The Dornach Building

GA 287

Afterword to the First Edition

These notes evoke distant, half-forgotten images in the soul. They emerge only as individual images, yet full of life and with a poignant power, from the general mood of memories of those times so rich in content and so deeply moving.

For these first months of work on the Goetheanum were too great, too overwhelming to be captured in contoured memories. Every day was an event, bringing something new to the creation of this work, which was the most significant of our time. And this in the midst of the gathering, threatening impulses of destruction that then erupted in the catastrophe of the World War. Against this background, the image of Rudolf Steiner stands like a warning conscience.

Young and old, professional artists, amateurs, but also many who had previously been rather blank slates when it came to art, we flocked to the Dornach hill in the spring of 1914. We came from the most diverse regions of the world and from even more diverse fateful and cultural backgrounds. How would this babble of languages find common ground for understanding? Only one thing lived in every mind, stood unshakably firm in consciousness: here in Dornach, the foundation stone for a new cultural work was being laid, for Rudolf Steiner was its founder, and our hands yearned to participate in this work. The joyful sound of hammering echoed from afar, coming from the network of scaffolding that outlined the contours of the future building on the hill. The person most often encountered on this hill covered with soggy clay was Dr. Steiner himself. In his work coat and high boots, he hurried from one workshop to another, a model and a sketchpad in his hand, stopping to greet us with a friendly word or a wave. Only a few artists had been working with him for several months, gaining a deep insight into what was happening. Most waited in complete ignorance.

In the concrete substructure, which had already been cleared of boards, workers glued the beautiful wood together into colossal blocks. Greenish-light hornbeam, golden-shimmering ash, reddish cherry, then brownish-warm oak and elm, and again the lighter colors of maple and birch. Each wood had its own smell, each felt different to the touch.

It was early March when the carving work—initially on the capitals in this room—had to be tackled. Dr. Steiner began this work himself, and we gathered around him in a circle. Standing high on two boxes, with chisel and mallet, he slowly knocked one chip after another from the solid wood, which hinted at a capital motif in its outlines. He was completely absorbed in his work, as if he were studying the movements of his hands inwardly, as if he wanted to listen to something in the wood. And so one hour after another passed, quietly, uninterrupted. We were already tired from standing, so we left and came back again. He continued working. And slowly, a sculptural form emerged from the mass of wood. From time to time, he looked at a small capital model. Why was there a wooden goat standing next to it? I used to play with toys like that as a child. Sometimes he climbed down from the crates, looked at his work, and said a few words to us. Then we got a closer look at the goat: it was a Russian peasant toy. He showed how intelligently and characteristically the toy was shaped in planes. He also said that you can learn a lot from the handle of a Russian hatchet, an axe. There, you have a feeling for how the handle should be shaped by the swinging motion of the axe. Here, we have less and less sense of this. So the handle becomes a straight stick.

The next day, everyone threw themselves into their work. Everyone was given a chisel and a mallet – but how hard and unyielding the wood was! After half an hour, their hands were already sore, and without any visible results; it was as if a mouse had gnawed on the wood. And yet Dr. Steiner had also worked for so many hours yesterday for the first time and achieved so much. But it was also necessary to defend the space they had conquered, because the shy ones were soon pushed out by their neighbors' hammer blows.

After a few days of futile struggle, Dr. Steiner came and led the superfluous ones with him to the carpentry shop to the architraves. Even more formidable, like insurmountable fortresses, stood the incomprehensible structures of the future architraves, discouragingly large. But at least there was room around them.

For the time being, a sculptress ruled the carpentry rooms. Wearing a short caftan, high boots, and carrying a long wooden spear, she commanded a group of Italian workers. Once again, one had to rely on one's own experience, and it took time for the Hindus to learn to replace strength with rhythm, to make the wood pliable, and above all, to find their way into the model room to study and measure their motif.

This Goetheanum model – the only thing that has survived from that time – in the early days of its creation, when one slipped under the double domes, one breathed in its impression, one did not dare to approach it with one's thoughts. And in the conviction that thoughts could not grasp it, one laid down everything one had known before.

So one was happy to have to strain one's muscles, imbued with the mood:

That the greatest work may be accomplished
One spirit is enough for a thousand hands.

But the day brought not only enthusiasm for work, but also much humor and drama.

A group gathered in one corner in flowing purple-toned robes: they delicately worked on a massive block that had not yet taken on any plastic form, using fine, woodworm-like twists and turns. In another corner, a lone artist tried out a new surface treatment: the form emerged as if wrapped in thick sheepskin. A linguist grabbed an axe and mercilessly hacked away at the wood, so Dr. Steiner had to help everywhere.

“They made me such an ox. I wouldn't sleep at night if I had carved that,” he said, characterizing a poet's unfortunate undertaking.

"In your left hand: feeling – feel the form with the chisel; in your right hand: strength. The interaction of the two is what is important. Study the surfaces of flowers, they are the best sculptors. But that doesn't mean you can reproduce flowers plastically. You must consciously put all your feeling into the movement of the surface. It must be imbued with soul – there must be soul in the surface. How will the edge between two surfaces turn out? You mustn't decide that in advance; you must wait curiously to see. Why do you want symmetrical shapes? Your nose isn't symmetrical either. Look at your cowlick. But that's how inner life is expressed!“ He was most concerned with the bulging, rounded surfaces: ”Astral fat! That has to go! There must be no astral fat in the building."

So he went from one group to another, encouraging, joking; but the look in his eyes seemed increasingly worried. Much work still lay ahead—the sculpture on the outer wall, motifs above the windows, portals...

On the high scaffolding surrounding the building, bathed in light and air, while the MeiBel sculpted the curved shape of the wall in the scorching heat of August 1914, as one declaration of war followed another, everyone felt all the more strongly that this building was a symbol of the highest humanity, in contrast to the forces unleashed within humanity that were destroying people.

Gradually, the next task approached: to continue the interrupted work on the architraves inside the building itself, this time on site. Dr. Steiner directed this work and accompanied it with comments that have been preserved for us in the form of notes taken by a stenographer (see page 81).

The building was supposed to be finished in August 1914, or so it was intended. And feverishly, with all forces strained, the work went on. But the task was too great, the forces too weak. Cannons were already rumbling in the distance, and our ranks of artists had already been thinned by conscription when we reached the first stage of our work in October, which is recorded in these “notes.”

Still in a rough state, unfinished, but finally, the architraves were placed over the columns, the inner dome was vaulted above them, and the space was freed from scaffolding.¹ And so we stood together with Dr. Steiner inside the Goetheanum for the first time. What we had been working on for months as individual fragments suddenly appeared around us, assembled into a whole, as a space never seen before. An impression that will remain indelible, overwhelming despite all the unfinished work and shortcomings, and there were plenty of shortcomings.

So we listened to Dr. Steiner's praise and criticism—praise that awakened a deep sense of shame in our souls, criticism that sounded so warm and humorous, so encouraging. We listened to him... but just as important was watching him. His facial expressions, his gestures, his entire body language illustrated and complemented what was left unsaid. The umbrella helped to follow the movement of the forms, and when things became more complicated, the soft felt hat, bent and turned, had to illustrate a plastic bend.

The “notes” preserved here are incomplete. But despite the gaps that memory can no longer fill, they remain a document of how freely and precisely, always based on direct experience, Rudolf Steiner guided a group of young colleagues as artists.

This 12th of October 1914, as the day in the life of the Goetheanum building when we stood inside it for the first time and saw the architraves, involuntarily brings back memories of another day, the day when the building stood before us for the last time in unforgettable but gruesome beauty. At dawn on New Year's Day 1923, the double architrave ring, pierced by the flames of New Year's Eve, still rested on the illuminated columns, transparent as glowing glass. Now the sky arched above it. No longer individual motifs—they had melted in the flames—but the entire floor plan rose to the night blue in radiant gold. Just a moment of final glorification.

Dr. Steiner walked up the hill, slowly, bent over—he who had walked so lightly across the earth until then. Passing his destroyed work, he turned toward the studio. There was much to be done after this night of destruction, for the work had to continue uninterrupted.

—Assja Turgenieff