Reading group

By age 12, I had a rote reply for grown-ups’ quizzical looks when they heard I went to a Waldorf school: “It’s based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner.” Blank stare. “He was an Austrian philosopher who believed in teaching the whole student — mind, body and soul.” Luckily no one ever asked me to elaborate, because I’d have been at a loss for words — except to say that we students got to do lots of drawing and painting, which I loved, but we couldn’t skip eurythmy class (yuck). Any serious discussions of pedagogic method and what Steiner called his “spiritual science,” anthroposophy, took place out of earshot in the teachers’ room. My only mental picture of Steiner (1861-1925) came from a dim black and white photo showing a stern mouth and X-ray eyes that made me glad this guy wasn’t our headmaster. Oh, well, I reasoned, as soon as I enter the real world after graduation, it’s Goodbye, Dr. Steiner.

In fact, decades later, I keep bumping into him, and each encounter makes me want to deepen our acquaintance. A gardener I met praised the ecological marvels of biodynamic farming, a Steiner innovation. An art historian introduced me to the Goetheanum, a templelike edifice that Steiner — an expert on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s theories of natural metamorphosis and the physiology of color — designed to anchor the anthroposophical community in Dornach, Switzerland. An English professor pointed out that Saul Bellow had been a Steiner devotee. These were mere hints, though, compared with the insights I expect to gain from “Rudolf Steiner: Alchemy of the Everyday,” a traveling exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum in collaboration with the Kunstmuseums of Wolfsburg and Stuttgart. When it opens on May 13 in Wolfsburg, Germany, it will be Steiner’s first major retrospective ever staged outside the anthroposophic community.
The images that Vitra’s chief curator and deputy director, Mateo Kries, sent me promise a vivid portrait in the round. Watercolors and sculptures, furniture and architectural models, stage sets and eurythmy robes, lab instruments and maps will flesh out Steiner’s ideas on (among other topics) prenatal existence and child development, environmentalism and economics, medicine and reincarnation. This polymath and mystic also found time to fit the design of necklaces, headache-remedy labels, stained-glass windows and radiator covers into his cosmic Gesamtkunstwerk.

“Today, design and architecture have become very focused on technology, removed from spiritual or social questions,” Kries said. “It is fascinating to examine how Steiner dared to develop this overall vision that included everything from metaphysics and natural science to art.”

I would never have dreamed that “hands-on” could apply to the remote Dr. Steiner of my boyhood. But there he is in a 1919 photograph, dressed in a workman’s smock and grasping a chisel as he contemplates the gigantic wooden statue “Representative of Man” that he was carving for the Goetheanum, then under construction. This was actually the first of two Goetheanums: a curvaceous, double-domed, mainly timber structure that burned down in 1922. The second, an angular outcropping of reinforced concrete, broke ground in 1924 and still stands. Vitra has delved into archives and private collections for little-known evidence of the creative processes that shaped them: terse pen-and-ink sketches aquiver with nervous urgency, lumps of plasticine molded by Steiner’s fingers. These maquettes were guides for the engineers, architects and artisans who assisted him on the dozen meticulously detailed studios, houses and utility buildings he clustered around the Goetheanum.

Interior photo of the Goetheanum, circa 1925

Located in Dornach (near Basel), Switzerland, the Goetheanum is the world center for anthroposophy, which is Steiner’s name for his philosophy (anthro – human, sophia – wisdom, “wisdom of the human being”). The Goetheanum, named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, includes two performance halls (1500 seats), gallery and lecture spaces, a library, a bookstore, and administrative spaces for the Anthroposophical Society. Trainings and conferences are held here for teachers, farmers, doctors, therapists and other professions.

Anthroposophical ideas have been applied practically in many areas besides architecture, including Waldorf education, special education (Camphill schools), biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, ethical banking and the arts.

The Steiner Reading Group meets once a month September through May to read and discuss the works of Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf education. Newcomers always welcome.

Location, day and time for the 2010-2011 school year will be announced soon.

Call Catherine Flynn at 406-261-1906 for more information.

An anthroposophy reading group is a critical spiritual element to the establishment and success of a Waldorf school. The spiritual reading group creates and holds a great deal of the spiritual energy of the school, without really being involved in the school in any other way. The reading group is a profound way to continue and pursue your own spiritual development while spiritually helping the very worthy endeavor of creating a Waldorf school for the children of the Flathead Valley.

Click Anthroposophy