Encounters with Rudolf Steiner today

Even a hundred years after his death on 30 March 1925 Rudolf Steiner is seen as interesting, or irritating. Many continue to be inspired by him. Experiences differ widely as the magazine ‘Stil’ shows in its edition ‘Twenty-seven perspectives. How do I find Rudolf Steiner’.

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“I feel caught out because I wasn‘t even looking for him,” says Angela McCutchon, adding: “I find Rudolf Steiner on my bookshelf.” In the end, she does not find what she expected but owes Rudolf Steiner the insight that “we are earthly and spiritual beings”, that “the connection between us and the cosmos is real.” Experiencing and knowing this, she says, “is a real spiritual help on the way to the other.”

Others find Rudolf Steiner in his works, in the Goetheanum building or, as Matthias Rang describes, in the sculpture of The Representative of Humanity. In academic life with its strong focus on an increasingly complex reductionism, Eckart Förster experiences Steiner as “someone who is present but whom no one sees”. Often it is people’s profession that leads them to connect with Rudolf Steiner or, as in Nana Göbel’s case, the study of Rudolf Steiner has become a “professional task”. For Vesna Forštnerič Lesjak it is Goetheanism: “I found him [Rudolf Steiner] in encounters with people who were very important to me and who helped to shape my path.”

Ha Vinh Tho also described this. During his studies in Dornach, Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner seemed to him, in encounters with people who had known him, to be very close: “I felt that I had known him myself.” It was important to Ha Vinh Tho to “distinguish between his spiritual teachings and the prevailing ideas and prejudices of his time, to distinguish timeless wisdom from concepts shaped by the cultural context of Steiner‘s time.” By overcoming “outdated ideas” et cetera one could “help him to develop further.” Wolf-Ulrich Klünker realized “that spiritual content can be destructive if the human existential dimension it represents is not taken into account.” It is important to him that the relationship with Rudolf Steiner is based on “spiritual and life-related individualization.”

In the twenty-seven reports the two editors Ariane Eichenberg and Christiane Haid experience that “Rudolf Steiner is alive when his inspirations and thoughts are developed further by individual people out of spirit presence, when they touch people’s hearts and guide their actions.”

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