Community Building

Background of the Following Two Lectures A Prefatory Note (Based upon the Biography of Rudolf Steiner by Guenther Wachsmuth) Immediately after the burning of the Goetheanum, on New Year's night, December 31-January 1, 1922-'23, Dr. Steiner continued his current series of lectures without interruption, using for this purpose the workshop (Schreinerei) beside the ruins of the building. These lectures he continued for several weeks. But, after thus avoiding any cessation or even hiatus in the spiritual activity at the center of the Society, which would otherwise have resulted from the overwhelming disaster of the fire, and after ensuring that fruitful work would continue in his absence, he set out near the end of January to visit other centers where there were urgent and complex problems requiring his presence. The lectures he delivered in Stuttgart during this visit constituted a profound and searching challenge to the Society as a whole and to every individual member. This challenge took the form, in part, of a retrospect over the development of the Society from the beginning up to that time and a penetrating analysis of weaknesses and errors which must be overcome and eradicated for the future. The two lectures here offered to English-speaking members as the first of the whole series lo be published in the English language were, in reality, the last to be delivered. They were addressed to an assembly of delegates representing the Society in Germany. The dates and titles of the entire series were as follows: January 26: Worte des Schmerzes, der Gewissenserforschung. Worte zum Bewusstwerden der Verantwortlichkeit. (Words of Pain, of the Searching of Conscience. Words to Awaken a Consciousness of Responsibility.) January 30: Urteilsbildung auf Grand der Tatsachen. (Forming One's Judgment on the Basis of Facts.) February 6 and 13: Die drei Phasen der anthroposophischen Arbeit. (The Three Phases of Anthroposophical Work.) February 27 and 28: Gemeinschaftsbildung: Zwei Vorträge zur Delegierten-Versammlung. (Community-building: Two Lectures Delivered at a Meeting of Delegates of the Anthroposophical Society.) Allusions to certain “foundations” or “establishments” which had been set up within the Society — prematurely, according to the statement of Dr. Steiner — require for a full understanding the reading of other lectures than the two here presented, especially the whole series listed above. For the immediate purpose of the present translation, the following will probably suffice by way of general information. The first phase in the development of the Society extended from 1902 to 1909; the second from 1909 to 1916 or 17. Soon after the beginning of the third phase, especially from 1919 on, when Dr. Steiner's lectures had begun to deal more and more specifically with contemporary culture in all its aspects, numbers of persons interested in special phases of modern science and life entered the Society and became active within it in their special fields without having first drawn from the central source of Anthroposophy adequate new life for their thinking within their specific fields of activity. One result of this was the creation within the Society of certain organized activities for which the Society necessarily sustained a certain responsibility, but which were not sufficiently permeated and motivated by its own innermost life. It is to these premature endeavors that Dr. Steiner alludes as sources of criticism from without and hindrance within the Society. The objection is not directed against the endeavors in themselves, but solely against the time and the manner of their initiation and prosecution. But the essential content of the lectures bears only in subordinate degree upon those special problems of that moment. This content is obviously of great importance to the whole Society and to every member, without regard to place or date. All the more thought-provoking do these admonitions become when we recall the step which Dr. Steiner felt called upon to take ten months later, in the reconstitution of the Society and the assumption (with the grateful approval of the members) of the Presidency. In the Opening Address at the Foundation Meeting, during the Christmas Conference of 1923, he thus linked together these two lectures and that memorable action: “I should like to say that, during recent weeks, my heart has been deeply concerned with the question: What, now, shall really lx taken as the starting point at this Christmas Conference, and what lessons are to be learned from the experiences of the past ten years during which the Anthroposophical Society has existed? “Out of all this there arose for me alternative questions to be answered. During the years 1912, 1913, I declared for good reasons that the Anthroposophical Society as such should provide its own direction, its own leadership, and that I must withdraw to the position of a counsellor, not participating directly in the conduct of its affairs. Today the situation is such that, after a profound inner struggle during recent weeks, it has become a matter of knowledge to me that I could not possibly lead the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society any longer unless this Christmas Conference should agree that I shall once more take over in all respects the direction of the Anthroposophical Society which is to be founded here at the Goetheanum in Dornach — in other words, its PresidenÑу.” This decision, that it was necessary to change his own relationship to the Society, he then explained as having been influenced in important measure by the fact that conditions existing within the Society at the time of the Stuttgart meeting had left him no choice but to recommend the creation of the Free Anthroposophical Society, as a separate organization devoted primarily to meeting the needs of youth. (This statement in the Opening Address is quoted in a footnote on page 16 of this brochure.) It is illuminating to us, as members of the Society at the present time, to read the Opening Address at the Christmas Foundation Meeting in close connection with these two Stuttgart lectures. O. D. W. September 2, 1942.