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.)
No comments:
Post a Comment