The Fateful Year of 1923

GA 259 — 14 February 1923, Stuttgart

Address at a Meeting with the Youth Group

on the three main questions for anthroposophical youth work

My dear friends! I think I can assume that the present appeal to the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is known to you all. You have seen from it that it is recognized in the circles of the Anthroposophical Society that, to a certain extent, the rudder, as it has been steered from Stuttgart in particular, must now be turned and that there is, after all, an awareness that such a change in direction is necessary. The details that come into consideration will naturally be discussed at the delegates' meeting. I believe you will be particularly interested in all that will be going on there. You found society in a particular state when you yourself were seeking the path to anthroposophy out of the external circumstances of your life. You imagined that what a young person seeks from the depths of his soul but cannot find in the institutions of the world today must be found somewhere. They were placed in these institutions and found that what has emerged from recent history does not correspond to what is actually demanded from the human soul as humanity. Perhaps you were looking for where this demand for true humanity would be fulfilled, and finally you believed you could find it in the Anthroposophical Society. Now, however, many things were not in accordance with the facts as they were. At first it was not all of you who somehow made this discord a conflict. You found many things unsatisfactory, but at first you remained at the stage of merely stating this dissatisfaction. In the face of the past and present facts within the Anthroposophical Society, however, the fact must be faced that the Anthroposophical Society has simply not fulfilled the development of anthroposophy, and that the extent to which something completely new must be created or the old Anthroposophical Society must be continued with a completely new impulse must be faced.

This has been considered by the personalities who have been involved in the leadership to a greater or lesser extent: to leave behind many old sins, which mostly consisted of omissions and bureaucratic forms, and to attempt to create the basis for the further existence of the Society in agreement with the representatives of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany.

In Stuttgart, it must be said that the developments of recent years have brought together a large number of excellent workers. As individuals, they are excellent people, but when brought together in a group, they are a truly great movement in their own right. But as one of the leading personalities here has already said, each one stands in the way of the other. This has actually been the cause of much unproductivity here. Each individual has filled his post quite well. One can be highly satisfied with the Waldorf School. But the actual Anthroposophical Society, despite the fact that the anthroposophists were there, has basically disappeared bit by bit, began to dissolve, one cannot even say, into goodwill, but into displeasure. An end must be put to this state of affairs if the Society is not to disintegrate completely.

You have obviously noticed this very clearly and then formed your own views. But it was necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to give itself a new form out of its old supports. After all, the work of twenty-three years is present in the bulk of the Anthroposophical Society. Many who are in it are in a completely different situation and find something that exists: Even if the branch decays, the individual anthroposophists remain, and anthroposophy will find its way; for example, Mrs. Wolfram, who led the branch in Leipzig for many years and then resigned from the leadership, recently founded a local group of the “Federation for Free Spiritual Life” in deliberate contrast to the local anthroposophical circles.

The fact that replacing old forces with young ones is not enough is evident in Leipzig, where the local chairman emerged from the student body. A balance must therefore be struck between what has been created over two decades and what is coming in from young forces.

The appeal should also represent this in the right way. Many members of the Anthroposophical Society have sought a reassuring element in this society; they were always very uncomfortable when something had to be said against external opposition. Sometimes harsh words had to be used. But this will also be unavoidable in the future, because the opposition is taking on ever more outrageous forms. A strange defensive position must therefore already be adopted. One must not lose sight of this. It is difficult for the old ones to be good anthroposophists after the reassuring element has become habitual in them.

As soon as one lives in anthroposophy in such a way that one experiences things as if out of habit, this is something very bad. Anthroposophy is something that actually has to be acquired anew every day; otherwise one cannot have anthroposophy. One cannot just remember what one once thought up. And the difficulties of the old Anthroposophical Society are due to the fact that human beings are creatures of habit, as we used to say when I was very young. For Anthroposophy must not become a habit. You will in turn find difficulties because Anthroposophy demands that we go beyond everything that is merely egoistic in an intellectual sense. Of course, human beings can be selfish, like other creatures. But anthroposophy and selfishness do not go together. If you are an egoist, you can be a tolerable philistine, even a tolerable human being. If you are selfish as an anthroposophist, you will constantly contradict yourself. This is because human beings do not really live on earth with their whole being. When he comes down to earth from a pre-earthly existence, a part of him still remains in the astral realm, so that when a person wakes up in the morning, it is not the whole person that goes with it; it is precisely what goes down from the supersensible human being. The human being is not completely on earth, he leaves a certain part of his existence in the supersensible. And this is connected with the fact that there can be no completely satisfactory social order. Such a social order can only come from earthly conditions. Within such a social order, human beings cannot be completely happy.

I have said it again and again: threefolding is not paradise on earth, but it shows an organism that is possible within itself. Otherwise it would be a deception, for the human being is not only an earthly being. This is the fact that one must actually hold to in order to really feel one's full humanity; and that is why one can never be satisfied with a purely materialistic world view when one feels one's full humanity within oneself. Only when we really feel this, are we truly ready for anthroposophy, when we feel that we cannot come down completely to earth, we need something for our supersensible human being.

You have evidently felt something of the kind quite instinctively, and that is why you have come to the Anthroposophical Society. You will have to realize that this fact makes your difficulty more or less clear to you. For if, on the one hand, Anthroposophy can never become a habit, on the other hand it is necessary that Anthroposophy does not merge into a being that really comes from a merely earthly one. For that which arises out of egoism is connected with the earthly. Man becomes as bad as he is as a human being when he is supersensible and at the same time egoistic: a supersensible being is made entirely in the character of a sensual being. Spiritual feeling and perception are not compatible with egoism. That is where the obstacle begins.

But this is also the point where the anthroposophical movement coincides with what today's youth is really seeking, due to the fact that all connection with the spiritual world has been lost. And now the external institutions are there. Young people flee from them and seek a consciousness of their humanity. It is out of this feeling that you must try to come to terms with what is already there and to feel with your own inner being. You must hold together the difficulties you encounter with the difficulties that others have, and then the way will be found to actually get a strong Anthroposophical Society for the near future, including in the circle that seeks internalization, a strong Anthroposophical movement.

If you go down this path, you will have to go through many a privation and many a difficulty, because humanity does not want such a movement. There is still a lot ahead of you before you are really so far that you are truly connected to the cause with your whole being. Then anthroposophy will assert itself under all circumstances. The disintegration of the civilized world is so strong that Europe will not have much time left if it does not turn to the spirit. Only from the spirit can an ascent come! Therefore, the spiritual must be sought unconditionally, and in this striving you have done the right thing, you have taken the right path. Now it is a matter of taking up the work for the near future. And to hear some more about how you imagine your intentions will take shape, we have come together today.

[The following is a question and answer session, printed in full in GA 217a. This is only a summary of the social context:]

A participant: About the difficulties students have in asserting themselves with anthroposophical works.

Dr. Steiner: The Anthroposophical Society must learn to recognize how important it is that the work done within its framework is not ignored; it must come to recognize such work. It must learn to appreciate the work of Dr. von Baravalle or the brochure by Caroline von Heydebrand, 'Against Experimental Psychology and Education'. Little by little, even if our research institutes were to solve the tasks that lie in the natural science courses and cycles, it must also be the case that even the opponents say that there is something to be found in the Anthroposophical Society that they respect. One must train oneself to recognize human achievements. Today, a student working on an anthroposophical dissertation is rejected! The Society must become a place where such things become “conscience”, so that it can no longer happen that a professor rejects an anthroposophically oriented work for these reasons. The research institutes, in which people are involved in practical work, must stand behind it, so that a student who is working in a seminar or doing a doctoral thesis is also granted it. The Anthroposophical Society must become such that a professor must accept an anthroposophically oriented seminar paper or dissertation, provided it is substantial enough, because he is concerned that otherwise he will get the Anthroposophical Society on his back.

Dr. Steiner asks if youth representatives are coming to the delegates' meeting.

A youth representative says a few words about the assembly of delegates.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if something could be presented in as comprehensive a form as possible and taken completely seriously on the three main questions that need to be addressed here:

Firstly: What is the situation regarding the student and youth movement?

Secondly: What kind of experiences does someone who feels their full humanity through anthroposophy have at the universities?

Thirdly: What does the academic and younger person expect from the Anthroposophical Society?

These things must, of course, be brought to bear by grasping them in a penetrating way. Nietzsche showed in a penetrating way what the situation was at our educational institutions at the turn of the 1960s. He brilliantly described how the educational institutions should be and what he expected of them. Unfortunately, Nietzsche has almost been forgotten. Today, what Nietzsche described at the time would have to be surpassed. These three questions that have just been characterized are the most important. And if we succeed in bringing personalities into the center of the Anthroposophical Society who not only have the highest interest in their field, but also attention for everything that is going on in the Society and everywhere, then everything will be fine. What has been lacking is interest and attention. This is shown by the fact that the emergence of the religious movement went unnoticed until it occurred. Attention and interest must be paid to everything in the Anthroposophical Society. For it is indeed the case that thoughts do not grow, they remain unchanged, but that attention and interest grow and can bear fruit.

Above all, one must seek and follow the path to the supersensible worlds with clarity and determination. Then one will also find the right relationship with people. And vice versa: if one has found the right relationship with people, then one is no longer far from entering the supersensible worlds.