69. Autobiographical Fragment I

Rudolf Steiner, born February 27, 1861 at Kraljevec in Hungary, was the son of an Austrian Southern Railway official. The family came from the Waldviertel region of Lower Austria and belonged to the peasantry. He initially studied natural sciences and mathematics at the Technical University in Vienna, but also turned to literary-historical studies and philosophy. This led him to Goethe's scientific writings, and from these he sought to penetrate the core of Goethe's world view. He was encouraged and supported in this by the Viennese Goethe scholar K. J. Schröer, who became a fatherly friend to him. In the 1880s, his studies of Goethe led Steiner to publish Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutscher National-Litteratur (German National Literature), with extensive introductions and commentaries. During the publication process, he was already faced with the necessity of providing a philosophical and epistemological foundation for Goethe's worldview in his “Erkenntnistheor[ie] der Goethe'schen Weltanschauung” (Epistemology of Goethe's Worldview). As a result of these Goethe publications, he was appointed to the editorial staff of the Weimar Goethe Edition for the natural sciences and lived in Weimar from 1890 to 1897. During this time, he attempted a systematic presentation of his insights into the spiritual world through direct intuition in his “Philosophy of Freedom” (1894). This book brought him into contact with Nietzsche, the fruit of which is the work “Nietzsche and His Opponents” (1895). He presented the insights into Goethe that were expanded in Weimar in his work “Goethe's World View” (1897). From 1897 to 1900, he edited the “Magazin für Literatur” (Magazine for Literature). In 1900 and 1901, he published “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the 19th Century). The seeds of a world view of intuition, which are already present in the “Theory of Knowledge of the Goethean World View” and the “Philosophy of Freedom” (which seeks spiritual experiences in a way analogous to the experiences of the outer senses, the “Philosophy of Freedom” bears the motto “observation results according to the scientific method»), he then further expounded in his writings: “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” (1901); “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” (1902); “Theosophy” (1904), “Secret Science” (1909).

He sought to depict them in scenic sequences of images in “The Portal of Initiation” (1910), “The Testing of the Soul” (1911); “The Guardian of the Threshold” (1912); “The Awakening of the Soul” (1913). In addition, there were descriptions of intuitive spiritual methods of observation in the writings: “How to Know Higher Worlds” (1910), “A Path to Self-Knowledge of Man” (1912) and “The Threshold of the Spiritual World” (1913) and others.

In 1902, the approval of his world view by leading members of the Theosophical Society (based in Adyar) prompted Steiner to He then worked in the external connection to this society for the intuitive-spiritual scientific worldview he represented, also in numerous lectures and in the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis”. His independent direction compared to the Theosophical Society led to the exclusion of Steiner and all his followers from this society in 1913 and to the founding of the independent “Anthroposophical Society” by the latter.