolerates a broad heart for all human striving and life. And it can only be given the right form through an open eye for everything that is thought, willed, and done in the world.

The newsletter should become a reflection of this way of thinking in society. Through its existence, it should be a call to each individual member to keep asking themselves how they can contribute to the common thinking in the society. If the members see the newsletter in this way, the executive council of the Anthroposophical Society can make it what it should be according to the intentions of the Christmas Conference.

The lectures printed in this volume are those Rudolf Steiner gave to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Berlin immediately after the outbreak of the First World War. The atmosphere perceptible in these lectures was markedly influenced by the momentous events of the time. On the other hand the language is often personal and intimate, for a powerful bond existed between Rudolf Steiner and this group of people. From 1900–1902 onwards, Berlin had been the place where he developed and presented spiritual science in lectures and written works, and it was the centre of his activities in Germany. The Berlin ‘Branch’ of the Anthroposophical Society was the only one Rudolf and Marie Steiner (von Sivers) led in person until the General Anthroposophical Society was established in its new form at Dornach in Switzerland over Christmas and New Year 1923–24.

The year 1914 saw the collapse of many hopes. Austria declared war on Serbia on 28 July, and further declarations of war followed at a rapid pace. Germany declared war on Russia on 30 July and on France on 30 August. Great Britain then declared war on Germany on 4 August, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia on 6 August, and Great Britain on Austria-Hungary on 13 August.

One year previously, in the autumn of 1913, Rudolf Steiner had laid the foundation stone for the first Goetheanum (referred to as ‘the building' in a number of these lectures) on a hilltop in Dornach, near Basle in Switzerland. At the time when war broke out, artists and young people from many European nations had been working together for many weeks to bring Rudolf Steiner's artistic and architectural concepts to realization on that site in Dornach. Something very real had developed among them, a true fellowship in the reality of the spirit, irrespective of nationality or creed. The outbreak of war came as a tremendous shock to them and to the millions who lived in Europe.

This is the background to the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in Berlin during 1914 and 1915. Particularly in the first lectures one is very much aware of his heart going out to all the people caught up in the maelstrom of war, people now finding themselves on opposite sides, facing great challenges both at home and in the trenches. Today different challenges have to be faced, but the wider context and true spiritual background given by Rudolf Steiner, the great challenge to humankind from the spiritual world which he was able to show to be behind the events of the day—these are as relevant now as they were then.

I have given you some idea of the forces which determined the first two periods of the anthroposophical movement. But in order to create a basis on which to deal with what happened in the third stage, I still wish to deal with a number of phenomena from the first two.

The first period, up until approximately 1907, can be described as being concerned with developing the fundamentals for a science of the spirit in lectures, lecture cycles and in subsequent work undertaken by others. This period concludes approximately with the publication of my Occult Science.¹

Occult Science actually appeared in print some one and a half years later, but the publicizing of its essential content undoubtedly falls into this first period. Some hope was definitely justified in this period, up to 1905 or 1906, that the content of anthroposophy might become the purpose of the Theosophical Society's existence.

During this time it would have been an illusion not to recognize that leading personalities in the Theosophical Society, and Annie Besant in particular, had a very primitive understanding of modern scientific method. Nevertheless, despite the amateurish stamp which this gave to all her books, there was a certain sum of wisdom, mostly unprocessed, in the people who belonged to the Society. This became more marked as the focus of the Theosophical Society gradually moved to London and slowly began to feed, in a manner of speaking, on oriental wisdom. It sometimes led to the most peculiar ideas. But if we ignore the fact that such ideas were sometimes stretched so far that they lost all similarity to their original and true meaning, such books as Annie Besant's Ancient Wisdom, The Progress of Mankind, and even Christianity transmit something which, although passed down by traditional means, originated in ancient sources of wisdom.

On the other hand one must always be aware that in the modern world beyond these circles there was no interest whatsoever in real spiritual research. The reality was simply that the possibility of kindling an interest in a truly modern science of the spirit existed only among those who found their way into this group of people.

Yet within this first period in particular there was a great deal to overcome. Many people were working towards something, but it was in part a very egoistic and shallow striving. But even such superficial societies frequently called themselves theosophical. One need only think, for instance, of the theosophical branches spread widely throughout central Europe—in Germany, Austria and also Switzerland—which possessed only an exceedingly anaemic version of Theosophical Society tenets, impregnated with all kinds of foolish occult views.

One person who was very active in such societies was Franz Hartmann.² But the kind of profound spirit and deep seriousness which existed in these shallow societies will become obvious to you if I describe the cynical character of this particular leader. The Theosophical Society was at one time engaged in a dispute in connection with an American called Judge³ about whether or not certain messages which had been distributed by Judge originated with persons who really had reached a higher stage of initiation, the so-called Masters. Judge had distributed these “Mahatma Letters” in America.

While they were both at the headquarters in India, Judge said he wanted some letters from the Masters in order to gain credibility in America, so that he could say he had been given a mission by initiates. Franz Harmann recounted how he had offered to write some Mahatma Letters for Judge, and the latter had replied that this would not permit him to claim their authenticity. They were supposed to fly towards you through the air; they originated in a magical way and then landed on your head, and that is what he had to be able to say. Judge was a very small fellow, Hartmann told us, and so he said to him “Stand on the floor and I will stand on a chair and then I will drop the letters on your head.” Then Judge could say with a clear conscience that he was distributing letters which had landed on his head clean out of the air!

That is an extreme example of things which are not at all rare in the world. I do not really want to waste your time with these shallow societies. I only want to point out that the close proximity of the anthroposophical to the theosophical movement made it necessary for the former to defend itself against modern scientific thinking during its first period.

I do not know whether those who joined the anthroposophical movement later as scientists, and observed anthroposophy during its more developed third stage, have gained sufficient insight into the fact that a critical assessment of modern scientific thinking took place in a very specific way during the first period of the anthroposophical movement. I only give instances, because this process occurred in a number of different areas. But these examples will show you how the theosophical movement was strongly influenced by the deference to so-called scientific authority which I described as particularly characteristic of modern education.

Annie Besant, for instance, tried to use in her books all kinds of quotes from contemporary science, such as Weismann's theory of heredity,⁴ which bore no relevance to the science of the spirit. She used them as if they provided some sort of evidence. If you recall, at the time when we were in a position to start a centre for the anthroposophical movement in Munich many homeless souls were already organized in the sense that they belonged to various societies. Of course centres for the movement had begun to develop gradually in Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Kassel, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, Hanover and Leipzig, and in Vienna as well as in Prague. When we were establishing the branch in Munich it became necessary to assess critically the various larger and smaller groups which were then in existence.

One group called the Ketterl, consisting of extremely scholarly people, was very much concerned with providing proofs from natural science for the claims which were made on behalf of the science of the spirit. If anthroposophy spoke about the etheric body, they would say that science has recognized this or that structure for atoms and molecules. Their formulae and definitions and so on were applied not to processes of the spectrum or electro-magnetism but to processes in the etheric or astral field. There was nothing we could do about that. The whole thing dissolved more or less amicably. In the end we no longer had any links with these investigations.

Not so very different were the efforts of a Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden,⁵ who played an important role in the Theosophical Society. He was a close friend of Blavatsky, and was the editor of Sphinx for a long time. He, too, was obsessed with proving what he felt was theosophical subject matter by means of natural-scientific thinking. He took me to his home, a little way outside Hanover. It was perhaps half an hour by tram. He spent the entire half-hour describing the motion of atoms with his index fingers: Yes, it has to happen in this way and that way and then we have the answer. The atoms move in one incarnation and then the wave motion continues through the spiritual worlds; then it changes and that is the next incarnation. In the same way as modern physicists calculate light in terms of wave lengths, he calculated the passage of souls through various incarnations.

A special version of this way of thinking was evident in the debate about the permanent atom, which took place in the Theosophical Society over a long period. This permanent atom was something awful, but was taken incredibly seriously. For the people who felt the full weight of modern science postulated that while of course the physical body decomposes, a single atom remains, passes through the time between death and a new birth, and appears in the new incarnation. That is the permanent atom which passes through incarnations.

This may appear funny to you today, but you simply cannot understand the seriousness with which these things were pursued, specifically in the first period, and the difficulty which existed in responding to the challenge: What is the point of theosophy if it cannot be proved scientifically! During that conversation in the tram the point was forcefully made that things have to be presented in a manner which will allow a matriculated schoolboy to understand theosophy in the same way that he understands logic. That was the thrust of my companion's argument. Then we arrived at his home and he took me into the loft, and up there—I have to repeat that he was an exceedingly kind, pleasant and intelligent man; in other words, a sympathetic old gentleman—were very complicated wire constructions. One of the models would represent the atom of a physical entity; the next model, which was even more complex, would represent the atom of something etheric; the third model, still more complex, was an astral atom.

If you pick up certain books by Leadbeater,⁶ a leading figure in the Theosophical Society, you will find such models in grandiose form. Atomism flourished nowhere as greatly as among those who joined our ranks from the Theosophical Society. And when younger members such as Dr. Kolisko⁷ and others are engaged in the fight against the atom in our research institute in Stuttgart,⁸ we might well recall that certain people at that time would not have known how to get from one incarnation to the next without at least one permanent atom.

That is something of an image of the way in which the strong authority of so-called natural-scientific thinking exerted its influence in these circles. They were unable to conceive of any other valid way of thinking than the natural-scientific one. So there was no real understanding in this quarter either. Only as the anthroposophical movement entered its second stage did these atomistic endeavours gradually subside, and there was a gradual transition to the subject matter which continued to be cultivated in the anthroposophical movement. Every time I was in Munich, for instance, it was possible to give a lecture designed more for the group which gathered round a great friend of Blavatsky's. Things were easier there because a genuine inner striving existed.

Within our own ranks, too, there was a call at that time to justify the content of anthroposophy using the current natural-scientific approach. It was less radical, nevertheless, than the demands made by external critics today. A large number of you heard Dr. Blümel's⁹ lecture today. Imagine if someone had responded by saying that everything Dr. Blümel spoke about was of no personal concern; that he did not believe it, did not recognize it and did not want to test it. Someone else might say: See whether it is accurate, examine it with your reason and your soul faculties. The first person says: It is no business of mine be it right or wrong, I do not want to become involved with that. But I call on Dr. Blümel to go to a psychological laboratory and there, using my psychological methods, I will examine whether or not he is a mathematician.

That is, of course, piffle of the first order. But it is exactly the demand made today by outside critics.

Sadly, it is quite possible today to talk pure nonsense that goes undetected. Even those who are upset by it fail to notice that it is pure nonsense. They believe that it is only maliciousness or something similar, because they cannot imagine the possibility of someone who talks pure nonsense acquiring the role of a scientific spokesman simply as a result of their social standing. That is the extent to which our spiritual life has become confused. The kind of things which I am explaining here must be understood by anyone who wants to grasp the position of the anthroposophical movement.

Well, undeterred by all that, the most important human truths, the most important cosmic truths, had to be made public during the first stage. My Occult Science represents a sort of compendium of everything which had been put forward in the anthroposophical movement until that point. Our intention was always a concrete and never an abstract one, because we never attempted to do more than could be achieved in the given circumstances.

Let me quote the following as evidence. We established a journal, Luzifer-Gnosis,¹⁰ right at the outset of the anthroposophical movement. At first it was called Luzifer. Then a Viennese journal called Gnosis wanted to amalgamate with it. My sole intention in calling it Luzifer with Gnosis was to express the practical union of the two journals. Of course that was completely unacceptable to Hübbe-Schleiden, for instance, who thought that this would indicate an unnatural union. Well, I was not particularly bothered, so we called it Luzifer-Gnosis with a hyphen. People were very sharp-witted and they were keeping a close eye on us at that time!

Of course we started with a very small number of subscribers, but it began to grow at a very fast pace, relatively speaking, and we never really ran at a deficit because we only ever printed approximately as many copies as we were able to sell. Once an issue had been printed the copies were sent to my house in large parcels. Then my wife and I put the wrappers around them. I addressed them and then each of us took a washing basket and carried the whole lot to the post office. We found that this worked quite well. I wrote and held lectures while my wife organized the whole Anthroposophical Society,¹¹ but without a secretary. So we did that all on our own and never attempted more than could be managed on a practical level. We did not even, for example, take larger washing baskets than we could just manage. When the number of subscribers grew we simply made an extra journey.

When we had been engaged in this interesting activity for some time, Luzifer-Gnosis ceased publication—not because it had to, for it had many more subscribers than it needed, but because I no longer had the time to write. The demands of my lecturing activity and of the spiritual administration of the society in general began to take up a lot of time.

To cease publication was a natural consequence of never attempting more than could be managed on a practical level, one step at a time. This belongs to the conditions which govern the existence of a spiritual society. To build far-reaching ideals on phrases, setting up programmes, is the worst thing which can happen to a spiritual society. The work in this first period was such that between 1907 and 1909 the foundations of a science of the spirit appropriate to the modern age were put in place.

Then we come to the second phase, which essentially concluded our attempt to come to grips with natural science. The theologians had not yet made their presence felt. They were still seated so firmly in the saddle everywhere that they were simply not bothered.

When the issue of the natural sciences had been dealt with, we were able to approach our other task. This was the debate over the Gospels, over Genesis, the Christian tradition as a whole, Christianity as such.

The thread had already been laid out in Christianity As Mystical Fact, which appeared in 1902. But the elaboration, as it were, of an anthroposophical understanding of Christianity was essentially the task of the second stage up to approximately 1914. As a consequence I gave lecture cycles on the various parts of the Christian tradition in Hamburg, Kassel, Berlin, Basle, Berne, Munich and Stuttgart.

That was also when, for instance, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity¹² was drawn up. It was, then, essentially the time in which the Christian side of anthroposophy was worked out, following on from the historical tradition of Christianity.

This period also included what I might call the first expansion of anthroposophy into the artistic field, with performances of the mystery dramas in Munich.¹³ That, too, took place against the background of never wanting to achieve more than circumstances allowed.

Also during this time those events occurred which led to the exclusion of anthroposophy from the Theosophical Society, a fact which was actually of no great significance to the former, given that it had followed its own path from the beginning. Those who wanted to come along were free to do so. From the outset anthroposophy did not concern itself with the spiritual content which came from the Theososphical Society. But practical co-existence became increasingly difficult as well.

At the beginning there was a definite hope that circumstances, some of which at least I have described, would allow the real theosophical movement which had come together in the Theosophical Society to become truly anthroposophical. The circumstances which made such a hope appear justified included the serious disappointment about the particular methods of investigation pursued by the Theosophical Society, specifically among those people who possessed a higher level of discrimination. And I have to say that when I arrived in London on both the first and second times, I experienced how its leaders were basically people who adopted a very sceptical attitude towards one another, who felt themselves to be on very insecure ground which, however, they did not want to leave because they did not know where to look for security.

There were many disappointed people who had great reservations, particularly among the leaders of the Theosophical Society. The peculiar change which took place in Annie Besant from, say, 1900 to 1907 is an important factor in the subsequent course of events in the Theosophical Society. She possessed a certain tolerance to begin with. I believe she never really understood the phenomenon of anthroposophy, but she accepted it and at the beginning even defended against the rigid dogmatists its right to exist. That is how we must describe it, for that is how it was.

But there is something I must say which I would also urge members of the Anthroposophical Society to consider very seriously. Certain personal aspirations, purely personal sympathies and antipathies, are absolutely irreconcilable with a spiritual society of this kind. Someone, for instance, begins to idolize someone else, for whatever underlying reasons within himself. He will not acknowledge whatever compulsion it is, and sometimes it can be an intellectual compulsion that drives him to do it. But he begins to weave an artificial astral aura around the individual whom he wants to idolize. The latter then becomes advanced. If he wants to make an especially telling remark he will say: “Oh, that individual is aware of three or four previous lives on earth and even spoke to me about my earlier earth lives. That person knows a lot!” And this is precisely what leads to a spiritual interpretation of something which is human, all too human, to use an expression of Nietzsche's.

It would be sufficient to say: “I will not deny that I like him.” Then everything would be fine, even in esoteric societies. Max Seiling,¹⁴ for instance, was very amusing in certain ways, particularly when he played the piano in that effervescent way of his, and he was amusing to have tea with and so on. All would have been well if people had admitted: We like that. That would have been more sensible than idolizing him in the way the Munich group did.

You see, all these things are in direct contradiction to the conditions under which such a society should exist. And the prime example of someone who fell prey to this kind of thing is Annie Besant. For example—and I prefer to speak about these things by quoting facts—a name cropped up on one occasion. I did not bother much with the literature produced by the Theosophical Society, and so I became acquainted with Bhagavan Das's¹⁵ name only when a thick typewritten manuscript arrived one day. The manuscript was arranged in two columns, with text on the left side and a blank on the right. A covering letter from Bhagavan Das said that he wanted to discuss with various people the subject matter which he intended to reveal to the world through the manuscript.

Well, the anthroposophical movement was already so widespread at that time that I did not manage to read the manuscript immediately. That Bhagavan Das was a very esoteric man, a person who drew his inspiration from profound spiritual sources—that was approximately the view which people associated with Annie Besant—spread about him. His name was on everyone's lips. So I decided to have a look at the thing. I was presented with a horrendously amateurish confusion of Fichtean philosophy, Hegelian philosophy, and Schopenhauer's philosophy; everything mixed up together without the slightest understanding. And the whole thing was held together by “self” and “not self”, like an endlessly repeated tune. The idolization of Bhagavan Das was based purely on personal considerations. Such things demonstrate how the personal element is introduced into impulses which should be objective. The first step on the slippery slope was taken with the appearance of this phenomenon, which became increasingly strong from about 1905 onwards. Everything else was basically a consequence of that.

Spiritual societies must avoid such courses of action, particularly by their leaders—otherwise they will, of necessity, slide down the slippery slope. That is, indeed, what happened. Then there was the absurd tale connected with Olcott's death,¹⁶ referred to as the Masters' nomination, which really represented the beginning of the end for the Theosophical Society. That could still be smoothed over, at least, by saying that such foolishness was introduced into the Society by particular people, even if they were acting on the basis of certain principles. It was, however, followed by the Leadbeater affair,¹⁷ the details of which I do not want to discuss just now. And then came the discovery of the boy who was to be brought up as Christ, or to become Christ, and so on. And when people who did not want to be involved in these absurd matters refused to accept them, they were simply expelled.

Well, the anthroposophical movement followed its set course throughout the whole of this business and our inner development was not affected by these events in any way. That has to be made absolutely clear. It was really a matter of supreme indifference—just as I was not especially surprised to hear recently that Leadbeater has become an Old Catholic bishop in his old age. There was no sense of direction and everything was going topsy turvy.

Indeed, there is no particular need to change one's personal relationship with these people. Two years ago a gentleman who had delivered a lecture at the Munich congress in 1907¹⁸ approached me with the old cordial spirit. He still looked the same, but in the meantime he had become an Old Catholic archbishop. He was not wearing the garments, but that is what he was!

It must not be forgotten that the stream which we have been describing also contained precisely those souls who were searching most intensively for a link between the human soul and the spiritual world. We are not being honest about the course of modern culture if these contrasts are not made absolutely clear. That is why I had to make these additional points today before going on to the actual conditions which underlie the existence of the Anthroposophical Society.

• 1. The appearance of Occult Science: An Outline (Translated by G. and M. Adams. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1969) had been announced in 1905 as a continuation of Theosophy which was published in 1904. For technical reasons, however, it did not appear until 1910 (the preface is signed: written in December 1909). “Only the absolute necessity of uninterrupted lecturing activity by the author has delayed the publication of this book for so long. Now it is to be made available to the public whatever the cost.” (Rudolf Steiner in the journal Luzifer-Gnosis, No. 33 from 1907.)
• 2. See Lecture Two, Note 8
• 3. William Quan Judge, 1851–1896. One of the co-founders of the Theosophical Society. In 1895 he split away from the Adyar-based society and became the leader of a secessionist movement in America.
• 4. August Weismann, 1834–1914. Medical doctor, zoologist. Disputed the heredity of acquired changes.
• 5. Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden, 1846–1916. From 1886–1896 edited the occultist monthly journal Sphinx. See Rudolf Steiner, The Course of My Life, Chapter XXXII, and Briefe II.
• 6. Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1847–1934. Prominent member of the Theosophical Society in England. See in this context the book Occult Chemistry by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, a series of clairvoyant observations about the chemical elements and atomic theory.
• 7. Dr. Eugen Kolisko, 1893–1939. Medical doctor and teacher at the Stuttgart Waldorf School.
• 8. The scientific research institute was one of the sections of Kommende Tag, a company set up for the promotion of economic and spiritual values, Stuttgart 1920–1925. The biology department (L. Kolisko) was transferred to the Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner in 1924.
• 9. Dr. Ernst Blümel, 1884–1952. Mathematician and teacher, first in further education at the Goetheanum and subsequently (1927–1938) at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.
• 10. The journal appeared from June 1903 to 1908. cf. The Course of My Life, Chapter XXXII. Rudolf Steiner's essays in Luzifer-Gnosis have been reprinted in the volume of the same name in GA 34.
• 11. See Aus dem Leben van Marie Steiner-von Sievers, pp.40ff.
• 12. Rudolf Steiner. The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity (1911). Translated by H. B. Monges. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1992.
• 13. Rudolf Steiner, The Four Mystery Plays. Translated by A. Bittleston. Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1982.
• 14. Max Seiling: member of the Anthroposophical Society for a time. He turned against it when a book which he wanted to have published by Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag had to be turned down. See Rudolf Steiner's lecture of 11 May 1917 in GA 174b (not translated).
• 15. Bhagavan Das: prominent member of the Theosophical Society. Resigned his office as General Secretary of the Indian Section in 1912 because he disapproved of the goings-on within the Order of the Star of the East in connection with the Krishnamurti-Alcyone cult, and of the behaviour of the President of the Theosophical Society who approved of and encouraged these events unworthy of the society.
• 16. Henry Steel Olcott, 1832–1907. Founder President of the Theosophical Society. See Rudolf Steiner, “Henry Steel Olcott (Obituary)”, in the journal Luzifer-Gnosis, No. 33 (March/April 1907). Olcott had proposed Annie Besant as his successor. Some of the circumstances surrounding this nomination had become public, which is why Rudolf Steiner wrote in this issue:
  
  “… The deceased President did not merely state that he nominated Mrs Besant as his successor, but he informed the General Secretaries through a variety of circulars—which then found their way into the theosophical press and, unfortunately, beyond—that the elevated individuals who are described as the Masters, and those in particular who are especially connected with theosophical affairs, had appeared at his death bed and had instructed him to nominate Mrs Besant as his successor.
  … Now this addition to Mrs Besant's nomination could simply have been ignored. For whether or not one believes that the Masters genuinely appeared in this case, the source of Olcott's advice has no relevance to the members casting their vote in accordance with the Statutes. Whether he was advised by the Masters or by some ordinary mortals is his business alone. The voters have to adhere to the Statutes and solely ask themselves whether or not they consider Mrs Besant to be the right choice. An immediate difficulty arose, however, through the fact that Mrs Besant announced that she had been called upon by her Master to accept her nomination and that for this reason she would assume the burden; indeed, that she considered the order from the Masters as decisive in determining the outcome of the election. Objectively that is a disaster … There would have been no reason to write these lines if the affair were not being discussed so much outside Germany. But under the circumstances the readers of this journal can rightly demand that it should not keep silent about a matter which is the subject of so much debate elsewhere.”
• 17. C. W. Leadbeater (see Lecture 6, Note 6) left the Theosophical Society in 1906 after the emergence of serious differences between him and the Society. But in 1909 he was re-admitted by Annie Besant, despite her earlier condemnation of his methods.
• 18. The person concerned is James Ingall Wedgwood. See Emily Lutyens, Candles in the Sun. London 1957.

During the re-founding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923, Rudolf Steiner also reconstituted the “Esoteric School” which had originally functioned in Germany from 1904 until 1914, when the outset of the First World War made it's continuance impossible.

However, the original school was only for a relatively few selected individuals, whereas the new school was incorporated into the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

Rudolf Steiner was only able to give nineteen lessons – plus seven “recapitulation” lessons – for the First Class before his illness and death. His intention had been to develop three classes. After his death, the Anthroposophical Society's Executive Council was faced with the dilemma of what to do about the Esoteric School – to try to continue it without Rudolf Steiner, or not. He had not designated a successor. And what to do with the stenographic records of the Class lectures.

Rudolf Steiner had always insisted that the lectures were not to be published. In fact the members of the School were only permitted to copy the mantra—and not the text of the lectures—for their own personal contemplation. The dilemma was further complicated by the dispute between Marie Steiner – Rudolf Steiner's legal heir – and the rest of the Executive council, which claimed all of Steiner's lectures for the Society. (The dispute was eventually settled by the Swiss courts in favor of Mrs Steiner.)

The Anthroposophical Society was permitted to hand out manuscripts of the lectures to its so-called designated “readers”, who read each lecture to the members of the school in their particular area or country. This system is still practiced.

Marie Steiner wrote:

How can we preserve the treasure with which we have been entrusted? Not by hiding it away, thereby simply giving our enemies the opportunity to do with it what they will, but by trusting in the good spiritual powers and thereby giving new generations the possibility of receiving a stimulus in their souls that will kindle the spiritual light slumbering there, a light that will awaken in their souls what the powers of destiny have sown in them.”

Marie Steiner, letter of January 4, 1948

The lectures were published in German in manuscript book form in 1977 by the Rudolf Steiner Estate (Nachlassverwaltung – Marie Steiner's legal successor) in a limited edition and sold only upon written request to anthroposophists.

However, pirated editions containing errors and falsifications occurred to the extent that the Rudolf Steiner Estate decided to make the printed volumes in German generally available in 1992.

As far as we know, the lectures in English translation are appearing in public availability for the first time here in Southern Cross Review.

Frank Thomas Smith - Editor