Thursday, September 6, 2012

On the Author Herbert Witzenmann and His Work



Herbert Witzenmann was born in Pforzheim, Germany on February 16, 1905 and died in Heidelberg on September 24, 1988. In his youth he had a decisive meeting with Rudolf Steiner, the founder anthroposophy or science of the Grail, and founder and first president of the General Anthroposophical Society, which determined the course of the rest of his life. He gave up his ambition to become a concert pianist and, following the advice of Rudolf Steiner, went on to study philosophy under the German philosopher Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg, but the rise of the Nazi’s prevented him from getting his doctorate. During the Second World war, which almost saw him sent to his certain death at the Eastern front in Russia, his thesis on the concept of work by Hegel and Nietzsche as well as many of his other writings were destroyed by bombing raids on his hometown of Pforzheim, in southern Germany. He also studied mechanical engineering and art history, and was active as a director in the metallurgical firm of his father and grandfather. After the war he became well known as a lecturer and editor of the anthroposophical organ of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany "Die Drei" (The Three), and in 1963 became Council member of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach and head of the Youth Section and later the one for Social Science at the Goetheanum, Free School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, Switzerland.  Around 1970, however, this position was taken away from him by a majority decision of the Council (in connection with the so-called, still unresolved book question dealt with in this essay) when in 1979 his chair was occupied by the late Manfred Schmidt-Brabant, who in 1984 also became president of the Society.

This first of four social-aesthetic studies Herbert Witzenmann was to write is translated from the second, revised and enlarged edition entitled Die Prinzipien der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, which appeared in 1984 in Dornach, Switzerland as the first in the series of publications entitled Sozialästhetische Studien (Social-Aesthetic Studies). The first German edition appeared in No. 9/10 of the Mitteilungen (Bulletins) published in 1969 by the Arbeitskreis zur geistgemässen Durchdringung der Weltlage (Working Group For A Spiritually Commensurate Penetration Of The World Situation) in Dornach. Of this first edition a translation in mimeograph form was done by G.M. Kealy, J. Lodder and S. Walsch, which was issued in 1969 by English-speaking members of the above-mentioned group and on which this translation is partly based.

In the appendices a new translation is offered of the ‘principles’, with added footnotes, and of the Foundation Stone Meditation by Rudolf Steiner given during the Christmas Conference 1923 in Dornach to refound the Anthroposophical Society in the presence of some 7-800 anthroposophists from around the world.

This “Study Material for the Spiritualization of the Principle of Civilization”is made available for members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society, the Herbert Witzenmann Foundation and of the Willehalm Institute for Anthroposophy as Grail Research, Royal Art and Social Organics based in Amsterdam.

It is a supplement to the blogs "The Just Price - World Economy a s Social Organics" and "The Virtues - Seasons of the Soul" both by Herbert Witzenmann. See also the blogs of translations in progress of The Philosophy of Freedom as a Basis of Artistic Creation and "To Create or to Administrate - Rudolf Steiner's Social Organics: A New Principle of Civilization". 

Willehalm  Institute Press Foundation 
Kerkstraat 386A, Nl - 1017 JB Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Donations are more than welcome and can be made via PayPal to rjkelder@willehalm.nl 


Foreword to the First and Second Edition (1998)


Note: These forewords may be of special interest to (former) members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society as they deal with attempts by the translator to not only show the significance of this study as heralding of a new principle of civilisation, but also to apply it to the life of the Anthroposophical Society itself, albeit without much success. Readers not so interested in this theme are cordially invited to skip these forewords and turn directly to the introduction by the author in Part II entitled “The Creation of an Overworld”.

The Anthroposophical Society has played no role of great importance in the course of the 20th century. Whether this will change in the few years remaining before the end of the second millennium and beyond that in the coming 21st century, will depend on whether the potential world historical significance of the ‘principles’ of this Society in their relation to the Foundation Stone Meditation, given by Rudolf Steiner at the end of the first quarter of our century as the spiritual cornerstone  of this society, are finally comprehended as embodying the archetype of social organisms and as such enacted.

To the general reader unaccustomed with this material, this strong conviction may well sound sectarian or strange, if not completely ridiculous. Yet, it lies at the heart of the attempt by the translator to make a new translation of this study as well as of the ‘principles’ and the Foundation Stone meditation by Rudolf Steiner available. For even though it is obvious to every student of the dramatic, dreadful war-torn history of the 20th century that the Anthroposophical Society has played no great visible part in it, the picture changes completely if one considers what would have happened, if the attempt by Rudolf Steiner to refound the Society during the Christmas Conference of 1923 – with at its core the Goetheanum, School of Spiritual Science as a new mystery center – had been planted in more fertile soil, i.e. if this new principle of civilization had been cultivated with more attention, loving care and courage in the hearts and minds of the recipients. Then it would certainly have branched out into all four corners of the earth and born fruit in all aspects of human culture, science and social life.
            
It would have acted as a counterforce against the movements opposing it that likewise came to the fore during that period: in the East bolshevism and Lenin’s Communist International Movement based on class struggle and the ideology of dialectic-materialism; in the West U.S. President Wilson’s League of Nations based on the contra-productive principle of self-determination for all peoples through the abstract idea of nation-states sanctioned by the moral cloak of the Vatican; and in the center on the one hand Hitler’s national-socialism based on the racist blood and soil doctrine with, on the other hand, its bedfellow and counterpart – strange but true – Theodore Herzl’s Zionism with its no less outdated racist theory of national blood- and soil bound supremacy (God’s Chosen People). These were, or even are, all more or less crimes against individual humanity – whereby the ignominious part played by the once so noble and universal freemasonry in conjunction with the dubious, because largely hidden and unchecked, role of Capital and the Central Banks in the service of Mammon seated mainly in the West must certainly not be overlooked. That this is no futile exercise in melodramatic recollection may be shown by the following.  

Rudolf Steiner had done everything he could to prevent the horrors of World War I and at the end of it, in 1919, he presented his proposal for the “Threefold Nature of the Social Organism” to the world as a direct answer of defeated Central Europe to the so-called 14 points of President Wilson. These would in the eyes of Rudolf Steiner – and how right he was considering all the so-called wars of national liberation which often ended up in still greater tyranny and turmoil than they strove to overcome – only cause greater havoc and suffering. He wrote a book that soon became a best-seller [1] and a movement, consisting largely of anthroposophists, was set up with headquarters in Stuttgart, Southern Germany, and with branches in various European countries, with representatives in England and America. By 1922, however, it became clear that the movement in this phase had failed due to too little support and too much external opposition from both left, right and center. But the intrinsic idea did not fail, and thus Rudolf Steiner presented the social organic impulse in the face of completely changed circumstances in Central Europe in a fundamentally new form and language, namely in his lectures on World Economy. In these unfortunately still not fully understood, let alone implemented, 14 lectures and 6 seminars for students of economy, he further developed the new royal art and science of social organics to neutralize the above mentioned inhuman effects of unleashed capital and the so-called free market economy by harmonizing them with the production factors – labor and nature – to bring about just prices through what he called associations of producers, traders and consumers.

By 1923 it became clear that the Anthroposophical Society itself had to be renewed, if it was to become a real vehicle for the cultivation and dissemination of anthroposophy, or science of the Grail as Rudolf Steiner also termed it in one of his basic works Outline of Occult Science. This societal renewal occurred at the Christmas Conference on a historic hill in Dornach, Switzerland in the presence of some 800 members and delegates from around the world, who at night heard lectures by Rudolf Steiner on world history in the light of anthroposophy and who, on December 28, 1923 – after three days of discussion – unanimously adopted the fifteen paragraphs submitted by Rudolf Steiner, with slight amendments, as the statutes of the refounded, general, i.e. neither national or international Anthroposophical Society. A day earlier Rudolf Steiner had characterized the task of the newly formed Council as follows: “The central Council is to consider as its sole task the realization of the statutes; it shall have to do everything that goes towards the realization of the statutes. And with that great freedom is given. But one knows at the same time what this Council signifies, because one has the statutes. From these statutes a complete picture can be gained of what the Council shall ever do.” [2] In the very next sentence Rudolf Steiner mentions one of the immediate objectives of the Council, namely to establish on the basis of the statutes the proper relationship between the Council of the newly found Society and its related institutions, especially the Goetheanum Building Association.  And it is exactly from this point on that great doubt has arisen as to whether the ensuing course of events was fully in line with the stated goal, or whether a serious departure from it crept in with the disastrous effect of neutralizing the newly constructed social-organic form for the cultivation of anthroposophy and consequently of preventing it from incarnating, as it were, in the soul life of a humanity hungry for real spiritual nourishment.

The increasing doubts concerning this turn of events, coupled with the resolve to help put the Anthroposophic Society as it were back on its track, has led to the formation of the G.A.S. Constitution Initiative - Working Group for the Clarification of the Constitution Issue of the General Anthroposophical Society with its international co-ordination center in Achberg, Germany. [3] 

The essence of what happened is that on December 29, 1925 the members of the Anthroposophical Society were invited to become active in the Goetheanum Building Association, renamed General Anthroposophical Society, thereby establishing a unsound mixture of spiritual and economic-administrative planes. Since that time the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society have been referred to as the principles to distinguish them from the statutes of the Association of the General Anthroposophical Society Inc. Hence the ‘principles’ in quotation marks.

In short, the task at hand now is to engender a reborn Anthroposophical Society by turning in full consciousness the ‘principles’ into statutes, thereby fulfilling the world historic task, which the Society neglected at the beginning of this century and thus help overcome further catastrophes.[4] 
                                                                                    
In closing my thanks go out Bernard Wolf and the friends from the Social Science Section of the Goetheanum who invited me this time to America to attend conferences of the Anthroposophical Society inspired partly, it seems, by this working translation.[5] This kind invitation prompted me to make a second edition of this work available and thereby use the American spelling. Pending the permission of the Herbert Witzenmann Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany, which governs his estate, I hope someday to make it also publicly available. (Update: this permission has in the mean time been give.) 

Robert J. Kelder,
Amsterdam, May 1998



[1] First published in English under the title The Threefold Commonwealth, London 1923; second edition The Threefold Social Order, New York 1966 and third edition Towards Social Renewal, London 1977. Original title Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft.
[2] Translated from Die Weihnachtstagung zur Begründung der Allgemeinen Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, Dornach 1963, p. 101, which also contains the sentence concerning the Goetheanum Building Association. English translation: The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society  (Hudson, 1990). 
[3] This group has been disbanded in the face of the development of the constitutional issue. Its leading spokesman, the former Wilfried Heidt, along with other colleagues, such as Gerhard von Beckerath and Benedictus von Hardop, has joined together with members of the Council of the Society in Dornach to form a working group to find a solution to the constitutional question. For further background information see Wilfried Heidt Does the Anthroposophical Society need to be refounded?, an article that appeared in the German Goetheanum News for Members in 1997 (Has been translated; exact reference could not found).
[4] See for a more penetrating analysis as well as a proposal to solve this constitutional issue “The Foreword to the Fifth Edition” of this booklet. 
[5] See my literary report Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community on my lectures last year (1997) in Wilton, New Hampshire. Available in the Library of the Anthroposophical Society in America. (Update; later enlarged to include reports of visits to Canada and America in 1998, 1999 and 2001. Of this fifth edition only two copies were printed. A new one is pending.) 

Foreword to the Third Edition and Acknowledgements (1998)


Among the various friends and members of the Society to whom I sent copies of the first edition of this working translation during my first visit to America in November 1997 was David Schwartz, who in turn sent a photocopy to Bernard Wolf. This led to the invitation to attend the above-mentioned social scientific and members conference entitled "Threefoldness and the Anthroposophical Society". Included among the reading material mailed to the coming participants of this conference was the translation of the statutes (principles) with footnotes from the first edition of this publication, found here slightly revised in Appendix I.

The conference itself took place from June 17 - 21 at Rose Hall, Camphill Village at Kimberton Hills, Pennsylvania, and provided a welcome and indeed golden opportunity to finally introduce this spiritual and social scientific research done by Herbert Witzenmann on the ‘principles’ to a larger audience than the one in Wilton, New Hampshire in 1997. Two slide shows on the Parzival and Willehalm geography based on the research by Werner Greub and on the Anthroposophical Society as Grail Chalice were also held in the beautiful Myrin Library of the Kepler House, adjacent to the Rose Hall

Since the demand for the second edition of this working translation gradually came to exceed the short supply, this third revised edition has been made during a two-week stay at my parents in Lachine, Montreal, to whom I hereby wish to express my gratitude. I also want to thank Guy Agoston, President of Aston Laser Connections in Montreal, for the kind use of his company computer and laser printer to prepare this edition. It is appearing simultaneously with a third edition of Munsalvaesche in America - Towards the New Grail Community which has been enlarged with a Postscript about my second visit to North America. In New York further contact was also made, through the good offices of David Gilmartin, with Sylvia Witzenmann and Daisy Aldan, through which hopefully another step toward a public presentation of this precious work has been taken. Lastly I extend my sincere thanks to Denis Schneider, a General Secretary of the Society in Canada, for inviting me to give a slide show on June 27 in Montreal, a great city whose connection with the history of the Grail, as I see it, lies not so much in the past, but – with the aid among other things of this inspiring study on the ‘principles – in the future. 

Robert J.  Kelder
Montreal, Canada, July 6, 1998

Foreword to the Fourth Edition (1999)



This foreword is being written on the eve of my departure for a third working visit to America to participate in three conferences, the second of which is this year’s Social Science Section annual conference for members, followed by one for the general public from July 9 –11 in New Lebanon, NY. In continuation of the theme of last year’s conference at Kimberton Hills, PA, the emphasis will be on deepening our understanding of the threefold nature of the social organism – in the Anthroposophical Society as well as in the world at large. In the fourth edition of my booklet Munsalvaesche in America – Towards the New Grail Community, I reported on some fundamental aspects of last year’s Social Science Conference, in which I participated with David Schwartz, Steve Burman and others in what by many was regarded as a fruitful seminar on the ‘principles’. As a contribution to this year’s theme of “elite globalization”, I then offered to present a translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s course on world economy entitled The Just PriceWorld Economy as Social Organics. This proposal which has recently met with a favorable response by Bernard Wolf, one of the organizers of the conference along with Claus Sproll, I hope to realize in the two weeks between the end of the first astrosophical conference on the Grail in Boulder (StarHouse) [1] and the start of the Social Science Section gathering in New Lebanon, NY.

My underlying motive for bringing this work forward at this point is the insight that the idea of social organics can be applied, is indeed inherent to the Anthroposophical Society as well as to the world at large, but that with respect to the Society it takes on the form of the ‘principles’ and with respect to the world at large it must be clothed in terms of Rudolf Steiner’s course on world economy. In that sense social organics can address the esoteric as well as the exoteric, the internal and external matters that so demand our urgent attention and call for resolute action: the state of the Anthroposophical Society and the world situation that are so mysteriously but inexorably intertwined.

As a fitting close to this fourth edition, I would like to share a passage I read while browsing through a friend’s library in Ithaca, NY. It is taken from the book The Life of Greece by the American philosopher and historian Will Durant and can be read (on p. 290) in the chapter XIII The Morals and Manners of the Athenians dealing with the education of young men of Athens:

“At nineteen they are assigned to the garrison at the frontier. There they are entrusted for two years with the protection of the city against attack from without and within. Solemnly, in the presence of the Council of Five Hundred, with hands stretched over the altar in the temple of Argoulos,[2] they take the oath of the young men of Athens: 

"I will not disgrace the sacred arms nor will I abandon the man next to me, whoever he may be. I will aid to the ritual of the state, and to the holy duties, both alone and in company with many. I will transmit my native commonwealth not lessened, but larger and better than I have received it. I will honor those who from time to time are judges; I will obey the established statutes, and whatever other regulations the people shall enact. If anyone shall attempt to destroy the statutes I will not permit it, but will repel him both alone and with all. I will honor the ancestral faith.

This passage is highly interesting in the light of what Rudolf Steiner described as the sole task of the Council during the Christmas Conference: realizing the all encompassing statutes (later called principles) of the Anthroposophical Society. However, it is no longer a question of merely “obeying the established statutes”, as in the days of old Athens, but of freely comprehending, implementing and defending them as the charter of a universal society of free spirits.

Robert J. Kelder,
Amsterdam, June 12, 1999



[1] In this conference I will present my annotated translation of Werner Greub’s From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, which is appearing today, one day before my flight to Denver tomorrow morning. Update: A second, revised and enlarged  edition appeared in 2001.
[2] Argoulos as such is not listed in the 1972 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. What is probably referred to here is Argolis or Argolid, the celebrated capital of Argos, “a name apparently signifying an agricultural plain, which was applied to several districts in ancient Greece…Traditionally the city was said to have been founded by the mythological Phoroneus, the son of the river-God Inachus about 1750 B.C. Derivations of a royal family from a god frequently implied that the human founder arrived as an invader, and this date is compatible with that assigned by many philologists and archeologists to the arrival of the first Greek-speaking people (the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C.).” 

Foreword to the Fifth Edition – Introducing The Kardeiz Saga to Recall The Anthroposophical Society (2001)


Since the last (fourth) edition of this social-aesthetic study on the threefold social organic nature of the statutes of the Anthroposophical Society was printed and presented (in July 1999 during the Goetheanum, Social Science Section conference in New Lebanon, NY), two members of the Anthroposophical Society have been elected to the Council of the General Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, namely Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff. [1] Nominated as such by the Council, their election had to be, and was, officially endorsed by a vote of the General Assembly (General Meeting) of the General Anthroposophical Society on April 8 this year at the Goetheanum.[2] During this Meeting, I attempted to present a motion on the intricate, but absolutely fundamental modalities of this election in order to lay bare and bring to the fore not only the root of the so-called constitutional crisis of the (General) Anthroposophical Society, but also to offer a general solution to it.[3] While his motion was printed in its entirety (along with the other 11 motions and 4 requests) in the German issue of the Goetheanum News for members; the motion itself, however was – together with practically all the other 15 motions and requests – not discussed and dealt with at all.[4] The General Assembly voted to simply do away with them on the basis of formal points of order entered by a certain obstinate Swiss member, which were given top priority by the leader of the assembly, Paul Mackay.[5] The only motion that was properly dealt with – a draconic proposal by Rembert Biemond to drastically increase the hurdles for raising a motion, in the sense that either a Council member had to, so to speak, sanctify it or that the motion be supported by two percent of all the members, i.e. some 1000 today – was (fortunately) rejected by the General Assembly. Instead, a proposal put forward by the quixotic Ulrich Hölder was accepted, namely to postpone a decision on this issue for a year and in the meantime hold a conference, preferably at the Goetheanum, on this very constitutional question of raising and dealing with motions – a right that, by the way, is guaranteed in paragraph 10 of the principles to individual members or groups of the Anthroposophical Society.[6] This fundamental right of members is shown by Herbert Witzenmann in this essay, indeed in this whole Social Esthetic Series,[7] to be a cornerstone or bridgehead for achieving a balance between, on the one hand, initiatives coming from the Council (the center) – as an initiative Council it has not only the right, but the duty to unfold initiatives – and, on the other hand, motions raised by members (the periphery) as they see fit, i.e. not as a duty but in freedom.

Before leaving the Jüngel report for what it is and moving on to a more general contemplation on the sad, sick or even sinister state of affairs within, or rather outside, the so-called Anthroposophical Society[8] and to a proposal for a healing resolution through the Kardeiz Saga, one glaring, inexcusable omission that this report contains must be corrected.[9] One will after reading this correction indeed be hard put to maintain that there is no ban, or at least a self imposed censure, on diverging opinions in ‘our Society’ (which one?), and that the so-called book question concerning the proper publication and defense policy with respect to the (esoteric) work of Rudolf Steiner has in reality been solved.
            
The omission in the Jüngel report concerned a request of mine at the said AGM that dealt with the question as to whether this General Assembly should or could assume the responsibility for the final report of the Dutch Commission on Anthroposophy and the Question of Race that was presented as a formal publication of the Dutch Society on April 1, 2000 (in the morning) to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland and (in the afternoon) to the media in a (closed) press conference.  My request was entitled “The Evidence Has Been Given – Rudolf Steiner Was Not A Good Man”, which referred to the title of an article with which on April 19, 2000 the Dutch leftist liberal weekly journal De Groene Amsterdammer had made huge headlines (and sales). This article by R. Zwaap consisted of nothing more than a translation into Dutch of the 16 so-called discriminating passages from the work of Rudolf Steiner, accompanied by excerpts from the commentary of the Commission of anthroposophists explaining why it would be a violation of Dutch criminal law on anti-discrimination to bring these 16 passages forward in public today as one’s own opinion. The request was nothing less than an urgent appeal to the General Assembly “to decide not to regard the final report of the Dutch Commission without ado [i.e. not without the necessary changes] as a publication of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands.”[10] I was able to hand out 200 copies of the two pages long motivation to various members present [11] and – in spite of the usual attempts to cut me off and hurry me up – was able to read the text out loud word for word. I quoted the exact words (in translation) of the Amsterdam Judge R. Orobio de Castro from his verdict on May 31, 2000 in the legal proceedings that the Dutch Council had entered last year against De Groene Amsterdammer accusing it of dishonoring the good name of Rudolf Steiner and that of the Anthroposophical Society. However, as we had already suspected and warned, the judge threw the case out of court on the basis of free speech. His verdict read, in part and in my translation, as follows:

“First of all, it must be said that we are not dealing with a review of the final report, but with an article in which apparently with regard to this report an opinion is given concerning remarks by Rudolf Steiner about different races. Zwaap [the journalist in question] has thereby chosen to publish the passages – which also the commission in its report has indicated to be of a discriminatory nature – without any commentary of his own and only accompanied with – abbreviated – conclusions of the commission pertaining to these passages, whereby the reader himself can make a judgment about them. Zwaap is apparently of the opinion that the contents of these passages conjures up such a negative image of Rudolf Steiner’s opinion about human races that no amount of fine distinctions can wipe away these discriminating opinions.
   Furthermore, it must be judged that Zwaap is in principle justified to express this socially relevant opinion and that this could only be otherwise, if there were very substantial interests of the [Anthroposophical] Society involved in the form of a violation of her honor and good name that would offset this. But this is not the case. It is true that the honor and good name of the [Anthroposophical] Society is at stake here, yet it is not in the first instance the publication by Zwaap that is responsible for this, but in essence the various passages from the work by Rudolf Steiner himself. The honor and good name of the [Anthroposophical] Society have after all been questioned just because of the contents of these passages and the commission was formed in order to do research and give a judgment about this. Zwaap makes according to the above-described method a judgment, which it is in his freedom to do. The method that he used cannot be said to be unnecessarily injurious in view of the gist of the publication mentioned that the passages quoted according to his opinion cannot be whitewashed.” [12]

I then went on to substantiate my request by saying that the first conclusion of the final report was negative and should be turned into a positive one. Instead of concluding that “Rudolf Steiner was not a racist”, the conclusion should be that Rudolf Steiner developed his anthroposophy to overcome all forms of racism in the world. With respect to the second main, politically correct, conclusion that “there are in Rudolf Steiner’s work 16 passages that are of a such a seriously discriminatory nature, that if someone were to make such a similar claim or formulation today, he or she would probably be guilty of a punishable offence”, I maintained that the commission has not really judicially tested these 16 passages on the basis of Dutch criminal law; has not in the least proven that anyone or any minority has in effect suffered any setbacks or drawbacks on account of the so-called discriminatory  passages and that therefore the premature and unnecessary assumption by the commission that some hypothetical person repeating those ‘tainted’ remarks by Rudolf Steiner as his own opinion would be found guilty was a violation of Dutch jurisprudence, which always makes a judgment with respect to particular cases as to context, content and presentation. This second conclusion is furthermore, so I argued, an infringement on free speech and by, as it were, forbidding anyone to repeat certain remarks the commission sets Dutch jurisprudence back to the Middle Ages. And finally, the commission acting as a self-styled tribunal playing judge and prosecutor at the same time has, although it strongly denied this, in effect found Rudolf Steiner guilty, not retroactively, but by bringing him from the past into the present.
           
How can the General Assembly, did I ask, tolerate that a final report of this nature be issued as a publication of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, which according to the principles is a local group of the Society and therefore responsible to the general Society? 
           
Yet, as already indicated, a motion was passed under the leadership of Paul Mackay to not even consider and thus simply discuss this request.[13]

At the beginning of this badly needed, but by no means exhaustively rounded off and substantiated correction, it was maintained that it would serve to realize that the so-called book question was not solved, and that in effect not only the annotation of the School is no longer printed in the esoteric and professional courses by Rudolf Steiner, but that his guidelines on how to deal with unfounded and biased criticism coming from amateurs is not observed either. For those who consider themselves responsible for the work of Rudolf Steiner do not enter into discussion with them, but make it clear to the outside world how and in what way those amateurs are lacking the necessary training in order to make a qualified judgment on this work. This is not arrogant or discourteous, but, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out, perfectly normal in the scientific world.[14] As a corollary, the ones responsible, i.e. the School should offer those wanting to be able make such judgments a schooling to develop this spiritual discernment; and this is exactly what this essay, as indeed the whole work of Herbert Witzenmann is eminently capable of.

The preceding objective polemics, which pertain solely to actions and states of consciousness on the part of officials of a public society and not to the persons themselves, were necessary to give an impression of how far the separation of Rudolf Steiner from his work – something which he repeatedly warned against [15]– has under various guises proceeded. For after all, the principles are not only a work of Rudolf Steiner himself, but also of the Christmas Conference founding assembly in 1923, which after three days of deliberations endorsed them (with minor changes in the text suggested by, among others, Carl Unger). The principles can therefore be seen as a truly unique work of Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical Society, which as a founding document similar to the Constitution of the United States should be respected for what it is, continually brought to further realization and never be altered, but as we shall see, only amended.[16] Downgrading their importance, paying lip service to them and placing them in the shadow of the Foundation Stone Meditation, as so often is the case,[17] in the trend of ‘Anthroposophy: yes; Rudolf Steiner: no’ can certainly not be said to be in the true interests of the anthroposophical movement or Anthroposophia, quite the contrary. [18]
           
We now finally turn to the root question of the constitutional issue, already referred to here and in the previous forewords. For however important this question of motions or the book question is or may turn out to be, they are overshadowed by a question that first has to be formulated, understood and solved before anything else; for this is much more than ‘simply’ a legal, constitutional or historical issue, but an existential question concerning the very identity and (future) state of the Anthroposophical Society.
         
This is the question as to the real identity of, on the one hand, the (general) Anthroposophical Society founded during the Christmas Conference 1923, a non-commercial society based legally and spiritually on the principles (formerly called statutes) and the Foundations Stone mantras, as distinct from, on the other hand, the General Anthroposophical Society. The latter is an administrative and economic body that came into being during an extra-ordinary meeting of the Goetheanum Building Association on February 8, 1925 during which this association changed its name to General Anthroposophical Society and at the same time enlarged with the administration of the Anthroposophical Society, the Philosophic-Anthroposophic Press, founded and run by Marie Steiner and the Clinic, founded and led by Ita Wegman.
            
After years of denial and disbelief it is now at least generally agreed by all parties involved in the constitutional debate that the Anthroposophical Society and the General Anthroposophical Society, although sharing the same Council, were indeed two distinct social bodies with separate, albeit related, functions and statutes. But alas, were and not are two different entities, for here the agreement ends.[19]  One side sees the Anthroposophical Society – even though since the Christmas foundation it has never held a proper General Meeting and even though since the death of the last member of the original Council Albert Steffen died (in 1963) it no longer has any duly elected Council members – as still existing, because it was after all never officially dissolved.  The other side maintained, or still maintains, that the two distinct bodies have been regarded and treated so long as one and the same that by force of habit or “Merger through Conclusive Conduct” they have in the course of some 75 years become one and the same.
            
This latter legal term requires some explanation and commentary. As can be read in the article on the Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society in News for MembersDecember 1999 and in a Member’s Update – May 2000 signed by Paul Mackay, this term was introduced by Professor H.M. Riemer (Professor of Civil Law at Zürich), who is not a (class) member and, as such, apparently not aware of the deeper, spiritual issues involved in this matter. This is shown by his recommendations, which are simply described as facts instead of (legal and nominalistic) interpretations, and which – instead of liberating or dissolving the ‘Alloy King’ reigning over the existing as-if situation, would, if acted upon, actually officially sanctify and crown him! [20]
            
Consider the following points: First of all, the term “Merger through Conclusive Conduct” is not applicable here, because this term requires a conscious, legal decision and vote on the part of the two merging bodies which was never the case here on December 29, 1925, during which the unconscious “merger” took place, but this is not mentioned at all in the Reimer report. Secondly and more importantly, in the event of such a merger one of the two bodies ceases to exist, dissolves and disappears as it were into the other one; meaning in this case that the Anthroposophical Society as such would have ceased to exist. This is explicitly stated in point 3 of Reimer’s Legal Opinion, dated March 9, 2000: “An association that for 75 years (= ¾ century!) has neither been treated as such by the people concerned nor has appeared externally as such, can and may no longer be considered as an independent association.” In the next point he somewhat contradicts himself by ending: “These considerations do not rule out that the culture of the Christmas Conference Society has become the dominating culture of the GAS.”[21] Yet, as can be read in the Byelaws of the General Anthroposophical Society, this association has a sub-division, namely the administration of the Anthroposophical Society. And, we repeat, it was this society under the legal name Anthroposophical Society that was founded during the Christmas Conference 1923-24 and not the General Anthroposophical Society, as point 1 of the Riemer Report states, a statement which was changed in the Member’s Update to: “The Christmas Conference Society was founded” which is also incorrect since that was not the name by which this society was founded.  Here it is not a question of names, of nominalism, but of real concepts, identities. Thirdly, the third point that Prof. Riemer makes that ever since February 8, 1925 “the General Meetings have been conducted as one” is not true either, because immediately prior to the General Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society and the ‘merger’ on December 29, 1925 there was a (final) meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. Conclusion: the argument that the members have for 76 years been unaware of the essential distinction between the two social bodies, have so to speak been sleepwalking all this time, is no reason to continue this as-if situation and even legalize it! For a bad habit or conduct can, if shown to be faulty, be changed no matter how difficult or long this may take. Yet this requires some serious, even painful soul-searching.

This is where my motion on the election of the two new Council members as the first act of the Kardeiz Saga, a real-life mystery play in three acts with literally a cast of thousands, comes in. This motion, co-signed by Leo van Egeraat (who supplied valuable suggestions to the text), Ben van Tilborg and Jan Bloem on the nomination of the two candidates for the executive-board of the GAS dealt with the question of the legitimate sovereignty of the General Assembly itself and was sent to the Council in Dornach on February 9th, 2001. The first act of this Saga was given the title "Dismantling the Alloy King", whereby in this instance the Alloy King is used in the sense of the fourth King in Goethe's fairy tale about the Beautiful Lily and the Green Snake to refer to the confused, paralyzing even illegitimate state of affairs concerning the identity of the Anthroposophical Society and that of the General Anthroposophical Society and their relationship, which has been the subject of a heated and long-drawn debate in Europe and to a much lesser extent, it seems, in America. The name Kardeiz for this on-going saga was chosen on the basis of a recent indication by Konrad Degand from Witten, Germany and seems an appropriate title for this attempt at writing and staging a real-ideal communal mystery play with a final act to take place on and a around  the historic Bluthügel (Bloody Hill) in Dornach on which the second Goetheanum still stands. For Kardeiz, as can be read towards the end of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, was the second son of Parzival, who was brought up by his uncle Master Kyot (next to his twin brother Lohengrin) and who, as the heir to his father's secular domains, was given the task of ultimately reclaiming the lands rightfully belonging to him that were occupied by the usurper Lahelin, a task in which, after he was crowned king, Kardeiz succeeded admirably.

The Kardeiz Saga not only raised the Parzival question "Uncle, what ails or confuses thee?" (the German word here is wirren, to confuse) with respect to the pathetic and unbearable Kaspar-Hauser-like situation [22] in Dornach, in an attempt to redeem Anfortas (the culturally paralyzed Anthroposophical Society). It also calls for a consciousness-raising campaign to reclaim and unite the word-wide anthroposophical institutions, banks, schools and firms under the banner of the General Anthroposophical Society as a "multi-national and multi-cultural association" to serve the more earthly (economic) needs of mankind on earth with as its core, its center of research and development, the Goetheanum, School for Spiritual Science and its branches around the world.[23]

A first step in this direction could be made by consolidating the institutions around the Goetheanum in Dornach which each went their own separate way after the public coronation of the Alloy King in 1925.  For that was when the present Kaspar-Hauser-like situation came about as, under the eyes of hundreds of well-meaning and non-suspecting anthroposophists and local officials, one social body (the AS) was, as it were, snatched away and replaced by another almost similarly looking and sounding one (the GAS).  

In this sense the (rejected) motion at hand could be seen as the first chapter of an on-going Kardeiz saga to spiritually review, recall and re-establish or renew the Anthroposophical Society and in the wake of that establish the proper world-wide relationship to the General Anthroposophical Society  by means of the new royal art of social organics developed by one of Rudolf Steiner's greatest aides: Herbert Witzenmann. The motion was printed in full in the Goetheanum Weekly for members (Nachrichtenblatt, nr 9/2001, dated Feb. 25) along with the other 16 motions and requests, and reads (in my translation and title):

Act I of the Kardeiz Saga: Dismantling the Alloy King

Motion Nr 9 on the Additions to the Executive Council:

The General Assembly of the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society being held on April 7th and 8th, 2001 at the Goetheanum, Dornach is asked to finally terminate the present as-if-situation with respect to its identity, function and competence, that has in effect existed since 1925, by deciding, after sufficient deliberation and discussion, out of self-knowledge, that:
1. The General Assembly 2001 of the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society can duly confirm the two nominated candidates Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff as members of the executive-board of this association;
2. However, the members of the Anthroposophical Society from all over the world who have been invited to attend this General Assembly cannot really actively participate in this election, since as members of the Anthroposophical Society refounded during the Christmas Conference 1923 they are in fact not eligible to vote in matters pertaining to the administrative association General Anthroposophical Society. Only the present executive council has the right to cast its vote in this case;
3. The nomination of the candidates as members of the executive-council of the Anthroposophical Society of the Christmas Foundation, on the contrary, cannot be confirmed by this General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society without further ado, since this can only occur in a proper and legal fashion by means of a General Meeting, or an extra-ordinary General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society.

Following the motivation there appeared this note (not printed in the Goetheanum):

To the Reader,

In case you want to support this motion, please make this known to the Willehalm Institute and indicate if you are or were a member of the Anthroposophical Society (membership card nr.), or if you want to be viewed as such. We will pass this on to the proper address, i.e. the administration of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach. If you would like to have your card signed by a president of the Anthroposophical Society, we assume that you want to get engaged in the sense of the motion to hold the first extra-ordinary General Assembly ever of the Anthroposophical Society. With that we can, with the help of the present council in Dornach, begin a "Christmas Conference Continuation Project" (At the time of this writing, the name Kardeiz Saga for this project had not been coined yet.)

Now, as already noted, the motion was dispensed with by members (or in this case, rather one particular Swiss stalwart, with the full consent and cooperation of the Council). Each time a counter motion was entered not to handle the motion at hand at all. This proved to be a largely successful (political) ploy to not have to deal at all with the issues raised by the various motions. One moot point was that the above motion dealing with the election of two new members to the Council was dealt with together with the other motions, and not, as it should have been under normal conditions, at the actual agenda point set aside for the endorsement procedure. A (personal) request to this effect (to Paul Mackay) was denied, and not raised by me publicly afterwards, and so it happened that the election of Bodo von Plato and Sergej Prokofieff took place without any critical discussion as to its historic, legal and spiritual context. Act I of the Kardeiz Saga was a failure: the Alloy King was not dismantled and remains in power. How long?

Act II of the Kardeiz Saga

Preparing the Review, Recall and Renewal of the Anthroposophical Society

This second, central act will obviously demand – depending on the cooperation that the Council of the General Anthroposophical Society (that can be regarded here as a provisionary Council of the Anthroposophical Society) and the various national Societies in the world are willing to give – the most time and energy. For here we are dealing with nothing less than the raising of a legion of some 10.000 members (the by Swiss association law required quorum of 1/5 of the present total) or members-to-be, who want to sign a petition in order to call and hold for the first time since 1923 an extra-ordinary General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. The purpose of this meeting would be to change the principles of the Anthroposophical Society back to statutes (again) with a few necessary amendments [24] and to describe the situation such as it has developed from 1924 to the present and also stating who the new Council is to be.
         
However, Paul Mackay in his address Dear Members regarding the constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society in Members’ Update – May 2000 and basing himself on the authority of Prof. Riemer seems to rule this procedure out: “To my question whether there might be any other, better way of connecting to the Christmas Conference Society in a legal sense, Professor Riemer responded that there is not. In particular a novation [25] or anything similar, which applies to contract law and not to association law, does not come into consideration. Neither would it be a solution to call a member’s meeting at which the participants would state that they are the member’s meeting of the Christmas Conference Society. According to association law, this would be seen as founding a new association. It could not be a renewal of the Christmas Conference.” Mackay and Reimer seem to overlook the obvious fact that the members would not simply out of the blue call such a meeting and they would certainly not call themselves members of the Christmas Conference Society, because such a society or association has never existed. As I have stated before, and as every member can check for himself – except in Austria and Holland where this has recently been altered without good cause – we are all simply members of the Anthroposophical Society, including the Council.
           
Therefore, ideally in fruitful cooperation with the existing Constitution working group and the provisionary Council of the Anthroposophical Society (being the head of the Administration of the Anthroposophical Society) and the necessary advisors, the road lies wide open and clear to further work out, write and rehearse a script for the Kardeiz Saga. Then, after a common consciousness, a concordance in awareness, has been reached concerning the fundamentals of the Anthroposophical Society, the School for Spiritual Science and its allied administrative and economic associations around the world in the form of a constitution with amendments to the principles, and a quorum has been gathered, it is time to proceed to the grand finale.

Act III of the Kardeiz Saga

The Re-invocation of the Being Anthroposophia from the Cosmos

The Goetheanum is built on the historical Bloodhill (Bluthügel) in Dornach, where in 1499 a decisive battle for the freedom of the young Swiss Confederation was fought against the imperial Austrian Hapsburgers, allied to the Church of Rome, and where back in the 9th century, under the star of Munsalvaesche, in the nearby Arlesheim Hermitage a new spiritual impulse in humanity on Christian soil was brought about. “A greater marvel never occurred”, according to Trevrizent, “That with your defiance you have wrung the concession from God that his everlasting Trinity has granted you your wish [to become Grail King]” [26] Parzival had overcome the bloodline, the heredity principle and transformed it in the spiritual, karmic principle. Accordingly, his first son Lohengrin was not to be asked where he came from, what his (high) family background was; he was to be judged only on his own merits. Alas, Alice of Brabant could unfortunately not withstand her curiosity and did ask the fatal question, whereupon Lohengrin had to depart. And hence until this very day, the power and station of the old royalty and aristocracy based on the bloodline, the heredity principle has not been overcome by the spiritual karmic principle, and so Europe was saddled, and partly still is, with old-style monarchies and kings for centuries. However, the institution of the Grail monarchy is long overdue.
            
Much less known is the destiny of Parzival’s second son Kardeiz. As already mentioned, Kardeiz in his youth was crowned king and received the task from his father to reclaim the kingdoms that were usurped by Lahelin, a mission in which, after he had been educated and reared by his uncle Kyot, he succeeded.[27]
            
Representing Parzival during the last General Meeting in Dornach, we directed in Act I of the Kardeiz Saga the question/motion to the sick Fisher King Anfortas (the lamed Anthroposophical Society, and overburdened General Anthroposophical Society): “Uncle, what is wrong with you?” (In German the word is wirren, thus literally: “What is confusing you?”) Not Parzival this time, but the motion was thrown out.
            
And so, once the necessary preparations have been completed during Act II, an attempt will be made through the holding of an extra-ordinary General Meeting to restore Anthroposophia – who has since 1923/24 more or less lived estranged from humanity on earth – to her original destination and thereby bring her and our karma as anthroposophists into order. After all, Rudolf Steiner once warned that if the impulse of the 1923 Christmas Conference for the refoundation of the Anthroposophical Society as the chalice for the inflow of anthroposophia would not be grounded within 9 months, she would then dissipate and dissolve into the cosmos. And even though this impulse lives on in the hearts and minds of many and may be cultivated in small groups here and there, one cannot maintain in all honesty that this new societal impulse, this new principle of civilization manifests itself in the life of the General Anthroposophical Society, which in addition was not shaped for this purpose to begin with. On the contrary, the expression Casper-Hauser-state for the Anthroposophical Society and Anthroposophia is justified, i.e. first a switch of legal persons just after birth and then a malicious attempt to let this being grow up in an organization inadequate and foreign to its mission in order to block and neutralize its mission on earth.
            
Just as during the original Christmas Conference, this invocation for the return, the re-embodiment of Anthroposophia in the Anthroposophical Society will require a threefold form:
  1. The discussion on and acceptance of the amended principles as the renewed statutes of the Anthroposophical Society;
  2. The reciting of the Foundations Stone Meditation and its rhythms;
  3. An overview of the history of the 20th century in the light of anthroposophy.

Now, as far as the General Anthroposophical Society is concerned: this social body also needs an impulse for renewal. Contrary to the timing of the Christmas Conference for the incarnation of Anthroposophia, which is truly a Christmas impulse that can best be realized during mid-winter, the General Anthroposophical Society is an impulse for the transubstantiation of the earth – the earth as a threefold social organism – so that it can become more and more the body of the spirit of the Earth, the Christ. This impulse can therefore be realized best during the time of mid-summer, the time of St John.
           
The human spiritual resources and capacities to realize this twofold renewal is the royal art and science of social organics that was lived by Rudolf Steiner and further developed by Herbert Witzenmann, as his social esthetic essay following this foreword introducing the Kardeiz Saga can attest to.[28]

Acknowledgments

This 5th edition has been done with a view to presenting it this Sunday afternoon, September 2, in the Conference Room of the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY, where it has also been written. As with the updated 3rd edition of Herbert Witzenmann’s The Just Price – World Economy as Social Organics, which consists of three lectures introducing Rudolf Steiner’s course on World Economy and which was presented at the Rudolf Steiner Library last Sunday, I therefore want to thank again the librarian Fred Paddock and his patient and helpful staff for their assistance in locating the necessary literature for my research that went into this edition. John Root Sr. and his wife Nancy from the Berkshire-Taconic branch of the Anthroposophical Society in America I want thank once more for allowing me to work in the library before and after closing hours. A special mention must go to my new friend and almost as it seems, long lost comrade-in-arms, Dennis Evenson with whom I spent a thoroughly enjoyable week editing the booklet on Herbert Witzenmann’s The Just Price and exploring the physical as well as spiritual landscapes in and around this hillside area, such as the House on the Hill, Olana, of the famous American landscape artist Frederic Church overlooking the Hudson River and the Catskills. It was Dennis’ intense interest and desire to hear something first hand of the recent (hidden) history of the Anthroposophical Society in Europe that inspired me to write the extensive foreword to this edition. Finally I thank again Richard Roe for allowing me to live in his nearby cottage, local publisher James Wetmore for his printing assistance and Herbert Horn and his wife Evi from Ghent for their generous offer to use their car in order to get this manuscript to Pro Printers in Hudson and to get to my talks and slide shows on Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found this busy weekend in the Town Libraries of Sheffield MA and Woodstock NY.

Robert J. Kelder,
August 30, 2001 
Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent NY

Update 2011: None of the suggestions here put forward to recall the Anthroposophical Society were taken up, nay were even seriously considered during the General Assembly in 2001. All of them, as well as all the many suggestions by other members were dispensed of in record tempo. This resulted in a number of court cases by disgruntled members against the board, which although in the end successful did not stop the plans by the board to assume more powere and privileges than foreseen in the original principles. For in the mean time, these have - under the leadership of the board executive and the passive willingness of the General Assembly- been disfigured in the sense that the balance of power between the center and the periphery has been shifted almost entirely to the side of the center, i.e. the board, at the expense of the members’ rights, such as the right of individual to submit motions. To further delve into this retrograde development must be left to a future publication.  



[1] While writing this introduction in the Rudolf Steiner Library during the week before the presentation of this booklet on September 2nd, the Summer 2001 issue of News for Members arrived. In it was a report by S. Jüngel entitled “The Annual Meeting at the Goetheanum,” taken from Anthroposophy Worldwide #4, May 2001. Now, having had a close look at many past issues of this newsletter over the last few weeks, I was somewhat prepared for what I would encounter. And indeed, I was again struck by the number of errors, oversimplification, disinformation and even an unsubstantiated accusation in this report and as such again reminded of the veritable news black out with respect to uncomfortable, dissenting opinions in our ranks that is being hung over the membership at large by the present leadership and staff of the Goetheanum in Dornach, of which most members have not the faintest idea. Apparently not even the (former) editor of this newsletter, Joan Almon – who never saw fit to publish any of my critical but fair articles over the past few years or references to my talks or publications. In the January 1999 issue she wrote (on p. 13): “I know of no decisions to ban controversy in the publications of the Society.” This was in response to a question by Mary Rubach, to whom I once complained about this ban, who had written: “Why are there no divergent opinions about the Society which, after all makes this newsletter possible?” Well, dear members, out of my own bitter experience over the last 25 years in the Society in Europe, which is corroborated by the experience of many other so-called dissidents, such as Herbert Witzenmann, Werner Greub, Thomas Meyer, G. Bondarew, and as I have shown in my booklet Munsalvaesche in America, I can truly state that – apart from the publication of my motion this year in the Goetheanum on the election of the two new Council members, which arose almost out of a legal necessity – since 1984 hardly any of my almost yearly motions, requests and remarks at the General Assembly in Dornach have found their way into the official minutes and reports of these meetings in the Goetheanum News for Members, nor have hardly any of my many articles been published (completely) or been taken notice of in the newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in Holland.  When I finally confronted the late Manfred Schmidt-Brabant during a General Assembly in 1994 or 1995 with this glaring suppression of contributions from ordinary members, he answered as a matter of fact that this was simply an age-old custom. However, I checked it out, and it surely was not, rather an initiative started during the (late) President’s own term of office. True to supposed custom, this exchange was thus not reported in any official organ either; nor were my remarks pointing this out, spoken at the General Assembly in Dornach the next year (1996). Only those who were present can attest to them. Any future historiography of the Society worthy of its name will have to take these mishaps into account and rely not only on the official written documents, but also on those of the ‘dissidents’ and, as in the days of old, oral tradition. – In what follows I will try to identify some of the pitfalls of the said report by S. Jüngel, and of other reports, in as far as they are relevant for the proposed Kardeiz Saga to recall the Anthroposophical Society.
[2] Here the first error in the report creeps in: contrary to what Jüngel writes, it was not an AGM of the Anthroposophical Society, but of the General Anthroposophical Society. This distinction is important, as will become clearer later on.
[3] At the point in time, February 2001, of entering this motion, I had not yet coined the title Kardeiz Saga for the herewith-proposed solution to the constitutional question.
[4] With respect to my motion regarding the expansion of the Executive Council, the Jüngel report limits itself to an under the belt accusation, or rather insinuation: “Among the reasons given to reject certain motions were….interference with the freedom of Executive Council”. I beg your pardon? Interference with the Council’s freedom? I challenge Mr Jüngel to substantiate this unfounded charge or else withdraw it. As the discerning reader who will read on to study the three points that my motion raised may decide for himself, it is the other way around: the Council is interfering with the freedom of members to raise motions, is suppressing free speech, is preventing a clarification of the ‘as-if situation’ of the Society and is thereby guilty of misrepresenting the principles and of keeping the Alloy King on his throne, instead of liberating him as in Goethe’s Fairy Tale of the Beautiful Lily and the Green Snake!
[5] Here the disinformation in the report and, indeed, the hypocrisy on the part of the present Goetheanum leadership enters into the picture: first of all there were not 16 motions, as the report states, but 12 motions and 4 requests. This distinction is important, because since 1975 a legal differentiation was made between motions and requests, which is not found in the principles. Secondly, the report states with respect to the motions and voting that “Paul Mackay began by explaining the various kinds of motions and how they are handled according to Swiss regulations.” Instead of giving the Swiss regulations priority over the principles, one would expect of a Council – that in an official announcement only a few years ago stated that it saw as its prime task the realization of the statutes (principles) – that it would stand for and guarantee the right of members to raise motions and not have them simply tabled by anti-motions without any real discussion. In the normal world this is called lip service, it is a political procedure and as such a violation of paragraph 4 of the principles of the Anthroposophical Society, which states: “Politics it does not consider to be among its tasks.” – Interestingly enough, however, in the translation of the book The Christmas Conference (as can be read on pp. 59 and 142) this outright rejection of politics has been weakened to party  politics. Is this perhaps an example of going along with the tide?
[6] None of these important details were mentioned in the report, which stated only that “in each case the motions to reject or table were passed by a large majority,” thus glossing over the fact that Biemond’s motion, which was whole-heartedly supported by the Council, did not make it. Instead, the impression was given that all this unnecessary and time consuming motion business stood in the way of more important agenda points initiated by the Council: “Time was reserved for our theme of the year, even if some of it had to be sacrificed (my italics) to handle the many motions.” Again a misconception as to the social organic nature of a General Assembly with the all-important role of the members and spontaneous discussions debate and decision-making comes to the fore without which the social organic counter-current principle as developed in this social esthetic study cannot function.
[7] This is especially the case in the third social esthetic essay To Create or Administrate / Rudolf Steiner’s Social Organics A New Principle of Civilization (not yet translated), where the social organic counter-current principle is developed by looking at the course of the General Assembly 1972 in Dornach in such a way that, notwithstanding the negative turn of events, the missing figure of the representative of humanity, can rise up in the heart and mind of the discerning reader.
[8] I write these qualifications about the ‘so-called Anthroposophical Society,’ because too often it is overlooked that in the first principle the Anthroposophical Society is described as an idealistic Society-to-be: “The Anthroposophical Society is to be (my italics) a union of people who wish to cultivate the life of soul in the individual as well as in human society on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.” Elsewhere (paragraphs 4 and 9), the Society is characterized as existing in the (Christian) middle realm between the Ahrimanic pole of (power) politics and the Luciferic pole of sectarianism, as a society in which dogmatism ought to be excluded. This in effect means that when such symptoms come to the fore in a society that calls itself, or is called anthroposophical by its members or outsiders, one cannot, realistically speaking, regard it as such. This applies, by the way, also to the human being who calls him- or herself, or is called, an anthroposophist. Yet who ever, but noble souls, make such a fine distinction?
[9] While editing this foreword for the 6th edition, it occurred to me that I might have overlooked the fact that the Jüngel report was only the first of two. I have no way of immediately checking this here in Montreal, but if it turns out to be so, it does not diminish much of what has been said here, for it fits the general trend and shows where the priorities by the current Goetheanum reporters lie.
[10] The title of this article in Dutch was “16 keer Rudolf Steiner – Het bewijs is geleverd: Rudolf Steiner deugde niet”. Another translation would be: Rudolf Steiner Was a Bad Character. ‘Deugd’ means virtue, so that this in effect was a case of defamation of character.  Already during the previous AGM in Dornach, and the one of the Dutch Society, I had attempted to point to the Achilles heel of the Commission’s work through a motion and text entitled  “A Higher Court Of Appeal”; my point being that the Goetheanum, School for Spiritual Science as the highest instance should intervene to correct and rewrite the two negative, faulty and damaging conclusions of a report that 1. Did not properly interpret nor fully complete its original task; 2. Its legalistic methodology, which was not given the upper hand in the original task, was not really thought through to the end; and that as a result 3. The negative public opinion that was formed through the slanted headlines carried by the media was not primarily the fault of the media, but of the commission itself. As may be expected, this motion was soundly defeated at the AGM 2000 in Dornach. In his report “No Racism, No Racist Doctrine” in News for Members – August 2000, S. Jüngel makes no mention of this. See the Dutch Willehalm Institute News (WIN), April 20, 2001 and my Anthroposophical Chronicle Anthroposophische Kroniek 1994 – 2001 / Mijlpaal of Molensteen? on the many motions and steps that were taken to avert the malicious misuse by the media of these faulty, politically correct conclusions. Alas, all to no avail! 
[11] Ted van Baarda himself, a lawyer and President of the (meanwhile disbanded) Dutch Commission on Race, as well as Martin Barkhoff, the official P.R. man for the Anthroposophical Society in Germany both refused to accept a copy. Various representatives of Anthroposophical journals and Council members did, but never made any reference to it, neither here in America nor in Europe. If this is not a ban, what is?
[12] Translated from the Willehalm Institute Newsletter, April 20, 2001. The complete verdict as well as the reasons that the Council gave for going to court can be read in my Anthroposofische kroniek: 1994-2001 (Willehalm Institute, Amsterdam, 2001). In “Countering Allegations of Racism in the Netherlands” in News for Members – Winter 2001, our S. Jüngel merely states “a critical, left-wing weekly, De Groene Amsterdammer, published an extremely one-sided, negative article. The Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands then went to court against this paper and lost on May 31, 2000.” Then his report cites four observations by Ramon Brüll, claiming that among other things “the historical and legal approach of the commission did away with any need to distance ourselves from Rudolf Steiner”, without mentioning that R. Brüll, as the publisher of the German translation of the Van Baarda Interim Report, refused to review in his journal Info-3 a booklet of essays written by four Dutch authors – including one by yours truly entitled Spiritual Capitulation – that was extremely critical of this report, saying that this was merely an internal matter of the Anthroposophical Society.
[13] A similar motion, supported by some 24 members, former members and friends of the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, was submitted to the AGM of the Dutch Society later that spring. Only the motion itself, not the motivation, was printed in the monthly Dutch newsletter Motief, which no longer views itself as an organ of the Society, as stipulated by the principles (nr 14), but as a publication of the Society, a subtle but significant change. Similar to the procedure in Dornach of simply tabling it, the motion was not dealt with, the only difference being that the initiative not to discuss the motion came from the Council itself and not a member. A point of order entered when it came time to discharge the Council in order to make it clear to the General Assembly that if it voted to endorse the account of the Council on its activities of the past year, it would be co-responsible for the work of the Van Baarda commission was not recognized – a clear violation of the customs of Dutch association law. This was an absolute novelty in the history of the Dutch Society in a country which, after all, prides itself on its record of free speech and tolerance. According to the president of the Dutch Society, Ron Dunselman, in an article in News for MembersAutumn 2000, the Van Baarda final report has ushered in “A New Phase for Anthroposophy”, a phase in which “knowledge of the philosophical ideas behind anthroposophy was and still is not necessary. What matters most for society is anthroposophy’s work for the good of humanity; anthroposophy does not have to be ‘sold’”. How this and other remarks in this article can be rhymed with the age of the consciousness soul is a mystery to me, but then I vividly remember my first encounter with certain more negative aspects of the Dutch approach to anthroposophy through the remarks of Bernard Lievegoed, the former president of the Society in Holland, who said that for the time being anthroposophy in Holland has to be approached in the manner of the intellectual or rational soul. Instead of spiritualizing the intellect, intellectualizing the spirit?
[14] Rudolf Steiner, The Christmas Conference, p. 54 ff.
[15] Rudolf Grosse in his book The Christmas Foundation – Beginning of a New Cosmic Age (Vancouver, 1984) reports (on p. 131 ff.): “In an essay dated June 28, 1924, Ita Wegman wrote: ‘We must preserve continuity in our work right down to its very form, so that no fragmentation or separation can take place between the anthroposophical body of wisdom and the personality of Rudolf Steiner. For he himself once said: ‘Once I have departed from the physical plane, if the opposition forces then succeed in separating Anthroposophy from me by allowing the broad masses of humanity to hear of my teachings without knowing anything about me, it would become superficial, and this would be just what the ahrimanic beings want and intend.’ – And in her essay Welches sind die Aufgaben des Nachlassvereins (What are the tasks of the Literary Estate?) Marie Steiner wrote: ‘He spoke to me about the time when he would no longer be among us, when it would fall to me to stand up for his work and strive to maintain the link between this great work for mankind and his name. He said that only a few would remain faithful to him and that if his work were to become separated from his name it would become estranged from its original intentions. Then the opposing powers would seize the forces contained in it and use them for their own purposes.’ (July 1945)”. For all of her great service and devotion to Rudolf Steiner’s work, Marie Steiner’s role in the disappearance of the annotation of the School from the editions published by Rudolf Steiner’s Literary Estate that she founded outside the realm of the Anthroposophical Society must be looked at very critically and dispassionately, something that Herbert Witzenmann has done in his social esthetic study nr. 4 The Primal Thought – Rudolf Steiner’s Principle of Civilization and the Task of the Anthroposophical Society (not yet translated).  
[16] I am aware of the criticism that the United States Constitution, especially in matters relating to financial issues, has been bypassed or even trespassed on by various means; a treatment similar to that given to the principles. To delve into this topic, however, is beyond the scope of this foreword.
[17] This is a clearly a Luciferic tendency in the work of S. Prokofieff, who during a recent meeting at the Goetheanum gave a thunderous speech, which earned him similar applause, squarely putting down the Ahrimanic tendency of looking only at the legalistic and historic twists of fate that befell the Society from 1923-1925 and calling for “more anthroposophy”. One could almost see him in the spirit pounding his fists or his shoe on the table. To show, however, that there is also a balanced way of putting more anthroposophy in this thorny constitutional question is the aim of this foreword, indeed of the whole Kardeiz Saga.
[18] If I may be allowed a more personal comment here: As a member of the First Class of the School for Spiritual Science, I consider it not only my right, but my duty to observe that union or concord with the leadership of the Goetheanum that Rudolf Steiner demanded from its members. This union, in my considered opinion, applies to all members of the school, including the present Council, for since Rudolf Steiner did not appoint his legal successor; he himself has remained the head, the leader of the Goetheanum. As a representative of anthroposophy it is furthermore one’s duty to point out when and where this union with the leadership is disregarded or trampled on. To those who claim that the leader of a spiritual school must be physically present on earth, I say that the Anti-Goetheanum School of Ahriman, which Rudolf Steiner referred to as becoming more and more active on earth, has no visible leader on earth, yet who would deny its existence?
[19] In the more than 10 years that the constitution question has now occupied center stage, the views of Herbert Witzenmann as expressed in this and other social esthetic studies have hardly received any notice. I attempted to correct this in my last two motions at the AGM in Dornach in which I referred to his study To Create or Administrate. In this work a qualitative distinction is made between a spiritual society and an administrative one, a qualitative distinction related to the difference between a pure, universal concept or idea and a representation or individualized concept. From his observation of a GM of the General Anthroposophical Society in 1972 and earlier ones, Herbert Witzenmann then comes to the conclusion that the administrative mentality and attitude displayed in the proceedings of the Society has supplanted the spiritually creative aspect, thereby corroborating from an inside point of view the conclusions made by those who restricted themselves to a minute study of the available legal and historical documents of the period 1923 - 1925, namely that what we call the Anthroposophical Society is in reality the old Goetheanum Building Association in a different dress. But Rudolf Steiner in his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and elsewhere points out that this fine but essential distinction is not even made by most philosophers; how can one then expect that social scientists pause to reflect on this? Yet anthroposophists must make it.
[20] There are so many errors and omissions in the conclusions of this Riemer report that it is impossible to deal with them all here. None of the massive criticism that at least three members of the present Constitution group, B. Hardop, W. Heidt and G. von Beckerath have made of it, has reached these shores where in general it is believed that there are more important things to attend to. Seen individually this is true; but social organically speaking not, for ideas are what nourishes the social organism. Lack of viable ideas will cause misery and chaos, in the end even war and hunger. This is what Rudolf Steiner’s fundamental social law can teach us.
[21] As I have pointed out earlier and as I can testify on the basis of my own experience of the last 25 odd years, it is rather the other way around: the administrative mentality has overcome and displaced the spiritually creative one. This does not of course rule out that the Christmas Conference continues to exist in the hearts and minds of individual anthroposophists, indeed Rudolf Steiner at that Conference said that that was the basic determining principle or condition for its continued existence. This is also the basis for act 2 and 3 of the Kardeiz Saga.
[22] Kasper Hauser, “The Child Of Europe”, was soon after birth abducted from the maternity ward – with someone else surreptitiously being put in his place – and at an early age kept in a dark dungeon in southern Germany during the early part of the 19th century in order to thwart his soul development and as such prevent him from assuming his destiny to become a modern sort of priest-king. Similarly, one could say that right after the birth of the Anthroposophical Society of the Christmas Foundation of 1923, it was “snatched away” and replaced by the Association of the General Anthroposophical Society founded in 1925 as the administrative and economic support group for the Anthroposophical Society. In the course of time the former (GAS) was regarded and taken to be the latter (AS), with the effect of paralyzing and stunting its spiritual growth and development. This is in essence the root of the constitutional question.
[23] There seem to be some moves underway in the US and Europe in that direction. In the US that is the Goetheanum West Giving Group and the newly formed Council of Anthroposophical Organizations. I write seem, because none of them are based, as far as I can glean from their own reports and statement of purpose, on a clear and encompassing knowledge of the intentions of Rudolf Steiner and consequently how the present crisis situation arose and what this situation demands in order to be resolved. In my scenario for the Kardeiz Saga, I will delve deeper into these moves.
[24] See the footnotes to my translation of the principles (statutes) in the appendix 1. This is also an opportune moment to deal with the question that some readers might have raised already at the beginning of this whole booklet or even by looking at its title; namely why the original statutes of the Anthroposophical Society are called principles here, a change in name which goes back to an indication apparently given by Rudolf Steiner in 1925 on his sickbed to his secretary Gunther Wachsmuth. This has been contested vehemently by some scholars who point out that Rudolf Steiner repeatedly said during the Christmas Conference that the statutes are not to be considered principles. Furthermore, it could be argued, a change in the name of the statutes would require a vote of the Anthroposophical Society. And after all, in the little booklet one receives on becoming a member they are called statutes (again). Well, they are all good points, but the original title of this booklet was principles and not statutes (in the text in italics), and Rudolf Steiner also said during the Christmas Conference that they are not ordinary statutes either. So, until an extra-ordinary meeting of the Anthroposophical Society calls itself back into existence and endorses the principles as statutes again, I will stick to the word principles. As may have been noticed, I did drop the word General from the (German) title, because this was clearly a mistake in the original.
[25] There is a note here saying “A legal term defined by Webster’s as ‘the substitution of a new obligation or contract for an old one by the mutual agreement of all parties concerned.’” This note may have been inserted by the translator, without knowing that this term ‘novation’ applies to a serious and well defined concept by B. Hardop, a German lawyer, anthroposophist and member of the present Constitution working group, to renew the Anthroposophical Society. As such this general note does not do much justice to Hardop’s particular scenario. Another case of oversimplification? Or misinformation, because Mackay was certainly aware of the above specific context to which this word applied.
[26] “With these words, Trevrizent indicates the actual new impulse in history, which became possible during the triple great conjunction in the constellation of Pisces. Until then, all striving for the Grail was of no use. One had to be divinely summoned by Heaven to the Grail. This changed with Parzival. Through independent thinking and conscious striving for the Grail, Parzival himself created the preconditions so that the Grail could become his own. This is an absolute novelty, the actual great miracle of the history of the Grail.” See Werner Greub, How The Grail Sites Were Found, translated by Robert J. Kelder, Willehalm Institute Press, Amsterdam 2001, p. 163.
[27] According to Werner Greub’s How The Grail Sites Were Found (Amsterdam 2001) the coronation of Kardeiz took place in Dornachbrugg, Switzerland on Whitsuntide, May 12, 848. The lost kingdoms that he regained were all located in present-day Alsace.
[28] A number of important elements and events concerning the constitution issue and the life of the Anthroposophical Society could not be woven into this foreword without making it a book, for which the following title suggests itself: A Union of People – The Kardeiz Saga for the Review, Recall and Renewal of the Anthroposophical Society.