Marginalia on Rudolf Steiner’s Life and Work: In his early years in Berlin, Rudolf Steiner was closely associated with the labor movement. He gave many lectures in this circle and also spoke about women, whose untapped spiritual and mental capacities offered great promise to the future.
In his autobiography, Rudolf Steiner described in detail how, when he was asked to teach at the Social Democratic Workers’ Education School [Arbeiterbildungsschule] in Berlin, he had to immerse himself entirely in the proletarian way of life: “I had to speak in forms of expression that were entirely unfamiliar to me. I had to familiarize myself with the concepts and judgments of this group of people in order to at least be understood to some extent.”1
Initially, he taught history and public speaking, and in 1902, he added natural science. Soon, he was increasingly invited to give lectures at workers’ associations: “But it was through natural science, in particular, that my teaching activities expanded among the working class. I was asked by numerous labor unions to give lectures on natural science. People especially wanted to hear about Haeckel’s book The Riddle of the Universe—a sensation at the time. . . . When the anniversary of Gutenberg was celebrated, I was asked to give the keynote speech in front of 7,000 typesetters and printers in a Berlin circus. My way of speaking to the workers was well received.”2
Just how much Rudolf Steiner’s way of speaking appealed to the workers becomes clear when one considers how often and on how many different topics Rudolf Steiner was invited to speak. From September 1899 to early 1905, especially during the years 1900–1902, he was invited to give lectures to the following professional groups: woodworkers, bookbinders, upholsterers, metalworkers, lithographers and lithographic printers, modeling and factory carpenters, furniture polishers, engravers and chasers, wood, stone, and plaster sculptors and modelers, saddlers in the harness and haberdashery industry, metal screw factory workers, bricklayers and plasterers, gas, water, and heating pipe fitters, tailors and seamstresses, stock and celluloid workers, brewers and their associates, carpenters, and construction surveyors!3
He also often spoke at social democratic associations and electoral associations across Berlin: in Weissensee, Steglitz, Lichtenberg, Adlershof, Rummelsburg, Wilmersdorf, and Möhring. Working-class women’s and girls’ associations also discovered him as a speaker. He was invited by the Workers’ Temperance League and the Berlin Consumers’ Association and was almost always the keynote speaker at the social gatherings of the Workers’ Education School.
What Was Important to Workers?
As Rudolf Steiner mentions in his autobiography, the workers were most interested in scientific themes. Rudolf Steiner spoke frequently about Ernst Haeckel’s sensational and popular book The Riddle of the Universe, in which Haeckel presents his monistic worldview as a link between religion and natural science, seeing in it the solution to all riddles of the universe: “In the strictly biological third of the book, I saw a precise and concise summary of the relationships between living beings. I held a general conviction that, when starting from this point, humanity could be led to spirituality, and I also considered this applicable to the working class. I connected my own reflections to this third of the book and often said that the other two thirds have to be considered worthless and, actually, should be cut out of the book and destroyed.”4
Other popular topics in natural sciences and natural history included (sometimes with slight variations in title): “The most important scientific advances of the 19th century”; “Astronomical discoveries since Copernicus”; “The origin of man”; “The interior of the Earth”; and—following massive volcanic eruptions in Martinique and Guatemala in 1902—“Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.” Sometimes, there was a clear connection between the chosen topic and the professional group: metalworkers were interested in the topic “Humanity before the discovery of iron,” while lithographers and engravers wanted lectures on “Humanity before the invention of writing” and “The development of humanity before the invention of writing.”
There was also interest in historical and societal topics such as “The French Revolution”; “Revolutionary currents of the 1840s”; “The development of the social movement in the 1840s”; “The emergence of the modern workers’ movement”; “Slavery and free labor, then and now”; and “The cultural achievements of the last century.” At the German Metalworkers’ Association in Rixdorf on December 5, 1901, Rudolf Steiner even spoke about “The Social Art”!
Literary topics were rarely requested. But Rudolf Steiner did give lectures to the South and South-East Woodworkers’ Association on “German literature in the last ten years” and “Art and literature in relation to natural science.” The Bookbinders’ Association was interested in “Goethe and the present.” But the wallpaperers especially stood out in this regard. To these professionals, Rudolf Steiner gave lectures on “Goethe and his world view,” “Gerhart Hauptmann and the spiritual life of the present,” and “Drama and its significance.” A lecture given to the social democrats in Steglitz on the interesting topic “Today’s significance” stands alone as a one-time event.
Another category was the individual lectures at the Workers’ Education School, devoted to topics such as “Old and new ecstatics [Schwarmgeister] and scientists”; “How is scientific socialism possible?”; “Émile Zola”; and “Kant’s position in world history.” On January 24, 1903, at the anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Education School, Rudolf Steiner even had the honor of giving a commemorative lecture on Wilhelm Liebknecht, the founder of the school himself. The following is an excerpt from a report on the lecture, which was followed by a recitation: “Herr Dr. Steiner pointed to Liebknecht as the founder of the school, whose larger-than-life image adorned the hall. Following in the spirit of all our great ones who’ve died, our own struggle is not to be waged for its own sake, but as a means to the high goal of the perfection of humanity. And in this striving, we must also include the work of the Workers’ Educational School; in all its hours of instruction, many seeds fall on fertile ground, which will be a blessing for future generations. The task to which the Workers’ Educational School will continue to prove itself worthy is as follows: Collaborating in the ideals of humanity, working according to Goethe’s legacy, standing on free ground with a free people.—A workers’ celebration would obviously be missing something if police censorship didn’t interfere in the program to some degree. On Sunday evening, for reasons unknown, the recitation of some verses from the satire Willis Werdegang [Willis’ career] was prohibited.”5
Lectures at Celebratory Events
Rudolf Steiner was often invited to give introductory speeches at celebratory evenings dedicated to particular poets, whose works were recited or sung (including J. G. Herder, Gerhart Hauptmann, and others), occasionally followed by a small ball. Short reports were sometimes written; for example, about an evening for Ferdinand Freiligrath on February 17, 1901: “In his commemorative lecture, Herr Dr. Rudolf Steiner understood how to sketch a poetic portrait of the poet in broad strokes with his outline of the poet’s life. Originally a poet known for his talent of describing exotic subjects, comparable to Böcklin in the fervor of his colorations, Freiligrath discovered his great mission only in the course of his development: to become the fiery singer of freedom for the socially oppressed. The three greatest German poets of the nineteenth century can be briefly characterized as: Lenau, the poet of melancholy; Heine, the poet of exuberance; and Freiligrath, the poet of heroism. And, at the end of his life, when Freiligrath said his revolutionary poems no longer held any incendiary significance, he was greatly mistaken: his formidable, blazing battle songs still inspire fighters for freedom and justice today. Even when the day of liberation that the struggling proletariat so ardently desires will finally dawn, Freiligrath’s name will still shine in golden letters among the poets of freedom. The audience applauded enthusiastically in response to the speaker’s inspired words.”6
About an evening for Detlef von Liliencron and Gustav Falke, it’s said that Dr. Rudolf Steiner “in a skillful and clearly organized lecture” sketched “the development of German poetry since Goethe” and described “the marzipan poetry of Geibel and Baumbach . . . . and then the new poetry born of the suffering and meager joys of the people, whose tones we’ve been hearing since the middle of the 1880s.”7
The following was reported about the lecture “Social Poets” on March 16, 1902: “In a festive lecture filled with enthusiasm, the active supporter of the school, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, showed how, with the rise of industrialization, the social question became the subject of poetry in all developed countries. He aptly sketched all the most outstanding writers who depict social misery, and after considering recent German poetry and the reactions it provoked, Mr. Steiner expressed the view that the proletariat itself would produce men who knew how to sing and speak not only of the sufferings of the working people, but also of its hopes, its love, and its joys.”8
And last, there’s a report on a “Hamerling and Lenau Evening,” November 1, 1903: “Dr. Rudolf Steiner illustrated in an excellent lecture the political circumstances under which Lenau and Hamerling matured in their native Austria. While Lenau, in the grip of censorship, wrote his song of freedom Die Albigenser [The Albigensians], Hamerling, who was born later, sketched his images of the process of social decay and the new seeds of development maturing among this rot. The epic poem Ahasver in Rome, which depicts the moral decay under the Caesars with Makartscher’s fiery colorations, can well be described as Hamerling’s most successful work.”9
How can one not be filled with admiration? For one thing, Rudolf Steiner was able to familiarize himself with such a plethora of topics and adapt his speech to each unique audience. He did all this while maintaining his many other activities: editing the Magazin für Litteratur [Magazine for literature], regular lessons at the Workers’ Education School, and later establishing the German Section of the Theosophical Society, and giving lectures in the Brockdorff Circle and more and more in other cities. But also, we must esteem the workers, who had such an irrepressible hunger to learn that they listened to lectures in the evenings and even took courses at the Workers’ Educational School, which usually lasted from 9:00 to 10:30 p.m. And this with a working week of 61 hours (common at the time) and often long journeys by public transport through the city of Berlin.
The Superstition about Women’s Brains
To end our short review, let’s look at the topics of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave to girls’ and women’s associations of workers. There were, for example, lectures on “Goethe and women,” “The development of man before the invention of writing,” and “Slavery and free labor, then and now.” But he also spoke on the highly topical “women’s question” of the times. One lecture was entitled “What does natural science have to say about the women’s question?” A second, given on September 2, 1901, bore the interesting title “The superstition about the female brain.” Rudolf Steiner prepared for this lecture for several days, as his diary-like notes from this period show.10
A somewhat more detailed report of this lecture has been preserved, which is all the more interesting as we have no other transcripts or notes of these lectures to workers, apart from the brief mentions quoted above. And so, this report may serve as an example of such a lecture to social democratic workers: “Dr. Steiner spoke on the superstition about the female brain. In public life, the difference between the sexes should play no role; performance alone is the only measure of value. The inferiority of women is an old legend that, in times past, often found drastic expression. In 1377, women were forbidden from attending the ancient Italian university of Bologna because ‘woman is the crown of sin and the cause of expulsion from paradise.’ Any conversation with them was to be strictly avoided, and violation of the ban was to be severely punished. In defense of these strict gentlemen, it should be noted that they were all Catholic clergymen, i.e., unfortunate men condemned to celibacy. And the same goes for the participants in the council, to which the question was put, whether women had an immortal soul. One hears echoes of those times when Professor Bischoff declared in the 1860s that he would tolerate a woman in his lecture hall as little as he would a Kaffir or a Hottentot [ethnic terms, later considered slurs, for certain groups of African blacks]. The famous chemist Liebig had his female auditor sit behind a fire screen so that the students would neither harass her nor be disturbed by her. In practical work, women proved their ability to pursue academic professions even while theory still proclaimed that the differences in physical constitution constituted an essential difference between the brains of men and women. In the evolutionary history of the human individual from its earliest origins, the speaker found proof of the essential equality of the soul, even if later influences developed the spirit in different directions. The inheritance of spiritual characteristics from both parents to sons and daughters without distinction also speaks strongly against a separation of intellectual capacities according to gender. The speaker expects that the as yet untapped spiritual and intellectual gifts of women will bring about improvements in many areas of cultural life, education, legislation, and the development of social life, leading to happier forms of existence. The stimulating lecture was met with rich applause and joyful approval.”11
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Footnotes
- Rudolf Steiner, Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life, 1861–1907, CW 28 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2006); cf. Mein Lebensgang, GA 28, 10th fully revised edn. (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2025).
- Ibid.
- Rudolf Steiner probably gave many more lectures. In his diary-like notes from 1901 (see footnote 1, German edn., note 10, pp. 33–37), he mentions lectures for which no advertisements or other documentation are available.
- Ibid.
- Supplement to Vorwärts [Forward], January 27, 1903. [Fritz Oliven, Willis Werdegang: Scenen aus dem Familienleben [Willis’ career: Scenes from family life] (Berlin: Schlesische Verlagsanstalt [Silesian Publishing House], 1920) was a bestseller of ironic masterpieces with subtle eroticism that artfully mocked the façade of bourgeois decency.—Tr. note]
- Vorwärts, February 18, 1901.
- Vorwärts, October 29, 1901.
- Vorwärts, 23. March 23, 1902.
- Vorwärts, 3. November 3, 1903.
- In Notebook 34; see Archivmagazin: Beiträge aus dem Rudolf Steiner Archiv [Archive magazine: Contributions from the Rudolf Steiner Archive] 10 (2020): 28–31.
- Vorwärts, September 7, 1901.
