Rudolf Steiner (25 or 27 February 1861[1] – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social thinker, architect and esotericist.[2][3] He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he founded a new spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of European transcendentalist roots with links to Theosophy. Steiner led this movement through several phases. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and mysticism; his philosophical work of these years, which he termed spiritual science, sought to provide a connection between the cognitive path of Western philosophy and the inner and spiritual needs of the human being. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, the movement arts (developing a new artistic form, Eurythmy) and architecture, culminating in the building of a cultural center to house all the arts, the Goetheanum. After the First World War, Steiner worked with educators, farmers, doctors, and other professionals to develop Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine as well as new directions in numerous other areas.[4]. Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which “Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”[5] A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.[6] Steiner's father, Johann(es) (Baptist) Steiner (June 23, 1829, Geras (or Trabenreith, Irnfritz-Messern), and lived Geras Abbey, Waldviertel - 1910, Horn), left a position as huntsman in the service of Count Hoyos in Geras, northest Lower Austria to marry Franziska Blie (May 8, 1834, Horn, Waldviertel - 1918, Horn), a marriage for which the Count had refused his permission. Johann became a telegraph operator on the Southern Austrian Railway, and at the time of Rudolf's birth was stationed in Murakirály in the Muraköz region, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Donji Kraljevec, Međimurje region, northernmost Croatia). In the first two years of Rudolf's life, the family moved twice, first to Mödling, near Vienna, and then, through the promotion of his father to stationmaster, to Pottschach, located in the foothills of the eastern Austrian Alps in present-day Burgenland.[4] From 1879 to 1883, Steiner attended and then was graduated from the Vienna Institute of Technology (Technische Hochschule), where he studied mathematics, physics, and philosophy.[7]:446 In 1882, one of Steiner's teachers at the university in Vienna, Karl Julius Schröer, suggested Steiner's name to Professor Joseph Kürschner, editor of a new edition of Goethe's works. Steiner was then asked to become the edition's scientific editor.[8] In his autobiography, Steiner related that at 21, on the train between his home village and Vienna, he met a simple herb gatherer, Felix Kogutski, who spoke about the spiritual world "as someone who had his own experiences of it... " This herb gatherer introduced Steiner to a person that Steiner only identified as a “master”, and who had a great influence on Steiner's subsequent development, in particular directing him to study Fichte's philosophy.[9] In 1891, Steiner earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rostock in Germany with a thesis based upon Fichte's concept of the ego,[10] later published in expanded form as Truth and Knowledge.[2] In 1888, as a result of his work for the Kürschner edition of Goethe's works, Steiner was invited to work as an editor at the Goethe archives in Weimar. Steiner remained with the archive until 1896. As well as the introductions for and commentaries to four volumes of Goethe's scientific writings, Steiner wrote two books about Goethe's philosophy: The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World-Conception (1886) and Goethe's Conception of the World (1897). During this time he also collaborated in complete editions of Arthur Schopenhauer's work and that of the writer Jean Paul and wrote articles for various journals. During his time at the archives, Steiner wrote what he considered his most important philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit (The Philosophy of Freedom) (1894), an exploration of epistemology and ethics that suggested a path upon which humans can become spiritually free beings (see below). In 1896, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to set the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg in order. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher and Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Of Nietzsche, Steiner says in his autobiography, “Nietzsche's ideas of the ‘eternal repetition' and of ‘supermen' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the nineteenth century.”[11] "What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's'.".[11] In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became owner, chief editor, and active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. His work in the magazine was not well received by its readership, including the alienation of subscribers following Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair.[12] The journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist writer John Henry Mackay.[12] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine. In 1899, Steiner married Anna Eunicke. They were later separated; Anna died in 1911. In 1899, Steiner published an article in his Magazin für Literatur, titled “Goethe's Secret Revelation”, on the esoteric nature of Goethe's fairy tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. This article led to an invitation by the Count and Countess Brockdorff to speak to a gathering of Theosophists on the subject of Nietzsche. Steiner continued speaking regularly to the members of the Theosophical Society, becoming the head of its newly constituted German section in 1902 without ever formally joining the society.[10][13] It was within this society that Steiner met and worked with Marie von Sievers, who became his second wife in 1914. By 1904, Steiner was appointed by Annie Besant to be leader of the Theosophical Esoteric Society for Germany and Austria. The German Section of the Theosophical Society grew rapidly under Steiner's leadership as he lectured throughout much of Europe on his spiritual science. During this period, Steiner maintained an original approach, replacing Madame Blavatsky's terminology with his own, and basing his spiritual research and teachings upon the Western esoteric and philosophical tradition. This and other differences, in particular Steiner's vocal rejection of C. W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant's pronouncement that Jiddu Krishnamurti was the vehicle of a new world teacher and the reincarnation of Christ, led to a formal split in 1912/13,[10] when Steiner and the majority of members of the German section of the Theosophical Society broke off to form a new group, the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society grew rapidly. Fueled by a need to find a home for their yearly conferences, which included performances of plays written by Eduard Schuré as well as Steiner himself, the decision was made to build a theater and organizational center. In 1913, construction began on the first Goetheanum building, in Dornach, Switzerland. The building, designed by Steiner, was built to a significant part by volunteers who offered craftsmanship or simply a will to learn new skills. Once World War I started in 1914, the Goetheanum volunteers could hear the sound of cannon fire beyond the Swiss border, but despite the war, people from all over Europe worked peaceably side by side on the building's construction. In 1919, the Goetheanum staged the world premiere of a complete production of Goethe's Faust. In this same year, the first Waldorf school was founded in Stuttgart, Germany. Beginning in 1919, Steiner was called upon to assist with numerous practical activities (see below). His lecture activity expanded enormously. At the same time, the Goetheanum developed as a wide-ranging cultural centre. On New Year's Eve, 1922/1923, it was burned down by arson; only his massive sculpture depicting the spiritual forces active in the world and the human being, the Representative of Humanity, was saved. Steiner immediately began work designing a second Goetheanum building – made of concrete instead of wood – which was completed in 1928, three years after his death. During the Anthroposophical Society's Christmas conference in 1923, Steiner founded a School of Spiritual Science, intended as an open university for research and study. This university, which has various sections or faculties, has grown steadily; it is particularly active today in the fields of education, medicine, agriculture, art, natural science, literature, philosophy, sociology and economics. Steiner spoke of laying the foundation stone of the new society in the hearts of his listeners, while the First Goetheanum's foundation stone had been laid in the earth. He gave a Foundation Stone meditation to anchor this. The arson committed against the First Goetheanum had a context. Threats had been made publicly against the Goetheanum,[14] and against Steiner himself[15] by right-wing nationalists.