In the summer of Rudolf Steiner who was not known in political circles approached the leading statesmen of Austria with a proposed solution for the complex situation of Central Europe. He realized that economic and cultural life would be more and more hindered in development if they were not separated from the political sphere; and he gave clear warning of the destructive consequences of the prevailing tendencies.
He proposed that the State should hand over the entire economic life to an administration chosen by its own personalities, not by the government, thus allowing it independent mobility, and should renounce control of cultural life.
A freedom could then develop in which minorities could feel at home. They would discern new possibilities for the future and hope would be born anew. Only by such action could Central Europe be saved to fulfill its common cultural tasks. Not only the future of Austria was in question, but of the world as a whole. Before the first World War ended, Steiner, then living in Berlin, had worked out directives along which a threefold social system could develop.
His Memorandum was submitted to the last Austrian emperor, Charles I; during the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk it was among the papers of the German delegates. Had a pronouncement in favour of new healing impulses been made from the right place, the effect could have been far-reaching indeed. The peoples of the Russian East could have understood the supplanting of Tsarism by impulses that corresponded with their longing for true brotherhood.
Among the English-speaking peoples were men who could see what was at work in the nations of Central and Eastern Europe; a central-European policy based on insight into the spiritual background of social life would have been intelligible to a western view which reckoned with historical necessities. The American peace programme should have been met by another, issuing from Europe. The threefold system offered hope of fulfillment to the three ideals of the French Revolution—Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Because man speaks a certain language, goes to school, or represents a point of view, his life extends into the realm of the spirit where Freedom should reign. In living under the protection of the state, like his fellow-men, he partakes of the life of rights, where Equality can rule.
As a producer and consumer, he is part of the economic life, which tends towards Brotherhood. Because of the tripartite nature of human existence, thoughts on these lines are like a rock on which a healthy social order can be based.
In innumerable lectures he had spoken of the need to turn to new impulses, strive for their realization and understand their world-wide significance. He fought for the future of humanity. If insight and the strength to make decisions failed, the whole human race would have to suffer. But no-one in political circles was sufficiently far-sighted to take up his suggestions and so create the foundations for reconstruction.
The rejection of the proposals for a threefold social order determined the later history of the twentieth century. But now it will only materialize after humanity has passed through the greatest catastrophes. In this small, rocky country, whose population stands firmly on the ground, Rudolf Steiner spent the last twelve years of his life. During his early years in Austria he had planned, with thoughts of regal power, his book about human freedom.
In Germany from to he had opened up the sources of the spirit to human striving. In Switzerland, he gave practical indications for a renewal of cultural life. His proposals for the threefold commonwealth date from these years.
From Switzerland he visited other countries. The questions he was asked at that time directly concerned practical life. In co-operation with doctors he evolved the fundamentals of a new art of healing. To orthodox medicine he added a deepened knowledge of the body, soul and spirit, as well as understanding for the healing properties of plants and minerals. When hew was asked about the care of retarded children, he gave answers that inspired a new art of curative education which offers profound understanding of those souls who cannot adjust themselves fully to conditions on Earth in their present lives.
In response to questions from the director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, who wanted to found a school for the children of his employees, he gave courses for teachers, initiating a new type of education which meets the innermost needs of childhood and adolescence.
Several Protestant clergymen approached Rudolf Steiner with problems of pastoral care and the celebration of the Sacraments today. When a sufficient number of people demanded advice of this kind, Rudolf Steiner gave courses to priests, which led to the foundation of the Christian Community. Young farmers asked about the application of healing principles to agriculture.
In the resulting lectures arranged by a Silesian landowner he gave all the instructions necessary to open up the soil to the forces of the cosmos, thus allowing it to gain new life forces. He also gave a new impetus to art. For the sculptural treatment of wood and clay he created examples in which the normally invisible movement of the intermediate stages of forms in metamorphosis is made manifest. In painting, he showed how the rhythms of temporal metamorphosis can be re-created and colours adapted to the laws of the rainbow.
Architecture also received new impulses through him. Modern buildings whose form is based on the cube are the image of present-day utilitarianism.
In future, the more man becomes conscious of the spirit the more this type of architecture will yield to living forms. Rudolf Steiner showed the way to such development. He also made possible a wider understanding for music whose connection with the world of stars he made evident. His new art of movement, Eurythmy, brings speech and movement, as well as music, into harmony. In every sphere he led beyond earlier ideals and showed the way towards a healthier development.
In particular he appealed to young people for decisions made consciously in the depth of the heart. Through his own life he showed what can be achieved by a human being filled with wisdom.
His life was a continually renewed sacrifice to humanity, a ceaseless effort to stretch out a hoping brotherly hand in every situation. Whatever he did he achieved out of love, presence of mind, and fully mastered capacities that were rooted in start wisdom.
Here the science of the spirit was to find a home. Constructed entirely in wood, it was like and image of the cosmos ad of the development of man. The succession of columns in the great hall was an illustration through form of the basic impulses of the planets and of the peoples of Europe.
The columns led the gaze to the large cupola, which was joined to a smaller dome painted with scenes of past and future as they appear in the world chronicle of Divine spirits. On the Eve of New Year, , the Goetheanum was deliberately burned down. At midnight the flames pierced the domes and rose like a gigantic torch to the sky. The pillar intended as the representation of wisdom burned on into the morning. Two years and three months after the fire, Rudolf Steiner died.
He had carved a large statue for the Goetheanum. This escaped the flames, not yet having been moved to its intended position; but it remained unfinished. It shows the Representative of Humanity between the two Adversaries who accompany evolution. In the series Classical Berliner Editions "with introductions by well known historians of literature" , he published and introduced the works of Wieland and Uhland.
In , he published Philosophy of Freedom later also published as Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path , the basic philosophical foundation for his later works. In Berlin, he published and edited the Magazine for Literature from to , and Dramaturgical Papers , official organ of the German Stage Association. During the period, and later, he developed an extensive lecturing and teaching activity under the auspices of a number of literary and scientific societies. At the fifth centennial of the birth of Gutenberg in June , he was asked to give a festival address to the 7, congregated typesetters and printers at the circus stadium in Berlin.
From to , he also worked as a lecturer on history, literature, the art of speaking, and the sciences at the Berlin Workers' Training School, founded by the Social Democrat Wilhelm Liebknecht.
From , he was married to Anna Eunicke, until her death in Through his work from the s and onwards, he became well known far outside the borders of Germany as a scholar and cultural personality. With the turn of the 20th century his life took a new direction. In , he was asked to become the General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society. He accepted, but gave the stipulation that he could speak freely only of what he developed through his own spiritual investigations.
The step from traditional scholar to the development and public presentation of spiritual research shocked many of those who up to that time had come to know him as a widely respected scholar and cultural personality. His closest co-worker from onwards, and later partner for life, came to be Marie von Sievers in Marie Steiner.
She made it possible for him to realize his artistic strivings. This was to be the starting point for four Mystery Dramas by Steiner, that were staged for the first time in Munich, in , , and In , a separation from the Theosophical Society became necessary, and an Anthroposophical Society was founded by co-workers of Steiner.
While he continued his lecturing activity on what he called "spiritual science", he held no office in this Society, and was not even a member of it.
In , he also initiated a new art of movement, eurythmy , as one part of the general development of the arts at the time, in a kindred spirit to that of Isadora Duncan , regarded as the mother of "modern dance".
Together with a new art of speech formation , developed by Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sievers, eurythmy from has come to constitute the focus for the work on the Goetheanum stage in Dornach Switzerland. Goethe, though best known outside German-speaking countries for his play Faust , was a prolific writer on science and metaphysics who attempted to construct an overarching, holistic philosophy of human perception and belief. Another influence on the young Steiner was a man named Felix Koguzki who gathered and sold herbs for a living but also had a rich life of spiritual and mystical experiences.
One of Steiner's professors noted his enthusiasm for Goethe and his systematic mind, and recommended him for a position as editor of a series of Goethe's scientific writings for a scholarly Deutsche National Literatur German National Literature publication project. He began work even before his graduation in For much of the first part of his life, Steiner made a living as an editor and archivist, working on a complete edition of Goethe's writings in the s and moving to Weimar in eastern Germany in to take a position at the Schiller-Goethe Archives there.
On the side, Steiner took more classes and received a Ph. His dissertation was published as a book, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft Truth and Science. During this part of his life Steiner was primarily a philosopher, and one who espoused the concept of idealism—the belief that experience is located in the mind—rather than materialism, which holds that the world, including mental processes, is ultimately reducible to matter and its interactions.
Philosophie der Freiheit Philosophy of Freedom, was his most important work of these years. Steiner studied the tradition of nineteenth-century German philosophy going back to Hegel and to the radical idealism of Johann Fichte. He continued to make a living as an editor of several different magazines, moving to the German capital of Berlin in In one article in the Magazine for Literature , Steiner rejected anti-semitic ideas. His positions on the relationship of Germanic peoples to those of other cultures would later prove controversial, however.
Steiner married Anna Eunike in , but the marriage later ended in divorce. Gradually, Steiner's interests broadened beyond philosophy and if they had not, his name would likely be little known today. He began teaching two evenings a week at the Arbeiterbildungsschule School for the Education of Workers in Berlin, a progressive institution where he could discuss ideas of universal education and freedom as they related to the working class.
Steiner also joined the Berlin Theosophic Society, a branch of the international theosophy movement. Theosophists held that existing religions were paths, often equally valid, to a higher spiritual truth.
By Steiner had given numerous lectures on theosophy and became the German Theosophic Society's general secretary. To describe his system of "spiritual science," he began to use the word "anthroposophy," derived from Greek roots meaning human wisdom.
It was clear that Steiner had found his calling. He became what would now be called a full-time motivational speaker for the last quarter-century of his life, giving some 6, lectures that ranged over numerous topics related to the nature of human spiritual life. Steiner lectured on Christian themes, on history, drama, science, agriculture, and virtually any other area of human endeavor that he saw as related to the spiritual quest. He saw the human being as consisting of body, soul, and an eternal spirit that manifested itself anew—he believed in reincarnation.
Among the spiritual beings who oversaw human development were the Archangel Michael and a negative Antichrist-like figure he called Ahriman, who sought to prevent human spiritual evolution. One of his favorite themes was that of the Threefold Social Order or Social Threefolding—the German term is Soziale Dreigliederung : he advocated the separation in human society of the cultural including educational , political, and economic realms.
After his first marriage dissolved, he met anthroposophy devotee Marie von Sivers, an actress from the Baltic region, and the two were married in It was around that time that Steiner's relationship with Theosophy dissolved.
It had been under strain for some time due to religious disagreements.
0コメント