The Beginnings of the Anthroposophic Youth Movement

by Nathaniel Williams

A youth movement is a riddle. Apathy might deliver an easy answer to this riddle but the ease and its lack of depth will simply leave us dull and dissatisfied. An independent youth movement is an amazing event. It is an event of testimony. It testifies to a fire in the young heart that does not find a suitable hearth to house it; it is colored light born into a society of grays. The young person walks with their light into the rules of society, the customs, the popular ideas and culture, the economic practices, and finds these places smothering and suffocating. As they cannot find a worthy field for their inspiration within society they create an independent space, a movement, outside of it.

To accept observations like these as eternally true whereever old and young meet, though it does possess some validity, is partially blinding. Reality demands more care. It is simply empirically untrue that every generation revolts in the same way against its elders. Some generations have found admiration, love, respect, and contentment when looking up toward their elders. Some generations have experienced only discord between those older than them and what they longed for and sought.

There is an inner force of tremendous significance in the relationship between generations. If we look to where in the world great strides were made we discover that whole groups were involved, groups fired up by some virtue, some justice, some truth. We have to see the difference between ideas about things and living, authentic sentiments that shape lives and relationships. We all learn about the Golden Rule. Our learning about it does not enter into our heart with transformative force and from there into our way of thinking and being. In some generations we see living sentiments, burning ideals. How are we to understand their origin? It is as if the world were clouded and gray, and then a portion of the great sky opens and the enlivening sunlight brings the gray, blue-green field into a luminous green glow and all the rest of the world undergoes a similar awakening. Through a new generation the hills and valleys of the world acquire fresh and original significance. Out of the young, truly new virtues, abilities, and forces are making their way. They are like the gate into the creative foundation of the universe, and through them the most progressed melody is being played.

Two clear testimonies of this come to mind when looking back over the last century. The generation that came of age between 1950 and 1970 are the first and most familiar. The generations that came of age within the first quarter of the twentieth century are less familiar.1

1 Examples include the Wandervögel and Herman Hoffman; the Neueschar and Muck Lambarty; the Bruderhof and Eberhard Arnold; Lebensreform and people like Gustav Graser, Ludwig Hauesser, and Fidus. Hermann Hesse gives aspects of the life of these in his works Damian and Die Morgenlandfahrt.

Within the first decade of the century, small gatherings began that were to grow into international movements. Young people began striking out into the world of nature with their cities and towns at their backs. They were not engaged by their cities, customs, and education. These were alien and cold to them. Carrying umbrellas for protection from the elements they wandered out over hills and through valleys for days and days. They felt life in the flowing bird whistles, in the wide sky-colors, in the wind that was more noble and more worthy than the cliché of twentieth century civilization. They became “Wandervögel”—wandering birds.

You wandering birds in the air, / in the ether-shine, / in the sun-aroma, / in blue sky-waves, / I greet you as companions! / I am also a wandering bird, / and my gift of song / is my dearest possession.

—Otto Roquette

Not everyone pursued this path. Some sought a worthy life in religious traditions, which they tried to embrace and even renew. Others tried to find something worthy by reaching far back into past civilizations and mythologies. Everyone had in common the search in other places, other times, other settings than those offered by their elders, where they could live a human life that satisfied them. Their elders could not inspire respect and admiration in them. Their elders testified to their impotence through their creation of the brutal insanity that was the First World War. Many of the young witnessed this testimony from the blood-spewn trenches. Who could be inspired by such a civilization?

Many in this young generation became aware of an elder who sparked some wonder and admiration in them. He was well known and controversial. He tirelessly traveled throughout Europe, lecturing, and was involved in a number of huge creative projects: the creation of the large work of art in Dornach, Switzerland, called the Goetheanum; the movement for a new social order; and leadership of a new and innovative school in Stuttgart called the Waldorf School. He was not just dreaming. He thoroughly understood the current state of civilization and culture and yet he did not find it sufficient. The culture that the older generation was so proud of, and in their pride were entrenched in, was materialistic natural science, it’s methods, results, and technologies. This man acknowledged the careful observations and the many fruitful insights and technologies this science made possible, yet he insisted that the remaining forces and mysteries of the universe had to be pursued as well. He maintained that so long as science only recognized one realm of the world as significant and existent, then such a science would yield illusion instead of truth, since it overlooked great portions of reality. He worked to reveal the need to further the knowable, and what is even more important, he actually pursued this furthering. He developed a spiritual science, which he came to call anthroposophy, by pursuing the inspirations that personalities like Goethe and Fichte had pursued and developing them to a new level of maturity. Besides this he recognized significance in many spiritual movements of his time, such as the Theosophical movement and Freemasonry. He worked with and within them. This man was Rudolf Steiner.

So the younger generation met an elder who was totally at home in his time, yet also pointed to its illusions and failures and developed ways forward. Many of his contemporaries may have viewed him as an eccentric standing at the fringes of society, but this was far from the truth. He stood fully within his time, as his work shows anyone willing to do some research. Among the younger generation to witness him at this point were such people as Arvia MacKaye, Karl Ege, Ernst Lehrs, Maria Roeschl, Lili Kolisko, and Herbert Hahn. Many of the real carrying forces of the first Waldorf School were from this young generation.

The new melody the younger generation heard in their hearts found a harmonious resonance in an elder. It was not a simple harmony, either. Through Rudolf Steiner they heard the maturity of their songs, an enrichment and articulation they had only divined. Many came to discover that the inspiration they felt in themselves was also speaking through Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. Here they found an elder from whom they could strive to learn in total freedom. They felt they might not need an isolated and separate youth movement as they had found an elder who was creative, active, and in relationships that corresponded with their inner ideals.

Rudolf Steiner gave a course for a group of these young people2.

2 Rudolf Steiner, Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions (formerly The Younger Generation). SteinerBooks, 2007.

He saw the fire in them as tremendously significant. It was a new fire. He saw in the dancing flames the sparks that would illumine a new age. He had been fueled by the same light in his work to develop anthroposophy. I know that it is difficult today to take such insights as indicating real facts; all the same, that is what is meant here. That there are real spiritual forces at work in our lives is a strange idea for most people today. What is strange is granting them the right to be as real as our skeletal system. By “real” I do not mean spatial extension and mass; these measurements are not the only way to validate positive existence. These forces have particular qualities, and there are forces that can bring our heart to jump in enthusiasm and to see the spirit and soul in the world as well as in other people, just as there are forces that humble us and fill us with receptivity and openness. Despite the unpopularity of this idea, it is an idea that corresponds with reality, and is an insight and experience that anyone can achieve given interest and a willingness to pursue it.

Yet the young who were trying to find their way into the meetings and activities of older anthroposophists were very disappointed. At times they met meek bookishness, contemplative restraint, and extreme arrogance. They wanted to see the fire they recognized in Rudolf Steiner in all other anthroposophists. Many elders did not live up to this ideal. The young wanted to deny the elders’ version of anthroposophy. Some older anthroposophists found the younger generation to be superficial, a nuisance at times, and a distraction from all the important work that had to be done. Rudolf Steiner encouraged the elders to distinguish between the essential and inessential and to make time for the younger people. He criticized their obsession with their work and their overlooking the importance of human relationships. He turned with some severity to the young, who were beginning to see themselves as the true anthroposophists, and struck down this vanity. He warned them that anthroposophy was for everyone, for old and young each in their own way. He revealed it to them as a power affecting humans in many conditions, in many different ways. He encouraged them to have compassion for the older generation who could not free themselves from the grayness of the nineteenth century. He told them that they possessed enthusiasm through their youth, but they would grow old and dull like everyone else if they did not actively awaken the spirit in themselves through working with anthroposophy. He pointed out that their instinctive, physiological youthfulness would wane and that only by establishing a free and creative relationship with the spirit of the world could they retain their youth. Anthroposophy alive within the human being appeared as the fountain of youth.

There were changes in the heart of the world. The sunrise and the colors spreading through the sky were different. In these young hearts forces were flowing that pointed toward this change as well. An age of darkness was turning, and on its heels brilliant light and life were growing. Rudolf Steiner spoke to these young people in a way he had never spoken before. A whole new quality entered his expressions. This is perceptible throughout the two books that have been published in English as Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions (formerly,The Younger Generation) and Youth and the Etheric Heart. He spoke to the humanity of this new day. These two books are an indication of how Rudolf Steiner addressed modernity. Everyone reading this article has been born into that day.

I will only dwell on the advice he gave the youth for their work together, their movement. They were burning up, storming around him, wanting to engage in changing the world and to get organized and solidify their work together. They came forward and suggested officials, representatives, committees, and structures of this sort. Rudolf Steiner discouraged them in this. He testified to his own experience, which proved that these methods were ineffective and obstructive. To develop a living, vital, and healthy movement one should not start by trying to find a form, but rather focus on the authentic relationships between you and your companions, and in these relationships a form will unfold out of life. Life will make a form from inside out. There are conditions that will support this.

Find a few people who want to come together to work with anthroposophy in whatever way seems right and want to do so regularly. The real and pressing desire to be together is important, to want to meet. In the meetings there must be an authentic mood of tolerance; everyone should really feel free to articulate their thoughts and feelings. Don’t get caught up in the small stuff, in details of how things should be expressed or other technicalities. Instead of wasting your energy in that, pour it into listening with such empathy that you know, you feel, what the other person is experiencing when they speak even if their speech is clumsy. The clumsiness is beside the point. There will be disagreements. It will be difficult. Get over it. Develop loyalty to one another that does not exclude individuality. Stick together through all your lives. Don’t get caught up in simply philosophizing. Strengthen your thinking to the point that you start having experiences. Then forces, virtues, healing will flow from your ideas. This is needed. Anthroposophy appears in its most noble and healthy form where it unfolds among people sharing authentic human relationships. This may seem trite and ineffective to many people. It can only seem so. The strength, the free and unhindered inspiration to take up a cause or creative project arises with natural force under these conditions. Those who think it is easy to create such conditions are mistaken; you need your whole life to do it, and your whole heart.

Over Christmas 1923 Rudolf Steiner led the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society and became its chairman. He organized the society with a school of spiritual science at its center. The school was organized into various sections for different realms of research and creativity. Besides the mathematical section, the literary section, and others, there was a youth section. Rudolf Steiner asked Maria Roeschl, one of the teachers at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, if she would take on the leadership of this section. He discussed the goals of the section with her and the young people. This section was to be a place where courses and gatherings were designed for young people so that they could meet anthroposophy through older anthroposophists who could connect with them. The bridge between the generations was of tremendous importance and was a major part of this section. The youth section was to be responsible for creating books and literature for young people. Basic books were to be written for the young in a way that spoke to them where they were. However, before two years had elapsed after the founding of the school, Rudolf Steiner died. Maria Roeschl continued to work for six years toward these goals. After Rudolf Steiner died various individuals in the society began to experience extreme difficulties with one another. Parties developed. Young people were pulled to various sides. Maria Roeschl left the section in 1931, announcing that such conditions made the tasks of the section impossible. She returned to Stuttgart to help carry the work at the Waldorf School forward. The difficulties within the society continued to worsen. In 1935 an extreme was reached when the society was split through the exclusion of many leading individuals and even national societies.

Nathaniel Williams: a summer

Against the backdrop of these events the importance of Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the young takes on its warm brilliance. A question must arise in one’s heart through all of this: What if today, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we were to renew the youth movement founded on the virtues described above? What if these virtues were not viewed as secondary to our work but as primary and central? These simple inspirations can ignite the formation of small groups anywhere. They throw a whole new light on the significance of regionalization. Size is not the significant quality. What is significant is that people regularly seek each other’s company to work with spiritual truths, that they practice honesty, tolerance, empathy, and a thinking that lives. I can see groups forming everywhere, some smaller, some larger, all unique and special, sensing their unity with the greater movement through these virtues. I can see each group with a name, a sign, a song—and each would have space in our society given.

We come together in joy.

We seek anthroposophy each in our own way.

We seek loyalty that is not oppressive.

We seek speech that has reality.

We seek listening that is revelation.

We seek relationships that are enduring.

So the Human heals.

Note: the author of this 2009 article, Nathaniel Williams, became the leader of the Youth Section at the Goetheanum at the end of 2022.