{"id":69727,"date":"2025-12-19T13:47:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T12:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=69727"},"modified":"2025-12-19T13:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T12:47:24","slug":"where-i-find-rudolf-steiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/where-i-find-rudolf-steiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Where I Find Rudolf Steiner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The centenary year marking the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner\u2019s death is now coming to an end. What will remain? Beyond all else, it is the personal encounters with Rudolf Steiner that endure. With this in mind, the journal Stil<\/em> [Style] asked 27 individuals to address the question \u201cWhere do I find Rudolf Steiner?\u201d and published their perspectives. Here is a selection from this bouquet of Rudolf Steiner in the present.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rudolf Steiner was a guardian, a shepherd of time, writes Christine Gruwez<\/strong>. No period, no epoch was excluded from Steiner\u2019s intimate listening. To encounter Rudolf Steiner is to encounter the abundance of time. According to Steiner, two mysteries play a special role in our development: death and evil. Steiner offers no consolation, no appeasement, no escape, but instead, he opens up a vertical and a horizontal understanding. The vertical means being able to grasp the high and the low. Understanding the horizontal means turning our gaze to the experience of time in its enigmatic double direction: into the future and from the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolf-Ulrich Kl\u00fcnker<\/strong> distinguishes between Rudolf Steiner\u2019s personal accounts and his books. While the biographical accounts belong to his life that has passed, Steiner\u2019s spiritual individuality continues to have an effect through his written works. The whole of Steiner\u2019s ideas makes possible the emergence of the human individuality, not the other way around. Kl\u00fcnker also sees Steiner\u2019s lectures as \u201cpreserved records of a moment in time\u201d that bring the past into the mind\u2019s attention in the present. In the sense of \u201clike recognizes like,\u201d Kl\u00fcnker takes three of Steiner\u2019s characteristics as opportunities for encounter: he stands within the process of evolution, turns against scientific dogma, and integrates outside views into his own worldview. Encountering Steiner means practicing anthroposophy from this standpoint and attitude and overcoming an old form of relationship: \u201cOnly in a future-oriented perspective can a free view of human beings, their lives, and their further development unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vesna For\u0161tneri\u010d Lesjak<\/strong> describes how she\u2019s found Rudolf Steiner in human encounters. She considers Goetheanism, as a universal research method, to be the \u201cbest gateway to anthroposophy.\u201d When she succeeds during a seminar at observing a plant in such a way that an encounter with the plant\u2019s essence is experienced, then the support of her deceased teachers, Goethe and Steiner, manifests in the present. She concludes by saying that she encounters Steiner by listening to the questions of the times and putting her answers into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctor Angela McCutcheon <\/strong>reflects on various moments in her life that she can trace back to Rudolf Steiner: her inspiring time in Waldorf school, conversations with her family, medical study groups, and discussions with patients. She wanders through her world of feelings: gratitude for her childhood, love of tradition, religiosity, reverence for nature, and a desire to learn. Here, she finds not so much Steiner himself but rather an abundance and depth of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The philosopher Eckart F\u00f6rster<\/strong> also encounters Rudolf Steiner in his absence from academic discourse; Steiner is \u201csilent, pensive, waiting\u201d in the background. He experiences Steiner in the \u201cliveliness that borders on the miraculous\u201d contained in his spiritual science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historian Andre Bartoniczek<\/strong>, following Rudolf Steiner\u2019s contemporary Hermann Friedmann, emphasizes Steiner\u2019s ability to listen \u201cwith all his organs.\u201d Friedmann says, \u201cI believe he heard, saw, felt, and understood the speaking human being.\u201d Bartoniczek underlines Rudolf Steiner\u2019s ability \u201cto speak out unreservedly and not remain in selfless withdrawal, but to throw himself out there passionately, to share his own insights, ideas, and impulses with those around him.\u201d What lives in the soul as a contrast between receptivity and productivity is heightened in Steiner to polar opposites, while at the same time forming a whole. Bartoniczek takes Steiner\u2019s engagement with Ernst Haeckel\u2019s conceptions of social Darwinism to demonstrate how, by embracing ideas that are contrary to their own, those that are repressed can sometimes liberate themselves. For Steiner, it was \u201cabout the inward strength to endure what is repellent, to break away from the attachment to a deeply loved but bodily bound point of view.\u201d Bartoniczek summarizes, \u201cWhere can I find Rudolf Steiner? In many outer and inward places\u2014and also everywhere I encounter the effort to develop a certain strength, out of which a lived dialectic is able to arise, a capacity that offers healing for our social, collegial, and personal relationships and thereby for our future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Katharina Dehmelt<\/strong>, who focuses on anthroposophical meditation, suspects that today more \u201cinner, personal contribution is needed to \u2018get to the bottom\u2019 of anthroposophical study, as if the spirit that brought forth this work (anthroposophy) had withdrawn.\u201d She senses Rudolf Steiner\u2019s \u201cformative force where spirit is imprinted in thought, ideal, and deed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nana G\u00f6bel<\/strong> approaches the question of Rudolf Steiner with a broader question: \u201cHave we the strength to nurture what is human\u2014across all boundaries? Have we the strength to overcome our own prejudices?\u201d Her search for Rudolf Steiner leads her to the following observation: Where something new comes into the world, and we become active\u2014in ourselves, inwardly, and in a circle with others, outwardly\u2014we find ourselves in harmony with the spiritual intentions of that entity who called himself Rudolf Steiner at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bastiaan Baan<\/strong> concludes with an aphorism and a dream: \u201cWhere and how do I find Rudolf Steiner? I come close to him through selfless love and enthusiasm for our cause\u2014even when he is far away.\u201d The dream: \u201cHe was sitting at the entrance to a hall where he was supposed to give a lecture. He had to sell the tickets himself. But I had no money. He looked at me intently and finally said, \u2018You may go in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Please note<\/strong> These excerpts are selective and taken out of context.
Full issue<\/strong> Visual Art Section of the Goetheanum, Stil<\/em>, \u201c27 Blicke\u2014Wo ich Rudolf Steiner finde\u201d [27 views\u2014Where I find Rudolf Steiner] (Easter 2025).
More<\/strong> Visual Arts Section at the Goetheanum: News of the Section<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman
Image <\/strong>Rudolf Steiner. Photo: Otto Rietmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The centenary year marking the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner\u2019s death is now coming to an end. What will remain? Beyond all else, it is the personal encounters with Rudolf Steiner that endure. With this in mind, the journal Stil [Style] asked 27 individuals to address the question \u201cWhere do I find Rudolf Steiner?\u201d and published their perspectives. Here is a selection from this bouquet of Rudolf Steiner in the present. Rudolf Steiner was a guardian, a shepherd of time, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9159,"featured_media":69703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8838,8823],"tags":[11743,11744,8824],"class_list":["post-69727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-time-issues","category-reflection","tag-ausgabe-51-52-2025-en","tag-english-issue-51-52-2025","tag-spotlights"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}