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Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian occultist and social reformer known for founding the spiritual movement of anthroposophy, which integrates elements of German idealism and theosophy. His work spanned various fields, including philosophy, education, agriculture, and medicine, with notable contributions such as Waldorf education and biodynamic agriculture. Steiner's teachings emphasized ethical individualism and sought to bridge the gap between science and spirituality, although many of his ideas are considered pseudoscientific.

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30 views6 pages

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian occultist and social reformer known for founding the spiritual movement of anthroposophy, which integrates elements of German idealism and theosophy. His work spanned various fields, including philosophy, education, agriculture, and medicine, with notable contributions such as Waldorf education and biodynamic agriculture. Steiner's teachings emphasized ethical individualism and sought to bridge the gap between science and spirituality, although many of his ideas are considered pseudoscientific.

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Rudolf Steiner

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Rudolf Steiner, see Rudolf Steiner (disambiguation).
Rudolf Steiner

Steiner c. 1905
Born Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
27 February 1861[1]
Murakirály,[2] Kingdom of Hungary,[3][4][5][6][7] Austrian Empire (now
Donji Kraljevec, Croatia)
Died 30 March 1925 (aged 64)
Dornach, Switzerland
Education Vienna Institute of Technology
University of Rostock (PhD, 1891)
Spouses
Anna Eunicke

(m. 1899; div. 1904)[8][9]


Marie Steiner-von Sivers

(m. 1914)
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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (27 or 25 February 1861[1] – 30 March 1925)
was an Austrian occultist,[10] social reformer, architect, esotericist,[11][12] and
claimed clairvoyant.[13][14] Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the
nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The
Philosophy of Freedom.[15] At the beginning of the twentieth century he
founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German
idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian
Gnosticism[i] or neognosticism.[17][18][19] Many of his ideas are
pseudoscientific.[20] He was also prone to pseudohistory.[21]

In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner


attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality.[22] His
philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought
to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western
philosophy to spiritual questions,[23]: 291 differentiating this approach from
what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase,
beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic
media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of
the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts.[24] In the third phase of
his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly
applied projects, including Waldorf education,[25] biodynamic agriculture,[26]
and anthroposophical medicine.[25]

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a


more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann
Wolfgang Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an
organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the
ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas."[27] A consistent thread that runs
through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human
knowledge.[28]

Biography
Childhood and education

The house where Rudolf Steiner was born, in present-day Croatia


Steiner's father, Johann(es) Steiner (1829–1910), left a position as a
gamekeeper[29] in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northeast Lower
Austria to marry one of the Hoyos family's housemaids, Franziska Blie (1834
Horn – 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission.
Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at
the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Murakirály (Kraljevec) in the
Muraköz region of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (present-day
Donji Kraljevec in the Međimurje region of northernmost Croatia). In the first
two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near
Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to
Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in Lower
Austria.[25]

Steiner entered the village school, but following a disagreement between his
father and the schoolmaster, he was briefly educated at home. In 1869, when
Steiner was eight years old, the family moved to the village of Neudörfl and in
October 1872 Steiner proceeded from the village school there to the realschule
in Wiener Neustadt.[2]: Chap. 2

Rudolf Steiner, graduation photo from secondary school


In 1879, the family moved to Inzersdorf to enable Steiner to attend the Vienna
Institute of Technology,[30] where he enrolled in courses in mathematics,
physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and mineralogy and audited courses in
literature and philosophy, on an academic scholarship from 1879 to 1883, where
he completed his studies and the requirements of the Ghega scholarship
satisfactorily.[31][32] In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers, Karl Julius Schröer,
[2]: Chap. 3 suggested Steiner's name to Joseph Kürschner, chief editor of a new
edition of Goethe's works,[33] who asked Steiner to become the edition's
natural science editor,[34] a truly astonishing opportunity for a young student
without any form of academic credentials or previous publications.[35]: 43 In
fact, it was a low-paid and boring job, according to Steiner himself.[15]
4

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