General
Renewal
– or Illusion
–
of the
Anthroposophical Society
by Harald Giersch
A lecture held in the Rudolf Steiner School, Villingen – Schwenningen
on 19.01.2005
giving “the reasons why I left the Anthroposophical Society”.
© Achamoth Verlag
Willi Seiss
E: info@achamoth.de
Reproduced with the kind permission* of Harald Giersch and Willi Seiss
Translated by Graham Rickett
*This was sent to me (Joel Wendt) by
a third party (Martin Wacey), and given the nature of the material, I
have set this within my website
without gaining any more direct
permission than its presence in my e-mail box in January of 2010.
Two Introductory Quotations from Ludwig Polzer–Hoditz (1869-1945)
“When Rudolf Steiner saw that the Society could only continue to exist
if he makes the sacrifice of taking over the leadership himself, which
he did at the Christmas Conference 1923/24, he connected his earthly
destiny with the
destiny of an earthly Society. When, shortly after this, a continuation
of his activity on the Earth was made impossible, he died. In the
spiritual world he cannot remain connected with an earthly
organization, and so it became clear that the Anthroposophical movement
has to be carried through the catastrophe by individual pupils of his.
He can reach through to these individual human souls, he can help them,
he can guide them if they are filled with the good will to work in
harmony with his impulse. Communities on the earth will only be able to
form with difficulty, slowly and in accordance with individual karma.
His activity on earth will be kept alive in many different groups and
perhaps continue further in the near future, until forces again begin
to work which are able to unite the groups once more on a universal
basis. An immediate continuation of what only he was able to hold
together in a unity must be recognized to be logically impossible. All
the lamenting over this impossibility has damaged the cause of
Anthroposophy in the world at large. To come to terms with the fact of
the great Teacher’s death and draw the consequences from it would have
been
necessary, and would have caused less harm to his life’s work than to
obdurate refusal to accept and the expectation that some miracle will
happen”
(From “Recollections of Rudolf Steiner”, Dornach 1985).
“The movement is indestructible, “The Society upon Earth is not (…..)
“He (Rudolf Steiner) will, from now on, only guide individual human
beings”. (L. Polzer-Hoditz: “Pictures of Destiny from my time as a
Spiritual Pupil. Thirteen scenes published posthumously”, edited and
introduced by Thomas Meyer, Basel 2000.)
Lecturer’s Introduction
In order to explain the necessity and
the urgency of my lecture I would
like to precede it with an imaginary conversation between someone with
a critical attitude towards the present Anthroposophical Society and
someone who is a member of this Society, which might go as
follows: The critic points to failings and weaknesses of the
Society, which he has observed in the behaviour of members and of the
Vorstand or which he has heard reports of. The defender of the Society
replies somewhat as follows: “I refuse to listen any longer to all this
old nonsense. I feel personally connected with Rudolf Steiner and the
spiritual Goetheanum. The things the people do in Dornach at the
Goetheanum, the earthly centre of the Anthroposophical Society, are of
little concern to me. The main thing is that I remain faithful to the
impulse of the Christmas Conference 1923/24, when the Anthroposophical
Society was newly founded, as a spiritual fact, because it was the will
of Rudolf Steiner to hold this Christmas Conference. All the
quarrelling between the karmic streams ought finally to be consigned to
the past and to the process of “decomposition”. We have more important
things to do at the present time than to worry about the constitutional
question of the juristic existence or
non-existence of the Christmas Conference Society. Let us leave all
this to the eternal mischief-makers who, from dust-laden writing
desks, import their own gall problem into the Anthroposophical
Society”.
An attitude of this kind in defence of the Anthroposophical Society is
possible, it is even universally present among the members, otherwise
the “pseudo-Christmas Conference” of 2002 would not have been able to
take its course in the way it did. And I am also quite sure that here
in this hall there is a majority of Society members whose heartfelt
conviction is echoed in the worlds of our imaginary defender of the
Anthroposophical Society. This was how I myself spoke two years ago. I
fully realize, therefore, that with this subject I am reaching into not
just a wasps’ nest, but at least into a hornet’s nest.
But let us recall the fact that two years ago, at this pseudo-Christmas
Conference, there were four plaintiff groups, who prevented the
intentions of the Vorstand from sailing through unchallenged. I do not
wish to express a judgement on this, as I am not one of the plaintiffs
but in February 2004 a Swiss court of law pronounced in favour of these
plaintiff groups against the Vorstand according to Swiss law of
association. The Vorstand must now pay at least 60,000 Swiss Francs,
because it appealed against the verdict. And now we ask the following
question to the members who defend the Christmas Conference of 2002 by
referring to the “cosmic mystery of the eternal Christmas Conference”
of 1923, with which they feel connected, together with Rudolf Steiner –
with whom they feel themselves in the best of company: Could it be
that, despite my firm conviction that all is well up there in Heaven,
things down here on the earth have unfortunately not gone in the way
they should? Could it be that the Vorstand’s mistaken view in
matters of association law, now exposed in court, needs to be examined
in a quite different way than is possible for a secular court of law in
relation to a Society which understands itself to be esoteric in
nature? For now in the appeal procedure the Vorstand is citing its
“responsibility towards the spiritual
world”. * According to the Members’ Supplement of Das Goetheanum of
5.5.2006 the costs from 2003 to 2005 amounted to SFr.821,315.
And now one would need to inquire whether, in the words of Goethe, it
is the spirit of the ladies and gentlemen in question or whether we
really have to do with the spirit of truth, which is the spirit of
Anthroposophy. But here the four plaintiff groups are open to scrutiny
just as much as anyone who dares to approach this subject. My aim,
therefore, is not to engage in monkish wrangling and dissension, but to
address certain facts which are completely ignored and evaded, and are
even obscured, by the litigating parties in Dornach.
For how would you respond if it were established as a fact that Rudolf
Steiner himself had declared the Christmas Conference a failure? If it
turned out that the object of contention, namely the Christmas
Conference, had long ago evaporated into thin air? If it turned
out that, in place of the facts, a Christmas Conference ideology has
been propagated, which may well provide my soul with a soft pillow of
repose, but which has not more than the name in common with the
Anthroposophy intended by Rudolf Steiner (as little as the C in CDU –
Christian Democratic Union – has in common with Christianity)? If the
teeth, so to speak, had been extracted from
Anthroposophy, and it had been turned into a drawing-room Anthroposophy
which benumbs my sense for reality and truthfulness and makes
impossible for me certain thoughts and deeds? (see lecture of
18.03.1916).
If it should turn out that the cause of Anthroposophy
since Steiner’s death has fallen into the wrong hands, continuously
right up to the present day? – For according to a statement of Rudolf
Steiner: “……..the
possibility exists that those exalted powers which stand at the
beginning of the Anthroposophical movement, are falsely represented.
For it is a normal occurrence in occultism that powers wishing to
pursue their own special interests assume the form of those which
previously gave the actual impulses”
(11.4.1912).
And suppose it were to be discovered that the Heavenly things whose
striving it has always been to be fought out on Earth, and only on
Earth, had been diverted by a comfortable and illusory conception of
the Earth, into an other-worldly consolation provided by the eternal
Christmas Conference and the heavenly Goetheanum? Just as the social
question of the fair sharing of goods between rich and poor demands a
solution on the Earth, and to console the poor with the prospect of
Heaven must be dismissed as hypocritical. With regard to the
situation of the Society today is it not a highly revealing phenomenon
that very many Society members explicitly declined to
concern themselves, even on an elementary level, with the Constitution
question and, uninformed as they were and are, swore a blind oath of
support for the Vorstand’s plans for a socalled new constitution?
Supposing it were established that my personal need for harmony and my
personal good will do not suffice as arguments where questions of
truthfulness here on the Earth are concerned. What have my need for
harmony and my red and blue cards to do with the sword which Michael
would wish to place in my hand, or rather my brow, and the sharpness of
which consists in the demand that I should be truthful? Truthful also
in the way I perceive the history of the Society to which I belong.
Rudolf Steiner stressed repeatedly that the cause of Anthroposophy
stands or falls with truthfulness.
To avoid any misunderstanding I would emphasise that I feel committed
to the cause of Anthroposophy more than ever.
I ask the reader to look upon what follows as an admission of the
mistaken view I have held hitherto with regard to the Anthropophical
Society. In what I say I will try to be guided only by the facts. These
facts are, in part, completely unknown and also very unpleasant.
Only in the last two years have they dawned for me with such clarity.
It would have been dishonest of me not to draw the logical conclusion
from my insights and withdraw from a Society whose necessity I
can no longer acknowledge. I maintain no less than the following: Even
if the Dornach Vorstand had won the case in a Swiss court of law, or
should do so in the future, it would nevertheless be in the wrong from
the standpoint of the spiritual world. I hope to justify this
unheard-of claim in the pages that follow.
One can very quickly correct errors on the physical plane by referring
to the real world. If one wishes to establish proofs on the level of
thought, then one is advised by Steiner to ensure that the thoughts
support one another. My lecture is corroborated by very many sources,
and I will mention these as I speak. With my statements firmly anchored
in this way, you will surely recognize that I am not just speaking out
of the top of my head. And another possible misunderstanding: My
intention is not
to start off a senseless argument. My sometimes sharp-edged
formulations arise from the deep inner concern that I feel, but can
also be justified in terms of the immense importance of the matter
under discussion. To understand what I mean, everyone should answer for
himself the following question: How can an infected wound over which a
skin has formed be healed? Is not the only way, to open up the source
of infection so that it can be cleansed? And this generally requires
the use of a sharp knife.
General Renewal – or
Illusion – of the Anthroposophical Society
I. What were Rudolf Steiner’s intentions with the Christmas Conference?
II. The Failure of the Christmas Conference
III. The Meaninglessness of the New Constitution
IV. The Consequences
V. A comment regarding the Free High School for Spiritual Science in
Dornach.
I. What were Rudolf
Steiner’s Intentions with the Christmas Conference?
To understand this it is advisable to take a closer look at Steiner’s
opening lecture of the Christmas Conference. This lecture was held on
December 24th 1923 starting at 11.15 a.m., in the hall of the carpentry
shop, as the Goetheanum had burnt down a year before, through an act of
arson. In this lecture Rudolf Steiner speaks of the Anthroposophical
movement and the Anthroposophical Society as separate entities.
Steiner would wish now to bring these two distinct phenomena to a new
unity under his own personal leadership: “The Anthroposophical movement
is to have as its sheath the Anthroposophical Society”.
This motif of the drawing together of such contrasting phenomena as are
embodied in the Anthroposophical movement and a sheath that might be
appropriate for it, is one that extends throughout Steiner’s biography
from the very beginning. The process of the drawing together of
movement and Society, very problematic from the beginning, is described
by Steiner in the lecture cycle held in 1923 with the title “The
History and Conditions of the Anthroposophical movement in relation to
the Anthroposophical Society”, and also in many lectures held in
1923. Rudolf Steiner as representative of the Anthroposophical
movement, which has its origin in heavenly realms, tests a number of
forms that are already in existence and have an earthly rigidity of
structure, to see whether they are able to receive the new revelation
that wishes, through him, to descend from heaven to earth. Steiner’s
activity embraces philosophy, Theosophy and Freemasonry. (The latter
cannot be
discussed here owing to lack of time.) The following is a passage from
the inaugural address of the Christmas Conference:
“There has opened up for humanity a revelation of a spiritual reality.
And it is not out of the arbitrariness of earthly will, but in a
beholding of the majestic pictures that have arisen from the spiritual
world as contemporary revelations for the spiritual life of mankind; it
is out of this that the impulse for the Anthroposophical movement has
flowed. This Anthroposophical movement is not an earthly service; it is
in its totality and in all its single aspects a Divine service, a
service of the Gods. And we find the right mood for it when we look
upon it in its entirety as a Divine service of this kind. And as such
we would receive it into our hearts at the beginning of our Conference;
we would inscribe it deep into our hearts, so that this
Anthroposophical movement may unite the soul of each individual who
dedicates himself to it with the primal source, in the spiritual world,
of all that is human, so that this Anthroposophical movement may lead
the human being to that latest illumination, which can provide him with
satisfaction for the present period in the development of humanity and
which, regarding the revelation that has begun, can clothe itself in
the words: “Yes, that am I as a human being, as a God-willed human
being on Earth, as a God-willed human being in the
cosmos …..” (GA260 24.12.1923. Dornach)
With these worlds Rudolf Steiner is referring to the Michael School
experienced before birth, which he described somewhat later in the 1924
Karma lectures, and to which all belong, who later seek Anthroposophy
during their life on Earth. The first earthly form, in which Rudolf
Steiner as representative of the heavenly movement clothes
Anthroposophy, is philosophy. According to an autobiographical
communication of Rudolf Steiner, he was assigned the task (in about
1880) by an anonymous master, of clothing Anthroposophy in the garment
of “German Idealism”. In the course of this work there arose the early
epistemological writings, which finally led to the “Philosophie der
Freiheit” in Weimar in 1894.
The next sheath into which the Anthroposophical movement was brought by
Rudolf Steiner was the Theosophical Society, whose German Section he
entered in 1902, although he had previously criticized it very
radically as being out of keeping with the present age. As late as
1897, in his “Magazin Für Literatur”, in an article entitled
“Theosophists”, he had characterized them in the following terms: “…..
nothing but empty formulations…. without a trace of content…. hypocrisy
…… empty phrases….. knowledge they do not possess ….. no idea
whatsoever….. obscure chatter…..” (GA32)
When Steiner nevertheless entered this Society, his friends questioned
his sanity. Yet Steiner knew what he was doing, in accordance with the
Master’s instructions. In essence, what he had said to him was the
following:
“If you wish to engage the enemy in battle, you must first understand
him. You can only conquer the dragon by clothing yourself in his skin.
One must
take the bull by the horns. In the greatest misfortune you will find
your weapons and your fellow-warriors. I have shown you who you are;
now go and remain true to yourself”.
Rudolf Steiner was thus faced with the dual task on the one hand of
working his way conceptually into the outer, materialistically coloured
activity of contemporary culture and science, and engage within it.
This he did through newspaper articles, lectures and work as a teacher
in the Berlin School for the education of workers, with its communist
leanings. On the other hand he took on the task, in the
Theosophical Society, of transforming the esoteric terminology with an
Indian character stemming from the British colonial tradition, into one
that was appropriate for the western consciousness. In addition to this
it was necessary to set over against Anglo-Indian
Theosophy which had remained untouched by Christianity: (Quote R,
Steiner) “The spirituality of Western Civilization with the mystery of
Golgotha as its central point”. (GA257. 06.02.1923. Stuttgart)
Here an important role was played by Marie von Sievers – later to
become Steiner’s wife – as his fellow fighter for the cause and
companion on his life’s path, when, at the right moment she asked a
question during a tea-party held at Graf Brockdorff’s home in Berlin in
1901, thus setting in motion Steiner’s public activity for
Christian-Rosicrucian esotericism. Rudolf Steiner’s inner connection
with Marie von Sievers to the very end came to expression in a letter
from him to Marie on 27.02.25: “Only with you can I experience a shared
feeling and thinking in the act of judgement”. (GA262)
Considering Steiner’s esoteric calling, the Anthroposophical movement
represented by him was a “Cuckoo’s egg” within the tradition-bound
Theosophical Society. And it was only a matter of time before the one
would no
longer be able to tolerate the other, because their strivings were in
conflict with one another. This moment arrived when in 1909, within the
Theosophical Society under the leadership of Annie Besant, the Indian
boy Krishnamurti was proclaimed to be the reborn Christ. Steiner’s
criticism of this impossible claim was used as a pretext for expelling
Steiner and his followers from the Theosophical Society.
On the 2nd and 3rd February 1913 what was now the Anthroposophical
Society constituted itself anew in Berlin. But Steiner himself was not
a member or functionary of this Society. He remained outside it as a
spiritual adviser and teacher from out of the Anthroposophical
movement. As a result of this the Society developed an independence of
its own, albeit with negative consequences. The hopes which Steiner
attached to an independent Society were not fulfilled. What he called
the “inner opposition” within the Anthroposophical Society became ever
more tangibly a paralysing obstruction for the Anthroposophical
movement, and thus for Steiner himself. Despite the
growth in numbers of members of the Anthroposophical Society, a
hollowing-out of the esoteric core within the Society was apparent.
The burning down of the Goetheanum in 1922, the Stuttgart state of
affairs, socalled, the splitting of the German National Society into
young members and conservatives, the general state of inner passivity
of the Society members, characterize the picture of a Society that had
been a failure right up to 1923. There are damming characterizations of
the Society in the letters to Edith Maryon, an English sculptress who
had helped with the work on the first Goetheanum. Here are a few
outstanding examples: Stuttgart 25.03.23: “As to the Society I have
actually no more to say than that I would prefer to have nothing to do
with it any longer. I am repelled by everything its
executive Councils do”. Stuttgart 11.05.23: “…. The Anthroposophical
Society remains asleep. It refuses to be woken up…..” Vienna 30.09.23:
“Otherwise, everything went well, leaving aside the albeit significant
fact that our Viennese members are also asleep…. The Hague 16.11.23:
“……here, too, the Society is in a parlous state, disunity, inadequacy
etc….”
In autumn 1923 Rudolf Steiner was faced with the difficult question
whether he should sever his connection with the Anthroposophical
Society altogether, or completely unite himself with it. On Nov. 17th,
in an internal circle in Holland, Steiner considers whether he should
withdraw with a few followers who understand him, into a community
something like an Order – Ita Wegman and Marie Steiner tried to
dissuade him from retreating in this way.
Steiner himself describes in retrospect the seriousness of the decision
confronting him: “But I would like, also in the circle of our dear
English friends, to stress quite emphatically something that definitely
needs to be stressed in connection with the decision to take on the
Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. With respect to the
movement as a whole it was a deed that was fraught with risk, because
by acting in this way one faced a quite definite eventuality. For the
Anthroposophical movement rests upon the fact that there flows down
from the spiritual world real revelations concerning the content of
spiritual cognition. If one wishes to do the work of the
Anthroposophical movement, one cannot do human work alone. One must be
open for that which flows down out of the spiritual worlds. The laws of
the spiritual world are very exact and they are inviolable. They have
to be strictly observed. And it is difficult to
contrive all that an outer function requires in our time, be it even
that of President of the Anthroposophical Society, with the occult
duties towards the revelations of the spiritual world. So that one had
at that time to place before one’s soul the question: Will the
spiritual powers who have, up to now, given as a gift of grace to
the Anthroposophical Society all that can flow down from them, will
these spiritual powers continue to bestow their gifts upon the
Anthroposophical movement in this way?” (GA240. 12.08.24. Torquay)
Rudolf Steiner did decide to unite his destiny as representative of the
movement with the destiny of the administrative Society, but he
attached quite definite conditions to this union. Were these conditions
not to be fulfilled, the impulse of the Christmas Conference would
fail; that is to say, the union of esoteric movement and exoteric
administrative association would have to separate again. One
condition was the forming of an esoteric Council, which was to be
responsible to the spiritual powers for what it does. The other
condition was that the consumer attitude towards the communications
from the spiritual world, which was generally typical of Society
members in the year 1923, would have to stop. An “esoteric trend” would
need to take hold among Society members. From now on,
Anthroposophy would have to be done. For the cause of Anthroposophy is
not just a personal matter for private indulgence. It is a concern for
mankind as a whole, and for the Gods.
As the opening lecture of the Christmas Conference is addressed to the
members, it has to do with the conditions attached to this new
beginning, which the members must, from now on, be careful to fulfil.
In Steiner’s
words: “Only if, in this way, we can make the
Anthroposophical movement into the deepest concern of the heart, within
our own being, only then will the
Anthroposophical Society continue. If we can not do this, it will not
continue. For the most important thing of all that has to be done in
the days ahead,
must be done in the hearts of each and every one of you, my dear
friends. What we say and what we hear, will only be made by us in the
right way into the starting-point for the development of the cause of
Anthroposophy if our hearts’ blood can beat for it. And it is actually
for this reason, my dear friends, that we have called you here, so that
in a truly anthroposophical sense a harmony of hearts may be awakened.
And we cherish the hope that it will be possible for this appeal to be
understood in the right way”. (GA260)
Steiner’s wish is that (quote): “The spiritual-esoteric must form the
basis for all our activity”. This means: “Truth that unfolds to
the full, divine and spiritual life that unfolds to the full, in our
inner being. Anthroposophy must live out in daily life all that is
recognized as truth within it”.
And further on in this opening lecture Steiner describes how, before
the Christmas Conference, when young people wanted to join this
Anthroposophical Society, they always shrank back from the dogmatic
demands made of them
by the old Anthroposophists who had belonged to the Theosophical
Society. Young people were always taught to feel that it was necessary
to make a declaration of faith in a dogmatic way. Of this, Steiner
says: “This is something that has absolutely no place any longer within
the fundamental disposition of human souls in our time”. Human souls
today feel “an aversion to everything of a sectarian nature”. “And it
cannot be denied that it is difficult to eliminate these sectarian
qualities from the Anthroposophical Society. But they must be
eliminated. And not the slightest trace of them must remain in future,
within the new Anthroposophical Society that is about to be founded. It
must be a genuine World-Society….” “Whoever joins it must have the
feeling: Yes, here I find something that really stirs me. The older
person must have the feeling: Here I find something that, throughout my
life, I have striven for in association with other people. The young
person must feel: Here I find something that comes to meet me as a
young person”.
Quite consistently through the further course of this opening lecture
the word “General”, which precedes Anthroposophical Society, is
interpreted to mean: “universally human”. On this basis there is no
need for guardians of the true teaching, so-called “dependable people”,
who in practical terms would be snoopers who keep Dornach informed of
whatever is going on. National Societies should regard themselves as
independent. (Quote) “But then these national societies will be really
autonomous. Then every group that forms within this Anthroposophical
Society will be really autonomous”. In this connection Steiner
points out that everything of a bureaucratic or dogmatic nature and all
clinging to abstract principles is out of place in this Society,
because everything is based on the “purely human”. And then Steiner
speaks about two difficulties that have to be overcome:
1. No more secrecy internally or externally. Unrestricted availability
of the teaching of Anthroposophy. This must be accompanied by the
capacity to form sound judgements in Anthroposophical questions. In
another connection
Steiner says what amounts to the following: So long as a person still
clings to Anthroposophical terminology, he has not yet found the
essential nature
of Anthroposophy.
2. The other difficulty to be overcome is: cowardly denial of
Anthroposophy where one ought actually to step forward in open
acknowledgement of it. Also, the spiritual traditions that are
flourishing everywhere although they belong to the past should not be
indiscriminately mixed up with what Anthroposophy brings, which is
essentially new. Elsewhere Steiner says: “Courage where Anthroposophy
is concerned is learnt quickly or not at all”. At this point I will
break off my reference to the opening lecture. Steiner begins then to
discuss very carefully the Statutes of the new Society.
From this brief summary of the opening lecture of the Christmas
Conference one can recognize two basic features of action in the spirit
of Anthroposophy, that is to say, of an attitude that is universally
human and in keeping with the demands of the present age. They are:
unconditional love of the truth inwardly, in relation to oneself; and
unconditional love of tolerance outwardly, in relation to one’s fellow
human beings. Love inwardly and outwardly needs to be developed, from
the heart, by everyone who wishes to belong. Truthfulness inwards and
tolerance outwards, borne by the capacity for love, are the fundamental
demands of the contemporary, universal human
consciousness, and hence of the consciousness-soul age. Whoever stays
behind has (or will soon run into) problems. He should ask himself
whether he is in the right place in this universal human society if he
does not want to be someone who is striving towards these ideals. That
this striving is bound up with inner work, of this there is no doubt.
Thus Steiner explains: Simple membership of the Society (pink card)
places one under no further obligation than to wish to become familiar
with Anthroposophy.
Elsewhere he says: “to wish to be a decent human being”. Membership of
the High School for Spiritual Science (blue card) requires that one
should wish to be a representative of the cause of Anthroposophy before
the world. Instead one can and could observe, then as now, how
many members of all descriptions have lain down upon what Steiner calls
“the snug couch of spiritual science“ and “the snug couch of confident
belief”. This attitude stems from the feeling that, just because one
thinks one has found what is right, one is better than others. Instead
of feeding one’s lower ego, this is where the work of the heart should
surely begin.
II. The Failure of the
Christmas Conference.
All the statements made by Rudolf
Steiner in 1924 after the Christmas
Conference on the subject of the Christmas Conference are filled with
hope and with deep concern as to whether the Christmas Conference
impulse was being
taken up by the members of the Society. Thus, even in the opening
address the following is said: “Only if, in this way, we can make the
Anthroposophical movement into the deepest concern of the heart, within
our own being, only then will the Anthroposophical Society continue –
If we cannot do this, it will not continue”.
Soon after this, on the 18th January 1924, he says: “If this Christmas
Conference is taken in the way people were so inclined to take earlier
Conferences, then it will gradually evaporate, it will lose its content
and it would be better if we had not met together”. A similar
statement is made in Stuttgart on 06.02.1924: “This Council, which was
formed in Dornach at Christmas, rests upon a kind of hypothetical
judgement. If the Society is willing to take up what it does, then it
will be the Council; if the Society is not willing to take it up, it
will be nothing at all. But it will also be possible to take it, so one
might say, as the centre of a living activity. With this I can only
indicate (…..) that the attempt has indeed been made to introduce a new
spirit into the Society by way of the Christmas Conference. But it is
essential that one should understand what is the nature of this new
spirit: that it is a spirit of living activity as opposed to a spirit
of abstraction, that it is a spirit that would speak, not to the head,
but to human hearts. The consequence of this is that, for the cause of
Anthroposophy, this Christmas Conference is actually either nothing or
everything. It will be nothing if it finds no continuation, if it was a
festive gathering that brought a little joy and satisfaction; then
afterwards one forgets the whole thing and life continues as before, in
the same old fashion. Then it has no content, nothing radiates back
towards it. It can only receive its content from the life in the
different areas of the Society; it is only a reality through what
happens through it, what happens continually in the life of the
Anthroposophical Society through it. The Christmas Conference only
becomes real through that which develops out of it. To turn one’s gaze
to the Christmas Conference gives rise in the soul to a certain
responsibility to make it real, which otherwise it will withdraw from
earthly existence. Whether as the Christmas Conference it will prove
effective for life depends upon whether it is continued further….
Formally speaking, we have brought it to a close, but actually this
Christmas Conference should never come to an end, but should always
live on in the life of the Anthroposophical Society…..”
Even when Steiner reports positively on the Christmas Conference, he
never says it has been accomplished, completed or has succeeded. He
always points to the conditions that need to be fulfilled, the
programme of inner work that ought to be carried out.
On 23.05.24 R.St. points to Ahrimanic demons that are beginning to make
their influence felt. On 24.08.24 Steiner also makes a remark about the
inertia of the Council, “Which so far has only made half a step
forward….” And Steiner asks patience of himself and his listeners. The
Christmas Conference is a process that is in danger because, in spite
of the
Christmas Conference, the members are continuing on in their old
lethargy. Even in Steiner’s remarks on the Christmas Conference on
05.09.24, the positive statement to the effect that through the
Christmas Conference an “esoteric impulse” had entered the GAS is
followed by the qualifying remark that the Christmas Conference will
only continue “if human beings find in their hearts the strength to
remain faithful to it”. The Christmas Conference is active only “where
this more esoteric trend is present”. Even at the end of his final
address on 28.09.24, which he had to break off because of illness,
there is a sevenfold repetition (“only then …..provided that”) of the
conditions which must be fulfilled if the Christmas Conference is to
succeed. Also in his final word of greeting to the members from his
sick-bed at the beginning of 1925 Steiner writes the following: “in the
fervent hope that the Christmas Conference will have received a new
impetus in the hearts (of members).”
None of this sounds like a proclamation of victory, as it later came to
be spoken of and implanted itself firmly in the minds of members – as
though the
Christmas Conference could be treated as a finished product. To these
expressions
of Steiner’s deep concern and hope in his lectures to members we will
now add some
less well known communications from the circle close to Steiner.
According to the priest Rudolf Meyer the following statement was made
by Rudolf Steiner long before his illness: “The Christmas Conference is
not being taken up. There is still time.
But if it is not taken up by the autumn, the Ahrimanic powers will
launch their
attack”. The Stuttgart state attorney Dr. Bruno Kruger has testified
that as
early as June 1924 Rudolf Steiner said to him personally with firm
insistence: “This impulse has failed. Come back to Dornach in October.
Then
everything will be arranged differently – including the situation in
Stuttgart”. A member who wishes to remain anonymous received from
Rudolf Steiner, in response to a question about the Christmas
Conference and its effects
within the Society, the answer: the spiritual world allows nine months
to see
whether an echo comes from the members. If no echo comes, the impulses
of the Christmas
Conference have come to an end. When the nine months had passed, this
member asked
Rudolf Steiner about it again. He replied: “No echo has come. The
Society has not taken up the Christmas
Conference”.
The eurythmist Ina Schuurman testifies to having received personally
from Rudolf Steiner the following statement, which she reports thus:
“It was during a eurythmy dress rehearsal in the course of the
Christmas Conference…. That Rudolf Steiner was walking past on his way
from the auditorium, stopped in front of me and said: ‘Now let us hope
that
things can continue in this way for ten years’. In September 1924 there
was again
a dress rehearsal in Dornach…. When Rudolf Steiner came by and stopped
in front
of me. He said with great emphasis: ‘the Christmas Conference has
failed’,
and walked on into the auditorium. There is also a communication said
to have been received by Countess Keyserlingk after Rudolf Steiner’s
death. Countess Keyserlingk had
attained certain degrees in occult training. She writes as follows: “It
was on the morning of Rudolf Steiner’s cremation, which I did not
attend. The earthly body of the great Teacher was still laid out near
to where I
stood in the room of the carpentry shop, when close to me the aura of
the beloved
Teacher appeared. From this aura the instruction came that I should
write. I
took paper and pencil and from his presence came the following words –
Often I
could not write quickly enough, then he stopped and waited until I had
caught up
with writing, as Rudolf Steiner had done on earlier occasions when he
was
dictating something to me: ‘My mission is ended. What I was able to
give human beings at their
present level of maturity, I have given them. I go away, because I
found no
ears able to hear the spirit-word behind the word. I go away, because I
found no
eyes able to behold the spirit-pictures behind the earthly pictures – I
go away,
because I found no human beings able to bring my will to realization.
The Mysteries remain veiled or hidden until I come again. I will come
again and unveil the
Mysteries when I have succeeded in establishing in spirit-worlds an
altar, a place of
worship, for human souls. Then I will come again, then I will continue
to reveal the
Mysteries. Responsibility for my death is borne by those who have
suppressed the
culture of the heart. If human beings had gone through their hearts and
penetrated
into the depths they would have found the strength to fulfil the tasks
of the
present age’.
Ita Wegman had asked Rudolf Steiner some time after the Christmas
Conference what would happen if it were not to succeed. Steiner had
replied: “Then
Karma will prevail”. Anti-Michael demons would become active if the
Michael
impulses, which had entered so powerfully, are unable to achieve a
breakthrough. From
January 1925 onwards Steiner no longer spoke to Ita Wegman of
exhaustion, but,
instead, of the effects of Karma.
Dr. Ita Wegman who, together with Dr. Noll, gave Steiner medical care
until the very end, reports as follows: “In full consciousness, but
without saying anything about the future,
without leaving behind any instruction or message for this or that
personality,
the Master has left us. And a direct question put to him on these
matters was
consciously answered in the negative. Why was this?” Somewhat later,
Dr. Noll told Johanna Mücke: “Shortly before his passing, Frau
Wegman asked Dr. Steiner whether
there was any arrangement he wished to make in connection with the
Society – he
looked very intently at her and then turned away!
To sum up what we have said so far, one could state the following: In
the new Anthroposophical Christmas Conference Society contrasting
Karmic
streams which had once been in conflict with one another were to be
brought together into
a new Christian movement. In order to neutralize the negative personal
element – and
the Karma of the different streams – the exercises had been given, in
self-knowledge,
character training (subsidiary exercises) and the meditations (main
exercises). For a
similar reason the Karma lectures had been held by Rudolf Steiner in
1924, to foster a
general awareness and a better mutual understanding of the Karmic
situations within the
Anthroposophical Society. Because the members did not heed the
Christmas Conference and
thus failed to do the inner work required, taking the Christmas
Conference with the
same lack of commitment as they had done with earlier conferences, the
Christmas
Conference impulse evaporated and the karmic streams began again to
gain the upper
hand. Negative astral beings used the opportunity to take
possession of
un-purified astral bodies and intensify weaknesses of character. On May
23rd 1924 Rudolf
Steiner reported on the Christmas Conference before a lecture given in
Paris,
and described the situation as follows:
“It is connected with the fact that – I mean from the spiritual aspect
– very powerful forces of opposition, demonic powers are attacking the
Anthroposophical movement. But we can well cherish the hope that the
forces of the alliance that we were able to form with the good
spiritual powers
will be able in the future to defeat all those powers of opposition in
spiritual
realms – which make use of human beings in order to achieve their aims
– to defeat all
these powers of opposition”.
The spiritual background of the Christmas Conference was that Steiner,
in taking on as an esoteric Master the leadership of a hitherto
exoteric
administrative Society, also had to stand responsible before the
spiritual world, for the unredeemed
Karma of the members of the Council and the Society. Thus he said:
“This leading function entails the following, and I have often,
particularly since the Christmas Conference, had to point out what this
function of leader of
the Anthroposophical Society entails. It entails that all that happens
in
connection with me, I am able to carry, myself, up into the spiritual
world…. And
you see, if you want to be actively involved in the true sense, if you
want to be
actively involved in that which the Anthroposophical movement has
become since
the Christmas Conference, you must be able to enter into the thought of
what it means to stand responsible for the Anthroposophical movement
before the spiritual world….. All that is represented on the Earth as
something of
a personal nature is, when it mixes itself into what has to happen for
the cause of Anthroposophy, an element which, if it remains personal,
cannot be
justified before the spiritual world. And what difficulties arise for
the one who
has to represent something or other before the Spiritual world in a
responsible way, if at times he has to bring, together with that for
which he must stand
responsible, all that comes out of the personal aspirations of the
people involved. What consequences this has, of this you ought to be a
little more aware. It
results in the most terrible setbacks from the side of the spiritual
world… Here
is someone working with others in the Anthroposophical movement…. but
he weaves
into what he is actively contributing, personal ambitions, personal
intentions, personal qualities. And so, there they are, these personal
ambitions, these
personal tendencies. Most people don’t realize that they are personal;
most
people regard what they do as impersonal, because they deceive
themselves as to the
personal and impersonal. This must then be brought along. And it
results in the
most appalling setbacks from the spiritual world for the one who has to
carry with him into the spiritual world these things that have their
source in the
personalities.
These are inner difficulties, my dear friends, which arise particularly
for such a movement as Anthroposophy within the Anthroposophical
Society.
Certainly it is terrible that we have such terrible opponents, but with
respect to the
inner question of how Anthroposophy has to be represented, it is far
more
terrible when it is necessary to carry the fruits of work that is done
within the
Anthroposophical movement, to carry them into the spiritual world with
the encumbrance
of the personal interests of this or that individual. And, actually,
very
little thought is given to this fact”.
The risk inherent in the initiative taken by Steiner lay in a promise
made to the spiritual world, that he would unite the karmically opposed
streams.
Steiner’s own words: “There is also in a certain sense a promise that
has been made to the
spiritual world. This promise will be fulfilled with the utmost
resoluteness, and
one will seem that in the future things will happen as have been
promised to the
spiritual worlds. So that a responsibility has been placed not only
upon the
Anthroposophical movement, but also upon the Anthroposophical Society,
towards the
Council”. That is to say: In order to keep this promise Steiner
depended upon the cooperation of the members. This would also explain
the appeals made
continually through the year 1924 to the members, that they should, at
long last,
take the Christmas Conference seriously. Steiner’s last attempt to
rescue the Christmas
Conference impulse, while bypassing the existing Council, occurs at the
close of
his final address, for the sake of which he summoned all his strength
and left the sick-bed to
which he had already been confined: “If in the near future there are at
least four times twelve human
beings in whom the Michael-thought becomes fully alive, in four times
twelve people
who can be recognized as such, not through themselves, however, but
through the
leadership of the Goetheanum in Dornach, if among four times twelve
people of this
kind there emerge leaders for a festival mood of Michael, then we can
look
upon that light which will spread abroad in humanity in the future,
through
Michael-stream and Michael-activity”.
These four times twelve human beings could not be found, however.
Retrospectively Ita Wegman wrote words to the effect that it was
Steiner’s sacrifice in taking upon himself the Karma of the Society
that led to his death. A
similar view was expressed by Marie Steiner von Sievers. How did the
Council act after Steiner’s death and what were the
consequences of this for the Society?
After the esoteric vessel had broken, the Council found itself in a
state of bewilderment and helplessness. A general meeting of all the
members
ought to have been called. The perplexing situation should have been
declared openly.
One should have discussed with the members what further steps might be
taken. Instead there began the “playing with esotericism”, which Rudolf
Steiner in the 3rd letter to members had expressly characterized as a
form of untrue
behaviour and thus as the opposite of Anthroposophy. There he describes
the two
fundamental evils of pseudo-Anthroposophical behaviour: “playing with
esotericism” on the
one hand, and on the other the cold impulse to teach others. So now
there was the wish
to appear to be more than they really were. They felt themselves to be
still the
esoteric Council, and let the members continue to look up to them as
such. Marie Steiner was the only one who was clear about the whole
situation.
There is a letter from her to Eugen Kolisko, in which she writes: “I
have clearly recognized that our Council, as it now is, has been
orphaned in the stage of infancy, and is a complete nothingness”.
She stresses that this has been written after the most painstaking
reflection and that she has weighed everything up in the fullest sense
of
responsibility”. It is in the ideological usurpation of the Christmas
Conference for reasons of
vanity and the retention of power that the true motives lie for the
inclination shown
very soon by Marie Steiner, to withdraw from the Council after
Steiner’s death. In various
letters she later expresses herself very clearly regarding the
spiritual decline in the
heads of the Council members. By way of characterization she chooses
typical concepts,
well-known from the Catholic Church. She speaks, for instance, of the
“dogmatizing of
the Christmas Conference”, of the “Papism” of Steffen, Wachsmuth and
others, of the
“authority principle” basing itself on “installation” and the Petrine
succession
emanating from this. She tells how people who wish to live according to
free spirituality
are “branded heretics” in true ecclesiastical fashion. How the
“infallibility dogma” of the
“Steffen party” dominates the Society and how the wisdom of Rudolf
Steiner, withheld in
secrecy, and the First Class of the Free High School for Spiritual
Science are
misused as “instruments of power”, causing Marie Steiner to feel in the
end that the “endless
talk about the Christmas Conference” is no more than “empty chatter”.
A further example of “playing at esotericism” on the part of the
remaining Council was their failure to inform the members of the
Christmas Conference
Society that on the 8th February 1925, in the absence of Rudolf Steiner
owing to his
illness, the Christmas Conference Statutes had been replaced by those
of the Building
Association in order, so it was claimed, to make possible, after
constant postponement, the
entry of the Christmas Conference Society in the Swiss trade register.
At any rate,
this was how Gunther Wachsmuth, who held responsibility for the
decision, justified
the action retrospectively in 1950. It emerged, however, from later
inquiries addressed to the Confederate
trade register office, that in 1924 the statutes of the Christmas
Conference
Society could have been entered in principle, as there were no
prescriptions attached to
the formulation of association statutes. From then onwards, the
Christmas Conference
Statutes were known as “Principles”, and no-one really knew what he had
committed
himself to. This is also the reason why it was possible later to bring
about expulsions
by means of majority voting. The Statutes of the Christmas Conference
would not
have allowed for this at all.
Now the Christmas Conference members, without being informed of the
fact, had become members of a Building Association with exoteric
administrative
Statues. The fact that Rudolf Steiner had agreed, through his own
signature given on
his sick bed, to the transformation of the Christmas Conference Society
into an exoteric
administrative association with the Statutes of a Building Association
is, within the
whole context of events, further proof that Rudolf Steiner had
abandoned the Christmas
Conference of 1923 and thereby again separated the Society from the
movement.
Especially considering with what meticulous care he had discussed the
Statutes
during the Christmas Conference. Now he simply puts his signature to
the statutes
of the Building Association. Illusionistic wishful thinking has, to
this day, obscured
people’s
perception of the fact of the failed Christmas Conference; and it is
this, and this alone
that made possible the entire constitution debate, including the
pseudo-Christmas
Conference of 2002 and its pointless legal processes. The pro and
contra of the many
painstaking and commendable investigations, and the courageous
opposition of the
“Gelebte Weihnachtstagung” group to the ‘two Societies’ theory, which
the
Goetheanum Vorstand quickly took over from the researchers into the
constitution, thereby
triggering the avalanche of legal battles from 2002 onwards, - all this
dissolves into
nothing if one learns how to think the thought that Rudolf Steiner
himself, on the 8th
February 1925, confirmed with his own signature the final separation of
movement and
Society, shortly before his death on 30th March 1925. For Building
Association statutes
are simply not the statutes of the Christmas Conference (Principles).
And the
Administration” (08.02.1925) is simply not the “Anthroposophical
Society in the
narrower sense” (29.06.1924), meaning the esoteric stream within the
Society, in so far
as it is cultivated by members, hence the movement.
To this day neither a report nor minutes have appeared of the
preliminary meeting for the members of the A.S., which took place one
hour before
the 4th extraordinary general meeting of the Goetheanum Association on
the 8th
February 1925. In the meeting itself Rudolf Steiner was represented by
Emil
Grosheintz, who in 1912 had placed his land in Dornach at Steiner’s
disposal for the building
of the Goetheanum. He held several leading positions within the Society
and can be
regarded as a close associate of Rudolf Steiner. No message of greeting
from Rudolf Steiner
was read out to those assembled!
Darkening of consciousnesses appears to have
occurred; confusion in a number of matters seems to have arisen. On the
evening
of Sunday 8th February, from 9 – 11 p.m. to 0-11 a.m. an astronomical
partial eclipse
of the moon occurred. [Footnote: Marie Steiner also had no precise
memory of what
happened at the meeting.] Although because of illness, Rudolf Steiner
was not
present at the meeting on the 8th February 1925 and he only received
the document for
signing afterwards, there is no doubt whatever that he knew what he was
doing.
On the contrary, the following is an account of all his activities
right up to
three days before his death: “Rudolf Steiner was weakened physically,
but fully awake and alert and
still full of amazing energy for work. Every week until his death
excerpts from his “Autobiography” appeared in the “Wochenschrift”, and
the essays for
members, with the “Leading Thoughts”, in the newssheet. Everything was
written
by hand and then the proofs were corrected. Until three days before his
death
the applications for membership of the class were read by him and
responded
to with written comments… At the same time, until close to the end of
March,
Rudolf Steiner was correcting the proofs of the book “Extension of the
Art of
Healing”. In addition to this there were letters, the signing of
residence permits,
visits from Council members. A photocopy of the last letter to members,
“From
Nature to Sub-Nature”, shows the clear, conscious and steady
handwriting of
Rudolf Steiner… It is also quite unthinkable that anyone should have
tried to
hide something from him, because everyone, Rudolf Steiner included, was
hoping for a speedy recovery.” (Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, Newssheet
04.05.1997).
As to the possibility that on 8th February 1925 a conscious act of
deception was carried out behind the back of Rudolf Steiner, extending
as far as
manipulations with Steiner’s signature, I would stress quite clearly
that according to my
research into the ways in which the Councils from then until now have
acted, there is no
evidence of any deliberately corrupt behaviour. What we are dealing
with is “only” the
result of an unconscious calculation related to vanity and power,
flattering itself
that it stands in the centre of world-evolution and has the very best
at heart. Again, the
error lies “only” in a lack of truthfulness with regard to oneself and
the facts.
Rudolf Steiner could have intervened, himself, when he saw the
decisions of the 8th February published in the Newssheet, if he had not
been in
agreement with the content. It seems to have dawned on Albert Steffen
when, in his diary
on 9th February, he noted with regard to the curtailment of the powers
of the existing
Council: “Now every member has a vote. The Society can now say: No
building! No clinic! A
different Council etc.” Instead, Rudolf Steiner now tried bypassing the
restricted Council to
rescue the movement by writing a letter on 19th March (eleven days
before his
death) to seven personalities of the Free High School for Spiritual
Science, appointing
them as leaders of the “Administration of the Goetheanum Building”. At
the head of this
group of seven new administrators we again find Emil Grosheintz,
appointed by Rudolf
Steiner as Chairman of the group. The letter bears the official stamp
of the Free High
School for Spiritual Science, and the signatures of Rudolf Steiner as
President and Ita
Wegman as Recorder. It is an appointment and not an open request, as
the
dethroned Council later declared it to have been. As the appointment
was made by the esoteric
High School, it has to do with the continuation of the Goetheanum
building in the
spirit of the Christmas Conference as a permanent spiritual
“construction project”.
However, after Rudolf Steiner’s death on 30th March 1925, the Council
that Steiner had himself curtailed, rejected the collaboration, as
equals,
of the seven administrators appointed by Steiner on 19th March 1925.
Through this action the dethroned Council of the Christmas Conference
of 1923 demonstrated that it had understood nothing of the things in
which it
was involved and which were of concern to Rudolf Steiner. To this day,
all the Councils
at the Goetheanum have been similarly unaware of their situation. That
is to
say: there is no consciousness of the fact that movement and Society
were condemned,
from that point onwards, through a decision of the spiritual
initiators, to go their
separate ways again. In this connection, the situation of the “Gelebte
Weihnachtstagung”
group must be viewed as a tragedy: On the one hand it has prompted,
thanks to its
grandiose stubbornness, the present Goetheanum Council and the dreaming
Society
members to take a new look at themselves and try to understand their
position.
This is highly commendable! On the other hand, they have also succumbed
to the
illusion that the Christmas Conference Society of 1923, after all that
has happened,
still has some meaning today.
Immediately after Steiner’s cremation, the karmic streams come into
irreconcilable collision with one another. The crowning points of this
unworthy culture of conflict in the history of Council and Society,
which has gone on for
years and continues into the present, can be quickly enumerated. Those
wishing to know the
details should read the “Rückblick” of Fred Poepping, in which he
describes from
his own experience the events in the Anthroposophical Society from 1923
to 1963.
The events described are a complete mockery of the heart culture
striven for by Steiner. The first to happen, directly after Steiner’s
cremation, was
the conflict over the urn between the women on the Council, who could
not agree on where the
urn should be placed for the members to pay their final respects. If
you read Fred
Poepping’s description you can see how a relatively trivial
misunderstanding
causes the various emotions to flare up with explosive force. Here, as
in all subsequent cases of conflict, what was lacking were the
subsidiary exercises of the path of inner development, which control
and transform
the astral body. The distressing thing about this and all the conflicts
that followed is
that they had to do with shortcomings of the representatives of the
cause of Anthroposophy,
who upheld at the same time their lofty claim to be leaders,
vis-à-vis the
Society and humanity as a whole.
Through this fundamentally untruthful and sectarian mode of behaviour
of individual Council members, the disintegration of the Council was
only
a matter of time. In 1935 Ita Wegman and Elisabeth Vreede were expelled
from the Council.
Together with the expulsion of other leading personalities, the English
and
Dutch Societies seceded from the control of Dornach. Following closely
upon the first
conflict over the literary estate came the second, in which Herr
Steffen and Herr
Wachsmuth wished to challenge the testamentary rights of the widow of
Rudolf Steiner.
Interestingly enough, they tried to justify their legal position on the
grounds that after
the Christmas Conference everything was different and even earlier
testaments should
no longer be regarded as valid. The conflict came to an end when in
1952 a Swiss
court declared Marie Steiner, who had died in 1948, to be in the right.
As a result of this conflict the books of the complete edition
(Gesamtausgabe – GA) of Steiner’s lectures and written works, published
by the
Nachlassverein (Literary Estate Association) which had been founded in
Marie Steiner’s lifetime,
were no longer sold in the bookshop of the Goetheanum. The whole
atmosphere within the Anthroposophical Society was marked by
dogmatic disenfranchisement of the members by the residual Council,
servility of the members, and by conflict between the most varied
interest groups, which
gathered in party-political style around the most varied personalities.
It should be realized that all this was going on while, all around, the
Second World War, the Holocaust, the dropping of atomic bombs was
throwing the
world into chaos. What was meant to bring healing to the world had
itself become a
prey of the counter-forces.
In the post-war period from the sixties onward, voices were raised for
the first time, pointing to a discrepancy between the statutes of the
Building
Association and those of the Christmas Conference. In full consistency
with the Dornach
policy of retention of power, these critical inquirers were branded
immediately
as opponents. Fred Poepping, as a witness over a long period, cites the
Parable of
the Ring from Lessing’s drama “Nathan the Wise” as proof and as a
touchstone for the
failure or success of the Christmas Conference. According to this
parable, only he
has the true ring, who also manifests the virtues of the true ring. If
we sum up all
the impressions from 1923 up to and including the events connected with
the so-called
new constitution of 2002, we must regretfully conclude that the Council
of this Society,
at any rate, despite widespread illusions to the contrary, was no
longer in
possession of the ring after 1925.
III The Meaninglessness
of the New Constitution
We will now discuss an aspect of the Christmas Conference which has so
far not been taken account of in the entire constitution debate and
which will
show up this debate in whatever shape or form as a complete waste of
time. It proves
those members to have been right all along, who felt that this debate
was
unnecessary. But what follows we will be dealing, not merely with vague
intimations, but
with facts. And it is also to be hoped that this will remove, for all
time, the basis of
the Christmas Conference ideology which is so widespread in the
Anthroposophical
Society today.
In the above-quoted address of Steiner to open the Christmas Conference
1923, words are spoken which one can pay insufficient attention to in
reading: and it is …. “ not out of the arbitrariness of earthly will,
but in response to the
call that has sounded from out of the spiritual world….” that the
Christmas Conference is taking place. Now there exists a hitherto
unpublished report written down by the
stenographer Helene Finkh (who was employed at the Goetheanum at that
time). Copies
of this report are in circulation among many members of the Society. It
is said not to
be traceable in the archives, where the claim is made that no such
document has ever
existed. It contains notes of a discussion held by Rudolf Steiner with
the esoteric
Council which was about to be formed, on Sunday 23rd December 1923 at
6.00 p.m., that
is, on the evening before the beginning of the Christmas Conference. In
it, words
are recorded that were spoken by Rudolf Steiner to the future Council.
I quote: “Thus, with this third and final attempt, the question is
again asked
of human beings, whether there is a group willing to come together to
form a new
spiritual leadership, where the impulse proceeds not from an earthly
community,
with the wish to “found” something, but where from out of the spiritual
world a
‘Stiftung’ (Foundation) is inaugurated, which one may propose to join
in full
responsibility.
This act of joining a ‘Stiftung’ inaugurated from out of the spiritual
world can be something of great significance for humanity as a whole,
but it will
bring calamity if later those who make such a resolve for earthly
evolution break
faith with their decision”. So here the reference is to a “third and
final attempt” to form a
“Stiftung from out of the spiritual world”. In order to grasp what this
means, we must
cite the explanatory words spoken by Rudolf Steiner, as they have been
passed down to us by
Marie Steiner in connection with the “second Stiftung”, Berlin
15.12.1911. Marie
Steiner describes the phenomenon of the ’Stiftung’ as follows: “It has
to do, as it were,
with a direct communication from the
spiritual world. It is said (by R.St. – Trans) to be like a call that
goes out to humanity;
and then (the spiritual world) wants to see what echo it receives. Such
a call
generally sounds three times. If the call goes unheard for a third
time, it is taken
back again into the spiritual world for a long time. This call has
already gone out to
humanity once.
Unfortunately, it found no echo. This is the second time. It is
purely spiritual things that are involved here. Each time a call goes
out in
vain, the conditions and circumstances to be confronted grow more
difficult”. It
becomes clear from the report of 1911 that the three calls are
identified with three ‘Stiftungen’, whereby a ‘Stiftung’ is not a human
creation, but
an initiative from the spiritual world which is hoping that human
beings will decide to adopt
a certain way of working. Rudolf Steiner said in 1911: “It is
therefore to be announced to you that, among those human beings
who will come together for this purpose in a corresponding manner, a
way of
working is to be inaugurated (gestiftet) which, through the way in
which the ‘Stiftung’
comes about, has as its direct starting-point that individuality whom
for ages past in
the Western World we have called by the name Christian Rosenkreutz”.
Just as this second ‘Stiftung’ impulse, inaugurating a ‘Stiftung of a
Society for Theosophical Style and Art (Art und Kunst)” in 1911 failed
owing to
human inadequacy, so the first ‘Stiftung’ impulse in 1905 had also
failed. What was
intended with the first ‘Stiftung’ impulse becomes apparent from a
lecture held by Rudolf
Steiner on the occasion of the general meeting of what was still the
Theosophical
Society, in Berlin on the 22nd October 1905. He said: “If, however, the
Theosophical Society were to forget that there is the
pulsing of this blood within it [Steiner had previously admonished his
listeners
to cultivate “occult teachings and occult living”], then it may well be
an
interesting Society, but that which is intended with it by the exalted
powers who presided
over its beginnings, it will not succeed in accomplishing”.
One should also quote here the conversation with Rudolf Steiner
reported by Alexander Strakosch, the handicrafts teacher at the first
Waldorf
School: “In a personal conversation while we were walking together
Rudolf
Steiner pointed out in the most earnest way how much depends quite
directly
upon the way human beings respond to a call that has gone out from
higher
worlds. This was in 1923, when events in the Anthroposophical Society
were a source
of great concern for him. He asked me, ‘Do you know where the
difficulties
in the Society come from?’ ‘They come from the fact that there is not a
sufficient number of people who have reached the levels of higher
knowledge
described in the book ‘How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds’. When
the spiritual
world had assigned me the task of writing this work, it had expected
that
many people would progress so far. Thus I was instructed to write a
second volume’. After an interval of most solemn silence he continued
by saying: ‘The expectations have not been fulfilled. Every so often,
the
spiritual world casts out a line. This time nothing was caught on it.
But because there
had been talk of a continuation I had at least to bring out the short
work
‘Stages of Higher Knowledge’.” So Part II of Knowledge of Higher
Worlds…. was never written.
But now, back to the Christmas Conference: If, therefore, we seriously
consider the Christmas Conference of 1923 as the third attempt at a
‘Stiftung’
from the spiritual world, it should be evident from this, that the
so-called “New
Constitution” of the A.S. in 2002, and all activities connected with
it, have nothing whatever to do
with the Christmas Conference of 1923, as this “New Constitution” rests
only upon human
activities and wishes. In the report quoted above, the following is
also said about
the esoteric Council: “But we will always need to place before our
souls the fact that a
centre of this kind will only be able to work in the right way if each
individual who
is here entrusted with a task of leadership, should really feel and
take on in
practice the commitment towards the spiritual powers. This solemn
commitment will
not only place demands upon the individual, which he may be quite
unable to
meet, it will place them above all upon the whole Council in its
entirely. If this
harmony and solidarity is not renewed ever and ever again, the central
Council will
soon disintegrate and it would really be better if its members had
never
come together to undertake a solemn commitment of this kind”.
And the following is also said: “If this attempt to connect to a
‘Stiftung’, and thus to begin a new
spiritual leadership on Earth, were again to fail, then no-one in our
circle will
find the strength again during this earthly life to connect once more
in this
way to a 'Stiftung’ from the spiritual world”.
It should also be clear from these words that with Rudolf Steiner’s
death, at the very latest, the Christmas Conference had finally come to
an end,
because from then onwards the united character of the Council as
emphasized by Steiner
disintegrated, not to mention the withdrawal of Marie Steiner already
in 1925 and the
expulsions in 1935. In the report quoted we see also how the individual
Council members were placed in a relation to one another, what
meditations they would need
to work with in order to overcome their own weaknesses, and in what way
they would
stand in a special relation to the truth.
This unity or totality (Gesantheit), drawn
together in a bond with Rudolf Steiner, would have been able to fulfil
the function of an organ
of spiritual receptivity. As to what has happened in Dornach since
Steiner’s death
and right up
to our own time, the situation is entirely different. Here, according
to a
quote from Steiner, the following law applies: “Where the dissemination
of the occult life is concerned, the Masters
speak. Where one is only concerned with the organization of the
Society…. Then
error is possible, because the Masters are silent”. (GA93 22.10.1905.
Berlin)
Seen against the background of the fact that the Christmas Conference
was a ‘Stiftung’ out of the spiritual world, it is evident that the
present
Council and broad sections of the membership of the Anthroposophical
Society have a
connection to reality that is insufficient. In the entire “New
Constitution” debate it is
either not known or the fact is simply ignored, that the third call
also, like all calls from
the spiritual world, are limited to a certain ‘window of opportunity’.
The “way of working”
demanded by a ‘Stiftung’ could not be continued beyond Steiner’s death.
Instead, the
idea was already propagated by the First Council and all too readily
believed by the
Society members, that Rudolf Steiner would now lead the Goetheanum from
the other side. But
if we renounce all illusionistic glossing over of the facts, then the
symptoms of the
failure of the Christmas Conference are unmistakable:
1. The character of the Christmas Conference as a ‘Stiftung’ (third and
final attempt).
2. Steiner’s words in 1924 about the failure of the Christmas
Conference.
3. His signature put to the Building Association statutes, out of
resignation.
4. His turning away despite explicit requests for instructions in the
event of his death and concerning a successor.
5. His early death, brought about by the Karma of those involved.
6. The entire history of Council and Society right up to the present
time.
7. The absence of Anthroposophy in contemporary cultural life, although
Steiner had anticipated a culmination of Anthroposophy in cultural life
at the
turn of the millennium.
IV The Consequences for the Anthroposophical Movement Today
The result of our inquiry is,
unfortunately, clear and beyond question.
The new spiritual leadership of humanity intended with the Christmas
Conference
failed to materialise. The Anthroposophical movement, with the death of
Rudolf
Steiner, separated again from the Society. Since that time the Council
of the
Anthroposophical Society has tried to create the impression that it has
the blessing of
Rudolf Steiner. We of later generations, who belong to the
Anthroposophical movement and
who, as “homeless souls”, sought Anthroposophy on the Earth, can be
overcome by
sorrow, when we consider the ideals of truthfulness and tolerance
cherished by
us, which have clearly led us, out of ignorance and naïve trust,
into a Society
which, in Steiner’s words, may well be “an interesting Society”, but
“which will not accomplish
what was
intended with it by the exalted Powers, which stood at its beginning”.
That it has not accomplished this for 80 years also comes to expression
in the fact that Council member Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, shortly before
his
death, in the opening lecture of the Michaelmas Conference in 2000,
spoke of the
“occult imprisonment” of Anthroposophy, in view of its lack of
influence in the
world. The constitution activists in the Society and the modernized
Council
now thought that they could rescue the Anthroposophical Society, in the
spirit of
the Christmas Conference and of Rudolf Steiner, from its state of
ineffectiveness by
freeing it from the Building Association statutes and consciously
reuniting it at last with
the Christmas Conference statutes. Here, the Council, modern and
self-sufficient as
it was, also allowed itself to make a number of changes to the
Christmas Conference
statues of 1923, though this was brought to a standstill by the four
plaintiff
groups, who challenged the entire New Constitution process in a court
of law. After its
defeat, the Council avoided taking the case to the highest possible
court of appeal. I will
not go further into the disaster of the New Constitution, and instead
refer the reader to
“Die verordnete Denkpause” by Detlef Olaf Boehm, which summarizes it
all in a concise
and readable form.
Underlying the idea of the New Constitution are a number of illusions
which anyone who cares deeply for true Anthroposophy should firmly
resist.
Here the illusions are listed briefly, and the reader can try to
identify the points that
apply to him:
1. The illusion that, by altering its statutes, one can help an
association which regards itself as esoteric to achieve greater
effectiveness in the
wider world.
2. The illusion that the administrative association which continued to
exist after Steiner’s death, is in reality the esoteric association
intended by
Rudolf Steiner at Christmas 1923.
3. The illusion that a ‘Stiftung’ from the spiritual world, bound to a
limited timeframe and to a particular circle of people, can be brought
to life
again through an arbitrary human act that is the product of human
wishful
thinking.
4. The illusion that in staging the Christmas Conference anew one is
standing in a direct line from Rudolf Steiner who, from the spiritual
side, is
continuing to lead the earthly Goetheanum; and that this New
Constitution is something we
owe to him, or alternatively that we have this “high obligation”
towards the
so-called spiritual world, which we conceive in a way that suits our
own purposes.
5. The illusion that, with the Christmas Conference, Steiner created an
entirely new esotericism, which must be distinguished from the
esotericism before the Christmas Conference.
An educational drive is needed to counter these absurd pseudo-
Anthroposophical ideas, which live not only in the Council, but also in
the Society. There may well be people who feel quite comfortable in
this undoubtedly
“interesting Society”. But for anyone who feels a deeper commitment to
the cause of
Anthroposophy than to the eighty-year-old spectre of an administrative
association with false
pretentions, and who has recognized the appalling situation in which
the “Living Being
of Anthroposophy” finds itself; three fields of work promptly arise
which in the present
context can only be given in outline:-
a) Bringing clarity regarding the illusionistic Christmas Conference
ideology (Free Spiritual Life in thinking).
b) A re-ordering of the relation between Anthroposophical Society and
Anthroposophical movement (the Life of Rights in Responsibility,
concerns the Feeling)
c) Taking initiative action on one’s own responsibility in the spirit
of the ethical individualism of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.
(The meditative
deed inwards, in balance with working upon the world, outwards. Both
involve
the will).
The Consequences
A. Bringing
Clarity regarding the Illusionistic Christmas Conference Ideology
The Christmas Conference Ideology is based upon the assertion that only
those are true Anthroposophists who subscribe to the following dogma,
which is
adhered to like an article of faith: the work of Rudolf Steiner
continues, but only
through the Society directed from Dornach, because the Christmas
Conference succeeded in
accordance with Steiner’s intentions and the Council stands in
spiritual
succession to Steiner. The fact is suppressed and passed over in
silence, that already in
Rudolf Steiner’s lifetime the Council failed in its task and thus
played a decisive part
in the failure of the Christmas Conference. It ought to be clear to the
Council members at
the very least, that with Steiner’s death the third attempt at a
‘Stiftung’ had to come
to an end. Instead, the first generation of Council members (Steffen,
Wachsmuth)
contributed substantially to the obscuring of the facts. Thus the
revealing but embarrassing fact
that from the 8th February 1925 onwards the members had, with Steiner’s
agreement,
belonged to a Building Association with exoteric statutes, was not
divulged to the
members, as this would have made apparent the dethronement of the once
esoteric Council.
Only through the persistent archival research of individuals into
constitutional questions did it become clear decades later that there
is an irregularity here, which
remains puzzling only so long as the character of the Christmas
Conference as a
‘Stiftung’ is left out of account, or kept secret. (see Ch.III)
However, this veiling of the truth did not happen through evil intent,
but through weakness of character. The deeper, unconscious reason for
unwillingness
to admit the failure of the Christmas Conference lies in the inability
to face up to
one’s own failure, working hand-in-hand with the flattering sense of
having been elected
to play a role of the highest importance. The two things in combination
give rise to a
vain belief which strives to maintain the situation unchanged for
oneself and one’s close
associates, ostensibly for the good of humanity. The un-purified,
illusionistic
life of feeling (Luciferic) opens the door to Ahrimanic intelligence,
which calculates as follows:
If we succeed in keeping the Anthroposophical Society after the
Christmas Conference
free from the stigma of failure and, instead, sanctify it still further
by
distinguishing it as clearly as possible from the Anthroposophical
Society before the Christmas
Conference, we can avoid facing up to the painful fact that with the
failure of the
Christmas Conference the Anthroposophical Society fell back again into
the unsatisfactory state
it was in, in 1923. We can thereby avoid having to apply to ourselves
the sharp and
unsparing criticism directed to the Anthroposophical Society by Steiner
in many lectures
during 1923. In reality this criticism of the Anthroposophical Society
by Steiner has
remained, to this day, of the utmost relevance.
Esoterically speaking, it is the unredeemed ‘double’ of the Society
which places itself as a shield before the Council and many members. In
the slumber in
which they are plunged to this day, the Sleeping Beauty, in order to
save them from
the terrible and sobering experience of waking up to the reason for the
“occult
imprisonment” and their ineffectiveness in the world. The reason is the
unconscious
self-deception underlying the Christmas Conference ideology. This
self-deception is incompatible
with the fundamental principle of truthfulness, with which
Anthroposophy stands
or falls. Rudolf Steiner’s own words: ”Actually, nothing has greater
power to tempt and mislead as than when
we say that an action was done “in good faith”. For this “good faith”
is the
snug couch of idleness for a humanity who, in its extreme lethargy,
does not feel the responsibility to first find out, before it makes a
statement, whether
it is true or not, whether or not it corresponds to the facts…. There
needs to be a correspondence with facts in the world as a whole, not
just with
ourselves; otherwise what comes about in the external world as a result
is
forsaken by Angels, and handed over to Ahriman. And everything of an
untruthful
nature that is asserted “in good faith”, is what drives human beings
most strongly
into the Ahrimanic, is the strong rope that draws them inexorably into
the
Ahrimanic. And to appeal to good faith in the case of untruths is the
best way, today,
of delivering world civilization over to the being of Ahriman…. For it
is really so,
that human beings lose the assistance of the world of the Angel or when
they lie
down on the snug couch of good faith in the case of statements which
they have not
verified. And elsewhere Steiner says the following: “One must break the
habit of a certain – there is no other way of
putting it – dream-like longing, a certain sleepy-headedness, which so
easily
overcomes the person who approaches our spiritual-scientific movement
and wants
something soft and comforting for his soul, something that carries him
through
lifeenveloped in a nice warm feeling, something that you listen to and
let
work upon you in such a way that it warms you through and through, that
you can
believe in the higher calling of the human soul, all of which is quite
right, but
which can also be bound up with a certain lulling of the soul-life into
complacency.
This can be observed all too often, especially in those who let
spiritual science
work upon their soul and who do not strive at the same time to find,
through what
spiritual science can be, a clear and certain judgement regarding the
events of
life, regarding the complex interconnection of the facts within which
each
individual human being stands”.
A particularly disastrous role in the creation of the Christmas
Conference ideology was played by Council member Rudolf Grosse with his
book “The
Christmas Conference as a Turning-Point of Time”, which first appeared
in 1976
and in a short period was printed in three editions, because it was
devoured
uncritically by the members. But if one wishes to characterize the book
and the reaction of the
Society members as seen at this much later point in time, there is
again no
conscious bad intention, but the subtle working of the
Luciferic-Ahrimanic forces
which we spoke of earlier. The book came as a gift to the uninformed
minds, the
complacency, the lack of spiritual independence and the wishful
thinking of many people. I
myself recall that it provided substantial arguments – which today I
can no longer accept –
leading to my joining the Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Grosse, as
representative
of the Society, skilfully exploited a number of publications of
Steiner’s Complete Works (Gesamtausgabe – FA) which the Literary Estate
Association
(Nachlassverein) of Marie Steiner – formerly opposed by Grosse – had
meanwhile published, and
made us aware of the ideas that were now made available to all in an
unprotected
form, for the benefit of the then vegetating Anthroposophical Society.
In Grosse’s book the failure of the Christmas Conference is kept hidden
behind a glorification of Rudolf Steiner’s death through its
transformation into
a sacrificial death for the sake of the continued existence of the
Society. The fact that
Rudolf Steiner did not appoint a successor but turned away in silence
when asked about this,
is interpreted to mean, entirely in the tradition of Steffen, that from
then on he would
lead the Goetheanum from the spiritual world. The Christmas Conference
is
celebrated as a triumphant victory, as a “new beginning at a
world-turning-point of
time”. Actually this concept comes to us from Steiner, just as does the
concept of the
“spiritual Goetheanum”, but the clever mixture of Steiner quotes,
wishful thinking
and unmentioned facts would require a more exact analysis than is
possible
in the present context. The people who belong to the Anthroposophical
Society and are
drawn to Grosse’s book imagine that they are joining the Christmas
Conference
Society, oblivious of the fact that the Association they are in may
well be an interesting
one, but is actually no more than a “Bau-verein”, whose Council also
has no knowledge of
this fact, as it has been since 1925 in a line of succession of
“playing at esotericism”.
The book resulted in a growth in membership, because it invites anyone
to receive, with no effort required, the consecration of the Christmas
Conference.
In the Christmas Conference ideology the element is decisive, according
to which simply
to be a member of the Society is a guarantee of the fact that one
stands within the
sacred stream of true Anthroposophy. That this basically
conservative-Catholic conception of
an “Institution that alone can bring salvation” is shared and defended
with inner
satisfaction by most members of the Anthroposophical Society, sheds
light upon the “snug
couch of good faith” on which many Society members are reposing. In
contrast to the
message of victory of the Christmas Conference as proclaimed by Rudolf
Grosse,
which so many Anthroposophists – myself included – fell for, it is
salutary to take
stock of the true situation of the Anthroposophical cause.
- The Goetheanism further developed by Steiner has not been recognized
by official Goethe research.
- The ‘Philosophie der Freiheit’ has not been taken up by universities.
- The first ‘Stiftung’ out of the spiritual world was not taken up
between 1905 and 1909
- The second attempt at a ‘Stiftung’, The Society for Theosophical
Style and Art, 1911, was declared a failure by Steiner in autumn 1912.
- The new Freemasonry for men and women had to be discontinued by
Steiner in 1914.
- The Social Threefolding movement was withdrawn by Steiner on the
grounds that it had failed for the present.
- The burning down of the Goetheanum on New Year’s Eve 1922/23 was a
consequence of the disintegration of the Anthroposophical Society.
- The third attempt at a ‘Stiftung’, the Christmas Conference 1923,
resulted in the death of Steiner.
Anyone who would ignore all this or recast it into a victory has lost
touch with reality. In the Council of the Anthroposophical Society at
the beginning of the
21st century it is above all Sergei O. Prokofieff who promotes the
Christmas Conference
ideology in his writings, and in thick volumes transports the feeling
of his readers
into an illusory heaven through numerous Steiner quotations, many of
which are applied in a
questionable way. In addition Prokofieff, standing entirely in the
Albert Steffen
tradition, treats the “Foundation Stone”, given by Rudolf Steiner
during the Christmas
Conference, as a finished product. This is clearly in contradiction
with Steiner’s
intention to open up a field for individual meditative work.
As an inducement to sober reflection I would quote here a statement of
Rudolf Steiner’s which is attested by Herbert Witzenmann to have been
made to
Guenther Wachsmuth: “It could well be that when I return I will have to
fight against the
Anthroposophical Society”.
If one wishes, in a constructive way, to oppose the presentation of the
Christmas Conference in false colours, it must be made quite clear that
the new
attempt at a ‘Stiftung’ from the spiritual world in connection with
Rudolf Steiner,
wanted to descend from heaven to earth in order to inaugurate a new
Mystery Centre on the
Earth. Steiner was prevented from doing this by the Karma of those
involved.
And now the death of Steiner which resulted from the hindrance to his
work is used
in order to disseminate the legend of his continued “spiritual
leadership of the
Goetheanum”. To this, one must say first of all, that in this way of
treating Steiner’s
death a mode of thinking becomes visible for which the Council’s
“playing at
esotericism”, is more important than consideration of the tragic
situation in which Steiner
stood to the very end. And, secondly, the question arises why Steiner
made such great
efforts on Earth when “spiritual leadership from beyond the Threshold”
would have been
just as effective. Regarding the claim that an entirely new esotericism
arose after the
Christmas Conference, it can be shown right down to single details that
Steiner’s
body of Christian- Rosicrucian teaching forms a hermetic unity.
B. Re-Ordering the Relation between Anthroposophical Society and Movement
Here too we can give only a few indications. The Anthroposophical
Society would not exist at all without the Anthroposophical movement.
The
movement is of primary importance. The only reason why Rudolf Steiner
united himself
with the Society at the Christmas Conference was that he hoped to
provide a protective
sheath for the movement which he represented. From Steiner’s death
onwards, at the latest, the Council of the
Anthroposophical Society instead used the movement for its own
purposes. For the sake of
the retention of power, the movement was, from 1925 onwards, harnessed
to the wagon
of the Society. Since then it has had to serve under a false guise,
held fast
in the grip of the dogma of the “eternal Christmas Conference” and thus
turned into its
opposite. It is hardly possible to imagine a more sinister and subtle
way of separating
Steiner from his work. During his lifetime Steiner had warned of the
possibility of the
separation of his name from his work.
In the light of this knowledge, the movement now has the task of
freeing itself from the grip of an element that is foreign to its true
nature. The Anthroposophical movement can only exist in the free
atmosphere of truthfulness and tolerance. Thus the Anthroposophical
Society since
1925 may well be an interesting Society that provides satisfaction to
many people
because it gives them what they want. The movement will always tolerate
this, but has,
itself, nothing to do with such a situation, because it feels committed
to the cause of
Anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical movement is committed to the work
of Rudolf Steiner,
which is published by the Association of Rudolf Steiner’s Literary
Estate (R.St. Nachlassverwaltung). It is in no way my intention to open
up the old
battlefront between the Council of the Society and the
‘Nachlassverein’. It is a matter of
looking as soberly as possible at the way things have developed.
Everyone in the Anthroposophical Society today was, to begin with,
interested in the heart’s concern of the Anthroposophical cause, and
thus in the
movement. If Rudolf Grosse’s seductive and misleading book had not
appeared, hearts would
have turned, in their movement, not to the Anthroposophical Society but
to the
Nachlassverein, for it is there and there only that, to this day, the
wellspring is to be found,
of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual bequest.
As a result of the obscuring of the facts, people who were actually
seeking the movement unwittingly entered a Building Association with
exoteric
statutes, whose Council went so far, between 1943 and 1952, as to take
legal action
against the source of the movement in order to obtain possession of all
the documents. It
would then have been possible, through selective and incomplete
publication of the
Steiner texts, to further perfect the “game with esotericism”. The
Council of the
Anthroposophical Society has always viewed with suspicion the Complete
Edition, which has
meanwhile become available on CD, DVD and HDD, because on the one hand
it fears that
revealing and therefore unwelcome facts might come to light, and on the
other hand
there is reflected in this suspicion the tendency of the sectarian
“game of esotericism”
to keep things secret.
But now also the Internet brings with it, depending on one’s point of
view, the risk or the opportunity of a free Anthroposophical movement
independent of
Dornach. If in this connection one leaves out of account the Ahrimanic
counter-school which uses for itself and distorts the original
Michaelic intelligence,
then one will not estimate rightly the danger to which the
Anthroposophical cause is
exposed. Not even full pages of quotations from Steiner can mislead one
as to the danger
of distortion of the facts. Steiner explains this as follows: “For it
is a normal occurrence in occultism that powers wishing to
pursue their own special interests assume the form of those which
previously gave
the actual impulses”. (GA 158 11.04.1912).
That it belongs to the essential nature of the Anthroposophical
movement that a battle, such as is suggested here, could be fought over
the future of
the cause of Anthroposophy, of this Rudolf Steiner spoke as early as
1912: “Only those who adopt an attitude of testing, towards what is
given
from out of the spiritual world, can remain loyal to Christian
Rosenkreutz….. In
your closest circles, too, many a trial will beset you”. (GA 130
17.06.1912 Hamburg)
Steiner’s words on 19.07.1924: “What is essential now is that the
Anthroposophical Society should take
hold of this, its inner task; the task which consists in not allowing
Michael’s
right to human thinking to be challenged. Here, there is no room for
fatalism.
One can only say that human beings must work in collaboration with the
gods.
Michael fills human beings with enthusiasm for Michael himself, so that
on the
earth there may appear a spirituality that is equal to the individual
intelligence
of human beings, so that one can think and be at the same time a
spiritual human
being; for this is what is implied in the rulership of Michael. This
must be
fought for within the Anthroposophical movement….”
Thus it is a struggle that must take place within Anthroposophical
circles. If now we look with undistorted vision at the situation of
Anthroposophy
today, we see a joining together of two unhealthy attitudes of soul in
the Society: Luciferic
Christmas Conference mystification and Ahrimanic dogmatism. The one
makes a
person flee reality and remain inactive, but be filled with conceit in
an elitist
sense; and the other paralyzes free activities through dogmatic
adherence to principles, and
makes one servile in one’s acceptance of the authority of Dornach. It
is a
puzzling fact that within the Society people are unaware that through
acting in this way they
provide direct evidence of the failure of the Christmas Conference
although, amusingly
enough, they believe themselves to be in possession of the Christmas
Conference.
If one wishes, from the standpoint of the Anthroposophical movement, to
resist these tendencies, one must find the courage to re-examine,
without
prejudice, the relations between Society and movement: The movement has
shown, through
all the years since it became manifest through Rudolf Steiner, that it
can
exist despite hindrances stemming from the Anthroposophical Society.
Why, then,
should it not be freer and more capable of action without the present
ideological
imprisonment, than if it is bound hand and foot by a superfluous
so-called new constitution
created at Christmas 2002?
Rudolf Steiner made the following observation: “On the ground provided
by spiritual science people unite through
differentiation, individualisation and not centralisation”. (GA 259
28.02.1923.
Stuttgart)
All the many initiatives carried by individuals working together – from
kindergartens to schools, agriculture, medicine, the Christian
Community, the Jugendkreis, the High School, the publishing houses,
banks, buildings
and organizations such as national societies, working centres, branches
etc. – all arose,
so far as their essential nature is concerned, from out of the movement
or with its
help, because people became active where needed, with their
intelligence, their heart-forces
and their initiative. The Council in Dornach and the Society structures
were not necessary
for this and, seen in relation to the initiatives, resemble a
superfluous
hydrocephalus. All of them can carry on working as before – but now
more conscious of their
independence, no longer needing to keep one eye trained on Dornach,
working in free
responsibility towards the spiritual world and their fellow human
beings.
There will be in the future many decentralized centres, held together
in friendship because they feel committed to the same idea. The flow of
gifts and
subscriptions must be reconsidered. Maybe in future more funds will be
available locally
than before – I can imagine the present Council functioning as the
administrative Council
of a conference centre, which is what the Goetheanum building is.
Whoever feels a
relation to the building should be free to connect on to it.
C. The Specific Inner
Work of Those Who Feel They Belong To the Anthroposophical Movement
Here we must reflect upon the ethical individualism as described in the
“Philosophie der Freiheit”. Only in this way will it be possible in
future for work to proceed “on the basis of geographical location and
subject matter”.
Words from the “Philosophie der Freiheit” are relevant here: “To live
out of love for the deed, and let live out of an understanding
of the will of others, is the fundamental maxim of free human beings”.
(GA4)
Following the law of the attraction of like by like, the people who
wish to work together will find each other. As a result of the failed
attempt at a
‘Stiftung’ in 1923, the Anthroposophical movement is now returning, one
hundred years later,
consciously to it germinal state of 1905. Standing at the centre of
individual strivings will be the first call
from the spiritual world – the manual for inner training, How to Attain
Knowledge of
Higher Worlds. This concerns the development of the individual’s
vertical connection to the
heavenly realms. It is quite obvious that neither a Pope nor any kind
of Council is
necessary, nor is it able to take away from me my own responsibility or
make prescriptions for me
in this matter. Only in this way will it be possible to retrieve the
“living being of
Anthroposophy” from the “condition of latency” * in which it has
predominantly been since
Rudolf Steiner’s death. Outwardly nothing changes at all, apart from
the flow of money –
inwardly, a turn of 180° takes place – either one holds fast to the
Society-illusion, maintaining the situation as it has always been, or
thinking is renewed in the spirit
of the Anthroposophical movement – in other words: general reform. We
are
living today nearly 600 years after 1413. The entire consciousness-soul
epoch has a
duration of 2500 years. Today, therefore, one quarter of this period
has passed,
and all is not lost.
“Anthroposophy will certainly not be made to disappear from the world.
But it could, for decades or longer, sink back into what one might call
a
condition of latency and then be taken up again. But this would entail
a tremendous
loss for the development of humanity….” (Dornach 17.06.1923.)
V A remark concerning
the “Free High School for Spiritual Science in Dornach”
According to a statement of Rudolf Steiner the High School is to be
regarded…. “as an institution of the spiritual world for the present
time”. (GA
270. 18.04.1924) But, like the Christmas Conference Society, it too is
subject to the
condition that it must develop. In Steiner’s words: “this school must
develop into what can be a real Mystery School in our
time. It is through this, that it becomes the soul of the
Anthroposophical
movement”. (GA 260a. 07.07.1924. Dornach. GA240. 06.02.1924. Stuttgart)
Maybe it is interesting to note that Rudolf Steiner continues, after
the Christmas Conference, to make a clear distinction between movement
and Society.
The union of the two is conditional upon their development. This
applies both to the
Council which understands itself to be esoteric, and to the High
School, and also to
the individual members of the Society. Steiner emphasizes that it is
only on the
precondition that everything “becomes different” that there is any
meaning for him to
bring movement and Society together.
Rudolf Steiner’s aim was to let the “primal source” of the movement,
the supersensible Michael School, flow into an earthly institution, the
High School, in
order from thence, in connection with Council and Society, to further
human
beings. We have already explained that the striven-for goal was not
achieved or, if so,
only to a very limited extent. Today, the Society together with its
Council clings to
the High School as its one source of hope.
However, the High School itself, owing to Steiner’s premature death,
remained a fragment. And, what is more, this fragment has rigidified
into a
questionable tradition. However, the Christmas Conference impulse is
bound up in the closest
possible way with the High School, since it comes directly from the
super sensible
school of Michael. And we have to face up to the bitter truth:
according to a number of
statements of Rudolf Steiner, the Christmas Conference will evaporate
if the conditions are
not met. That they were not met is amply demonstrated by the conflicts,
expulsions
and lawsuits.
Thus the same applies to the High School as to the Society: “It will be
an interesting Society, but it will not accomplish what was
intended with it by the spiritual powers which stood at its very
beginning”.
The First Class of the High School, which was usurped by the Council of
the Society through the excommunication of Ita Wegman became, in
Bondarev’s
words, a “Flying Dutchman”, suggesting a phenomenon that is more
appearance than
substance – a ghost-ship, in other words. How far this applies also to
the
esoteric Jugendkreis is for those who belong to it to decide for
themselves. Rudolf Steiner, at
any rate, wanted to see the Jugendkreis integrated into the High
School. These unpleasant facts raise the question for anyone seriously
concerned about the cause of Anthroposophy: How can one find, today,
the living school
of Michael, which Steiner called the ‘Fundamental source’?
The answer is simple: The laws that applied then are still valid one
hundred years later. The method that is of central importance was made
known by
Rudolf Steiner in his basic work “Die Philosophie der Freiheit”, and
esoterically deepened in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”. He
himself makes no
distinction between the book “How to Attain….” and the High School
which he tried, but
without success, to bring into being: “It is really so, that the
esoteric deepening of which you can read so
much in my book ‘How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds’ and of which
so much is spoken, is now to take place through the three classes.” (GA
260a.
07.07.1924. Dornach)
As, however, the three classes did not materialize and the one class
was used more for “playing at esotericism”, mystery-mongering and
“sailing in
cloud-cuckoo-land” (all in lecture 30.01.1924 Dornach) than for a High
School activity
worthy of the name, there is only one remaining option – serious
individual work in
esoteric striving. Plenty of material providing stimulus is available.
We who feel connected with the Anthroposophical movement owe a debt of
gratitude to the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, to the extent that,
in the spirit of the later Marie Steiner von Sievers, they made their
editorial work subject
to the test of truth, although doubts about this have been raised
recently. Let us hope that
the Nachlassverein is not overtaken by the “Karma of Untruthfulness”.
It cannot be, that later generations, who also belong to the School of
Michael, must suffer the consequences of the failure of the first
generation and
that the tradition of inefficacy and untruthfulness resulting from this
should hinder real
development. Do we not see a clear message in a declining membership
and in young
people’s lack of interest in joining the Anthroposophical Society? Of
crucial importance from now on is the direct, vertical connection
with the spiritual, which can be achieved by any individual. And
working out
from this basis, likeminded people can join together to carry out their
various tasks.
The rest is history.
Translator’s Note:
In this English version most of the 173 references (to Steiner lectures
and works of other German authors) are omitted; also H. Giersch’s
frequent underlining’s
of words and sentences. Harald Giersch shares G. Bondarev’s conviction
that nothing underhand
can have taken place at the meeting of 8th Feb. 1925, which Rudolf
Steiner was unable
to attend owing to his illness
Commentary by Joel A.
Wendt on this lecture
.