It lies at the foot of the Goetheanum, storing its treasures underground—the Rudolf Steiner Archive. Even the whimsical architecture of Haus Duldeck conceals the significance of this repository of anthroposophy. It ought to be a cathedral, like Chartres, visible from afar in the haze on the horizon, guiding travelers and pilgrims; a Louvre, a Fort Knox of the spirit to which we ascend—like to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi—to discover our personal question with reverence in our limbs. Yet it is a simple garden house in the Goetheanum Park—as if there were a café there and not something that, out of its source, has reached millions of people: a philosopher’s stone, ciphers for a millennium.

I bring this secret beacon to light for a moment. To educate means to teach breathing, to teach sleeping and waking. For me, as an educator, what the archive conveys is found on the first pages of Study of Man (GA 293). I cannot conceal the teacher in my writing and therefore try to bring the lessons of breathing, sleeping, and waking into every text. This is how Rudolf Steiner’s idea for schooling—unearthed and compiled in book form by the Rudolf Steiner Archive and the publisher—comes alive in me and then in you, dear reader. This is how it happens, time and time again. So, the Archive is not hidden at all but is present everywhere that anthroposophy takes place, as its source—great and mighty.

On the occasion of the completion of the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner, I allow myself a touch of pathos. Pieter de Haan, an attendee of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in London in 1913, noted that it concerned the “good of humanity.”¹ Therefore, to all of you who have viewed, written, organized, and printed Rudolf Steiner’s spirit—from Marie Steiner and Helene Finckh, to Edwin and Eva Froböse, to Hella Wiesberger, Walter Kugler, Roland Halfen, and David Marc Hoffmann, to Angelika Schmitt and Philip Kovce—on behalf of humanity: Thank you!

Translation Laura Liska
Image Various new editions of the Rudolf Steiner Collected Works

1. In Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner [Memories of Rudolf Steiner.] Edited by Erika Beltle and Kurt Vierl, Stuttgart 2017.