Foundations In Spiritual Science
Emil Molt’s request to Rudolf Steiner fell on well-prepared ground. Rudolf Steiner was very familiar with educational practice. He had worked as a private tutor in a family, a remedial teacher and a lecturer for the Working Men’s Educational Institute in Berlin, and had already spoken and published on educational matters. (among others GA 34, S. 309 f.; GA 55, S. 118 f.; GA 60, 8th Lecture).
After the founding of the first Waldorf School in 1919 Rudolf Steiner was asked increasingly to speak about his educational ideas in Switzerland, in Holland and in England also. In these countries he conducted 8 more comprehensive courses on education with teachers from the Waldorf School, (among others: Caroline von Heydebrand, Hermann von Baravalle, Walter Johannes Stein, Ernst Blümel, Julie Lämmert, Karl Schubert, Erich Schwebsch); as well as many talks and courses in Germany, the growing public interest is documented by in April 1924 in Stuttgart 1,700 participants.
Between 1919 and 1924 Rudolf Steiner gave around 200 lectures for teachers, parents and people with a general interest in education, wrote a number of essays and conducted conferences with the college of teachers of the Waldorf School (GA 296–311), which show in varied ways that for him it was not about an alternative way of teaching but about enlivening the daily educational practice through the understanding of the individual development of the pupils in their social and cultural environment, and also about enhancing the intellectual productivity of the teachers in any given situation through understanding human development. These presentations were supplemented by courses in individual subjects such as linguistics, physics and astronomy.(GA 299, 320, 323).
Translated by Britta Edwards
- The campus of the free Rudolf Steiner School in Stuttgart before 1943: on the left is the new school new building of 1921/22, in the center the remodeled restaurant "Uhlandshoehe", on the right the teacher house, in the foreground "biological research institute" (Lili Kolisko) with "archive of Goetheanism" (Eugen Kolisko)