In response to the article by Gilda Bartel, “It’s Always Me Who Is Meant—Rudolf Steiner as Questioner” in the Goetheanum Weekly (March 19, 2025) [German edition, no. 10 (Mar. 7, 2025)], the editors received a number of questions for Steiner, submitted by our readers. We share some below.
Johannes Kühl
What advice would Steiner give on how to work with the school of spiritual science today?
Within my specific profession, I have questions on how we can do meaningful work today based on Steiner’s various remarks about natural science. For example: What is meant by the so-called “third force” (Oct. 1, 1911, CW 130)? How can we work on the “bending of the spectrum by magnetism”? How do the absorption experiments of Eugen Dreher, discussed in the Warmth Course (Mar. 1 and 11, 1920, CW 321), relate to the types of ether?
Elisabeth Cumming
Who am I when no one speaks my name? How can I learn to know the being of silence?
Michael Gesthüsen
Who is Christ, really?
I grew up in the Lower Rhine region, deeply Catholic, an altar boy and lector, with questions and spiritual experiences within the church. The priests didn’t speak out of any real wisdom. In the neighboring village, there was/is a small Buddhist community with its own Gohonzon. That was foreign to me. Is there no European spirituality? [I asked.] Well, Christianity, I guess. Off to Israel—there must be something to learn there. At the end of my community service, the head nurse asked me what I wanted to do after 21 months in the children’s surgical ward of a hospital. I’d like to be a nurse, but not here at the university hospital; it’s too much like a factory. “Then go to the anthroposophists, they do everything differently.” Who? What’re they called?—Off to Herdecke. Then, certification—not good enough and too late, but here’s something from the therapeutic educators. After a vacation and a meeting in a hammock, something had to happen at the ripe age of 27. First, it was Bingenheim, where I was shocked, but I stuck it out for three days. Then, to Eckwälden—only from the outside and around the grounds. I passed on Bayerisch Gmain. Then, after a break at home driving around my ol’ Opel Kadett Coupé with manual transmission and all my recent experiences, I went to Hamburg; more specifically, Schenefeld near Hamburg, to a children’s and youth home. Since it was not at all unusual for these people to ask, “Who is Christ, really?” (which happened to be my question, too), I ventured into curative education in Schenefeld, with the city nearby as a means of escape. When I arrived back in the Lower Rhine region, I sat down at my father’s desk the next day and wrote my application to the Friedrichshulde children’s and youth home in Schenefeld. Suddenly, a figure in a dark suit stood behind me and said, “What you’re doing now is right.” I knew immediately that it was Rudolf Steiner. I had never read anything about him.—Well, that wasn’t exactly a question, but almost an answer.
Christian Mehr
Thank you very much for the wonderful image. I know immediately what question I’d ask: “What is it, both inside me and in my surroundings, that is holding me back in my development, preventing me from becoming more deeply initiated? What do I need to change and develop further, or let go of both inside me and in my surroundings?” I do know from experience that when I carry a question seriously in my heart for a while, I do receive an answer, often quite soon. But I haven’t asked this question yet. I’m giving myself time; I feel I’m already pushed to the max in my life and with myself, and that’s enough. So, I’ll stick with the subjunctive (“What would I ask”) and simply enjoy the image of Herr Doctor behind his desk, kindly smiling back at my subjunctive.
Ralph Andreas Meyen
Once anger and resentment have formed in a small child, they become a lifelong automatic reaction to certain types of stimuli and run through the entire spectrum of human personality and emotional life. My question to Rudolf Steiner would be: Why do human beings have such an “inclination” for anger?
Manfred Kannenberg-Rentschler
Where does threefolding live after Steiner’s death?
“The threefold idea is not dead, it’s only yet to be understood” (GA 260a, p. 647).
This was Rudolf Steiner’s response to former twelfth-grade students on September 3, 1924. It was his last visit to the first state-independent school that he and Emil Molt had inaugurated in Stuttgart in September 1919. His initiatives for foreign and domestic policies and more generally for the pacification and confederation of Central Europe were already in the past. These included: His “Memoranda” for the reorganization of Central Europe, written at the request of Count Lerchenfeld and Polzer-Hoditz for the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk (1917); his briefing of the last Chancellor of the German Empire Prince Max von Baden (1918); his “Appeal to the German People and to the Cultural World” (February 1919), signed by 95 renowned cultural figures, economists, and public figures in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; his Key Points of the Social Question had been published; the founding of the business association “Der Kommende Tag zur Schaffung geistiger und wirtschaftlicher Werte” [The Coming Day for the Creation of Spiritual and Economic Values]; hundreds of public lectures to the workforces and workers’ economic and cultural councils of Daimler-Benz, Waldorf-Astoria, Del Monte, and many others on new plans for the organization of businesses and economic associations; and his specialist courses for national economists and social educators on the fundamental laws of the social organism (1922/23).
None of this awakened public consciousness, let alone came to action. “Only when people will it to happen does the world move forward. But for them to will, inner soul work is necessary in each individual,” wrote Steiner as early as 1905/06 in three essays on “Spiritual Science and the Social Question” (GA 34, Lucifer-Gnosis) in which he described for the first time the “basic social law” of structural altruism in the global economy based on the division of labor. This was long before the aforementioned visit to the school on the Uhlandshöhe in Stuttgart. Steiner’s response to the students continued: “[A]nd I hope that understanding for threefolding will arise precisely from out of the circles of Waldorf school students.” Steiner could well base his hope on the fact that, in the school, there were human beings coming to maturity who were capable of thinking in terms of real life, who would not allow themselves to be hypnotized by the centralized state, and who would be empowered to be peace-loving instead of warmongering!
The idea of the threefold social order is yet to be understood. Does this mean that the social laws of modern times, which Steiner researched and made public, are dead? How can we, who are alive today, develop an understanding of them? And is this spiritual heritage not rather a seed that needs to be nurtured, brought to light, and put into action?
Eleven days before his death, performance artist Joseph Beuys gave a speech on January 12, 1986, entitled “My Thanks to [Wilhelm] Lehmbruck” [Mein Dank an Lehmbruck] (one of the signatories of Steiner’s above-mentioned “Appeal”) in gratitude for his inspiration for social art, and ended with the poem from Pietro Antonio Metastasio (1698–1782):
Protect the flame,
for if you don’t protect the flame,
before you realize,
the wind easily extinguishes
the light
that it kindled.Then you will break
your heart in utter misery,
silent with pain.
Note First published as Manfred Kannenberg-Rentschler, “Die Dreigliederungsidee ist nicht tot” [The idea of threefolding is not dead], Gegenwart, no. 2 (2025): 9.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
