1908 – 1929 – FIRE BORNE: Anthroposophy in America

WWI / PROHIBITION – Phase “Unravel”

EACH GENERATION LIVES IN A MORAL LANDSCAPE.

This generation was led by the invention of “progress,” a significant rise in education, and women’s suffrage but suffered in WWI’s rapid technological change, chemical agriculture, widening class differences, gigantic monopolies of newspapers and publishing, and weak political leadership in a financial boom.

When WWI broke out, this generation was called “THE G.I. GENERATION.”

Anthroposophists fled Europe and were part of the large immigrant population that came to America. The chapter describes where and how groups formed in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere in the U.S. so that by 1923 a Branch was formed in New York City.

——————————–

1913 – GOETHEANUM BUILT WHILE WAR RAGES NEARBY

1913 – Steiner breaks from Theosophical Society and begins General Anthroposophical Society (GAS). His ideas went into an “unraveling” social / political situation following WWI.

AN EXAMPLE OF AN “END NOTE” THAT ACCOMPANIES EACH TIMELINE..

1913 “LIVING IN A ‘FOOL’S PARADISE’ STEINER NEVER LET UP”

https://firebornecom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/1908_1929.1-steiner-never-let-up WOULD BE AVAILABLE

The years 1908-1928 in the schema of Howe and Strauss was called an era of “Unraveling”.

“Living in a fool’s paradise and enjoying a high level of prosperity, the peoples of Europe in the years preceding the first World War seemed to have no inkling of the destructive forces which such a conflict would unleash. Steiner was perhaps one of the few whose penetrating mind could read the future and embrace the magnitude of the danger hanging over the old continent. He was fully aware of the changes it might bring in its wake. Desperately he tried to warn his contemporaries of the follies of nationalistic adventures.”¹

Over 150 men and women had gathered to work on the building the first Goetheanum building – a totally wooden structure. “Both by example and specific instructions, Steiner taught his amateur carvers. He teased them merrily with anecdotes, encouraged their efforts, paid no heed to their weariness, and in the evening gathered them into the workshop to hear one of his profound and inspiring lectures.”²

Steiner never let up on his lecture schedule throughout Europe even with war eminent: Vienna, Paris, Prague, Scandinavia, and many German cities. At the end of June, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated but several weeks passed before the war burst into flames. When it did break out the young people at the Goetheanum were still united in their diversity.

¹ MEETING RUDOLF STEINER, Sonia Tomara Clark and Jeannette Eaton, Journal for Anthroposophy, Number 75, Fall 2005, Pg. 90
2 IBID

———————————————

1913 “FOUNDATION STONE STUMBLING BLOCK FOR ‘TOAD NATURES.’”

https://firebornecom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/1908_1929-1913-foundation-stumbling-block WOULD BE AVAILABLE

The following is an original document provided by the Archive at the Goetheanum to the Anthroposophical Society in America in 1998. It is part of a collection of documents from the white supremacist, nationalist political party National Socialism (Nazis) that was forming itself in 1913. The Nazis viewed Spiritual Science, Rudolf Steiner and all Anthroposophically inspired groups as enemies which had nothing to do with the National Socialist idea of Volk.

The differences between the two groups intensified into conflict following the publishing of Steiner’s “Threefold Memorandum” in 1917.

The “Toad natures” Steiner warned about in 1913 when he laid the Foundation Stone eventually took over and the spiritual freedom, the “stumbling block” that Steiner predicted, eventually took over.

The following is an original NAZI document provided by the Archive at the Goetheanum and explains why the National Socialists banned Steiner’s writings, DISSOLVED the Anthroposophical Society, and banned Waldorf schools in 1934. (SEE NAZI DOCUMENTS in the next chapter.)

THESE ARE THE TYPES OF ORIGINAL, HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS ONE WILL FIND THROUGHOUT FIRE BORNE.