Working on the constitution question
Last autumn around forty members registered their interest in participating in an initial two colloquia on a problem that has been with the Anthroposophical Society throughout its history: the documented development of its constitution.
An initiative that was suggested at the last AGM by Gerald Häfner, Michael Schmock and Justus Wittich and that has been taken on by the Social Science Section, aims at providing documentation of the development of the Anthroposophical Society’s constitution and making it available to interested members. On the basis of this documentation one hopes to gain greater clarity on the kind of constitution Rudolf Steiner had in mind after the Christmas Conference of 1923/1924.
Convincing phenomenology
At the first colloquium on 7 December 2019, which took place at the Stuttgart Rudolf Steiner House (DE), a phenomenological approach was applied to go through the available documents in chronological order. Since many experts were present as well as people who know the problem with the constitution well, it was possible to work out a clear sequence of legal foundations that involved Rudolf Steiner: from the 1903 constitution of the German Section of the Theosophical Society to the principles of the Anthroposophical Society of 1912 to the foundation of societies in other countries in 1923, and finally, in the same year, the Christmas Conference for the new foundation of an Anthroposophical Society.
At the same time, legally required bodies were formed such as the Johannes Building Association in Munich (DE) which later evolved into the Goetheanum Association of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach (CH). The problem with the constitution arose when, after 8 February 1925, this building association and the Anthroposophical Society founded at the Christmas Conference of 1923/1924 were suddenly considered as «having merged into one».
Based on this chronological foundation, the second colloquium on 25 January 2020 at the Goetheanum was able to look at more complex questions: Did the Christmas Conference of 1923/1924 constitute a body that satisfied Swiss legal requirements? For most of those present at this colloquium there was no question about this while others doubted that it was what Rudolf Steiner had in mind. But what, then, was the meaning of the attempt at the Goetheanum Association meeting of 29 June 1924 to create one overarching constitution that would the publishing activities and the Arlesheim hospital? The intentions pursued by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman from 3 August 1924 to 8 February 1925 are relatively easy to reconstruct. The confusion about the constitution arose after 8 February and around the time of Rudolf Steiner’s death.
Making the documents available
In the forthcoming third colloquium on 16 May 2020 in Stuttgart we hope to be able to make a decision on important documents that will have been compiled by then, so that they can be made accessible to all members and maybe even studied at one or more Members’ Days.
Until then, it is best if the present research group first concludes its investigation because of the interrelatedness of the stages of this process.