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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This fundamental right of members is shown by Herbert Witzenmann in this essay,
indeed in this whole Social Esthetic Series, 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
and to a proposal for a healing resolution through the Kardeiz Saga, one
glaring, inexcusable omission that this report contains must be corrected.
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.” I
was able to hand out 200 copies of the two pages long motivation to various
members present 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.”
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.
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.
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 –
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.
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,
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.
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. 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 Members – December
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!
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.”
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
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.
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
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
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]”
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.
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:
- The discussion on
and acceptance of the amended principles as the renewed statutes of the
Anthroposophical Society;
- The reciting of the
Foundations Stone Meditation and its rhythms;
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
