Ytterjärna, Sweden. 2025 is the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death. How does he live on in specific individuals? Daniel Evaeus, a workshop teacher at a Waldorf school and teacher of traditional Swedish crafts, gives his answers.
What questions in life brought you into contact with anthroposophy?
In my early twenties, during my training as a violin maker at a school in Germany, a health crisis awakened in me the desire to get to know myself and my spirit. I looked for answers in yoga and books. I was amazed to discover later that anthroposophy was also a source of spiritual knowledge! I had been a student at Waldorf schools, but I never knew what anthroposophy was. Through participation in the Youth Initiative Program (YIP), I came into closer contact with anthroposophy as a path of self-knowledge.
This journey deepened for four years while working with the Elderberries Café initiatives in Los Angeles, where community building and peer mentoring processes were at the center of our work. One of the similarities between the violin making school and the Elderberries Café work was experiencing the transformative potential of hands-on work. At the café, the learning and working process was framed in terms of traditional craft training, which involved not only professional but also moral and personal development.
I began to embody more and more of a therapeutic gesture in my life. Through my current work and training as a workshop teacher at a Swedish Waldorf school, I am reconnected to this common thread of practical work and healing. In Sweden there is an established practice of remedial education in the workshops of several Waldorf schools. I see great potential in this.
Contact daniel.evaeus@protonmail.com
Translation Charles Cross
Photo Kimberley Gustavsson-Lorne-McDougall
