Report on the Agriculture Course

GA 260a — 20 June 1924, Dornach

My dear friends!

I have just returned from my trip to Breslau-Koberwitz, which this time had a specific purpose, but this particular purpose was connected with a very general anthroposophical issue. First of all, as you know, a number of farmers who are members of the Anthroposophical Society requested that a course be held for them with a special focus on agriculture and issues related to farming. Those who are farmers within our society traveled from far and wide to gain a serious understanding of what anthroposophical research can offer in this area of human work.

In such a practical area of life, it is of course a matter of practical considerations for work, not of theories. Therefore, practical considerations were definitely expected.

This event was a self-contained and extremely satisfying one for the participants, because the participants in this agricultural course, including those members of the Goetheanum Executive Council who were able to attend—Dr. Steiner, Miss Vreede, and Dr. Wachsmuth—were guests at Koberwitz Castle with our dear friend Count Keyserlingk.

And it is fair to say that it was an exceptionally anthroposophical reception. For it was no small matter to not only accommodate an entire group of people in a place that is three-quarters of an hour's drive from Breslau, but also to entertain them lavishly. The group consisted of more than a hundred participants who had to be fed every day.

The group usually arrived in Koberwitz around eleven o'clock. People couldn't stay in Koberwitz; they came from Breslau to Koberwitz. And then the lecture began, which lasted until one o'clock. The lecture soon turned into breakfast, during which the guests were able to use almost the entire castle and everything that goes with it, which is very interesting. This lasted until around half past one or quarter to two. Then there was a discussion on agricultural topics until three o'clock. That was the Koberwitz part of the whole event. It went on for ten days.

So you can see what a generous gesture this was. Now I must say that it was not easy for Count and Countess Keyserlingk to organize this course, because it had been promised for a long time, and I was unable to come again and again. That is why Count Keyserlingk's nephew was already here in Dornach at the Christmas conference, and when he was sent here, he was told: Either you bring me a definite promise that this course will take place in the next six months, or you don't come home at all. Under these auspices, the nephew, who has achieved many strange things in the world, appeared here and spoke so insistently that I told him that the course would take place as soon as it was possible.

Now it couldn't be earlier, so it took place at Pentecost. It was a beautiful Pentecost, a truly anthroposophical Pentecost. There is something very peculiar about the Koberwitz estate and its surroundings. The Koberwitz estate includes thirty thousand acres of farmland. It is one of the largest estates. So there is a great deal to see in terms of agriculture there. We saw a great deal there, because everything was shown to us with extraordinary kindness.

One thing strikes you immediately when you arrive in Koberwitz and want to perform your first task, which is to wash your hands: you notice right away that there is iron in the sink. The soil in Koberwitz is iron-rich. And I actually think that this soil could be used in a variety of ways, because it is extremely rich in iron. I found this abundance of iron everywhere. And so, at the first lunch, when I greeted the residents, I said that the first thing I noticed was that everything in Koberwitz was made of iron: My nephew was already iron in his demands when he arrived here for Christmas; the soil is completely saturated with iron, and there is something purposeful and energetic about the place, so that I could not help saying: the iron countess and the iron count. There was indeed something thoroughly iron in the moral behavior.

The agricultural course was then about first developing the conditions for the prosperity of the various areas of agriculture. There are extremely interesting areas, such as plant growth, animal husbandry, forestry, horticulture, and so on. Then there is what is most interesting, the secrets of fertilization, which are extraordinary real secrets.

For all of this, the principles and connections were first developed, which seem particularly significant in the present time because, believe it or not, agriculture, under the materialistic worldview, has strayed the furthest from rational principles. And very few people know that over the last few decades, agriculture has seen all the products that humans actually live on degenerate, and degenerate at an extraordinarily rapid rate.

It is true that it is not merely the moral development of humanity in the present, in the time of transition from the Kali Yuga to the light age, is degenerating, but rather what humans have done to the earth and to what is immediately above it through their actions is degenerating rapidly, which is statistically proven today and discussed in agricultural associations, for example, and against which humans are powerless.

And so today, even the materialistic farmer, if he is not completely dull-witted but thinks a little about the things that happen every day or at least every year, can roughly calculate how many decades it will take before the products will be so degenerated that they will no longer be fit for human consumption in the course of this century.

So this is definitely a question that, in the most eminent sense, is a I would say a cosmic-earthly question. In agriculture in particular, it is clear that forces must be drawn from the spirit that are completely unknown today, and that these forces are not only important for improving agriculture a little, but also for ensuring that human life—since humans must live off what the earth provides—can continue on earth in a physical sense.

So this was already a very important topic. And the principles that were then given to show the conditions under which plants develop in the most diverse ways, how animals develop, the principles according to which fertilization must be carried out, according to which weeds must be removed, according to which agricultural pests parasites can be destroyed, according to which plant diseases can be combated, all of these are extremely pressing questions in the field of agriculture today.

After these principles had been discussed, the course moved on to what needs to be done first to bring about a reform of fertilization, a reform in the control of weeds and animal pests, parasites, and in the control of plant diseases. Following the course and the daily discussions that followed, a “ring,” as Count Keyserlingk called it, was formed by the anthroposophical farmers who had gathered there and who want to work here in close cooperation with the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum. The Natural Science Section will therefore have to work out principles based on the geological and other soil conditions, the possibilities for fodder and manure, and all other relevant factors, such as proximity to the forest, climatic conditions, and so on. Once this information has been provided in the appropriate manner by agricultural experts, the principles will be worked out here according to which further experiments are to be designed in order to actually try out what has been given as practical tips in the course or mentioned in the discussions, so that everyone can then say, even if some things still seem strange today: We have tried it, it works.

This is what this circle of farmers is for, which will work in close cooperation with the Natural Science Section and also with Dr. Vreede, because astronomical data is necessary for this.

Of course, the entire School of Spiritual Science, especially the Medical Section, will be involved in this in the most diverse ways possible. So that, in accordance with the intentions that were developed by our friends, namely Count Keyserlingk and Mr. Stegemann, during the course, the matter will hopefully now take a more favorable course in the practical realm than many things that have been undertaken recently under other auspices, under less appropriate auspices.

However, the condition for success is as follows, and it was strictly emphasized, repeatedly and again and again, that the content of this course remains the intellectual property of the Ring of Farmers, the practical farmers. There were also people interested in agriculture who who were unable to join the ring, and they were expressly instructed not to divulge everything to everyone in the usual anthroposophical manner, because things can only gain practical significance if what was covered in the course remains within professional circles and is tested by farmers. Some things will take four years to try out. During this time, the practical hints that have been given will not go beyond the circle of the agricultural community, because there is no point in just talking about things; things are there to be put into practice in real life. And anyone who has heard these things there and then goes and talks about them is doing wrong.

These are the things that initially relate to what I believe is a fruitful agricultural course.

A mental image of eurythmy was also presented in Breslau on Pentecost Sunday morning, which was extremely well attended and received in an exceptionally favorable manner.

In addition to these events, numerous others took place. Above all, the agricultural debates lasted from about a quarter past eleven in the morning until three in the afternoon. That was outside in Koberwitz, as I said. The other events took place indoors in Breslau – I will tell you later what happened in between – and each day ended with an anthroposophical lecture for members of the Anthroposophical Society, which essentially dealt with questions of karma, which had been the subject of discussion here for weeks. They were summarized there in nine lectures. I have already given a brief report on the whole matter in the newsletter accompanying the Goetheanum, which was published today. It already reports on the entire Breslau event. I would like to emphasize once again that from what has now been tried out in various places, in Prague, in Bern, in Paris, and now again in Breslau, I can say that what emerged from the Christmas Conference, this esoteric impulse that is now spreading throughout the entire Anthroposophical Society, is indeed a new spiritual movement.

that what emanated from the Christmas Conference, this esoteric impulse that is now passing through the entire Anthroposophical Society, that is new, one might say is actually what is now present after the real re-foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, what was not there before, that this is now being received from the hearts everywhere in a truly, in a clearly satisfying, not only that, but in an extraordinarily soulful way; so that there is a well-founded hope that now, after the Anthroposophical Society has gained its spirituality through the Christmas Conference, the esoteric Executive Council in Dornach is consciously working spiritually, that now it can actually be noticed everywhere that not only is the current flowing outward, but that the hearts of the participants are also responding to this current.

This could be seen very, very clearly in the evening lectures and in the members' lectures in the evening. And the warmth with which Breslau and Koberwitz also responded to these lectures was truly expressed in a spiritual and organizational way, because it was a deep anthroposophical understanding, and it had also been implemented and realized in practice. I need only mention that on the last evening, on Monday evening in Breslau, instead of the lecture, everything was decided in a convivial get-together. Many members had traveled from far away, and for a long time the members in the German regions had not had anything like this. People came from far away, from southern Germany, from western Germany, from the nearby areas, of course, so that large halls were overflowing with members. On the last evening, at the social gathering, after many or most of them had to leave on Sunday, there were still about three hundred and seventy members present, who were all entertained for dinner indoors in Breslau by the Keyserlingk family.

So you must imagine that everything needed to cater for three hundred and seventy anthroposophists, who, as I noticed while walking around, had an extraordinarily good appetite that evening, was brought into a restaurant in Breslau on trucks. - Yes, that's what happens when you look at pictures; you are never as hungry as when you have been through picture galleries, and this is obviously also the case with anthroposophical lectures. It had built up over the days. But the best thing was that the anthroposophists had a great appetite, there were three hundred and seventy of them, and there was still a lot left over.

These lectures thus formed the conclusion of the day, so that the entire event was framed by the agricultural course and the anthroposophical members' meetings. In between there was a course on artistic speech formation by Dr. Steiner; there were two meetings for the Breslau youth group; there were two class lessons [- and everything else in between]. And on the last Sunday, something else was added. Mr. Kugelmann arrived with his troupe of actors, who had founded a new artistic theater group inspired by the speech course that had been held here at the Goetheanum two years earlier, and they wanted to perform “Iphigenia” for us, which was indeed a very promising, initially very promising undertaking in relation to everything that had emerged from the language course.

The time was richly, truly richly filled, but it was also possible to offer something to members who had long been unable to attend an anthroposophical event at all. [Thus the entire event came to a close in Breslau-Koberwitz.]

In between these activities, there were tours of the estates. People looked at what there was to see on the estate, although of course everything in Central Europe today is affected by the absolutely collapsing economy. I mean economic life in general. The Koberwitz estate is excellently managed, and agriculture must of course continue, but economic life in Germany is already in a terrible state. Well, on Monday, I think it was around eleven o'clock in the evening, the events came to an end.

Then on Tuesday I was able to drive over to Jena-Lauenstein, where a number of our younger friends, together with Dr. Ilse Knauer, are establishing a healing and educational center for children who are not only mentally challenged but also constitutionally ill, who are to be educated and brought as far as possible. As I said, this institute is in the process of being established. I was able to inaugurate the project and see the first children who had been admitted. So we have been able to get things off the ground, so to speak, in Lauenstein, near Jena.

Then I came here via Stuttgart. Isn't it true that in Stuttgart today, apart from everything else, the most depressing thing is that the Waldorf School, which is making such extraordinary progress in educational and spiritual terms, is in a dire financial state? Just consider, for example, that this morning I had to reorganize the fifth grade so that two classes became three, so now we have fifth grade a, fifth grade b, and fifth grade c. We also have the sixth grade divided into three sections. Most of the classes are divided into two sections, even up to the higher grades. We have over eight hundred pupils at the Waldorf School. Things are going extremely well in terms of pedagogy and didactics, and also in spiritual terms, but the economic situation of the Waldorf School is downright bleak, truly bleak in the deepest sense!

You must bear in mind that in the weeks before Christmas, for example, we still had a monthly budget of around 6,000 to 8,000 marks for the Waldorf School, which now corresponds to a monthly budget of 25,000 to 27,000 marks as a result of the enormous rise in food prices in Germany. These are, of course, things which are quite terrible. And some time ago, we were faced with a financial situation in which we were unable to cover about 15,000 to 17,000 marks of this 25,000 to 27,000 mark monthly budget, meaning that we will have to reckon with a monthly deficit of 15,000 to 17,000 gold marks in the near future.

This is a depressing situation that weighs heavily on the soul, because everything is already in place: we have a teaching staff of over forty teachers and over eight hundred students. All this is, of course, extremely difficult to maintain under such economic conditions, and especially under the economic prospects that exist in Germany.

Now, thanks to the willingness of anthroposophical friends to make sacrifices, it has been possible to cover this monthly shortfall of 10,000 marks for the next three, four, or five months, so that only about 6,000 to 7,000 marks will have to be covered each month in the last few months. This could also be covered, but it is true, my dear friends, that in the Anthroposophical Society, when it comes to practical matters, there is a certain impractical way of behaving.

One need only consider, as I said recently at a meeting of the Waldorf School Association, which I hope will be widely disseminated—for it is much more important to disseminate these things than what is sometimes disseminated by anthroposophists today—I said: We have, at a very conservative estimate, 10,000 anthroposophists in Germany. If collections were taken everywhere every week, and everyone gave just 50 pfennigs, that would amount to 5,000 marks a week from 10,000 anthroposophists, and it would be something that could easily be managed if only it were done. So I said: In the Anthroposophical Society, it is often the case that our institutions are so poorly funded that people who would like to give money — and this is my experience — have absolutely no idea how to go about doing so.

Yes, but the situation of the Waldorf School remains very difficult to bear, and I would like to take this opportunity to mention that, thanks to the willingness of our Swiss friends to make sacrifices, a not inconsiderable monthly budget has been provided recently, partly through direct contributions, but mainly through sponsorship of children – a sponsor is someone who pays the monthly budget of 25 to 27 marks for a child at the Waldorf School. [And through such sponsorships, the Swiss have made a considerable contribution.]

But of course, the outlook remains very bleak and the conditions at the Waldorf School are very, very depressing.

If we could find another 250 to 300 sponsors, and if membership fees were paid more regularly and collections were held, it would not be so difficult. But of course it must be said that there is currently an indescribable shortage of money in Germany. It's not that there are no values, but there is such a shortage of money that circulation is virtually impossible. So economic life is in a pretty bad state in Central Europe.

That is the report I wanted to give you. All these things show that everything that is done in the anthroposophical field, originating from the anthroposophical movement itself, has a very strong force in the present. The whole form that the Waldorf school has taken on shows a very, very strong force inherent in anthroposophy. And this is also evident in other areas.

There is a need for what anthroposophy can offer. A language course was planned, a course in artistic speech, which had to be completed in a few hours because there really wasn't enough time for so much. But I think 160 people or so signed up. You can't give language lessons to 160 people in five hours, so the course had to be organized in such a way that about 30 people sat at the front and received real language lessons, while the others could only listen. So there is definitely a need, a deep, intense, and widespread need. We just need to be able to really mobilize the existing forces, and we need to actually make progress in anthroposophical work.

It is a fact that something like what happened in Breslau was made possible by the work, as I have already said, of the iron Count and Countess Keyserlingk and our old friend, who has been working almost as long as the anthroposophical movement has been active, Rector Bartsch, who began as a young man to be an anthroposophist and has now retired as a school principal, but still feels so youthful in the company of others that in his welcoming words to me on the first evening of the members' meeting and lectures, he called me his father, for which he had to pay dearly throughout the entire ten days!

This is the report I wanted to give you, my dear friends, about this event, which must undoubtedly be of interest to you because it may now be possible, starting from anthroposophy, to bring something into immediate life in a certain area. For we can see that in the anthroposophical field, it is possible to work from both sides, from the highly spiritual and from the entirely practical, and that it is only when these two sides are interwoven and brought into complete harmony that the real work can be done.

The mistakes that can very easily arise in anthroposophical work arise precisely because, on the one hand, what is spiritual does not pass into real life, but remains a kind of theory, or a kind of I would say, belief in words, not even in thoughts, but belief in words remains, and on the other hand, the insight is not imparted in the right way that the spiritual can really intervene in the immediate practical handling.

You only have to consider one thing, my dear friends: today, no one really understands the nature of fertilization. Certainly, it is done instinctively, based on tradition from ancient times. But no one today actually understands the essence of fertilization. No one really knows—except those who can know it from a spiritual perspective—what fertilizer actually means for the field, why it is indispensable and necessary in certain areas, and how it should be used. For example, no one today knows that all mineral fertilizers are precisely those that contribute most to the degeneration I have spoken of, to the deterioration of agricultural products. For today, everyone simply thinks: Well, a certain amount of nitrogen is necessary for plant growth, and people are simply indifferent to how this nitrogen is produced or where it comes from. But it is not irrelevant where it comes from. There is a big difference between nitrogen and nitrogen, between the nitrogen in the air combined with oxygen [between this dead nitrogen and the living nitrogen in the earth]. You will not deny, my dear friends, that there is a difference between a person who is alive and walking around and a corpse, a human corpse. One is dead, the other is alive and has a soul.

The same is true, for example, of nitrogen and other substances. There is dead nitrogen. This is the nitrogen that is in our air, mixed with oxygen, and which plays a role in our entire respiratory process and in the process of coexisting with the air. It must not be alive, for the simple reason that if we lived in living air, we would be constantly unconscious. The fact that the air is dead, that oxygen is dead, that nitrogen is dead, is the condition of air in which many people must breathe so that they can think consciously and calmly.

The nitrogen that is in the earth, that must enter with the manure, that must form under the influence of the whole sky, this nitrogen must be alive.

And these are two different types of nitrogen: the nitrogen that is above the level of the earth and the nitrogen that is below the level of the earth; one is dead nitrogen; the other is living nitrogen.

And so it is with everything. That which is necessary for the continued maintenance of nature has been completely lost in the course of the materialistic age. The most important things are not known. And so things are carried on, certainly out of a very good instinct, but that is gradually disappearing. Traditions are disappearing. People will fertilize their fields with science. Potatoes, grain, everything will get worse and worse.

People know that things are getting worse; they can see it in the statistics. Today, there is only resistance to practical measures that are based on what can be gained from spiritual observation.

It is of tremendous importance to look at these things correctly, to see them correctly. I have often said here that if someone has a magnetic needle that always points in a certain direction, with one tip pointing toward the magnetic north pole and the other toward the magnetic south pole, they would be considered childish if they said that the reasons why one tip always points north and the other always points south lie inside the magnetic needle. You say, here is the earth, there is the magnetic needle; why does the magnetic needle point with one tip to the north and the other tip to the south? Because there is a magnetic north pole here and a magnetic south pole there; they direct the direction of the magnetic needle to one side and the other. You use the whole earth to explain the direction of the magnetic needle. You go outside the magnetic needle. One would consider it childish to believe that the cause lies in the magnetic needle.

But one is just as childish if one believes that what modern science observes in the immediate vicinity of plants or in their immediate environment depends on what one looks at. The entire sky with its stars is involved in plant growth! You have to know that. That really has to get into people's heads. You have to be able to say that it is just as childish to practice botany in the modern way as it would be to talk about the magnetic needle in the way I have suggested today.

And every educated person today can learn certain things, provided they have a sense for the simplest conditions of anthroposophical life.

What I hinted at for the very first time in Penmaenmawr last year is extremely important. People today do not even know how humans and animals feed themselves, let alone plants. People believe that nutrition consists of humans eating the substances in their environment. They put them in their mouths; they then go into the stomach. Some of it is stored, some of it goes away. Then what has been stored is used up. Then that also goes away. Then it is replaced again. This is how people today imagine nutrition in a very superficial way. But this is not how it is, [namely] that the food that humans take in through their stomachs builds bones, muscles, and other tissue mass—this is only true for the human head. And everything that spreads throughout the human being in further processing via the digestive organs only forms the material for the head and for everything that is deposited in the nervous and sensory systems and everything that belongs to them, while, for example, the substances needed for the limb system or for the organs of metabolism themselves that is, to form the tubular bones for the legs or arms, or to form the intestines for metabolism and digestion, are not formed at all by the food taken in through the mouth and stomach, but are taken in from the entire environment through respiration and even through the sense organs. A process is constantly taking place in humans whereby what is absorbed by the stomach flows upward and is used in the head, but what is absorbed in the head or in the nervous-sensory system from the air and the other environment flows back down, and from this the organs of the digestive system or the limbs are formed.

So if you want to know what the substance of the big toe consists of, you don't have to look at food. If you ask your brain: Where does the substance come from? Then you have to look at food. But if you want to know the substance of your big toe—insofar as it is not sensory substance, i.e., lined with warmth and so on, insofar as it is also nourished by the stomach, but rather what it is in addition to that in terms of structural substance and so on—then this is taken in through breathing, through the sense organs, and partly even through the eyes. And all of this, as I have often explained here, passes through a seven-year cycle into the organs, so that the human being is substantially built up in relation to his limb-metabolism system, that is, the organs, from cosmic substance. Only the nerve-sense system is built up from telluric, earthly substance. Now, you see, this is such a fundamentally important fact that [life itself,] the physical life of humans and animals, can only be judged if this is known. And nothing, not even the means and ways to know such a thing, nothing is given in today's science. It is impossible to know with today's science. It is impossible because, when modern science works with its means, it cannot arrive at such a thing. It is impossible, it is futile.

These are the things that must be taken into consideration. That is why we have this separation between theory and practice today. [Today's theory is theoretical and impractical.] Today's practice is spiritless, mere routine.

But what comes from the spirit ceases to be impractical when it actually comes from the spirit. It then becomes practical in the most eminent sense.

[Tomorrow evening at half past eight there will be class, and on Sunday at eight o'clock I will give a lecture in which I will continue my reflections on karma. On Sunday at five o'clock there will be a eurythmy performance here.]