Opening and Closing Addresses in Penmaenmawr

GA 227

Rudolf Steiner's Teaching Activities in England

Rudolf Steiner often and gladly spoke about spiritual science in England.

There is a certain generosity in the willingness to accept spiritual scientific truths in England: people are more open to the unlimited possibilities. There is less fear of the defeat of one's own hard-won head knowledge; the stubbornness in the defense against the new and unknown is less deep-seated; one is not so stubborn in one's scholarly vanity. There is more daring, a bolder striding out to conquer the unknown worlds.

What has united contemporary England into one people are the conquering tribes of different nations. After the Roman invasion, the conquering Germanic Anglo-Saxons, who pushed back the indigenous Celtic population of Britons and Gaels and threw them over to the north-western coast of France; invading Frisians and Danes; conquering French Normans. Britain was thus conquered several times and its peoples then welded together after a hard mutual struggle. But what emerged from this was a strong, self-confident unity, a proud sense of self that permeated the whole, a power of carrying one's own essence into other national substances. The forces of the soul, taken from the peculiarities of different national individualities, balanced each other out. Individual consciousness, heightened to the level of state consciousness, permeated them and kept the forces in balance. In this way, this multi-layered national unity was now able to defy all attacks from outside, to vigorously develop its self-confident independence in its sea-bound, sea-enclosed island and to stride out to conquer the world.

Noblesse oblige. It would be unworthy of a nation so sure of its strength to suppress freedom of thought, to stifle freedom of conscience, to inhibit freedom of action, both in spiritual and in matters of state and humanity. Thus England is the country where the search for the spirit has been allowed to unfold most freely. State power and church coercion have not been able to extinguish it; neither have secret organizations with fem courts.

If Rudolf Steiner had been able to work in English-speaking countries as he did in Central Europe, his name would now be alive on every tongue. He would not have been hushed up or stigmatized; his honour and life would not have been sought after in order to render him harmless. But as it was, he had to speak in a language that was foreign to his listeners at a time of the strongest German hatred; no matter how correct the translation, it could never do justice to the artistic verve of his speech.

And yet his work got through. A loyal circle of students gathered around him and drew the attention of those far away to the outstanding intellectual researcher. The war then threatened to suffocate the already awakened germs, as it did everywhere; however, they slowly fought their way to new life.

Just three years after the end of the war, Rudolf Steiner was able to speak on educational questions, initially at the Goetheanum in Dornach, for an English auditorium. Mrs. Millicent Makkenzie, the well-known English teacher, was at the head of the group of interested people who came over from England to Switzerland to draw light from new spiritual sources for educational problems. The impulses given at that time continued to have an effect. First, Rudolf Steiner received an invitation to speak on artistic and educational issues at the Shakespeare birthday celebrations in Stratford-on-Avon in April 1922. “Drama in its relation to education” was the subject of two lectures, “Shakespeare and the new ideals” the other. It was a fortunate omen to be able to draw on Shakespeare's spirit, to transcend international hatred and find common intellectual aspirations. Shakespeare, whom Goethe rediscovered for the world, whom the builder of the Goetheanum was able to place in that light from his spiritual knowledge that burns around him from the spiritual world and makes him a problem for a materialistic age, to which groping hypotheses cling rather helplessly. The festivities that followed the commemoration in Stratford, in which the representatives of the various countries took part in the procession, were worthy of the proud joy of recognition of England's greatest son. Germany was not yet officially represented, but through Rudolf Steiner it was spiritually and therefore more real. The bond was re-established, and in August 1922 Rudolf Steiner was able to speak to a considerable circle of interested people about educational issues in Oxford, the delightfully beautiful university city that still harbored the Middle Ages.

The eight lectures on education and the subsequent debates led to the founding of the “Educational Union” under the chairmanship of Mrs. Millicent Mackenzie. The aim of this union was to make Rudolf Steiner's ideas on education accessible in wider circles and especially in English and American educational associations.

Such events were always followed by lectures on spiritual science in London and at the location itself. These were also associated with performances in eurythmy art, carried out by artists from the Goetheanum. Eurythmy, an art of movement whose tendencies are based on the spiritually perceptible vibrations of the spoken word or sound that resounds in the air and vibrates in the ether, is a source of revitalization for all the arts and an educational factor that cannot be overestimated for humanity growing up in need of spirit. Rudolf Steiner, eavesdropping on spiritual life, presented at a time when he was besieged by requests for enlightenment in these matters, created a new art on the basis of original theoretical indications, which were put into practice by industrious students and thus attracted ever more advice, which then became revelations, and which has effectively entered into the cultural life of the present.

The enthusiasm which the young art aroused among Rudolf Steiner's friends in London led to a wonderful result. As early as June 1926, a lecture and theater hall was opened in one of London's best traffic areas (Park Road 33 NW), which bears the name “Rudolf Steiner Hall”. The architect, Mr. Wheeler, happily combined the building requirements of London's road conditions with inspiration taken from Rudolf Steiner's building ideas in Dornach. The house serves above all to spread the word and Rudolf Steiner's artistic intentions.

And the pedagogical impulses also led to practical results. First of all, the headmistress of an existing country education home in a delightful former Dominican abbey near London, Kings Langley Priory, agreed to gradually transform her school system according to Rudolf Steiner's educational ideas. Miss Cross, the headmistress of Kings Langley Priory School, had to reckon with a certain amount of time to transform existing institutions into new educational methods; she has bravely and faithfully pursued this goal and spared no effort or disappointment. Already after the Pedagogical Christmas Course in Dornach, Miss Cross began to put her decision into practice. Those who pushed faster and wanted a school that would be based directly on Rudolf Steiner's educational principles in the soft focus of London itself were able to realize their ideal in a relatively short time. In 1923, after a two-week cycle of Rudolf Steiner's educational lectures in Ilkley, their decision matured. And in June 1926 we were able to visit an excellently functioning school with an attached boarding school in Streatham, a friendly suburb of London, which was working vigorously and joyfully and had already attracted interest through a pedagogical conference: “The New School”.

The congenial custom of English “summer schools” meant that Rudolf Steiner not only visited places with names that resound far and wide, such as London, Oxford, Stratford, but also distant regions that provide an interesting insight into the diversity of English existence. The foreigner is particularly surprised by the strangely stark contrast between the most modern commercial and industrial operations and the profound isolation of the world. The world of cars, engines, gramophones, radios, the whizzing pace of traffic, the superficiality of modern cultural life borders directly on a deep isolation from the world, on cultural memories that lie far behind the Middle Ages, on geological formations that almost take you back to the times when the continents rose from the waters. You can have such impressions when you wander through the wastelands of Dartmoor in Devonshire and then experience the rushing onslaught of the ocean waves on the coasts of Cornwall in front of the rocky ruins of the Arthurian castle in Tintagel. The Middle Ages, so wonderfully preserved in the buildings of England, create a wonderful transition that makes such contrasts bearable for a powerful experience. One can well understand how it must be an essential necessity for the Englishman to preserve the Middle Ages in his costumes and customs, in his guild life. It strengthens his sense of self, strengthens his national consciousness and arms him against the overflowing socialization that lays the first axe to the mighty trunk of an imperialist system. It also builds a bridge for the aesthetic consciousness to the hoary past, which looks at him uncannily vividly from moors and hilltops, from earth formations, from the ether weaving through them, running through them.

A visit to Ilkley in August 1923 gave us a first impression of such contrasts. You drive through the blackest of industrial areas: Leeds, Bradford, monstrous black houses, monsters worthy of a Strindberg hell. Ikley is a friendly place at the foot of the Yorkshire moors. Here, the ancient past speaks to us; up on the moors of those hills, we find druid stones, dolmens and engraved signs that speak the language of the inwardness that connected the culture of that time with the spirit.

But all this is experienced even more strongly in Wales, in the legendary land of Merlin, who had his favorite magic robe in the rustle of the forest and the foam of the sea. From Ilkley, the train leads through overpopulated, black, shin-streaked industrial areas, past the factory masses of Manchester to bright, friendly terrain. The medieval battlements of Chester beckon, the blue bays of the approaching Irish Sea twinkle. Gulls and other seabirds, lined up in large camps, announce that their undisturbed realm is about to begin. Mighty castles rise, grand in the sweep of their lines, conquering the valleys and merging with the rock. The realm of the barons, which no king and no church could overthrow, imposingly imposes itself on the soul. Now everything has become poetry, poetry of nature weaving in stone and ivy. Above on the rocks the heroic epic, below with the soft flocks of sheep on the green pasture the idyll: the pulse of the world's rhythm trembles in the trembling of their backs nestled together, reminiscent of gentle ocean waves.

The pulse of time captured in this land leads us through the Middle Ages to the Nordic antiquity that has stopped here. It was - but it still is. It is so strong in the wild beauty of its nature, in the power of its elements, in the laughter of the sun through half a cloudburst, that modernity cannot do it much harm. It disappears in these surroundings.

Although the cars whizz by in long rows down by the bay shore, almost like in Piccadilly, they are insignificant in this picture. The view is directed upwards, where the industry initially draws attention to itself. Mighty gashes are cut into the mountain ridge; the quarries. The villages lie there, black and gloomy, with no stylistic connection to the surrounding nature. Rails, steam carts, blasting devices have drilled into the primary rock, tearing its veins. But it is stronger than them, defies them, laughs at them, depending on whether the atmosphere loosens or hardens the mountain. The sphere of air and light reigns here: the chasing clouds, the flying wind, the rain pelting down again and again, or its merry showers, the sparkling sun, which conquers the turmoil of the elements with its cheerfulness, only to quickly cover itself up again. It jokes and plays in confusion, rages and threatens, ducks and rejoices and chases and sweeps: a glorious, roaring youth in the midst of awe-inspiring witnesses of gray antiquity. But there, behind the mountains, the past lives on, standing there in powerful, enduring images; it is to it that the seeker is drawn today; it is to it that he makes his pilgrimage up the steep slopes, not shying away from the battle with the whistling, darting winds from the gorges. Soon he is gloriously rewarded. The bay shore disappears from view; radiant yellow, deep purple in vast hanging meadows surround him, broom and heather. It flames and rests, it beckons and blazes, the color overwhelms. But nature is too harsh here to linger in pleasure. The struggle with the wind becomes more arduous; every step has to be fought for. Soon there is only rock around us, dry grass and moss. You have to brace yourself, you have to defend yourself in order not to be torn down; you push forward and breathe new strength in drinking in the lines, the colors of the horizon.

The druids did not make it easy for their pilgrims.

But what a high celebration it must have been, what generosity in the festive procession, when the people of the slopes and valleys streamed out of the villages from all sides of the surrounding area, up to the mountain top. What a breath of solitude, what a murmur of desolation, of depth, of vastness. Up there you were far from everyday life, close to the deity. Here, spirits spoke through the elements, here the sun wrote its script in the waiting shadows; stones were awaiting these signs, placed in a circle according to the signs of the zodiac; as the sun passed through a sign of the zodiac, it imprinted itself on the shadow of the stone, and the initiated druid read off the secret.

Turned to the east stood a stone that received the god's ray arrow when the sun rose. Shadowy spaces were formed by horizontal positioning over vertical stones, in which the sun in turn wrote its language. In this way, the priest who knew light and shadow communicated with the spiritual world, reading the commandments that had a decisive influence on the order of the year, work, festivals, laws and customs. In this way, the wisdom of the gods was received and transformed into the wisdom of men.

How vividly all this still worked in this country, where the ancient wisdom could be taught anew in its metamorphosis and historical development, in accordance with the demands of the present.

It could be taught here in a different way than in Germany, where the epistemological basis, the scientific foundation, had to be created first and foremost. Here, the spirit could be approached more directly in front of an English audience. An environment such as that of Penmaenmawr with its recorded imaginations could provide the mood and the courage to do so.

And this is the fruit of Rudolf Steiner's lecture activity in England. It made it possible to approach the understanding of the history of the spiritual development of the world and humanity from a different angle.

Penmaenmawr: a foreign murmur in the sound of the lute, a foreign breath, but more eternal and spiritually permeable; not holding fast, not stagnating, like that which has come about through the mixture of the Celtic idiom with the Anglo-Saxon; the language sparkling mysteriously in many of its wind-breathed sounds.

Rudolf Steiner was moved to read the language of this atmospheric and ethereal world weaving in the past, transforming the wisdom of that time into the wisdom of today, pouring into it the I-power that drives man back to God, thus closing the circle in the course of his journey and his arrival, running through it for humanity. When past and future find their spiritual focal point in a person's consciousness, thus encompassing eternity, the experience of the spiritual development of the world and humanity is forever given to humanity.

Dornach, December 1926.
Marie Steiner