by Conrad Rehbach
“The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others”. (Rudolf Steiner in 1919)
It sounds like a fairy tale. In 1919 there was a cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, owed by a certain industrialist named Emil Molt. The times were difficult. The first World War had just ended and most of Europe lay in ruins. At the same time there were revolts, uprisings, and regime changes happening in various parts of the world, with the Russian revolutions of 1917 the most significant ones.
The times were also highly interesting and full of new ideas and idealism, including the teachings of an Austrian philosopher and educator named Rudolf Steiner. Under his leadership, a most amazing and beautiful building had been designed and was nearing completion, the Goetheanum Building in Dornach, Switzerland, which fell to arson on New Year’s eve 1922.
“The well-being of a community of people working together will be the greater, the less the individual claims for himself the proceeds of his work, i.e. the more of these proceeds he makes over to his fellow-workers, the more his own needs are satisfied, not out of his own work but out of the work done by others”. (Rudolf Steiner in 1919)
It sounds like a fairy tale. In 1919 there was a cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, owed by a certain industrialist named Emil Molt. The times were difficult. The first World War had just ended and most of Europe lay in ruins. At the same time there were revolts, uprisings, and regime changes happening in various parts of the world, with the Russian revolutions of 1917 the most significant ones.
The times were also highly interesting and full of new ideas and idealism, including the teachings of an Austrian philosopher and educator named Rudolf Steiner. Under his leadership, a most amazing and beautiful building had been designed and was nearing completion, the Goetheanum Building in Dornach, Switzerland, which fell to arson on New Year’s eve 1922.
The First Goetheanum Building in Dornach, Switzerland, which fell to arson on New Year’s eve 1922
During World War I when most of the world was fighting each other, Steiner and a group of supporters worked on the construction of this building. There were people from different countries and nationalities working together side by side. You might imagine hearing the rhythmical banging of the hammers on the hillside near Dornach while on the other bank of the Rhine river nearby you heard the canons being discharged at the German/French front lines. This working together on the creation of the First Goetheanum Building really was a kind of counter gesture showing the world that there is another way, there is an alternative to war.
Emil Molt (born 14 April 1876 in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Baden-Württemberg, died 16 June 1936 in Stuttgart) was a German businessman, social reformer and Anthroposophist. He was the director of the Waldorf-Astoria-Zigarettenfabrik, and with Rudolf Steiner co-founded the first Waldorf school. Hence, Waldorf education was named after the company.
After the end of World War I, Steiner was asked to set up a school for the workers at the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Steiner went there in 1919 and met with Emil Molt, the owner of the factory, and other supporters of this new project.
We can imagine Steiner climbing on top of a bale of tobacco on the factory floor and addressing the workers and managers at the cigarette factory, speaking to them about his new ideas for an education that would make a difference in the world and would be a new beginning.
Steiner had laid out the ideas for this new education in a book published in 1912 bearing the title, “The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy." In this groundbreaking work Steiner presented the ideas that Waldorf Education is based upon, namely that the human being is not only a physical being but a being of body, soul and spirit, that in growing up the child recapitulates the development of consciousness of humanity and that the education needs to be tailored to this reality, thereby being age-appropriate in a very deep sense of the word, and that the educator, the teacher, needs to also be on a path of conscious self-development.
During these early days of the founding and setting up of the first Waldorf School, it is also reported that Steiner, in a personal meeting over coffee and cake, conferred with Emil Molt about the financing of this new school movement. Emil Molt gave an estimate of how much profit he expected the factories to make, and he wanted to know how much of the profit he needed to earmark for the school movement. Rudolf Steiner leaned over the table, and spoke close to Emil Molt’s ear, saying: “My dear Mr. Molt, we will need all of it, every penny.”
We can imagine Steiner climbing on top of a bale of tobacco on the factory floor and addressing the workers and managers at the cigarette factory, speaking to them about his new ideas for an education that would make a difference in the world and would be a new beginning.
Steiner had laid out the ideas for this new education in a book published in 1912 bearing the title, “The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy." In this groundbreaking work Steiner presented the ideas that Waldorf Education is based upon, namely that the human being is not only a physical being but a being of body, soul and spirit, that in growing up the child recapitulates the development of consciousness of humanity and that the education needs to be tailored to this reality, thereby being age-appropriate in a very deep sense of the word, and that the educator, the teacher, needs to also be on a path of conscious self-development.
During these early days of the founding and setting up of the first Waldorf School, it is also reported that Steiner, in a personal meeting over coffee and cake, conferred with Emil Molt about the financing of this new school movement. Emil Molt gave an estimate of how much profit he expected the factories to make, and he wanted to know how much of the profit he needed to earmark for the school movement. Rudolf Steiner leaned over the table, and spoke close to Emil Molt’s ear, saying: “My dear Mr. Molt, we will need all of it, every penny.”
Rudolf Steiner (1861 - 1925)
This conversation also touched on the future and how this new school - and the schools that would be founded in other places - should be funded. Steiner emphasized that the old ways of funding education namely via taxation and thereby creating control mechanisms held by the state authorities (or the church) needed to be abandoned and replaced by new ways of funding.
Rudolf Steiner’s idea about the funding of school’s can be summarized in this way: “Independent and free from state and church control, privately funded and available to all …”
But how exactly was this to happen, you may ask? Steiner’s ideas are laid out in some of his works, most clearly in a book named “The Threefold Social Order” where Steiner discusses the idea of a social system where three distinct areas of activity are distinguished and described as being subject to different laws and impulses. Steiner brought forward the idea of a threefold social organism including a “free spiritual life,” a democratically organized “life of rights” (which includes what we refer to as the government and the legal system), and thirdly an “economic life” that through associations creates and manages the “production, distribution and consumption of commodities.”
Steiner was well aware of the social and economic ideas of his time including Marxism, capitalism and the various ideas and political streams of socialism. Steiner himself worked for a time as a teacher at a workers’ college during his time living in Berlin at the turn of the 20th century. During this time he was in close contact with leading socialists and intellectuals of differing convictions, as this workers’ college and the movement that created it, was founded and directed by the well known socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who later took over the Berlin government in a short lived revolt which ended in them being executed and thrown into the Landwehr canal in Berlin after having been overthrown by a right leaning counter movement. These events do remind us that this period in history was quite tumultuous and everything but stable both politically and concerning people’s individual lives and wealth (or lack thereof) … not unlike the times we are now living in with an economic revolution in the western world and various revolutions happening in different corners of our globe including the Middle East …
Rudolf Steiner’s idea about the funding of school’s can be summarized in this way: “Independent and free from state and church control, privately funded and available to all …”
But how exactly was this to happen, you may ask? Steiner’s ideas are laid out in some of his works, most clearly in a book named “The Threefold Social Order” where Steiner discusses the idea of a social system where three distinct areas of activity are distinguished and described as being subject to different laws and impulses. Steiner brought forward the idea of a threefold social organism including a “free spiritual life,” a democratically organized “life of rights” (which includes what we refer to as the government and the legal system), and thirdly an “economic life” that through associations creates and manages the “production, distribution and consumption of commodities.”
Steiner was well aware of the social and economic ideas of his time including Marxism, capitalism and the various ideas and political streams of socialism. Steiner himself worked for a time as a teacher at a workers’ college during his time living in Berlin at the turn of the 20th century. During this time he was in close contact with leading socialists and intellectuals of differing convictions, as this workers’ college and the movement that created it, was founded and directed by the well known socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, who later took over the Berlin government in a short lived revolt which ended in them being executed and thrown into the Landwehr canal in Berlin after having been overthrown by a right leaning counter movement. These events do remind us that this period in history was quite tumultuous and everything but stable both politically and concerning people’s individual lives and wealth (or lack thereof) … not unlike the times we are now living in with an economic revolution in the western world and various revolutions happening in different corners of our globe including the Middle East …
Karl Liebknecht (13 August 1871, Leipzig, Saxony, Germany – 15 January 1919, Berlin, Germany) was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919. Rosa Luxemburg (Rosalia Luxemburg, Polish: Róża Luksemburg; 5 March 1871, Zamość, Vistula Land, Russia – 15 January 1919, Berlin, Germany) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was successively a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (World War I veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.
Steiner’s ideas concerning the funding of the Waldorf schools (and other initiatives that belong to the “free spiritual life”) are relatively simple, but they do require a shift in thinking. Wealth created in the economic realm – that which Marxism and socialist philosophers call the “added value” and claim to be the property of the proletariat (the workers) while the capitalist system claims this as profit – according to Steiner this added value or profit should be voluntarily made available to the free spiritual life (for instance as donations to a school), thereby presenting a sort of “third way" besides capitalism and socialism. The schools in turn are then able to open their doors to all students whose families find value in the education offered and bypassing the control mechanisms of state or church, thereby enabling a school to determine out of freedom the best pedagogical approach the teachers see possible and find value in.
To this day this kind of funding or this approach to funding has not been established in the Waldorf Movement. The majority of the schools in the worldwide Waldorf Movement are receiving most of their revenue via public funding (like the charter schools in the USA) and a minority have managed to establish themselves as privately funded independent schools that rely on tuition income for up to 95% of their revenue.
It seems that the time has come where a major shift in the direction indicated by Steiner needs to happen, as we witness the traditional ways of funding (via taxation for Waldorf charter schools and via tuition revenue for private Waldorf schools) losing its validity, receding in dominance and relevance or in accessibility.
Waldorf Schools are well advised to prepare for this shift. The further development and refinement of fundraising and community outreach will be essential for the survival of the Waldorf Schools. Each school needs to set up and maintain a functioning and well staffed development office as well as working towards national and regional foundations that enhance and transcend the localized efforts by each school community.
In this way the ideals that Steiner brought forth for all of humanity, ideals that include an alternative to the defunct economic systems that we see in the world today, can be implemented on a modest but invaluable scale and over time ray out into society in a healing way, so that indeed the well-being of the community can be greater than it is today.
To this day this kind of funding or this approach to funding has not been established in the Waldorf Movement. The majority of the schools in the worldwide Waldorf Movement are receiving most of their revenue via public funding (like the charter schools in the USA) and a minority have managed to establish themselves as privately funded independent schools that rely on tuition income for up to 95% of their revenue.
It seems that the time has come where a major shift in the direction indicated by Steiner needs to happen, as we witness the traditional ways of funding (via taxation for Waldorf charter schools and via tuition revenue for private Waldorf schools) losing its validity, receding in dominance and relevance or in accessibility.
Waldorf Schools are well advised to prepare for this shift. The further development and refinement of fundraising and community outreach will be essential for the survival of the Waldorf Schools. Each school needs to set up and maintain a functioning and well staffed development office as well as working towards national and regional foundations that enhance and transcend the localized efforts by each school community.
In this way the ideals that Steiner brought forth for all of humanity, ideals that include an alternative to the defunct economic systems that we see in the world today, can be implemented on a modest but invaluable scale and over time ray out into society in a healing way, so that indeed the well-being of the community can be greater than it is today.
Conrad Rehbach is the director of the Sophia Institute, and has been a Waldorf teacher and administrator for many years. Conrad has published several books on anthroposophical foundation studies, Waldorf Education, and self-development; his essays and articles have been published in the Journal for Anthroposophy, the News for Members, the Bio-dynamic Journal and the Camphill Correspondence.
