Rudolf Steiner E-Book

Johannes Hemleben

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 234

Beschreibung

Rudolf Steiner's legacy is remarkable. Around the world, thousands of initiatives have been built up around his inspiration and thought, including Steiner Waldorf schools, special education establishments, medical clinics, biodynamic farms, cultural centres, and much more. At the core of this outer work stands the scientific and spiritual path which Steiner called anthroposophy - a philosophy and method which he expounded and developed throughout his life. Hemleben's concise yet informative biography throws a clear light on Steiner's life and his numerous struggles and achievements. Beginning with Steiner's childhood, Hemleben guides us through his youthful years as a respected Goethean scholar and philosopher in Weimar; his work in the Theosophical Society and the later establishing of the Anthroposophical Society; the development of anthroposophy as a spiritual science; the creation of spiritual initiatives in art, the social sciences, education, medicine, agriculture, religion and architecture; the important Christmas Foundation Conference, and his eventual death in 1925. Hemleben's biography - seen by many as the finest account of Steiner's life and work - includes a chronology, personal tributes, an extensive section for further reading, as well as an index. It is also profusely illustrated, with 69 pictures and photographs.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER

An Illustrated Biography

RUDOLF STEINER

An Illustrated Biography

Johannes Hemleben

SOPHIA BOOKS

Sophia BooksHillside House, The Square,Forest Row, E. SussexRH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Sophia Books 2012An imprint of Rudolf Steiner Press

First published in English by Henry Goulden Ltd. 1975Translated by Leo TwymanOriginally published in German by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag 1963

© Rowohlt Verlag GmbH 1963This revised translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted under theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the priorpermission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 285 4

Cover by Andrew Morgan DesignTypeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks

Contents

PREFACE

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

Neudörfl

Wiener-Neustadt

Vienna

Karl Julius Schröer

Steiner as a Private Tutor

RUDOLF STEINER THE GOETHE SCHOLAR

Weimar

Gabriele Reuter

Anna Eunike

Haeckel and Nietzsche

STRIVING FOR PERCEPTION IN THE WEIMAR PERIOD

‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM’

BERLIN 1897-1900

The Turning Point

FROM THEOSOPHY TO ANTHROPOSOPHY

West-East Aphorisms

ANTHROPOSOPHY

The Development of Anthroposophy as a Spiritual Science (1902-1909)

Theosophy

How to Know Higher Worlds

An Outline of Esoteric Science

CHRISTOLOGY

ANTHROPOSOPHY IN ART

The Mystery Dramas

The First Goetheanum

Eurythmy

Speech Formation

LECTURING ACTIVITIES—THE FIRST WORLD WAR

THE THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER (1918-1921)

THE STEINER WALDORF EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENT (1919-1924)

MEDICINE (1920-1924)

EDUCATION FOR SPECIAL NEEDS

AGRICULTURE

THE FOUNDING OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY (1921-1922)

THE FINAL YEARS

1922

1923

The Christmas Foundation Conference

1924/25

POSTSCRIPT

CHRONOLOGY

SOME TRIBUTES

FURTHER READING

Basic Books on Anthroposophy by Rudolf Steiner

Selection of Lectures by Rudolf Steiner

Selection of Books by Other Authors

PREFACE

Immortal—as yet unborn—only one who understands both these states will understand eternity.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner’s Autobiography*, most of which he dictated from his sickbed in the last months of his life, under the title of Mein Lebensgang, has surprisingly little to say about the private side of his life. All the more care, however, does he devote to the account of the objective development of his striving for knowledge, starting from the early awakening of his interest in geometry and Copernicanism, passing on to the study of Kant, and ending with his experience of the meditative life as a fully mature man. He believed that it was presumptuous, and not to the purpose, to give an account of his private and personal experiences.

For it was my constant endeavour to present what I had to say, and what I believed I should do, in such a way as to stress objective rather than personal aspects. While I have always believed that in many fields it is the personality that most gives colour and substance to human activities, still it appears to me that this personal element must find expression in speech and action, not through the contemplation of one’s own personality. Whatever may emerge from this contemplation is a matter about which an individual has to come to an understanding with himself.

Steiner’s reticence about his personal experience serves to bring into sharper focus the objective circumstances of his life.

* Autobiography. Chapters from the Course of my Life, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, 2000.

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

Rudolf Steiner was born at the frontier between central and eastern Europe. He himself looked upon it as something more than chance that he should have been born there. His birth to Austrian parents at Kraljevec (which is now in Croatia but was then in Hungary near its border with the Austrian empire) assumed for him symbolic significance. This east-west polarity held him in a state of tension which was to remain with him throughout his life.

‘Both my father and my mother were true children of the glorious forestlands of Lower Austria, north of the Danube.’ Right up to our time, this remote region has remained to a great extent shielded from the destructive influences of civilization. Here his father was employed as a gamekeeper in the service of a count. The desire to establish a family led him to change his occupation.

So he gave up his post as gamekeeper and became a telegraphist on the Austrian railway. His first post was at a small station in southern Styria. Next he was transferred to Kraljevec on the Hungarian-Croatian border. It was at this time that he married my mother. Her maiden name is Blie. She comes of an old-established family of Horn. I was born at Kraljevec on 27 February 1861—So it comes about that my birthplace is far distant from the corner of the earth to which I rightly belong.

Two days after his birth Rudolf Steiner received Roman Catholic baptism in the neighbouring village.

The child remained in Kraljevec for only one and a half years. After six months in Mödling near Vienna his father was transferred once more, this time to Pottschach station on the Semmering line—which for those days was a technological marvel. This was where the boy spent his childhood from his second to his eighth year. To the end of his life Rudolf Steiner looked to that period with joy and gratitude.

The scenes amidst which I passed my childhood were marvellous. The prospect embraced the mountains linking Lower Austria with Styria: Schneeberg, Wechsel, Raxalpe, Semmering. The bald rockface of the Schneeberg caught the sun’s rays, which, when they were projected on to the little station on fine summer days, were the first intimation of the dawn. The grey ridge of the Wechsel made a sombre contrast.

The green prospects which welcomed the observer on every side made it seem as if the mountains were thrusting upwards of their own volition. The majestic peaks filled the distance, and the charm of nature lay all around.

In these words Rudolf Steiner describes the natural scenes that he knew in his childhood. Against this has to be set the fact that the milieu in which he grew up was largely the product of his father’s occupation. The family, to which in course of time a brother and a sister were added, lived in the station house, directly in front of which ran the railway track. The arrival and departure of the trains, the ringing of the signals, the mechanical rattle of the telegraph, created the atmosphere and divided up the day.

At that time, of course, trains were few and far between in this part of the world; but when they did come, usually there were some of the village folk who had time on their hands assembled at the station, looking for diversion in a life which otherwise they apparently found too monotonous. The schoolmaster, the parson, the steward of the estate, and often the mayor, put in an appearance.

The arrival, say, of a certain train from Vienna was the daily event that drew the leading lights together and stirred the children into activity.

It was against this background that from his earliest years the young Rudolf Steiner became aware of the polarity of nature and technology. He experienced the healing virtues of unspoilt nature, and at the same time felt the attraction of the growing power of technology.

I believe that my childhood in such an environment was an important influence on my life. For the mechanical aspects of this life engaged my interest in a compelling manner. And I am aware of how again and again these interests cast a shadow over the emotive side of my childish being, which was drawn towards nature, at once so gracious and so vast, into which, for all their enslavement to the mechanical arts, these railway trains always vanished.

Two further childhood influences were school and church, the schoolmaster and the parson. After a difference of opinion with the village schoolmaster, who it seems was none too competent, his father took on the task of educating the young Steiner.

‘And so for hours together I sat beside him at his desk, where I was supposed to write and read while he proceeded with his duties.’ Not surprisingly, nothing much came of this. The boy gave much more attention to what was going on on the railway than to the toil demanded by his first attempts at writing. He was interested in handling the pounce box and sharpening the quills—less so in the beauty of the letters he had formed. But he also retained in his memory one human figure. The priest from the neighbouring village of St Valentin visited the Steiner family almost daily. He was an eccentric, and at the same time ‘representative of the liberal catholic clergy, tolerant and affable. He was witty, liked cracking jokes, and enjoyed seeing people laugh’. He was knowledgeable on the subject of dumplings and baking recipes. He was caustically critical of the institutions of his own church, so that he radiated an atmosphere in which the traditional religious attitudes melted away. But his criticism was tinged with humour, without fanatical bitterness, and he left the traditional forms of the church to do their work. Zeal for reform was far from the mind of this lovable Austrian.

Neudörfl

When the boy was coming up to eight, the Steiner family moved from Pottschach to Neudörfl, a small Hungarian village an hour’s journey from Wiener-Neustadt. This move brought the young Rudolf Steiner considerably closer to modern civilization. The Alps, and the wooded landscape which lay before them, once so near and so dear to him, withdrew into the distance and were now no more than the backdrop on the horizon. The Rosalien-Gebirge, on whose slopes Neudörfl lies, was a reminder of the wooded paradise that he had lost. This range of wooded hills lies, a kindly, sheltering screen, before one comes to Hungary and its wide steppes.

Seen from the top of the Rosalien-Gebirge, the Vienna basin extends in a wide vista, in the foreground of which can be seen the industrial centre of Wiener-Neustadt, not very large but humming with intense activity.

To the growing boy these woods were a blessing.

For in the woods there were blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. Often it gave one a sense of deep satisfaction to spend an hour and a half gathering a contribution to the family’s evening meal, which otherwise would have consisted merely of a slice of bread and butter or bread and cheese for each.

Half-an-hour on foot from Neudörfl is Sauerbrunn, where there is a spring with carbonated chalybeate mineral water. The road to it follows the railway, part of the way through beautiful woods. In the school holidays I used to go there early every morning, carrying a Blutzer. This is a clay water pitcher. Mine held about 3 to 4 litres. There was no charge for filling it at the spring. The family drank the pleasant-tasting, sparkling water at the midday meal.

Clearly, Rudolf Steiner grew up in simple circumstances—austere and healthy. There is no hint in his boyhood of any softening or pampering influences. He describes the economic situation of his parents as a ‘struggle against the poor wages of such minor railway officials’, adding that they ‘were always willing to spend their last coppers on whatever would benefit their children, but there were not many of these last coppers to be had’.

At Neudörfl the boy attended the village school in the main street of the village. With its low houses and broad layout, it made a strikingly oriental impression.

Between the two rows of houses flowed a brook, and to the sides of the houses were magnificent nut-trees. In relation to these nut-trees the schoolchildren had worked out an order of precedence amongst themselves. When the nuts began to ripen, the boys and girls bombarded the trees with stones and this way gathered a winter store of nuts. In autumn, the talk was almost entirely about the size of the nut harvest each one had gathered. He who had gathered the most was the one most looked up to. The others followed in order of precedence— and last of all came myself, who, as a ‘foreigner’, was not entitled to a place in this order at all.

The railway station, which at the same time was the home of the Steiner family, stands above the village. The church with its surrounding graveyard is halfway up the hill, so that the boy passed the church on his way to school every day. There was an equally close inner relationship between the church and the school. Everything that happened in the school was interrelated with the church. In a single schoolroom, five classes of boys and girls were taught simultaneously, in the way that was customary in village schools in those days. The schoolmaster only seldom made an appearance. His main occupation was as village notary, and he had an assistant master to represent him. In his possession the boy found a geometry book. This was one of the decisive moments of his youth.

I tackled it with enthusiasm. For weeks my mind was full of congruence, the similarity of triangles, quadrangles, polygons; I racked my brains over the problem of where the parallel lines really meet; Pythagoras’ theorem fascinated me. To be able to grasp something purely in my mind brought me inner happiness. / know that it was in the study of geometry that I first found happiness.

It may seem hardly credible that a boy no more than nine years old should be capable of such experiences. But they are typical of Rudolf Steiner, and tell us a great deal about him. There are instances of them throughout his development.

As a child I felt, without of course expressing it to myself clearly, that knowledge of the spiritual world is something to be grasped in the mind in the same way as geometrical concepts. For I was as certain of the reality of the spiritual world as of the physical world. But I needed in some way to justify this assumption. I needed to be able to tell myself that experience of the spiritual world is no more an illusion than knowledge of the physical world. I told myself that geometry was something that only the mind by the exercise of its own powers could grasp; this feeling was my justification for speaking of the spiritual world that I experienced in the same way as I did of the physical world. And that was how I spoke of it. There were two concepts which, though vague, had already become an important part of my mental life before I was eight years old. I distinguished things and essences that ‘one saw’ from those that ‘one did not see’.

He comforted himself with the certainty that there are realities that are invisible. This experience was the light without which he would have remained only dimly aware of the physical world. ‘With his geometry book, the assistant master at Neudörfl gave me the justification I needed at that time for my view of the spiritual world.’

Further, this assistant master awakened in him an interest in the arts.

He played the violin and the piano. And he drew a great deal. Both these accomplishments attracted me towards him. At the age of no more than nine, he had me making charcoal drawings.

The assistant master was also church organist and custodian of the vestments and the other church ornaments and utensils; he assisted the priest in everything connected with the administration of the rites. We schoolboys served at the altar and sang in the choir at masses, requiems, and funerals. My boyish mind was attuned to the solemn Latin and the church ceremonial. Through my active participation in church affairs up to the age of ten I was often in the company of the priest, whom I esteemed very highly.

Reflecting on my boyhood at Neudörfl, I was struck by the way in which the combination of church ceremony and sacred music compellingly evokes for our contemplation the enigmas of existence. The study of the bible, and the teaching of the catechism by the priest made less of an impression on my mind than his performance of the rites as mediator between the natural and the supernatural world. From the very beginning this was to me no mere form, but a profound experience, the more so as in this respect I stood alone at home, in my parents’ house.

At home there was nothing to foster my relationship with the church. My father took no interest in it. At that time he was a ‘free-thinker’.

The fact that his father was a ‘free-thinker’ did not prevent the boy from receiving confirmation.

Opposite the school was the presbytery. Here lived the priest, who was responsible for the supervision of the lessons and who also gave religious instruction twice a week.

The image of this man is deeply engraved in my mind.... Of the people I had got to know up to my tenth or eleventh year, he was by far the most significant.

Moreover, it is to this priest that I owe in very great measure the intellectual leanings that I developed later, and one powerful impression especially remains with me. One day he came into the school, assembled the ‘more mature’ pupils, in whose number he included me, in the little master’s study, unfolded a drawing he had made, and explained the Copernican system to us with reference to it. He was very clear on the subject of the earth’s movement round the sun, the rotation of the axis, the inclined axis of the earth, summer and winter, and the zones of the earth. I found the subject quite absorbing, spent days making drawings to illustrate it, then received further special instruction from the priest about eclipses of the sun and moon, and from then on concentrated all my intellectual curiosity on the subject.

Wiener-Neustadt

From the age of eleven Steiner attended the modern school (Realschule) in neighbouring Wiener-Neustadt. He now had to travel to school every day by railway. But it was often impossible to make the journey because the line was out of operation or because the connections were bad. The journey then had to be made on foot. Neudörfl was in Hungary, Wiener-Neustadt in Lower Austria. Between them flowed the Leitha, the river that marked the border. So every day Rudolf Steiner had to cross from Hungary to Austria and back. In fine weather this meant one hour’s travel. But in winter the railway and footpath were often completely snowed up. Then the boy would have to make his way laboriously through knee-deep snow. Sometimes his sister would meet him at the outskirts of the village and relieve him of his heavy school satchel. In old age he did not regret the heavy demands made on his physical strength in his youth. He believed that it was to this that he owed his good health later in life. Town life faced him with problems. However close he felt to life in the woods and fields, however secure he felt in the realm of mathematics and pure speculation, in the external world, in the bustle of the city streets, he stood helpless. ‘I stood bemused, wondering what was going on in the houses that stood row upon row.’ This problem of achieving the same rapport with town life as with his inner world was to exercise him for the next two decades.

The subject that made most impression on him at the modern school was mathematics. He came into possession of an essay by his headmaster (Heinrich Schramm) in a school report, entitled ‘The force of attraction considered as an effect of movement’. Of course he was without the acquired knowledge which he needed in order to understand a work the chief basis of which was integral calculus. Unflagging effort, combined with the ordinary school lessons, enabled him within a short time to overcome this difficulty. There were two teachers who gave him considerable help in his pursuit of these studies: Laurenz Jelinek, physicist and mathematician, and Georg Kosak, teacher of geometry. Through guidance, and through studying assiduously on his own, this boy of twelve or thirteen years acquired considerable knowledge of descriptive geometry and of probability calculus. He himself speaks of his ‘infatuation with geometry’ at this time.

Kosak was for him a teacher

who truly embodied the ideal that my mind suggested to me. He was one whom I could seek to emulate. His method of instruction was extremely systematic and clear. Starting from the principles, he built up the argument with such clarity that in following him the capacity for thinking derived the utmost benefit.

Steiner’s abilities did not go unrecognized by the school authorities, so that

from the fourth class onwards he received a mark for descriptive geometry and drawing that was never otherwise awarded. The highest commendation, which was very hard to achieve, was ‘excellent’—he was commended as ‘outstanding’.

It may truly be asserted without boasting that at sixteen or seventeen the boy had progressed to a point where he had absorbed such of the works of Kant as had been published by the Reclamsche Universal-Bibliothek.

The study of philosophy opened up a new world for him.

This was the time when the Reclamsche Universal-Bibliothek was for the first time bringing out popular editions of learned works which had hitherto been inaccessible to the public at large. In his straitened financial circumstances, this was a great boon to the intellectual aspirations of young Rudolf Steiner. Thus, when no more than fourteen years of age he was able to acquire Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Because his teacher’s history lessons bored him and he needed his free time for his homework, he took his school history book apart and ‘pasted neatly between its pages those of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason’. And so during school lessons he industriously and thoroughly studied the works of Kant.

At the same time this boy, who was trained to think with mathematical clarity and for whom well-ordered, lucid thoughts were a condition of his very existence, ‘was seeking to reconcile this brand of thinking with religious dogma’. Because he never had the least reason to doubt the existence and effectual working of a spiritual world, he lived without opposition and with true devotion to the dogmas of the church, knowledge of which was available to him through good textbooks on dogma, symbolism, and ecclesiastical history.

For self-evident reasons, in order ‘to contribute at least a little of what my parents had to pay out of their meagre income for my schooling’, from the age of fifteen onwards Rudolf Steiner gave private tuition, ‘either to fellow pupils in the same year as himself, or to pupils in a lower class. I owe a great deal to this tuition work’.

But this was not all. Because his father wished him to become an engineer, he had attended a modern school (Realschule) and not a grammar school (Gymnasium) and so lacked any knowledge of the classical languages. He found this a grievous deprivation. ‘And so I bought myself Latin and Greek textbooks and quite secretly pursued a course of private classical studies in addition to my modern education.’ Later, as a student, he was able, thanks to this self-study, to coach grammar-school boys in the classical languages.

In 1879, at the age of eighteen, he passed his school-leaving examination. His school-leaving certificate is still kept at the school. It reads: ‘Entry in respect of school-leaver Steiner, Rudolf, from Kraljevec in Hungary, born 27 February 1861, son of Johann Steiner, station master at Neudörfl on the Südbahn, catholic, commenced his schooling in school year 1872/3 at the modern school at Wiener-Neustadt and completed it in all classes in the school year 1878/79. His behaviour was exemplary. His report reads: “Passed with distinction“.’

Vienna

In order that his son could study at the Vienna Polytechnic, the elder Steiner had arranged for a transfer from Neudörfl to Inzersdorf near Vienna.

This can hardly have meant an advancement in his career. As regards the environment it was a change very much for the worse. It would be hard to find a more desolate spot in the whole of Austria. ‘The station was far from the village, solitary in a landscape without charm.’ Today, sidings and a repair workshop are features of the scene. Gone are the woodland paradises of Pottschach and the Rosalien-Gebirge. But the opportunities for study are there. In the autumn of 1879 Rudolf Steiner entered the Technical University of Vienna. He read biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. It seemed as if his father’s dream that he should become an engineer was to come true. But the reality was to be otherwise.

Between passing out of school and commencing his advanced studies Rudolf Steiner, by selling his school books, had been able to acquire a number of works of the great philosophers of German idealism. From Kant and his painstakingly evolved theory of knowledge he now turned his attention to Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and their pupils, and already even to Darwin.

Fichte’s ‘philosophy of the Ego’ is the one great human theme whose echoes resound throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche, took up this theme and made their response to it without achieving any general measure of agreement. ‘The destiny of Man’, his self-determination and his dependence on the universe, is here the question that is insistently raised. Man’s Ego, the spiritual core of his being, puts him in a special category in relation to all other forms of existence. What is his mission, what part is he to play in the natural order of things? These are the questions which Rudolf Steiner confronted round about his twentieth year.

My preoccupation with the concepts of natural science had led me finally to a position in which I saw the activity of the human Ego as the only possible point from which to advance towards true knowledge. I put it to myself that when the Ego is in action and contemplates its own activity, then a spiritual entity is directly present in the consciousness.

In order to come to a clearer understanding of his own intellectual position and to define the points at which he agreed with and differed from Fichte’s theory of knowledge, he took it a page at a time ‘and rewrote it’.

Before, I had cudgelled my brains in an attempt to find concepts for natural phenomena and on the basis of them to develop a concept for the Ego. I now proposed to reverse this procedure and, starting from the Ego, to penetrate into the workings of nature. At that time I saw spirit and nature as two quite distinct opposites. For me, a world of spiritual entities existed. It was by direct perception that I was aware that the Ego, itself spirit, exists in a spiritual world. But there was no place for nature in the spiritual world of my experience.

In this confession, Rudolf Steiner once again touches on the cardinal point of his own spiritual development. In this, unlike modern man, to him the world of spirit is not a problem, a country to which entry is barred. For him, the riddle whose solution was fraught with difficulties was the natural world, and how to live in it.

Even in childhood Steiner had displayed powers of clairvoyance which left him in no doubt that ‘behind’ and ‘above’ the world of the senses there is a spiritual world. Thus, from early on the problem for him was, not: ‘Is there a spiritual world?’ but: ‘How are the physical world and the spiritual world related to each other?’

At that time I felt it my bounden duty to seek the truth through the medium of philosophy. I was committed to the study of mathematics and science. I was convinced that I could never stand in a proper relationship to them unless I could rest their results on a secure philosophical foundation. But to me there was a spiritual world which was reality. The spiritual individuality of each and every person was revealed to me with the utmost clarity. The physical body, and activity in the physical world, were merely its revelation. It was united with what came as a physical embryo from the parents. I followed the man who had died into the spiritual world.