Current Social and Economic Issues
GA 332b
On the Cultural Council
Excerpt from the memoirs of Emil Leinhas
The works council movement showed a tendency towards a certain one-sided, purely economically oriented radicalism. This danger became all the more apparent the more the employers retreated to their earlier entrepreneurial position with the strengthening of political reaction.
In this situation, we turned to a few professors at the University of Tübingen through the mediation of Professor von Blume. One Sunday we met with these gentlemen at the home of Professor Robert Wilbrandt in Tübingen. Rudolf Steiner described the development of the movement to form works councils and pointed out that such a one-sidedly economically oriented social movement could pose a great danger for spiritual and cultural life, precisely because it seemed to lead to a certain success among the working class. In contrast to this, he considered it necessary to also bring intellectual life to greater effectiveness through free corporations in all areas of cultural life. He therefore proposed the formation of a cultural council consisting of personalities from intellectual and cultural life, which would have the task of preparing the self-administration of the entire intellectual and cultural life, but above all of the education system and universities. Rudolf Steiner explained how he would envision the self-administration of a university, for example, without the involvement of a ministry of education, but rather through the teachers working at the university itself; a state of affairs that, incidentally, did not exist that long ago.
You can't exactly say that the professors didn't show any understanding for this; but their answers did paint the distressing picture that these gentlemen were truly worried about the difficulties that would arise from such self-government of the university within their own ranks. In view of the envy and jealousy that would show among colleagues, they believed that they still had to give preference to administration by a higher-level ministry of education. It was clear that a college of academics of this nature would be completely unsuitable for self-administration of its affairs.
As on previous occasions, for example on the occasion of a highly significant lecture that Rudolf Steiner had given in Tübingen to an audience consisting mainly of students, one had to make the sad experience again that of all sections of the population, the academic world was least able to muster understanding for new social ideas, regardless of age or rank. On the drive back from Tübingen, we decided to appeal to the general public of intellectual and cultural life as soon as possible, calling on them to establish a cultural council. At two meetings convened for this purpose at Landhausstraße 70 over the Pentecost weekend, various drafts of such an appeal were discussed in detail. On Sunday evening, a proposal I had put forward was accepted in its main features. During the night, this draft was reworked by Dr. Unger and several other friends, taking into account the suggestions that had arisen from the meeting, and submitted to a second meeting, which took place on Whit Monday, for a decision.