On the 150th anniversary of Goethe’s death, Schad gave a lecture in the hall of the Waldorf School Uhlandshöhe in Stuttgart, in which he compared assumptions of the normal natural scientist with the attitude of many autistic people.
His remarks remain unforgettable to me. I got to know him better in the Deutscher Mitarbeiterkreis [German Employee Group], an association of researchers within the German Anthroposophical Society, in which Schad played an important role for a long time. He brought about a change in the direction of interest of this circle by saying that anthroposophy, unlike Goetheanism, is based on supernatural perception. No one else could have said this as effectively as the great Goetheanist Wolfgang Schad. I was impressed by the willingness of established personalities to go back to kindergarten to do elementary exercises of inner perception. Schad was able to give interesting short lectures on many topics on the spur of the moment. Fortunately for his listeners, he sometimes fell back into this habit.
Translation Monika Werner
Image The thin-tailed dormouse of south-western Australia. Drawing: W. Schad after Strahan 1984. Drawing from: Wolfgang Schad, ‘Mammals and Man’.
