Anthroposophia and the Christmas Conference –
Christmas Eve 1923 to January 1, 1924
The Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society (GAS), also know as the Christmas Conference, took place on December 24, 1923 to January 1, 1924 in Dornach, Switzerland. The conference unfolded what would be the rebirth of the Anthroposophical Society whose beginning was in 1913.
As it is fast approaching Christmas, I have been thinking about Anthroposophia and the Christmas Conference. It will be 84 years since the Foundation Meeting Christmas Conference, in which Rudolf Steiner is said to have aligned his personal karma with that of the renewed General Anthroposophical Society, Christmas eve and day occurred on a Monday and Tuesday in 1923, as it will in this year 2007. How does the Being Anthroposophia, the spiritual support of Rudolf Steiner, along with Archangel Michael play into what has happened since the 84 years of the re-founding? Upon Steiner’s death in 1925, Anthroposophia has been largely overlooked (until recent years), though Steiner had admonished the society that they owed her their greatest respect, and perhaps that is one reason the society has had an inner turmoil amongst different members that has kept anthroposophy from really flourishing in the world the way Steiner envisioned. Thinking of Marie Steiner and Ita Wegman, both great people who were instrumental in the artistic (Marie Steiner) and medical (Ita Wegman) aspects of anthroposophy flowing out into the larger world through them. Imagining what role Anthroposophia may have played in serving their individual karmic purpose and could have played in aligning their differences if so allowed.
When the original Anthroposophical Society first came into being in 1913, Rudolf Steiner had remained outside the Society itself, and participated only as an adviser. For ten years, a building to house the meetings and artistic performances of society members, named the Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner, would be built on a hill in Dornach, Switzerland, in painstaking detail by workers and members from around the world. As the result of arson, it burned down on Christmas Eve 1922. Nearly ten years of living etherically into flowing forms in wood, was destroyed, the flames filling a night sky on a hill in Dornach that could be seen as far away as Basel and for many miles around. Rudolf Steiner and everyone involved, could only stand by in great sorrow and watch it burn down. The “Representative of Man” a sculpture in wood of balanced consciousness, the work of Dr. Steiner and his collaborator, the British sculptor, Louise Edith Maryon, would be saved from the fire because it was still in the workshop. Today this sculpture is housed in the second Goetheanum, now created in concrete, the material that had been Rudolf Steiner’s original choice.[1]
One year later, the Phoenix rising from the ashes, Rudolf Steiner would organize the foundation meeting of what would now be known as the General Anthroposophical Society. This meeting would take place in the carpentry workshop building, a simple wooden structure and the only building on the property that remained after the fire. The 800 members attending the conference, mainly from Europe, but some from North America would walk by what had been a hymn to the spiritual world, now only the burnt vestiges of what were once organic forms now lying in the silent snow as stumps of burnt wood and ash.
At the conference, Steiner in great humor and love, as in his Foundation Stone Meditation, shared he hoped the conference would be a turning-point-in-time for the anthroposophical movement. During the year between the burning of the 1st Goetheanum and the foundation meeting of the renewed society, Rudolf Steiner would incorporate new national branches in different countries, living in the imagination of what could, with the help of Anthroposophia and Michael, unfold anew from the spiritual world.
The opening lecture of the Foundation Meeting, on December 24, 1923, I find to be especially beautiful in its simplicity and directness. The Foundation Stone Meditation, was read for the first time on the Christmas Day, Tuesday, 1923. During the conference Dr. Steiner would speak of the ashes of the 1st Goetheanum as maya, an illusion, for the true Goetheanum lived on in the warmth of hearts of the members. Warmth that gives life to myriad spiritual seeds to flow on into the future. He spoke of sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world, flowing into the impulse of the anthroposophical movement. “This anthroposophical movement is not an earthly service; this movement is, in its entirety, in all its particulars, is a service of the gods, a divine service.”[2]
For many months Steiner had been working on the founding statutes. In full humility, Steiner would bring these statutes to the conference membership. He would read each individual statute and ask for any thoughts or suggestions that a member might have on how they might wish to see the wording changed in any way. Suggestions were offered, which Steiner took on fully, and in the end all at the conference would live into a pure appreciation for the task in which they were asked to share. These statutes, with the grace of Anthroposophia, would allow them to flow on far into the future. With esoteric simplicity, the first statute reads: "The General Anthroposophical Society is meant to be a union of people who desire to further the life of the soul - both in the individual and in human society - on the basis of a true knowledge of the Spiritual World.”
Steiner’s sense of humor is wholly present at the conference. When questioned by a conference participate on the use of the word “anthroposophy," Dr. Steiner would state, “It is not necessary to throw the actual word ‘Anthroposophy’ at people, but if asked whether you are an Anthroposophist it would be quite a good thing if you did not say no.”[3] Also, one can picture the members at the conference as Dr. Steiner requests that the upper canteen be open in the evenings for those friends who are quarantined in the dormitories or other inhospitable places, so that they may have somewhere to go that is heated for a while after the evening lecture. As quoted by one student attending the conference, “I was sent to a straw mattress in the local inn whose dance hall had been turned into group lodgings.”[4] There were also announcements of many members’ items, which had been lost or misplaced, incorporating the picture of the fullness of humanity at a large gathering.
To bring forth the statutes and the Foundation Stone Meditation written for the conference, anything speaking to dogmatism would not be accepted, only that which flowed from full freedom would be allowed. The Foundation Stone Meditation in its fullness would allow the earthly human being to know him/her self also as a cosmic human being.
Reading different accounts of the Christmas Conference, one is struck by how love and warmth of heart are often referred to as the center of the conference. One gets a sense of Dr. Steiner in communion with all there and even with the trying incidents of the world around them. The beauty and clarity of the Statutes and the Foundation Stone Meditation are still capable of enabling us to found what is good out of the present age and time we live in. Perhaps the potential for their magnificence may only be beginning to be understood. The question is, in spite of the questionable history of the society after Steiner’s death, are we as individuals able to live up to and support their promise?
“We shall only make what we say and hear into the right sort of starting point for the development of anthroposophical matters, if our hearts’ blood is capable of beating for it.”(RS)[5]
Patri Beckett
Christmas 2007
[1] The Goetheanum: Rudolf Steiner’s Architectural Impulse, Hagen Biesantz and Arne Klingborg, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1979.
[2] Opening Lecture, at the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society, December 24, 1923, Anthroposophic Press, 1943.
[3] The Christmas Conference for the Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society 1923/1924, Anthroposophic Press 1990.
[4] Time of Decision with Rudolf Steiner, Friedrich Hiebel, Anthroposophic Press, 1989.
[5] Opening Lecture, at the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society, December 24, 1923, Anthroposophic Press, 1943.