Goethe and the Goetheanum

Anyone who has studied the forms that make up the living structure of the Goetheanum could see how Goethe's ideas on metamorphosis were incorporated into the architectural ideas. These metamorphosis ideas became clear to Goethe when he wanted to embrace the diversity of the plant world in spiritual unity. To achieve this goal, he searched for the archetypal plant. This was to be an idealized plant form. In it, one organ could be developed to particular size and perfection, while others could be small and unattractive. In this way, one could also devise an immense number of special forms from the ideal original plant; and then one could let one's gaze wander over the external forms of the plant world. One found this realized in one form, that in the other, derived from the original plant. The whole plant world was, so to speak, one plant in the most diverse forms.

But with this, Goethe assumed that a formative principle prevails in the diversity of organizations, which is recreated by man in the inward mobility of thought forces. He thus ascribed something to human knowledge whereby it is not merely an external observation of world beings and world processes, but grows together with them into a unity.

Goethe had applied the same principle to the understanding of individual plants. In the simplest way, he saw an entire plant in the leaf. And in the multiform plant he saw a leaf developed in a complicated way; so to speak, many leaf-plants combined again according to the leaf principle into a unity. — Likewise, the various organs of animal formation were transformations of a basic organ for him; and the whole animal kingdom the most diverse forms of an ideal “primordial animal”.

Goethe did not develop the idea in all its aspects. His conscientiousness led him to stop on unfinished paths, especially in relation to the animal world. He did not allow himself to go too far in the mere formation of thoughts without repeatedly having the ideational confirmed by the sensuous facts.

One can have a twofold relationship to these Goethean metamorphoses of ideas. One can regard them as an interesting peculiarity of the Goethean spirit and leave it at that.

But one can also attempt to bring one's own activity of ideas in the Goethean direction. Then one will find that in fact secrets of nature are revealed, to which one cannot gain access in any other way.

More than forty years ago, I believed I had realized this (in my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur) and called Goethe the Copernicus and Kepler of the science of the organic. I proceeded from the view that for the inanimate, the Copernican act consists in noticing a material connection independent of man; but that the corresponding act for the animate lies in discovering the right mental activity by which the organic can be grasped by the human mind in its living mobility.

Goethe accomplished this Copernican feat by introducing the spiritual activity through which he worked artistically into knowledge. He sought the path from artist to knower and found it. The anthropologist Heinroth therefore called Goethe's thinking a representational one. Goethe spoke with deep satisfaction about this. He took up the word and also called his poetry a concrete one. He thus expressed how close the artistic and cognitive activities were in his soul.

Immersing oneself in Goethe's spiritual world could give courage to lead the view of the metamorphoses back to the artistic. This helped to develop the architectural idea of the Goetheanum. Wherever nature unfolds in living activity, she creates forms that grow out of each other. One can come close to nature's creative activity through artistic-sculptural work, if one lovingly and empathetically grasps how she lives in metamorphoses.

It is now possible to call a building the “Goetheanum” which has been created in such a way, both architecturally and sculpturally, that the assimilation of Goethe's metamorphic view of life has dared to attempt to be realized in its forms.

And in the same way, anthroposophy itself is also the direct further development of Goethe's views. Anyone who embraces the idea of the transformation not only of the sensory forms – in which Goethe, in accordance with his particular soul character, remained – but also of what can be grasped in soul and spirit, has arrived at anthroposophy. This is only a very elementary observation. In the human soul, we see thinking, feeling and willing at work. Anyone who is only able to see these three forms of soul life side by side or in their interaction cannot penetrate deeper into the essence of the soul. But anyone who gains clarity about how thinking is a metamorphosis of feeling and willing, feeling a metamorphosis of thinking and willing, and willing a transformation of thinking and feeling, connects themselves with the essence of the soul. If Goethe, who wanted to be oriented towards the sensually descriptive, was highly satisfied to hear that his thinking was called objective, then a spiritual researcher can find a similar satisfaction when he realizes how his thinking becomes “spiritually animated” through the metamorphosis view. Thinking is “representational” when it can become so entwined with the essence of sense perceptions that this essence is experienced as resonating within it. Thinking becomes “spirit-animated” when it is able to absorb the spirit into its own currents and movements. Then thinking becomes spirit-bearing, just as perception, directed to the sense world, becomes color- or sound-bearing. Then thinking metamorphoses into intuition.

With this metamorphosis, however, thinking has been freed from the body. For the body can imbue thinking only with sense-perceptible content.

One conquers the living through the contemplation of metamorphosis. One thereby enlivens one's own thinking. It is transformed from a dead to a living one. But in this way it becomes capable of absorbing the life of the spirit by contemplation. Anyone who, on the basis of what Goethe's writings contain, wants to form the judgment that Goethe himself would have rejected anthroposophy may be able to cite external reasons for doing so. And one may concede that Goethe would have been very cautious in such a case, because he himself would have felt uncomfortable pursuing the metamorphosis into areas where it lacks the control of sensory phenomena. But Goethe's world view merges with anthroposophy without artifice.

Therefore, that which rests securely on Goethe's world view could be cultivated in a building that bore the name Goetheanum in memory of Goethe.