Emil Molt (April 14, 1876–June 16, 1936) was cosmopolitan and firmly convinced of the power of the spiritual realm. By acting on his courageous intuition, he made possible the founding of the first Waldorf School in 1919 through an unusual collaboration between workers and business owners. April 14, 2026 marked the 150th anniversary of his birth.
The social constellation for the founding of the Waldorf School in 1919 was truly remarkable. On one side, there were the workers of the cigarette factory, passionately engaged with the idea for a new school; on the other, there was Emil Molt who for several months had taken all the independent steps to actually establish the school. It is a unique moment for history that the school’s foundation—this special relationship between workers and entrepreneur—was primarily born out of those active in the economic sphere. Molt’s impressive personality was evident in his striking appearance: “The small, stocky, corpulent figure with the beautifully shaped, large, bald head revealed a man of strong will. His small blue eyes were lively and had an intelligent, penetrating, energetic gaze. His large mouth with thin lips and a strong chin gave his very attractive face a distinctive character.”1
Molt’s standing among the anthroposophists of his time was just as unique as his appearance. Not only did he build and run a thriving enterprise with several hundred employees, but he was also deeply rooted in business circles far beyond Stuttgart. He knew politicians and many others active in public life at the time. He shared their concerns and joys, spoke their language, had an approachable, convivial manner, and truly belonged to such circles. Molt also associated with writers and artists and enjoyed inviting them to his home. Hermann Hesse, a childhood friend from his school days in Calw, shared a special friendship with him. “Molt is that rich friend whose guest I [. . .] was and to whom I am indebted to a certain degree by way of loans, while he recognizes me as a thinker and artist.”2 Molt would have liked to see Hesse in Stuttgart supporting his activities there.
At the same time, as an anthroposophist, Molt had an unshakable and uncompromising faith in the efficacy of the spiritual world. For him, knowledge of this spiritual world was inseparable from the question of how his actions and his self-understanding—which were dedicated to serving these spiritual impulses—could make them possible. On several occasions, Rudolf Steiner gratefully pointed out how Molt’s gesture enabled higher spiritual powers to connect with the founding of the school.3
As early as 1900, Molt had already been introduced to anthroposophy and Steiner by fellow Stuttgart entrepreneur José del Monte. He felt an especially close connection with the Stuttgart anthroposophists Adolf Arenson and Carl Unger, and he regarded their continuous, intensive, and extraordinarily solid spiritual work as an indispensable foundation for the success of the practical activities in Stuttgart. “There’s a direct line that leads straight from this work to the fact that it was in Stuttgart, of all places, that, first, a Branch was established as early as 1911, and then the Waldorf School followed and the Threefolding Movement in 1919. It is certainly not insignificant that so many active businesspeople came together in the Branch here.”4 Another significant factor in the successful founding of the Waldorf School was that Molt had known both the first Waldorf teachers for years through their shared anthroposophical circles. In 1909, Molt was among the group of people who attended the ceremonial dedication of the Model Building in Malsch, built by the 21-year-old E. A. Karl Stockmeyer. A few months earlier, he had also been present when the 18-year-old Herbert Hahn heard Steiner give a lecture for the first time in Heidelberg.
Courageous Intuition
Though he considered himself a businessman through and through, the most important decisions of his life were not made by way of petty financial calculations, but rather on the basis of a spiritually grounded, courageous intuition and generosity. “The department heads and assistant directors of the factory would tap their foreheads with a knowing look in their eyes when they spoke of the boss’s fantastic plans to found a school in his absence. I don’t know how often I saw that gesture back then.”5 Molt’s confidence in his actions was, in the end, crowned with success. He made substantial sums available from his private fortune for anthroposophical initiatives, channeled investment income from his factory into spiritual work, and, thanks to his good connections, secured funds from other sources as well. He was able to manage large sums with personal restraint and social responsibility. In his factory he was known as “Father Molt,” at the school, he was “the School Father” and “Protector,” for the first Goetheanum he was appointed curator by Steiner, and in Stuttgart he was a leader in the stock corporation Der Kommende Tag [The Coming Day] as well as in the Swiss company Futurum. He understood his role as the mediator with the “outside world” and a helper in implementing anthroposophically inspired projects. “One had the impression that a part of his soul—as if in intense daydream—was immersed in some important plans, in fundamental deliberations.”6 Molt bore the burden of responsibility bravely but also had to endure countless personal conflicts and watch powerlessly as enterprises declined economically over long periods of time. For his choleric temperament, it was a special challenge to live out the virtue of trust in social matters, which Steiner especially urged him to hold close to his heart. Until the end of his life, Molt grappled intensely with the failure of the Movement for Social Renewal and his personal role in it; many of his previously unpublished manuscripts on this subject still exist.
The founding of the school and its success were the absolute highlight of his life.7 The school filled his heart. He would have given everything he had—right down to his last cent—for the school, the teachers, and the students; and if he had no more to give, he could at least offer boxes full of Waldorf-Astoria cigarettes.
When, at the end of the first school year, the college of teachers sought to limit his dominant role at the school and demoted him to “advisor on economic affairs,” he took it quite hard, so much so that Steiner had to intervene. Molt’s wife Berta, “the soul of his life,” participated in all the joyful and difficult moments and supported him unconditionally. As a home economics teacher, she was herself a member of the college of teachers. His son Walter often put him in awkward situations, not least by assiduously handing out cigarettes to his classmates. During 10th grade Walter decided to leave school, something that was incomprehensible to his father.
Molt stood up boldly and fearlessly against the attacks directed at Steiner, like Major General Gerold von Gleich’s antagonistic campaign for example. Dietrich Eckart, the sinister, yet somehow inspiring figure behind Adolf Hitler, wrote as early as December 1919(!) against Molt and the founding of the school: “What a witch’s sabbath this is! A world opens up before you that almost makes you shiver. The good ‘school father’! If he keeps up this Steiner business much longer, I fear he’ll one day be whizzing through the air on a sultry summer night toward Blocksberg, the doctor of the black arts by his side.”8
Just four months before his death, as Chairman of the School Association, he had a conversation with Leo Tölke, the representative of the National Socialist parents’ group at the Independent Waldorf School Uhlandshöhe regarding the dissolution of the School Association and said, “You can’t just say that the Waldorf School Association is an association beholden to a worldview simply because a few personalities have served on the Executive Board of the Anthroposophical Society. You can’t separate the pedagogy from the anthroposophy!” in response to which Tölke asked, “Do you believe that one must be an anthroposophist to practice this pedagogy?” Molt replied: “Yes! You can’t just imitate the pedagogy on the surface. You can only practice it properly if you are an anthroposophical teacher. Without that, you can never have this type of pedagogy.”9 Here, too, Molt’s exemplary clear and courageous posture is expressed.
Against this backdrop, we are not surprised by the call from Herbert Hahn, who knew Molt well from personal experience: “It should [. . .] become a spiritual custom throughout the entire Waldorf School movement—to keep the image of Emil Molt alive in the consciousness of both teachers and students, alongside that of Rudolf Steiner.”10
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Employees of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory; Emil Molt holding hat (front left); Photo: Rudolf Steiner Archiv, Dornach.
Footnotes
- Rudolf Grosse, Erlebte Pädagogik. Schicksal und Geistesweg. [Experiential education: Destiny and the spiritual path] (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 1998), 37.
- Elke Schlösser and Tomas Zdrazil, “Kindheits- und Jugenderlebnisse von Hermann Hesse und seine Freundschaft mit dem Schulgründer und Hesse-Mäzen Emil Molt” [Hermann Hesse’s experiences of childhood and youth and his friendship with the school founder and Hesse patron Emil Molt], Hermann-Hesse-Jahrbuch 16 (2023): 146; see Tomáš Zdražil, “Creating and Perceiving the Uhlandshöhe: Emil Molt and Hermann Hesse,” Das Goetheanum: English Issue 25-26/2024.
- See, among others, Rudolf Steiner, The Foundations of Human Experience, CW 293 (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1996), lecture in Stuttgart, Aug. 21, 1919.
- Emil Molt, Entwurf meiner Lebensbeschreibung [Draft of my autobiography] (Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben, 1972), 133; cf. Emil Molt, Emil Molt and the Beginnings of the Waldorf School Movement: Sketches from an Autobiography, edited and translated by Christine Murphy (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1991).
- Herbert Hahn, “Begegnungen mit Emil Molt” [Encounter with Emil Molt] Erziehungskunst [The art of education] 23, no. 9 (1959): 253.
- Ibid., 251.
- See footnote 4, p. 207.
- See Tomas Zdrazil, Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart. Rudolf Steiner – das Kollegium – die Pädagogik [The Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Rudolf Steiner, the collegium, the pedagogy (Stuttgart: Edition Waldorf, 2019), 276 f.
- Dietrich Esterl, Emil Molt. 1876–1936. Tun, was gefordert ist [Doing what is needed] (Stuttgart: Meyer, 2012), 229 f.
- See footnote 5, p. 25.
