For the Children

As the longing and call for independent schools grew in many places, Rudolf Steiner responded to the question of a friend and the question of an entire era by founding the Waldorf School—an impulse for children all over the world.¹

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One hundred years after the first Waldorf school was founded, there are now 200,000 pupils attending Waldorf schools in Europe alone. At the same time, Steiner’s educational ideas are also being developed in many state schools across the world. Rudolf Steiner was a teacher himself. He learned to learn, as he recounts looking back: “From the age of fifteen, I gave private tutoring lessons. . . . I learned about the difficulties of human soul development from my pupils.”² Rudolf Steiner’s experience as a young private tutor in Vienna with the child Otto Specht³ as an “educational task became a rich source of learning for me. The educational methods I had to apply gave me an insight into how the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being connect with the physical.”⁴ Years later, in 1906, Steiner spoke about education oriented around the child—and published The Education of the Child from the Viewpoint of Spiritual Science [original German title: Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft]. This was not a theory of child development, rather it was a call to awaken to the reality of becoming that is occurring within the child.

School as a “Force for Change”

The question posed to Rudolf Steiner about founding a school arose from social concerns: the poverty, destruction, and hardship during and after World War I. Many voices addressing these concerns spoke out about the need for a new form of education. In Barcelona, Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia founded the Escuela Moderna [Modern School]. The state and the church were not to have any influence on the school. A rapidly growing school movement emerged, which by 1905 already comprised 147 schools in the province of Barcelona and three years later was represented throughout Spain, Portugal, São Paulo, Lausanne, and Amsterdam.⁵ Ferrer wrote in his book La Escuela Moderna [The Modern School], “The task of the Modern School is to ensure that the children entrusted to it are brought up to be good, truthful, just, and free from all prejudice.”⁶ The independent school was to be accessible to all children—school fees were paid by families according to their means. In 1909, accused of participating in political uprisings in Barcelona, Ferrer was executed.

In Germany, pacifist and writer Gustav Landauer campaigned for independent schools and gave the call: “Away with state and church interference in our schools! Freedom for schools! Self-determination for parents united in school communities concerning their own children!”⁷ The aim was to “bring out what is unique [in each student], to foster it, and thus to make the world something personal, and make the personal into something world-awakening and world-encompassing.”⁸ In these years of upheaval, a strong social view and sensitivity towards children went hand in hand.

In Sweden, the educational reformer Ellen Key wrote the book The Century of the Child [original Swedish title: Barnets århundrade, 1900], which was translated worldwide. She had written about Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom early on and “presented her equally profound and original interpretation of this book in 1898.”⁹ By 1905, The Century of the Child had appeared in eight editions in Germany alone. In chapter six, “The School of the Future,” Key writes about her dream for children: “I should like to set down here briefly my dreams of a future school, in which the personality may receive a free and complete self-development. I purposely say ‘dreams,’ because I do not want any one to believe that I am pretending in the following outline to give a reformed programme for the present time.”¹⁰ She claims: “To be able to use one’s eyes in the worlds of nature, man, and art, [and] to be able to read good things—these are the two great ends to which home and school education should direct their course.”¹¹ The child should be at the center—the methodology should develop from their being.¹²

The work of Martin Buber (1878–1965), a close friend of Gustav Landauer, offers a broad perspective on children and human beings as beings in the process of becoming. At the Third International Educational Conference of The New Education Fellowship in Heidelberg in 1925, which had the theme “The Development of the Creative Powers in the Child,” Martin Buber gave a highly acclaimed speech.¹³ He begins immediately with the idea of birth as a fresh start: “In every hour, the human race begins.”¹⁴ He then describes the dual character of the child: on the one hand, their coming into the world as a “given”—this manifests as the child’s life circumstances and heredity—and, on the other, everything that is unpredictable and new. He describes how “what has not been invades the structure of what is, with ten thousand countenances, of which not one has been seen before, with ten thousand souls still undeveloped but ready to develop—a creative event if ever there was one, newness rising up, primal potential might. This potentiality, streaming unconquered, though, much of it is squandered, is the reality [we call] child: this phenomenon of uniqueness, which is more than just begetting and birth, this grace of beginning again and ever again.”¹⁵ Human beings must be found who will still stand up for this “might of newness.”¹⁶ During the years Rudolf Steiner was campaigning for social renewal, visions and perspectives on the child, images of becoming, of the future, and of beginning, were living and being given new formulations.¹⁷

Learning to Read the Child

In the midst of a social crisis, Emil Molt (1876–1936), director of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory, asked Rudolf Steiner to found a school. Molt recalls: “Every afternoon [at the Waldorf Astoria factory] there were lessons in foreign languages, painting, history, geography, etc. Sewing and mending classes were also set up for the girls. In addition, there was an introduction to questions of life and knowledge. Independent of this, lectures in the workrooms once a week dealt with questions about the company and current events.”¹⁸

“I came to realize that in order to make it possible for young people to achieve what circumstances made difficult or impossible for them after they’d grown up, it was necessary to begin with the children of workers, to help develop their own inner forces and to awaken their general interest. The actual birthday of the school is April 23, 1919.”¹⁹

“After Rudolf Steiner’s first lecture to workers at the Waldorf Astoria, we had a works council meeting together with Dr. Steiner, where I expressed the intention to found the school and asked him to take over its establishment and leadership.”²⁰ The project was implemented in an incredibly short time: If, as Emil Molt reports, the conversation on April 23 was the birth of the school, then the opening of the school with its 150 children on September 7, 1919, was only five months later! The young teacher, Herbert Hahn, and natural scientist and teacher, Karl Stockmeyer, played central roles. Hahn was responsible for the workers’ courses at the factory, and Stockmeyer, who’d studied Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, was invited by Molt to collaborate in founding the school itself. On April 23, Rudolf Steiner held a lecture for the workers about an independent educational system separate from all authority of business and state. The next day, April 25, 1919, the so-called “founding conversation” took place, where Steiner, Molt, Stockmeyer, and Hahn all met together to discuss the founding of the school. Rudolf Steiner was already providing practical suggestions for teaching:

“The instruction in German should lead all the way up to business writing; in history, after a general course, local history should be covered; likewise, geography should cover local geography after a general survey; languages, especially English, should be taught; mathematics and physics, with special emphasis on mechanics; natural history, drawing, painting especially, singing, and gymnastics. Dr. Steiner outlined the standard schedule of lessons.”²¹ Already by May 13, negotiations were commencing with Minister of Education Stefan Heyman. Karl Stockmeyer traveled throughout Germany to find teachers for the school. Herbert Hahn writes: “And so Stockmeyer set out on a journey of discovery in search of people. He was to, as Rudolf Steiner jokingly put it, search for the stars.”²² On August 21, Steiner’s teacher training course began. Addressing the participants on the evening before, he said:

“We will only be good teachers if we have a lively interest in everything that is going on in the world. It is through interest in the world that we first gain the enthusiasm we need for school and for the tasks of our work. This requires an elasticity of spirit and dedication to our task.”²³ The morning lectures unfolded the major anthropological motifs, followed in the afternoon by contributions on methodology and didactics, and seminar-style discussions. Most fundamental was the intensive relationship between children and teachers: “The child is educated and taught from soul to soul,”²⁴ according to Steiner. Emil Molt and his wife participated in the course: “My wife and I were allowed to experience everything together from beginning to end. It was a high, blessed time of learning and absorbing comprehensive truths. In these courses, he dealt with accomplished teachers from the various scientific disciplines. Regardless, Dr. Steiner was in every single case the far superior teacher of the teachers.”²⁵

The school’s opening ceremony took place on September 7, 1919. Alexander Strakosch wrote that there were “huge mountains” of pretzels and that Rudolf Steiner directed each teacher to stand under a tree and call the children of a certain age to them: “Each child received a chocolate bar in a box with the words ‘Welcome to the Waldorf School’ written on it. For some of the war children, it was probably their first chocolate.”²⁶ In the evening, the teachers were invited to see The Magic Flute at the state theater. The first college of teachers consisted of five women and seven men. Collegial work was central to Rudolf Steiner. He believed that the teachers’ faculty meeting was a “continuous, living higher educational school.”²⁷ It was about interest in the child, paying attention to all the child’s expressions was the living foundation that made learning possible.

Just three days after the opening, September 10, 1919, Emil Molt asked Rudolf Steiner to take over as chair of the college of teachers: “Now that our Waldorf School has been established, we humbly ask you to take on the permanent chairmanship of the college of teachers and to promote and supervise the work by attending teachers’ faculty meetings as often as possible. The young school enterprise stands or falls with your personal collaboration.”²⁸ Rudolf Steiner came to the school as often as possible. He repeatedly encouraged the children and young people to ”learn to read.” In the educational course for young people that he held in October 1922, he said that people should learn to read in libraries “and these libraries are the people walking around outside. Learn to read from them! Learn to read the secrets that are drawn within every human being.”²⁹ The school was founded in a field of tension between the state authorities, family circumstances, financial possibilities, and learning to experience education as a path of knowledge for the child. The reality of the world as given and the immanence of becoming—fundamental elements of education—were the determining factors for the founding of the school.

From left: Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia, Gustav Landauer, Ellen Key

The Beginnings of a Worldwide Movement for Children

In the fall of 1919, Rudolf Steiner began speaking about education in a number of places. In Switzerland, he spoke in Aarau, Dornach, Olten, and, in November 1919, he gave fourteen lectures in Basel. In the Netherlands, he spoke of the need to found a world school association—a worldwide network for child-oriented learning and living environments. In 1921, educational work began in Great Britain following a meeting with Professor Millicent Mackenzie. From the very beginning, Rudolf Steiner’s educational impulse was cosmopolitan and was realized in and through the initiatives of many people. Professor Millicent Mackenzie was the first female professor in Wales. She visited the London anthroposophical branch in 1914 and came to the Goetheanum for a longer stay with her husband in 1921 in order to participate in the Summer Art Course. She witnessed the educational work being carried on in the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart and organized a series of lectures in 1921 to be given by Rudolf Steiner and several Waldorf educators. About forty people in Great Britain accepted her invitation and traveled to Dornach. In August 1922, the “Pedagogical Course” took place in Oxford, a public course attended by well-known personalities from the field of education in Great Britain. This was followed by courses in Ilkley in 1923 and Torquay in 1924.

In 1924, Millicent Mackenzie published the educational book Freedom in Education, in the preface of which she mentions Rudolf Steiner as an author on education who is still little known in the English-speaking world.³⁰ She writes about self-knowledge³¹ and about the central importance of the teacher for the child’s learning.³²

“[T]here are things in life that are more real than bread and butter, more lasting than the clothes we wear. All that has permanent value is spiritual in nature, and the most solid facts in life . . . are those most truly spiritual. If whatever our hands find to do we do with all our might, we may be engaged in spiritual work no less than when we meditate in silence and alone. . . . It is our potentiality for creative work that makes us really human on the one hand and connects us with the Divine and cosmic life on the other.”³³

In 1924, Rudolf Steiner held educational courses in Stuttgart (Germany), Bern (Switzerland), Arnhem (the Netherlands), and his last educational course in August in Torquay (Great Britain). He repeatedly summarized two elements—knowledge of the world and knowledge of the child—wherein and by way of which education is possible. The educational process occurs when these two types of knowledge come together. Teachers should learn to read: to read the world and to read human beings.

“And so, piece by piece, you see that Waldorf education wants to teach teachers to read, but not from a book, not from some pedagogical system, but rather from human beings. It is in this most wonderful document in the world, in the human being, that the Waldorf teacher should learn to read. What this reading gives them is transformed into enthusiasm for teaching and educating. Only in the book of the world can we read what immediately calls upon us as a human being—body, soul, and spirit—to engage in an all-around, multifaceted activity, the one thing necessary for being a teacher.”³⁴

Rudolf Steiner formulates the ideal of education as “learning to be there for the other human being. This education is oriented towards drawing the method of education and teaching itself purely out of the human being, so that the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—may fully develop; but it also places the human being into life in such a way that, as a child, he grows in body, soul, and spirit, towards religious, ethical, and artistic experience, and into the life of knowledge, and can develop within himself those virtues whereby he can be most useful and fruitful for his fellow human beings.”³⁵ By truly immersing ourselves in each person’s particular circumstances, intentions, and questions about the world, we can help to weave the unique destiny of each individual.

Left: Flyer announcing the summer school in Torquay; right: program and schedule for the teacher training course in Ilkley. Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach.

Unknown Territory

Ten years after the school was founded, a booklet was published with contributions from parents. Their words express how the founding of the school was also the founding of a school movement. The foreword states: “This school and its sister schools are just the start of realizing Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogy as a necessary healing impulse for the times and the current events of the world. The sister schools are located in Berlin, Dresden, Essen, Hamburg, and Hanover, in Germany, and in Vienna, in Austria. Abroad, such schools can be found in America, England, Holland, Norway, Switzerland, and Hungary.”³⁶

The school grew rapidly: in 1919, there were 280 pupils, which rose to 897 by 1925; the number of teachers increased from 16 to 56. In 1926, the senior government school inspector Friedrich Hartlieb visited the school and wrote an inspection report:

“. . . Whoever enters a Waldorf school for the first time, without previously informing themselves about the important and essential aspects of the school through a study of its pedagogy and literature, is setting foot on completely unknown territory, and they will not be able to do justice to the school and its work unless they are also filled with the good will to get to know the special psychological and pedagogical foundations of this school thoroughly and without prejudice, and to get to know the unique life that resides with such benefit in the school, all of which is in good standing and fully accepted by the authorities, down to its very core and innermost essence. Whoever is unable to bring oneself to adopt this attitude will not be able to form an objective judgement about this school, which falls entirely outside the framework of what they are used to . . . .

“The Waldorf School applies a great ideal of focus and concentration by establishing connections between the great variety of subjects taught and by creating units in which all of the student’s intellectual life is gathered together like a focal point, by having the same class teacher for grades one through eight and, as far as possible, the same subject teachers, as well as by the already mentioned unity of the teaching staff on fundamental issues, by group discussions in the faculty meetings, and by the cultivation of an intrinsic repetition, the weaves thread from one subject to another in order to illuminate previously covered material from other viewpoints and bring it into new contexts. But there is something else that is very special about all this. The unity striven for is by no means solely or primarily an intellectual construct, a system, conceptual generalities, or an emphasis on utilitarian purposes, but rather is found through the relationships of human beings and their relationship to the Earth beneath them, to their fellowship beside one another, and to God above them . . . . My involvement with the Waldorf school has borne valuable fruit in that I have come a considerable step closer to the ‘spirit’ of the new Württemberg curriculum by way of this school.”

“When a sixty-year-old schoolmaster who is not an anthroposophist, has no connection with the Waldorf School, and is oriented in many ways differently from the Waldorf School teachers in terms of pedagogy and methodology, makes such a statement, he thereby expresses the opinion that the Waldorf School is worthy of being followed with loving interest by the state school authorities as it continues to develop . . . .”³⁷

Newspaper reports also offered positive comments about the school:

“The ideas of Steinerian pedagogy also inspire schoolmen who are critical of contemporary currents. There is much that is good and fine in them. An enormous idealism confronts us in his work . . .” Neue Schlesische Schulzeitung [New Silesian School Newspaper] (March 1925).

“[The Waldorf School’s] spiritual founder is the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner. Whether one rejects him as a philosopher or not, this school is a brilliant achievement full of enormous work and comprehensive spirituality. The school of the future lies in its direction” Hamburger Anzeiger [Hamburg Gazette] (March 1925).

“A group of people who attribute world significance to this Waldorf School have joined together to form an association for an independent school system and are doing their utmost to maintain the school. However, in keeping with the rapid growth of the school, the number of those who support and sustain it with their love and interest, with their sympathy and firm confidence that the future belongs to it and that it is necessary for humanity on its path from materialism to a new culture, is also bound to quickly increase, as well . . .” Preussische Volksschullehrerinnen-Zeitung [Prussian Folk School Teachers’ Newspaper] (April 1925).³⁸

And yet, persecution and aggression against Rudolf Steiner and the school increased year by year, even from official quarters. As early as 1919, Dietrich Eckart, teacher and inspirer of Adolf Hitler, and Hitler himself had turned against Steiner and the Waldorf School in the press. This development intensified: in 1933, new admissions to the school were banned. In 1934, the Jewish teachers Hiebel, Strakosch, Schubert, and Lehrs were forcibly dismissed. Members of the Nazi Party  formed the new parents’ council but attempts to conform to National Socialism did not prevail among the college of teachers.³⁹ In his memoirs, Emil Molt wrote: “In the moment that I write this, February 1936, concerns about the school’s survival in its current form are greater than ever. But I cannot imagine that responsible people could be so blind as to destroy this cultural factor so widely accepted throughout the world and so essential to German spiritual life. History would probably one day describe this as an act of Herostratus.”⁴⁰ On March 30, 1938, the school had to close. At the last school assembly, all the teachers addressed the remaining 555 students with deeply felt words. Count von Bothmer gave the closing speech: “It is now my task to announce here that, at the behest of the Württemberg government, the Waldorf School is closed. We want to seal our school in the deepest depths of our hearts for the future through the force of love.”⁴¹ Seven years later, just five months after the end of the Second World War, the school reopened on October 8, 1945, with eight elementary school classes, 17 teachers, and 314 students.

School life takes place within the life of society—that this school had the force to survive the closure and the dehumanizing circumstances of the war years is truly astounding. Here again, we see the fundamental elements of the school’s foundation: perception of the world as given and of human beings who, in a process of perpetual becoming, are capable of changing what has become.

Staying Connected

The bond between teachers and students is the pulse of the school’s life. This bond is clearly evident in Rudolf Steiner’s relationship with the school, the teachers, and the students.⁴² During the last months of his life, the school had to make do without him. On January 24, 1925, Herbert Hahn wrote a five-page letter to Rudolf Steiner with questions from the college of teachers: “We considered these questions urgent and believe that only you can decide on them.” Rudolf Steiner made notes in the margins. The first question was whether a pedagogical conference of Waldorf schools should take place at Easter. Rudolf Steiner: “Yes, it can take place. But I cannot be counted on to attend.” Then comes the second question: “The question of whether guidelines for the establishment of the 13th grade (additional preparatory year for higher education) can already be given, and therefore we an adjustment of our work and administrative management before Easter.” The marginal note: “I can only take that up after some time; I am still risking too much for my physical forces if I exert myself in such areas now.”

At the end, Herbert Hahn asked how to deal with the youth and non-denominational offering services. Rudolf Steiner replies: “There are only two ways: either wait, [or] take independent action.”⁴³

On March 15, Rudolf Steiner wrote to the students and teachers. To the teachers, he writes of the hardship of not being able to be among them and sends a verse that brings to mind what they share together:

“Goetheanum, March 15, 1925 / My dear teaching force at the Independent Waldorf School! / It is a great hardship for me to not be among you for so long. And now I must place in your hands important decisions, in which I have naturally participated since the school’s inception. It is a time of testing by destiny. / I am among you with my thoughts. I cannot do more now if I do not want to risk extending the time of physical hindrance indefinitely. The effective power of thinking unites us, / since we must be separated in space. / What we have already accomplished together / is now a force within the faculty. / May this force spread its strength by way of your own council, / since the council that so gladly would come, / does not have free wings.
So let us strive all the more earnestly for intercommunity in spirit, / as long as nothing else can be. / The Waldorf School is indeed a child in need of care, but above all it is also a landmark of the fruitfulness of anthroposophy within the spiritual life of humanity. If the faculty carry the consciousness of this fruitfulness faithfully in their hearts, then the good spirits holding sway over this school will be able to be effective, and divine-spiritual forces will prevail in the deeds of the teachers. With such thoughts in mind, I would like to send you all my warmest thoughts and greetings. For the students, I am enclosing a short letter, which I bid you to read aloud in class. / All most heart-felt / Rudolf Steiner.”

In his letter to the students, he thanks them for sending their work and hopes to be among them soon.

“Goetheanum, March 15, 1925 / To my dear students at the Waldorf School. / To my great sorrow, I cannot be among you for some long time now. And yet it always gave me the greatest satisfaction when I could spend some time among my dear students. As long as this cannot be, I will send you many heartfelt and good thoughts. You have, indeed, also given me great pleasure by sending me your work. I send you my dearest thanks for this. Hopefully, I will be able be present among you again soon. All most heart-felt greetings / Rudolf Steiner.”

Learning to Be in the World

In the verses he wrote for the lower and upper grades at the request of the teaching staff, Rudolf Steiner summarized the two driving forces of education and their constant interpenetration—the encounter between world and man. The morning verse for the lower grades ends:

“That I with all my might / May love to work and learn.”⁴⁴

In the verse for the upper classes:

“That strength and blessing grow / In me, to learn and work.”⁴⁵

Both verses refer to sunlight and the environment, an image of the reality surrounding human beings, and they direct us to our inwardness, our own being. In the relationship between the two, there is a reverent turning toward a Great Being that connects man and world, gives the gift of existence, and provides us with confidence. Prayers and thanks are expressed: a daily reminder and realization that confidence is a real experience. Rudolf Steiner’s educational principles are dedicated to this idea: to enable and to realize confidence in life ever anew.

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Translation Joshua Kelberman
Title image Stuttgart Waldorf School, Heydebrand class photo, 1920s. Rudolf Steiner Archive.

1. Abridged version of the lecture “Die Eröffnung der Freien Waldorfschule und der pädagogische Impuls Rudolf Steiners” [The Opening of the Independent Waldorf School and Rudolf Steiner’s Pedagogical Impulse,”] given at the Goetheanum on February 24, 2025, as part of the lecture series for the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death, “Rudolf Steiner. Signaturen eines Werdens” [Rudolf Steiner: Signatures of Becoming].
2. Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life: 1861–1907, CW 28 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006), p. 20–21.
3. Cf. Ibid., p. 50 f.
4. Ibid., p. 52.
5. Pedro Costa Musté, “Biografia sumaria de Francisco Ferrer Guardia” [Brief biography of Francisco Ferrer Guardia] in Francisco Ferrer Guardia, La Escuela Moderna [The Modern School] (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2009), p. 13.
6. Francisco Ferrer Guardia, La Escuela Moderna [The Modern School] (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2009), p. 80 f.
7. Gustav Landauer quoted in Tilman Leder, Die Politik eines Antipolitikers. Eine politische Biografie Gustav Landauers [The politics of an anti-politician. A political biography of Gustav Landauer] (Hesse: Edition AV, 2014), p. 518; [original publication: “Gemeinschaft” des Sozialistischen Bundes [“Community” of the Socialist Union], “Aufruf zur Freien Schule” [Appeal for an Independent School], Der Sozialist [The Socialist] 2, no. 2 (Jan. 15, 1910): 15–16.]
8. Ibid. p. 517.
9. Karl Brodersen, “Ellen Key und Rudolf Steiner: Eine Begegnung für die Zukunft. Die Philosophie der Freiheit in Schweden” [Ellen Key and Rudolf Steiner: An encounter for the future. The Philosophy of Freedom in Sweden] Beiträge zur Rudolf- Steiner-Gesamtausgabe [Contributions to the Rudolf Steiner Complete Works] 93/94 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung [Rudolf Steiner Estate Administration], 1986), p. 41.
10. Ellen Key, The Century of the Child, translated by Marie Franzos. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), p. 233.
11. Ibid. p. 268.
12. Cf. ibid. p. 280–81.
13. Cf. Peter Selg, Constanza Kaliks, Die Gegenwart des Anderen: Über Martin Buber und Franz Rosenzweig [The presence of the other: On Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig] (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 2022), p. 226 ff.
14. Martin Buber, “On Education,” in Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, translated by Ronald Gregor-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 98.
15. Ibid. p. 99.
16. Ibid.
17. Cf. Rudolf Steiner’s contributions to social renewal in the years after the war: Peter Selg, Rudolf Steiner, Life and Work, vol. 5: 1919–1922: Social Threefolding and the Waldorf School (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2017).
18. Emil Molt, Von der Gründung der Freien Waldorfschule [On the founding of the independent Waldorf School] (Stuttgart: private printing, 1938), p. 5.
19. Ibid. Nine days later, on May 2, 1919, Gustav Landauer was shot and killed.
20. Ibid., p. 7.
21. Karl Stockmeyer, in ibid. p. 81.
22. Herbert Hahn in Tomáš Zdražil, Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart 1919–1925 [Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart] (Stuttgart: Pädagogische Forschungsstelle Stuttgart [Educational research center], 2019), p. 116.
23. Rudolf Steiner, The First Teachers’ Course. Anthropological Foundations. Methods of Teaching. Practical Discussions. CW 293, 294, 295. (Bangkok: Ratayakom, 2020), address in Stuttgart, Aug. 20, 1919 (CW 293).
24. Ibid., seminar on Aug. 21, 1919 (CW 295).
25. See footnote 18, p. 11 f.
26. Cf. Tomáš Zdražil, Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart 1919–1925 [Independent Waldorf School in Stuttgart] (Stuttgart: Pädagogische Forschungsstelle Stuttgart [Educational research center], 2019), p. 187.
27. Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education, CW 307 (Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 2004), lecture in Ilkley, Aug. 17, 1923.
28. Letter from Emil Molt to Rudolf Steiner, Sep. 10, 1919. Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach.
29. Rudolf Steiner, Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation, CW 217 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 1988), lecture in Stuttgart, Oct. 15, 1922.
30. Millicent Mackenzie, Freedom in Education. An inquiry into its meanings, value and conditions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1924), p. XI.
31. Cf. ibid. p. 145.
32. Cf. ibid. p. 153.
33. Ibid. p. IX.
34. See footnote 26, lecture in Ilkley, Aug. 15, 1923.
35. Ibid., lecture in Ilkley, Aug. 17, 1923.
36. Paul and Gertrud Fundinger, eds., Zehn Jahre Freie Waldorfschule und wir Eltern [Ten Years of the Independent Waldorf School and we parents] (Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1929), p. 9.
37. Dietrich Esterl, Die erste Waldorfschule Stuttgart-Uhlandshöhe. 1919 bis 2004. Daten, Dokumente, Bilder [The first Waldorf School in Stuttgart-Uhlandshöhe. 1919 to 2004. Data, documents, photographs] (Stuttgart: Edition Waldorf, 2006), p. 118 f.
38. Ibid. p. 133.
39. On Waldorf schools under National Socialism, see Peter Selg, Erzwungene Schließung. Die Ansprachen der Stuttgarter Lehrer zum Ende der Waldorfschule im deutschen Faschismus (1938) [Forced closure. Addresses by Stuttgart teachers at the end of the Waldorf School under German fascism] (Arlesheim: Ita Wegman Institute, 2019.)
40. See footnote 18, p. 14. [Legend tells of Herostratus burning down the Temple of Artemis, the center of the Mysteries of Ephesus in 356 BC—Trans. note.]
41. See footnote 38, p. 69.
42. Cf. footnote 17.
43. Herbert Hahn to Rudolf Steiner, January 24, 1925. Rudolf Steiner Archive, Dornach.
44. Rudolf Steiner, Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, vol. 1: 1919–1922, CW 300a (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1998), meeting in Stuttgart, Sept. 26, 1919, 4:00 p.m.
45. Ibid.