The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I.

Very early on, I was drawn to Kant. Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, I studied Kant very intensively, and before I went to university in Vienna, I studied Kant's orthodox successors very intensively, from the beginning of the 19th century, who have been completely forgotten by the official history of science in Germany and are hardly ever mentioned anymore. Then I began to study Fichte and Schelling in depth. During this time—and this already is related to external occult influences—the idea of time became completely clear to me. This realization had no connection with my studies and was derived entirely from occult life. It was the realization that there is a backward-going evolution that interferes with the forward-going one—the occult-astral. This realization is the condition for spiritual vision.¹

Then came the acquaintance with the agent of the Masters.

Then an intensive study of Hegel.

Then the study of more recent philosophy as it developed in Germany from the 1850s, particularly of so-called epistemology in all its ramifications.

My childhood passed without anyone outwardly intending to do so, so that I never encountered a person with a superstition; and when someone around me spoke of things of superstition, it was never without a strongly emphasized rejection. I did get to know the church cultus, as I was drafted into the cultic acts as a so-called altar boy, but nowhere, not even with the priests did I get to know any true piety and religiosity. Instead, certain dark sides of the Catholic clergy kept coming to my attention.

I did not meet the Master immediately.², but first one of his emissaries,³ who was completely initiated into the secrets of the effectiveness of all plants and their connection with the cosmos and with human nature. For him, dealing with the spirits of nature was something natural, which he presented without enthusiasm, but which aroused all the more enthusiasm.

My official studies were directed towards mathematics, chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, mineralogy and geology. These studies offered a much more secure foundation for a spiritual world view than, for example, history or literature, which, in the absence of a specific method and also without significant prospects in the German scientific community at the time, were left without a secure footing.

During my first years at university in Vienna, I met Karl Julius Schröer. At first, I attended his lectures on the history of German literature since Goethe's first appearance, on Goethe and Schiller, on the history of German literature in the 19th century, on Goethe's “Faust”. I also took part in his “exercises in oral presentation and written presentation”. This was a unique college course based on the model of Uhland's institution at the University of Tübingen.⁴ Schröer came from German language research, had conducted significant studies on German dialects in Austria, he was a researcher in the style of the Brothers Grimm and in literary research, an admirer of Gervinus. He was previously director of the Viennese Protestant schools. He is the son of the poet and extraordinarily meritorious pedagogue Christian Oeser. At the time I got to know him, he was turning entirely to Goethe. He has written a widely read commentary o n Goethe's Faust and on Goethe's other dramas as well. He completed his studies at the German universities of Leipzig, Halle and Berlin before the decline of German idealism. He was a living embodiment of the noble German education. The person was attracted to him. I soon became friends with him and was then often in his house. With him it was like an idealistic oasis in the dry materialistic German educational desert. In the external life, this time was filled with the nationality struggles in Austria. Schröer himself was far removed from the natural sciences.

But I myself had been working on Goethe's scientific studies since the beginning of 1880.

Then Joseph Kürschner founded the comprehensive work Deutsche Nationalliteratur (German National Literature), for which Schröer edited the Goethean dramas with introductions and commentaries. Kürschner entrusted me with the edition of Goethe's scientific writings on Schröer's recommendation.

Schröer wrote a preface for it, through which he introduced me to the literary public.

Within this collection, I wrote introductions to Goethe's botany, zoology, geology and color theory.

Anyone reading these introductions will already be able to find the theosophical ideas in the guise of a philosophical idealism.

It also includes an examination of Haeckel.

My 1886 work is a philosophical supplement to this: Epistemologie.

Then I was introduced to the circles of Viennese theological professors through my acquaintance with the Austrian poetess M. E. delle Grazie, who had a paternal friend in Professor Laurenz Müllner. Marie Eugenie delle Grazie has written a great epic “Robespierre” and a drama “Shadow”.

At the end of the 1880s, I became an editor at the Deutsche Wochenschrift in Vienna for a short time. This gave me the opportunity to study the national psyche of the various Austrian nationalities in depth. The guiding thread for an intellectual cultural policy had to be found.

In all of this, there was no question of publicly promoting occult ideas. And the occult powers behind me gave me only one piece of advice: “All in the guise of idealistic philosophy”.

At the same time, I had more than fifteen years of experience as an educator and private teacher.

My first contact with Viennese theosophical circles at the end of the 1880s had no lasting external effect.

During my last months in Vienna, I wrote my little pamphlet Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetic.

Then I was called to the then newly established Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar to edit Goethe's scientific writings. I did not have an official position at this archive; I was merely a contributor to the great “Sophie Edition” of Goethe's works.

My next goal was to provide the foundation of my world view, purely philosophically. This took place in the two works:

Truth and Science and Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.

The Goethe and Schiller Archives were visited by a large number of scholars and literary figures, as well as other personalities from Germany and abroad. I got to know some of these personalities better because I soon became friends with the director of the Goethe and Schiller Archives, Prof. Bernhard Suphan, and visited his house a lot. Suphan invited me to many private visits that he received from visitors to the archive. It was on one of these occasions that I met Treitschke.

I formed a deeper friendship with the German mythologist Ludwig Laistner, author of Riddle of the Sphinx, who died soon after.

I had repeated conversations with Herman Grimm, who told me a lot about his uncompleted work, a History of German Imagination.

Then came the Nietzsche period. Shortly before, I had even written about Nietzsche in a hostile sense.

My occult powers indicated to me that I should subtly allow the current of thought to flow in the direction of the truly spiritual. One does not arrive at knowledge by wanting to impose one's own point of view absolutely, but rather by immersing oneself in foreign currents of thought.

Thus I wrote my book on Nietzsche by placing myself entirely in Nietzsche's point of view. It is perhaps for this very reason the most objective book on Nietzsche in Germany. Nietzsche as an anti-Wagnerian and an anti-Christian is also fully represented.

For some time I was now considered the most unconditional “Nietzschean”.

At that time the “Society for Ethical Culture” was founded in Germany. This society wanted a morality with complete indifference to all world views—A complete construct and an educational hazard. I wrote a pointed article against this foundation in the weekly Die Zukunft.

The result was sharp replies. And my previous study of Nietzsche led to the publication of a pamphlet against me:

Nietzsche-Narren (Nietzsche Fool).

The occult point of view demands: “No unnecessary polemics” and “Avoid defending yourself where you can”.

I calmly wrote my book, Goethes Weltanschauung (Goethe's World View), which marked the end of my Weimar period.

Immediately after my article in Zukunft, Haeckel contacted me. Two weeks later, he wrote an article in Zukunft in which he publicly acknowledged my point of view that ethics can only arise on the basis of a worldview.

Not long after that was Haeckel's 60th birthday, which was celebrated as a great festivity in Jena. Haeckel's friends invited me. That was the first time I saw Haeckel. His personality is enchanting. In person, he is the complete opposite of the tone of his writings. If Haeckel had ever studied philosophy, in which he was not just a dilettante but a child, he would certainly have drawn the highest spiritualistic conclusions from his epoch-making phylogenetic studies.

Now, despite all of German philosophy and despite all of the other German education, Haeckel's phylogenetic thought is the most significant achievement of German intellectual life in the second half of the nineteenth century. And there is no better scientific foundation of occultism than Haeckel's teaching. Haeckel's teaching is great, but Haeckel is the worst commentator on his teaching. It is not by showing Haeckel's contemporaries his weaknesses that one benefits culture, but by presenting to them the greatness of Haeckel's phylogenetic ideas. I did this in the two volumes of my:

Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert (World and Life Views in the 19th Century), which are also dedicated to Haeckel, and in my small work: Haeckel and his opponents.

In Haeckel's phylogeny, only the time of the German intellectual life actually lives; philosophy is in a state of the most desolate infertility, theology is a hypocritical fabric that is not remotely aware of its untruthfulness, and the sciences, despite the great empirical upsurge, have fallen into the most barren philosophical ignorance.

From 1890 to 1897 I was in Weimar.

In 1897 I went to Berlin as editor of the Magazine for Literature. The writings Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert (World and Life Views in the 19th Century) and Haeckel und seine Gegner (Haeckel and his Opponents) already belong to the Berlin period.

My next task was to bring an intellectual current to bear in literature. I placed the Magazin für Literatur at the service of this task. It was a long-established organ that had existed since 1832 and had gone through the most diverse phases.

I led it gently and slowly into esoteric directions. Carefully but clearly: by writing an essay for the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth:

Goethe's Secret Revelation.

which only reflected what I had already hinted at in a public lecture in Vienna about Goethe's fairy tale of the “green snake and the beautiful lily”.

It was only natural that a circle of readers should gradually gather around the trend I had inaugurated in the Magazin. They did gather, but not quickly enough for the publisher to see any financial prospects in the venture. I wanted to give a literary trend in young literature an intellectual foundation, and I was actually in the most lively contact with the most promising representatives of this trend. But on the one hand I was abandoned; on the other hand, this direction soon either sank into insignificance or into naturalism.

Meanwhile, contact with the working class had already been established. I had become a teacher at the Berlin Workers' Education School. I taught history and natural science. My thoroughly idealistic method of teaching history and my way of teaching soon became both appealing and understandable to the workers. My audience grew. I was called to give a lecture almost every evening.

Then the time came when I was able to say, in agreement with the occult forces behind me:

you have philosophically laid the foundation of the world view,
you have shown an understanding of the currents of time by treating them as only a complete adept could treat them;
no one will be able to say: this occultist speaks of the spiritual world because he does not know the philosophical and scientific achievements of the time.

I had now also reached my fortieth year, before the onset of which, in the sense of the masters, no one is allowed to publicly appear as a teacher of occultism.⁵ (Whenever someone teaches earlier, this is an error).

Now I was able to devote myself publicly to Theosophy. The next consequence was that, at the urging of certain leaders of German socialism, a general assembly of the Workers' Educational School was convened to decide between Marxism and me. But the ostracism did not decide against me. At the general assembly, it was decided with all of them against only four votes to keep me as a teacher.

But intimidation from the leaders caused me to resign after three months. In order not to compromise themselves, they wrapped the matter up in the pretext that I was too busy with the Theosophical movement to have enough time for the labor school in.

From the very beginning of my theosophical work, Miss v. Sivers was at my side. She also personally witnessed the last phases of my relationship with the Berlin working class.

II.

Christian Rosenkreutz went to the Orient in the first half of the fifteenth century to find the balance between the initiation of the East and that of the West.⁶ One consequence of this was the definitive establishment of the Rosicrucians in the West after his return. In this form, Rosicrucianism was to be the top secret school for the preparation of what esotericism would have to take on publicly as its task at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when external natural science would have come to a preliminary solution to certain problems.

Christian Rosenkreutz described these problems as follows:

1) The discovery of spectral analysis, whereby the material constitution of the Cosmos was brought to light.
2) The introduction of material evolution into the science of the organic.
3) The realization of the fact of a state of consciousness other than the ordinary one through the recognition of hypnotism and suggestion.

Only when these material discoveries have been fully assimilated by science, should certain Rosicrucian principles be passed on from the realm of esoteric science to the public.

For the time being, the Christian-mystical initiation was given to the West in the form in which it was given by the initiator, the “Unknown from the Oberland”. ⁷ erfloss in St. Victor, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, etc.

The initiation of Manes is seen as a “higher degree” within this entire stream.⁸ In 1459, Christian Rosenkreutz also received his initiation: it consists in the true knowledge of the function of evil. This initiation, with its underlying reasons, must remain hidden from the masses for a long time to come. For wherever even the smallest ray of light from it has found its way into literature, it has wrought disaster, as through the noble Guyau, whose disciple was Friedrich Nietzsche.

III.

FYI: It cannot be said directly in this form yet.⁹

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky and H. S. Olcott. This first foundation had a distinctly Western character. And also the writing “Isis Unveiled”, in which Blavatsky published a great many occult truths, has a distinctly Western character. However, it must be said that the great truths communicated in this writing are often distorted and caricatured. It is as if a harmonious countenance were to appear completely distorted in a convex mirror. The things said in Isis are true, but the way in which they are said is an irregular reflection of the truth. This is due to the fact that the truths themselves are inspired by the great initiates of the West, who are also the initiators of Rosicrucian wisdom. The distortion stems from the inappropriate way in which these truths were absorbed by the soul of H. P. Blavatsky. For the educated world, this very fact should have been proof of the higher source of inspiration for these truths. For no one could have had these truths through themselves, and yet presented them in such a distorted way. Because the initiators of the West saw how little chance they had of the flow of spiritual wisdom into humanity in this way, they decided to drop the matter in this form for the time being. But once the gate was open, Blavatsky's soul was prepared to receive spiritual wisdom. The eastern initiators were able to take hold of it. These eastern initiators initially had the very best of intentions. They saw how humanity was heading towards the terrible danger of a complete materialization of the way of thinking through Anglo-Americanism. They, the Eastern Initiators, wanted to instill their form of anciently preserved spiritual knowledge into the Western world. Under the influence of this current, the Theosophical Society took on an Eastern character, and under the same influence, Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” and Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” were inspired. But both became distortions of the truth again. Sinnett's work distorts the high revelations of the initiators through an inadequate philosophical intellectualism carried into it, and Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” through their own chaotic soul.

The result of this was that the initiators, including the Eastern ones, increasingly withdrew their influence from the official Theosophical Society, and that this became a playground for all kinds of occult powers that distorted the high cause. There was a brief episode in which Annie Besant, through her pure, lofty way of thinking and living, came into the initiators' current. But this little episode came to an end when Annie Besant surrendered to the influence of certain Indians who, under the influence of German philosophers in particular, developed a grotesque intellectualism, which they interpreted wrongly. That was the situation when I myself was faced with the necessity of joining the Theosophical Society. It had been founded by true initiates and therefore, although subsequent events have given it a certain imperfection, it is for the time being an instrument for the spiritual life of the present. Its beneficial further development in Western countries depends entirely on the extent to which it proves capable of incorporating the principle of Western initiation under its influence. For the Eastern initiations must necessarily leave untouched the Christ principle as the central cosmic factor of evolution. Without this principle, however, the theosophical movement would have to remain without a decisive influence on Western cultures, which have the Christ life at their starting point. The revelations of Oriental initiation would have to present themselves in the West as a sect alongside living culture. They could only hope to succeed in evolution if they eradicated the Christ principle from Western culture. But this would be identical with extinguishing the very purpose of the earth, which lies in the knowledge and realization of the intentions of the living Christ. To reveal this in its full wisdom, beauty and truth is the deepest goal of Rosicrucianism. Regarding the value of Eastern wisdom as a subject of study, only the opinion can exist that this study is of the highest value because the Western peoples have lost the sense of esotericism, but the Eastern peoples have retained it. But regarding the introduction of the right esotericism in the West, there should also only be the opinion that this can only be the Rosicrucian-Christian one, because it also gave birth to Western life, and because by losing it, humanity would deny the meaning and purpose of the Earth. Only in this esotericism can the harmony of science and religion flourish, while any fusion of Western knowledge with Eastern esotericism can only produce such barren bastards as Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” is. One can schematically represent the correct path:

Original revelation -> Evolution through Indian Esotericism -> Christ -> split between Modern scientific materialism AND Esoteric Rosicrucianism -> Synthesis: productive modern Theosophy

the incorrect, of which Sinnett's “Esoteric Buddhism” and Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine are examples:

Original revelation -> Synthesis of Evolution through Indian Esotericism AND Modern scientific materialism of which the Eastern world has not participated = Blavatsky and Sinnett.

Appendix to Part I

From the introduction by Edouard Schuré to his French translation of Rudolf Steiner's work Christianity as Mystical Fact (1908) ¹⁰

At the age of fifteen [eighteen], Rudolf Steiner made the acquaintance of a knowledgeable plant expert who was temporarily staying in his area. What was special about this person was that he not only knew the species, the families and the life of the plants down to the smallest details, but also their secret properties. It was as if he had spent his whole life in conversation with the unconscious and fleeting soul of plants and flowers. He had the gift of seeing the living principle of plants, the etheric body, and what is called in occultism the elemental beings of the plant kingdom. He spoke of it as if it were the most ordinary and natural thing. The calm and sober scientific tone of his conversation only increased the young man's curiosity and admiration. He later learned that this strange man was an emissary of the Master, whom he did not yet know, but who was to become his real initiator and who was already watching over him from afar.

What the whimsical botanist with the second sight had told him, young Steiner found to be entirely consistent with the logic of things. It only confirmed an inner feeling that he had had for a long time and that imposed itself more and more on his mind as the basic law and basis of the great universe: namely, the law of dual currents, which constitutes the movement of the world itself and which could be called the ebb and flow of the life of the universe.

We are all familiar with and aware of the outward current of evolution, which draws all beings of heaven and earth with it, stars, plants, animals, humans, and allows them to move forward into an infinite future, without our being aware of the original force that restlessly propels them forward. However, there is now a countercurrent in the universe that moves in the opposite direction and constantly intervenes in the first current. This is the current of involution, through which the principles, forces, entities and souls that come from the invisible world and the region of the eternal constantly penetrate into the visible reality. No evolution of the material would be comprehensible without this constant involution of the spirit, without this occult astral current, which, with its hierarchy of powerful entities, is the great inspirer of all life. Thus the spirit, which contains the future in its germ, involves itself in matter; matter, which receives the spirit, evolves towards the future. Thus, while we blindly walk towards an unknown future, this future consciously comes towards us, sinking into the course of the world and of man. Such is the dual movement of time, the exhalation and inhalation of the world soul, which comes from eternity and returns to eternity.

From the age of eighteen, the young Steiner had an intuitive sense of this dual current, which is the condition for all spiritual knowledge. The principle of the two currents had revealed itself to him through an involuntary and direct vision of things. From that moment on, he had an undeniable perception of secret powers at work behind and through him to guide him. He listened to what these powers said and followed their beckoning, for he felt himself in deep harmony with them.

However, these kinds of perceptions formed a world of their own in his spiritual life. They were truths for him, appearing as something so deep, mysterious and sacred that he could not imagine ever expressing them in words. He nourished his soul with them as from a divine source, but to let a drop of it flow out would have seemed like a desecration to him.

Alongside this inward, contemplative life, his intellectual and philosophical mind developed most vividly. From the age of 15 to 16, Rudolf Steiner had studied Kant, Fichte and Schelling in depth. When he came to Vienna a few years later, he was enthusiastic about Hegel, whose transcendental idealism leads to the limits of occultism. However, speculative philosophy could not satisfy him. His positive spirit demanded the solid basis that the observational sciences could provide. He therefore studied mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany and zoology in depth. “These studies,” he says, “provide a much more secure basis for a spiritual world view than history and literature. The latter, lacking precise methods, were at that time unable to throw any significant light on the great field of German science.” Full of interest in everything he encountered, enthusiastic about art and poetry, Steiner nevertheless did not neglect the study of literary history. In this field, the literary historian Julius Schröer became an excellent guide for him. He was an outstanding scholar in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm who, above all, strove to cultivate in his students the art of free speech and written expression. The young student owed his extensive literary education to this important man. “In the wilderness of contemporary materialism,” Steiner says, “his house was an oasis of idealism for me.”

Nevertheless, this was not yet the master he was seeking. Amidst the most diverse studies and intensive meditations, he was only able to recognize fragments of the actual structure of the universe; but his innate intuition prevented him from doubting the divine source of things and a spiritual beyond. It is a characteristic sign of this extraordinary man that he never had to go through the crises of doubt and despair that mystics and thinkers on the threshold of a final conviction usually experience. However, he felt that the real light that illuminates and permeates everything had not yet come to him. The youth besieged him with their urgent problems. How should he arrange his life? The sphinx of fate lay before him. How would he solve the question she put to him?

At nineteen, the young neophyte met his guide - the master - an encounter he had long anticipated.

It is a fact confirmed by occult tradition and experience that those who are inspired by a disinterested yearning for the higher truth find a master who initiates them at the appropriate moment, that is, when they are ripe for it. “Knock and it will be opened to you,” says Jesus. This is true for all things, but especially for the truth. But the desire must be as ardent as a flame, as pure as crystal in a soul.

Rudolf Steiner's master was one of those powerful people who live unknown to the world under the mask of some bourgeois profession to fulfill a mission that only their peers in the Brotherhood of “Masters of Renunciation” know. They have no visible effect on human events. The incognito is the condition of their effectiveness, which thereby gains all the more strength. For they awaken, prepare and guide those who act in the open. For the Master, Rudolf Steiner did not have to do much to complete the first, spontaneous initiation of his disciple. He only had to show him how to make use of his own nature to provide him with everything he needed. In a luminous way, he showed him the connection between the external and the secret sciences, the religions and the spiritual forces that are currently contesting the leadership of humanity, as well as the age of the occult tradition that holds the threads of history in its hand, ties them, breaks them and ties them again over the centuries. He quickly led him through the various stages of the inner discipline in order to achieve conscious and rational clairvoyance. In just a few months, the student had been introduced to the incomparable depth and beauty of the esoteric synthesis through oral instruction. Rudolf Steiner had already outlined his spiritual mission: “To combine science with religion, to bring God into science and nature into religion, and thereby to fertilize art and life anew.” But how to approach this tremendous and audacious task? How could he conquer or rather tame and convert the great enemy, modern materialistic science, comparable to a huge armored dragon with a great treasure hoarded? How can we succeed in taming the dragon of modern science to harness it to the chariot of spiritual truth? Above all, how can we conquer the bull of public opinion?

Rudolf Steiner's master was hardly like this. He had none of this deep, almost feminine sensitivity, which, while not excluding energy, turns every touch into an emotional experience and immediately transforms the suffering of another into personal pain. He was a masculine spirit, a natural-born ruler who only looked at the species and for whom individuals hardly mattered. He spared neither himself nor others. His will was like a cannonball that, once it has left the barrel, shoots directly towards its target, sweeping away everything in its path. To his student's concerned questions, he replied something along the lines of:

"If you want to fight the enemy, you must first understand him. You can only conquer the dragon by putting on its skin. You have to take the bull by the horns. You will find your weapons and your comrades-in-arms in the greatest adversity. I have shown you who you are; now go – and be yourself!” ²

Rudolf Steiner knew the language of the masters well enough to sense the difficult path that this command imposed on him; however, he also understood that it was the only means to reach the goal. He obeyed and set out on his journey.

• 1. Cf. Schuré's remarks on p.28; Rudolf Steiner's autobiographical lecture Berlin, February 4, 1913 in “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe” No. 83/84; Lecture Dornach June 14, 1923 in “The History and the Conditions of the Anthroposophical Movement in Relation to the Anthroposophical Society” in GA 258; also Hella Wiesberger “The Biographical Moment of the Discovery of the Concept of Time” and “The Concept of Time as the ‘Basic Nerve’ of the Beginning of Anthroposophical Research” in “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe” Nr. 49/50, S. 15-28. Then came the study of more recent philosophy as it had developed in Germany since the 1950s, especially so-called epistemology in all its ramifications.
• 2. Further details not known.
• 3. Felix Koguzki (Vienna 1833-1909 Trumau). Cf. the autobiographical lecture Berlin, February 4, 1913 in “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe” No. 83, as well as “Mein Lebensgang”, GA 28. Furthermore, Emil Bock “Rudolf Steiner. Studies on his life and work, Stuttgart 1961.
• 4. Cf. Rudolf Steiner's biography of Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862, Tübingen). (section “Politics and Research. University Professor”) in GA 33.
• 5. Näheres in «Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904-1914», GA 264.
• 6. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz” in GA 35 “Philosophy and Anthroposophy 1904-1918”; also in “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz anno 1459”, translated into modern German by Walter Weber, Stuttgart 1957 and Basel 1978. Cf. also “Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity”, GA 130.
• 7. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and Its Relationship to the Modern Worldview” (1901), GA 7; Basel, November 23, 1907 in “Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden” GA 266/1; “Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904-1914”, GA 264, p. 230.
• 8. Cf. Lecture Berlin, November 11, 1904 in “The Legend of the Temple and the Golden Legend” GA 93.
• 9. Regarding the whole of Section III cf. “The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century and its Relation to World Culture”, CW 254; lecture Helsingfors 11 April 1912 in “The Connection of the Human Being with the Elementary World. Kalewala - Olaf Åsteson - Russian folklore. 9
• 10. The complete introduction by Schuré can be found in “Beiträge zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe”, issue no. 42.
• 2. This statement is confirmed by Marie Steiner in the preface to the two lectures she published in 1947 under the title “The Christ Impulse in Historical Development” (Der Christusimpuls im historischen Werdegang): “Lugano, September 17, 1911 and Locarno, September 19, 1911,” now in CW 130. Her preface can be found in Marie Steiner, Collected Writings, Volume I, 'The Anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner', Dornach 1967. In it he states that Rudolf Steiner deliberately set himself the task of 'making himself all the objections that the critical materialist brings to the revelations of the spirit, and to spare nothing that would in the slightest deviate from this line. He called this 'crawling into the dragon's skin'

Translated by Marie Steiner for the twenty-seventh Anniversary and Convention of the Theosophical Society

To the President-Founder, TS: received with much pleasure the Charter of 22nd July, 1902, and made all necessary preparations for the formation of the German Section of the TS. At the general meeting of the 19th and 20th of October this Section was formally constituted, and the Executive Committee chosen. The ten lodges forming our section are: Berlin, Charlottenburg, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hannover, Lugano (Switzerland), Munich, Cassel and Leipzig.

The names of the Executive Committee are:

Dr. Rudolf Steiner, General Secretary (ex-officio), and the Mesdames and Messrs. Henriette von Holten, Julius Engel, Bernard Hubo, Richard Bresch, Dr. HübbeSchleiden, Günther Wagner, Ludwig Deinhard, Bruno Berg, Adolf Kolbe, Gustav Rüdiger, Adolf Oppel, Marie von Sivers and Dr. Noll.

The President of the Leipzig Lodge is issuing the Vâhan. A review, which is to be edited by Dr. Rudolf Steiner under the name of Luzifer, is to appear either on the Ist January or the 1st April.

The books printed in the course of last year were: «The Mystic in the awakening of spiritual life in the new times,» Dr. Rudolf Steiner; «Christianity as a mystical fact,» Dr. Rudolf Steiner; «Goethe’s Faust: a picture of his Esoteric Philosophy,» Dr. Rudolf Steiner; «Occult Psychology,» by Ludwig Deinhard; «Is Death an End?» by B. Hubo, and translations of «Thought Power» and «Evolution of Life and Form,» by Mrs. Besant, and «Fragments of a Faith Forgotten,» by G.R.S. Mead.

Our task for the coming year will be the recruiting of members and an increased activity by writings and lectures in the service of Theosophy, as well as an attempt to introduce Theosophy into the various branches of German spiritual life.

The German Section began its activity with the visit of Mrs. Besant, who gave on 20th October a lecture to the members of the T.S., and on the 21st, another to a large public gathering, upon «Theosophy, its meaning and objects.»

The Rules of the German Section were discussed in the General Meeting and adopted.

The head-quarters of the German Section is in Berlin.

Accept my assurance that I shall work in the service of the Theosophical Society in every way to the utmost of my strength.

Rudolf Steiner,
General Secretary.