Biography

Private teacher in the home of a Viennese businessman, Ladislaus Specht. There he also meets the family’s doctor, a famous Viennese internist who is considered to have paved the way for psychoanalysis, Josef Breuer. Steiner’s first volume of Goethe’s scientific writings appears. Volumes II-IV follow between 1887 and 1897.

Friendship with the poet and later feminist Rosa Mayreder (Kritik der Weiblichkeit) and Friedrich Eckstein (later Anton Bruckner’s secretary and biographer). Correspondence with the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann. In addition to working on the Goethe edition, numerous articles for various encyclopedias (such as Pierer’s Konversations-Lexikon) on behalf of Joseph Kürschner.

Weimar

Worked at the Goethe and Schiller Archives. Edited some parts of Goethe’s work on natural science which appeared 1891–1896.

Meetings with Hermann Grimm, Ernst Haeckel and Eduard von Hartman, friendship with the poetess Gabriele Reuter, Conrad Ansorge, a pupil of Liszt, John Henry Kackay, the biographer of Stirmer, Fritz Koegel, Nietzsche’s editor for the Cotta’s Library Edition.

Together with Marie von Sivers, builds up theosophical lodges inside and outside of Germany. Frequent lecturing activity, both for the public and for members of the Theosophical Society.

Founds, publishes and edits the monthly, Luzifer, later called Lucifer-Gnosis (1903). Certain fundamental works appear there in serial form, such as How to Know Higher Worlds, From the Akasha Chronicle, Theosophy and the Social Question, The Education of the Child and Levels of Higher Knowledge. These appeared later in book form.

Friendship with Christian Morgenstern and Edouard Schuré. Encounter with Wassily Kandinsky.

Each winter, public lecture cycles in Berlin’s Architektenhaus, e.g.: “Origin and Goal of the Human Being,” “Metamorphoses of the Soul,” “Answers of Spiritual Science to the Great Questions of Existence.”

Directs and produces Schuré’s The Holy Drama of Eleusis, with Marie Steiner in the lead role, as part of a congress of the International Theosophical Society in Munich, organized by him. He also decorates the hall artistically in a way that reveals his future building and art impulse.

Premiere performances of Steiner’s four mystery dramas, directed by him in Munich.

Design for a building (Johannes-Bau) for artistic performances and meetings of the School of Spiritual Science. This project is thwarted by several adjoining owners and the authorities.

Publishes The Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World, A Road to Self-Knowledge, The Threshold to the Spiritual World. Anthroposophy, begun in 1910, remains incomplete. Intensive studies of the senses.

First encounter with the Russian writer, Andrej Belyj (St. Petersburg) in Cologne in 1911, which has a lasting influence on Belyj’s life and work. In Prague, encounter with Franz Kafka and Hugo Bergmann.

Begins to develop a new art of movement called eurythmy (1911). First eurythmy course in Bottmingen, Switzerland in autumn. During the following years, develops eurythmy into a stage art together with Marie von Sivers.

Separation from the Theosophical Society and founding of the Anthroposophical Society (1912/13).

Lectures in various cities inside and outside of Germany on Reincarnation and Karma, the Gospels, Life Between Death and Rebirth, History of the Mysteries, Teaching of the Senses, History of Evolution, etc. Builds up anthroposophical branches inside and outside of Germany together with Marie von Sivers.

Builds the Goetheanum, a sculpted, double-domed wooden building, in Dornach, Switzerland. Designed by Rudolf Steiner, the project is carried out with the help of numerous artists from various countries under his direction. Artistic work by Steiner: designs for the sculpted interior and exterior of the building, designs for ceiling murals (some painted by him), designs for colored glass windows, design for a nine meter high sculpture, The Representative of the Human Being, partially carved by him. Steiner himself carries out the main statistic calculations for the building.

Marriage to Marie von Sivers (1914).

An ensemble of other buildings designed by Steiner are gradually built near the Goetheanum (Glass House, Haus Duldeck, Heating Building, Publishing House, Transformer Building); he later designs Haus de Jaager and other homes.

The Dornach hill becomes an artists’ colony. Among them are numerous Russian artists, including Assja Turgenieff, Andrej Belyj and Margarita Woloschin.

Numerous lectures on art, architecture, contemporary events and spiritual science.

First public eurythmy performance on February 24 in Zurich’s Pfauentheater. Directed by Marie Steiner.

A lecture cycle on “The Social Question” held in Zurich appears in April under the title, Towards Social Renewal. The key idea is to trisect the social organism, that is, to separate the state into a free cultural life, a democratic life of rights and an associative economic life.

Steiner lectures and participates in numerous meetings with workers and industrialists to encourage the formation of works committees.

In autumn, after intensive preparations, the Independent Waldorf School opens in Stuttgart, Germany. Its patron is the director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette company, Emil Molt. Steiner is the school’s director until his death in 1925. He offers the teachers courses in education to help them prepare for their task.

The Goetheanum is destroyed by fire on New Year’s Eve 1922/23. All performances and lectures continue unabated, in the carpentry building next to the ruins. Due to his illness in autumn 1924, Steiner only manages to create a model for a second Goetheanum (concrete, finished in 1928).