The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture

www.rosejourn.com, 2013

If we wish to address this question of how anthroposophy stands in relation to what it means to be scientific, a few concepts must be clarified in advance. Modern culture is dominated by science, but finding a straightforward definition of science in the relevant literature is no simple matter. No less difficult is the creation of a consensus on what “anthroposophy” means. Right at the outset, then, it is probably worthwhile to clarify – at least within the present context – what is intended by these terms. An attempt will be made to arrive at a working definition of science based around the process of observation, by looking at situations where it leads to knowledge or where prior knowledge is being used. In the case of anthroposophy a hermeneutic approach will be taken, in which Rudolf Steiner’s own conceptual interpretation will be presented.

European Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 2022

The Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, was, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, a global phenomenon with 100,000 members. New Age philosopher Dr Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was appointed as the first Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society on 19 October 1902. The Theosophical Society offered Rudolf Steiner a platform, a ready-made audience, infrastructure, and the insider experience of the world's leading New Age spiritual society. The success of the Theosophical Society demonstrated that there was a public appetite to hear about reincarnation, karma, maya, kamaloca, and other Eastern and alternative spiritual ideas. The Theosophical Society provided Rudolf Steiner with a capable, multilingual, and determined personal assistant, Marie von Sivers (1867-1948). For Rudolf Steiner, the Theosophical Society offered the ideal training ground for what would be, a decade later, his life's work, the Anthroposophical Society. Rudolf Steiner grew the membership of the German Section of the Theosophical Society from 377 in 1905 to 3,702 in 1913. He earned cash from ticketing of his lectures and his Mystery plays, and from book sales of his personal publishing house, 'Philosophisch-Theosophischer Verlag'. Another enterprise, the 'Johannes-Bau-Verein' (Johannes Building Association) was founded in 1911, independent of the Theosophical Society, to build a theatre in Munich to present Rudolf Steiner's plays. The building application was rejected by the Munich municipal authorities in 1912. The resistance to the proposed building in Munich provided an impetus for the move to build in Dornach, Switzerland. The Anthroposophical Society was founded on 28 December 1912 in Cologne, Germany. Most of the members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society followed Rudolf Steiner into the Anthroposophical Society. The Theosophical Society expelled Rudolf Steiner from the Society on 7 March 1913. The foundation stone for the Goetheanum (then still called the 'Johannesbau') was laid on 20 September 1913. The Theosophical Society had served as the ideal prototype and springboard for founding and growing the Anthroposophical Society.

Handbook of the Theosophical Current, 2013

RoSE – Research on Steiner Education, 2013

Most Highly Esteemed Doctor Steiner, before his Magnificence, the rector of our university and the provincial minister of higher education write to you formally, I take it upon myself to inform you of an important matter pertaining to yourself, and without further ado will come straight to the point. Following the departure of their colleague, Julius Lange, for Kiel, the academic board of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Jena is seriously considering you as the replacement to fill this vacant professorship. Your recently published Philosophy of Freedom, together with your numerous other philosophical writings have convinced the faculty of the originality of your philosophy, and they are willing to recognise your works to date as sufficient to fulfil the conditions of professorial appointment. That I – subsequent to our conversation at my sixtieth birthday celebration, which you were gracious enough to attend – was not entirely uninvolved in the decision-making process,...

STEINER STUDIES (1), 2020

The workshop ‘Anthroposophy’, held in Fribourg on October 18 and 19, 2019 at the invitation of Helmut Zander, had three intentions: 1. To review the status of academic research on Rudolf Steiner’s work. 2. Based on such a review, to formulate questions and priorities for academic research on Rudolf Steiner’s work. 3. To use workshop contributions from different academic research areas for a discussion about how Steiner’s thinking connects with contemporary currents and issues in science. Keywords: Reception of Steiner, Biodynamic Farming, Waldorf Pedagogy, Anthroposophical Movement, Theory of Science, Steiner Research

Anthroposophy refers to human cleverness and was created by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) in Vienna in the late 19 th century. By wisdom, Anthroposophy is a philosophy, and by knowledge, it is a science. The object of Anthroposophy is secular spirituality and thus it differs from Theosophy which deals with mystical spirituality. From the very beginning of his initiative, Rudolf Steiner suspected that man did not belong on Earth. It seemed too much to him that man differed from other forms of life on Planet Earth. That is why he publicly asked the question, "Who is man and where does it come from, since it does not seem to be Earthly?"

"Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthroposophical Society, is renowned for his work in widely varied fields. However, his accomplishments as an architect are less well understood. His two greatest achievements in this field – two buildings known as ‘Geotheanum I’ and ‘Goetheanum II’ (built after the destruction of the 1st) – have been described as ‘sculptural architecture’, of a kind similar Expressionist form to Gaudi, Obrist, and Finsterlin. The focus of this chapter, Goetheanum II, is a giant sculptured form, four stories high, with sweeping lines that give the effect of a giant monolithic mass. It is home to the Anthroposophical movement, and holds a 1,000 seat performance hall in which spiritual performances take place. Contributors to an issue of the Swiss architectural magazine Werk, in 1960, on the building, agreed that the building’s design must have required “a uniform worldview and lifestyle.” Indeed, to understand the Goetheanum requires an understanding of Anthroposophy and of Steiner himself. This chapter looks at the meaning in the aesthetic choices of Steiner in the design and construction of the Goetheanum II. Steiner’s belief that the people of Western Europe needed to re-orientate their weltanschauung is understood as a spiritual need. Interestingly, it was a view shared by many Expressionist artists. Steiner could not have been unaware of a number of significant Expressionistic philosophies and forms present in Europe during his formative period. As a lecturer he travelled extensively, and came into contact with many artists and writers who shared similar ideas. His vision for the Goetheanum was grandiose, like those of many other Expressionists, though unlike many others he had the opportunity to build his vision himself. The Goetheanum has also been referred to as a gesamtkunstwerk, also a theme common in the German art scene at the time. Yet Steiner wanted something ‘new’ for his nascent spiritual group; “Not to build in a style born out of our spiritual world view, would mean to deny Anthroposphy in her own house.” As a result the Geotheanum expresses Anthroposophical ideals, a movement which itself professed to inhabit the entire cultural life of its adherents. For Steiner this was came in the form of spiritual realisation, which could best be achieved in the sculptural shapes and organic forms of the Goetheanum"

Schriften – Rudolf Steiner Kritische Ausgabe: Band 6: Schriften zur Anthropologie – Theosophie – Anthroposophie. Ein Fragment, 2016

Foreword to Volume 6 of the series Schriften – Rudolf Steiner Kritische Aufgabe (frommann-holzboog Verlag, 2016), edited by Christian Clement. This volume contains Steiner's two texts, Theosophie and Anthroposophie. The foreword discusses Steiner's relationship to the Theosophical and post-Theosophical currents.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), founder of the spiritual humanities known as anthroposophy, inaugurated and developed the idea of the threefold order of the social organism, in short social organics, in four phases. It first came to the fore in 1917 with his memoranda to the governments of the German and Austrian-Hungarian emperors as a Central-European peace initiative to end the wars against Russia and the West. It contained a radical proposal to finally realize the ideals of the French revolution by extending the separation of powers – the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government – to the three branches of the social organism, i.e. freedom in the cultural life (science, art and religion), equality in the rights sphere of the proper life of the state and politics and brotherhood in the economic life (production, distribution and consumption of goods and services). After this internal attempt failed, Rudolf Steiner went public in 1919 with his Appeal to the German People and the Civilized World followed by his book The Threefold Social Order, out of which grew a popular movement with branches in several European countries. When also this attempt failed to break through, he developed in 1922 in his Course on a Science of World Economy a new social organic form of thinking and language. And in order to further this new paradigm he and his followers refounded on a social organic constitutional basis in 1923 the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, which now has branches throughout the world, all designed to bring this new principle of civilization to fruition for the benefit of mankind and the earth.