Goetheanum
A voyage through the soul
Recently I found myself with two days off and my boo out of town, and not knowing what else to do, I went to Switzerland. As my loyal readers will know a thing, I have been circling around a building called the Gotheanum for some time. The building, vast and bizarre, is home to the anthroposophists, a group about whom no one seems to know. I have spoken to my old philosophy teacher, a cool library owner, French bakers, a puppet master, not a single one could even get as far as pronouncing the name. Thus I found it imperative I investigate the case myself. In order to prepare I read almost nothing and made contact with almost no one save for cheap bnbs. The journey is documented below.
Paris - Dornoch Day 1
I have begun my journey already fatigued from a mornings work in the bakery. My arms ache and my head is sore from the inordinate amount of times I bludgeoned it on various things, as is the case everyday in a bakery that is too small for my length. I went out the night before to say goodbye to a friend who is going to make documentaries about bugs, and having gotten quite drunk, ordered a cheesy pizza which I made my sister pay for, I returned home later than I ought have. On the train I was forced to move after a passenger next to me began covering his nose due to the unpleasantly loose embouchure of my bowel which was resonating in low tones throughout the trip. I was unable to locate a bag but my colleague and comrade has kindly loaned me one for these next two days that I have loaded with bread ham and salad for my exploration in what I am told is an outrageously expensive part of the world. It remains to be seen. As I encroach on my destination the increasing number of gothic churches and low slung mist is heightening my impressions of mystical questicism
Cut to later and I’m falling asleep in a freezing cold camper van after a strange night of only ham sandwiches and water from Swiss fountains I found on my walk to the strange commune I was staying in (nothing to do with anthroposophy, just crusties). The camper van had no lock, a hole in the floor and my girlfriends insinuation that there may be Bed bugs combined with the strong wind blowing through the floor hole did not result in the best night sleep.
Dornach Day 2
This morning I awoke early, noticing my camper van also lacked curtains. I decided to walk up through the mountains in the morning, following a stream to a large mossy rock on which I read my book for a while. I’m reading creation lake which has leaked it sardonic removed tone into my approach to this trip. I wound up a valley pass to a cattle farm where cow bells rung softly along to the morning bird song and apple blossom glittered with dew. The fog was slowly lifting off the forest as I descended back towards the city. Weaving my way out of the forest and through suburban sprawl I was confronted by a heron stood about 5 meters from me and watching me closely. Some sort of esoteric symbol I thought. It took flight in the direction of the Gotheanum whose grey roof I could see from my raised vantage point.
As I rounded a corner I was faced with a large spaceship fairytale building emerging from the still rising mist. It was 8:30, I had woken up on baker time and my walk through the mountains had not sufficed to slow me down. After stopping for a coffee in a neighbouring biodynamic farm food shop and bakery (future career option perhaps) I circled the site impatiently awaiting its opening
I must take this opportunity to apologise for my photography, my camerawork is bad at the best of times but the semi brokenness of my camera combined with the thick mists that enveloped the scene have resulted in some pretty shoddy work, so enjoy.
.The surrounding buildings were of varied architectural form. One or two sub-sektions into which the society HQ is divided were in the same style as the main building, another, the most beautiful was in the style of the old Gotheanum that was burnt down (purportedly by a catholic firebrand) in 1922). It was labelled as Glashaus and was the only building that was accompanied by a mystical phrase. I didn’t make a note of it but I believe it said something about travelling deep into swirling meditations.
Through the windows however it looked like it was now functioning largely as an administration centre with bookshelves filled with ring binders. It was outside this building that I met a beautiful cat that strolled over to me and rolled on the floor inviting caress. I bestowed and the cat rose and walked around the side of the building. I followed, an apparent sucka for animal guides, and was shown a beautiful fountain that flowed down into a stream in myriad whirlpools.
I thanked the cat and walked back to the main centre, passing a mystical chimney shaped building emanating steam. I circled round the top and found an agricultural area with men and women weeding and wheelbarrowing about and thought I ought to ask to join in. I didn’t out of fear of rejection and embarrassment.
There were some other low flat wooden buildings I took little notice of as by this point the main building doors had opened and two men were wheeling large blackboard from the back of a van through the front doors. I slid in behind them, feeling like Mr incredible in syndromes complex, and snuck up the first flight of stairs I saw. The interior was raw concrete though as I climbed the walls were occasionally painted in a tuscan sunset hue with occasional pink virtual cornicing. It reminded me of Mike, a man I had lived with who had a similar taste for colours and arrangement.
I climbed the stairs and found gallery which seemed to be in the process of being rehung, the stairs continued so so did I, climbing past a toilet on every mezzanine. It felt like a university building and I was aware that the Gotheanum did in fact offer some kind of courses though I hadn’t done enough research to understand what these entailed. Eventually I got to the top of the last set of stairs and was confronted with a sign reading
“Entry Reserved for Members of the Parsifal Choir”
This triggered further memories of a past exploration into the freemasons hall in Holborn where, while running the corridors with some friends out of view of the masonry adherents, we came across a room labeled
“Prudent Brethren”
Of course in both instances there is no option but to dig a little deeper. At the grand lodge in holborn I had been confronted by some sort of gathering room replete with checkered floors and esoteric symbols. There stood a lectern at its head where I believed one of the brothers would preach prudence to the others. There were ceremonial cloaks hung neatly against the wall. In the Gotheanum I found a clothes horse with outfits hung, also resembling ceremonial garb in black with shoes placed neatly below each top. “Hmmm spooky” I thought, and turned around. Though it feels trite to make the comparison, there were obvious mental connections with Severance that I had just finished at the time. The vague esoteric yet authoritarian style of the building, the bust of Steiner that stood by the door as I entered, the strange rooms one could discover by entering any door. Returning back downstairs I passed an office with names embossed on the door which stood slightly ajar. From inside I could here a conversation in English and thought it the time to out myself as an imposter. I walked in to what again seemed to be a university office, with two “professors”, one male one female, on separate sides of the room facing each other.
“Hello” I said “Sorry to disturb, I’ve just come from Paris to see this place and I don’t know what’s going on. Would anyone be free to talk with me?”
The Man stood up and held out his hand. He was Nicholas, he resembled a large racist gardener I had once worked with during my summer jobs in London as a teenager, or an American meat-diet republican. His eyes were bright but where burdened with heavy bags and he spoke fluent English with a German lilt.
“Yeah I can give you a run down, lets go get a coffee in the cafe”
“Great” I said “thank you so much!”
We walked down the stairs again without speaking to the ground floor and into a large flashy cafeteria space not unlike one you might find in a modern art gallery. Nicholas paid for my coffee and we seated ourselves at a table.
“So” he said “what do you want to know”
I explained I had done a masters in sustainability and energy that had transformed in my mind into something more related to energy in the spiritual sense, that all the reading I had been doing recently seemed to spiral around this site and that I had felt an impulse to come, knowing only the bare bones of the story, that the anthroposophists had developed from the theosophists, a group of spiritualists who believed in the spirituality of the scientific world, in a fusion of faith and science in all areas of life. I knew too that Rudolph Steiner had been a member of this group until the theosophist appointed a young boy Jiddu Krishnamurti as their messiah and essentially kidnapped him from his family with the aim of indoctrinating him. That is another story for another time. Steiner then founded a separate, to my mind more grounded group, the anthroposophists and pushed on with his work in biodynamic farming and special education. I knew that Steiner had had some connection to members of the Nazi party, and that while his preaching was multi-faith and claimed to be open to all, he had some contradictory opinions on racial matters. Other than a few other details this was the sum of my knowledge on the man.
Nicholas filled in the gaps, he worked in the “section for general anthroposophy” and had been a philosopher before arriving. The school was not so much a school but was in a limbo period that had lasted, it seemed, since seiners death (100 years of limboing). There were courses but the school was largely underfunded and struggling to overcome it’s complicated history with Nazism and racial issues. The school was separated into
General Anthroposophy
Natural Science
Pedagogy
Literary Arts & Humanities
Medicine
Agriculture
Visual Arts
Performing Arts
Social Sciences
Mathematics & Astronomy
Youth
Inclusive social development
I didn’t know what anthroposophical medicine entailed but the rest of them I largely understood.
Nicholas told me there was a course in the foundations of general anthroposophy, the first class of which Rudolf Steiner had given with a view to giving five more, only he died after the first two. The society had therefore only taught the first two since his death.
He further explained to me that the original idea had been that there were five professors each specialised in a certain subject: a mathmatician, a poet, a doctor, a physicist, an actor (maybe, I can’t really remember) that would teach parts of the course through their own speciality. Sounded cool so far to me, like something we might need in an age of faithless capitalist consumption that leaves us feeling ever confronted by the abyss. I told Nicholas this and noticed a slight twinge in his eye, as though something I had said had annoyed him. I asked if there was any truth to the accusations of Steiner’s Nazi relations and he said no but that it was hard to escape the reputation, and besides, anthroposophy wasn’t about politics.
“Oh no?” I said “isn’t it all slightly political?”
“Yes” acquiesced Nicholas, “but Steiner had a different conception of the political sphere, if anything he was more of a centrist”
“Right” I said, feeling all my rainbow dream desiccate “In what sense?”
“Well, are you aware of his theory of social three folding?”
I confessed I was not.
Social three-folding, he explained patiently, was the idea that the health of a society can be determined by the independence of three spheres civilisation: culture, polity and economics. The more independent these spheres were from each other the more they kept each other in check, thus preventing inequality and coercion and promoting freedom. So far so good I thought, my recent integration classes with the French government had indoctrinated me to take a shine to secularity.
“I am constantly surrounded here by left wing liberals” Nicholas muttered, as though I had asked. “It’s like they all think that anthroposophy has to be synonymous with liberal values of inclusion and equality and radical ideals.”
“Is it not?” I asked, once again feeling deflated at having picked the wrong man to speak with.
“Well I myself am a libertarian, and I don’t go in for all of this new radical philosophy, Steiner was a capitalist at heart”
I shrank further from it all
“I mean I just think it’s all going too far, I should be able, as a tax paying man in Switzerland, who is made to pay half his salary to the government, I should be allowed to talk about migrants without being called a racist”
A fair point I thought but perhaps more of a problem with the system of taxation and government (in a threefold world) rather than the migrants, I remained quiet
“And this gender thing” he continued unprompted “why are we teaching kids they should change genders at such a young age?”
“Well I don’t know about that” I interrupted, a little scared as he was big and getting angry “I think we should be teaching kids they can be whatever they want to be, isn’t that libertarianism?”
“Well yes, you do your thing I’ll do mine so long as you don’t interfere, but they’re forcing it on them”
“I’m not sure they are, I think the real problem here is the way social media twists us up like this until we feel like everyone is brainwashing everyone and we’re all trapped. I don’t think it’s wrong to teach kids they don’t have to be trapped in their roles.” I said, not as smoothly or eloquently as that, but mumbling and stuttering.
I had outed myself and there was a certain soft awkwardness that breathed between us.
“Well anyway” he said “I don’t know how we started talking about that, would you like a tour? I’ve got some spare time.”
“Sure” I said, nervous to tour with a big scary right leaning centrist through a building full of empty halls and locked rooms.
We went upstair again and Nicholas unlocked a door and bid me enter. Scared as I was I was also curious and did so.
Inside there was some sort of museum. A large purple sheet of stained glass stood before me with designs that a friend later described as similar to the illustrations of Alasdair Grey, with a weaving river and glowing son and a strange peasant boy. Past this were some glass cases filled with small sculptures and on the wall a museum like explanation. Steiner had been a woodworker and had made a good deal of sculptures in his life, his greatest being The Representative of Man. there was a small photo of it and I looked around the room to see if it was there, only to discover that right behind me, and the very thing that Nicholas had taken me into the room to see, was the representative of man. It was huge (24ft according to google) and stood in a small side room specially dedicated to it. I didn’t really know how to react, I could feel Nicholas wanted an epiphanic moment from me so I kept saying “wow” as though giddy and stupid. “What is it?” I said after too many wows.
Nicholas launched into what was quite a complicated explanation of the sculpture. He said something about their being two angels inside everyone, I thought of the gay wolves. One was called Lucifer he said and Lucifer was passionate and artistic. The other was called Ahriman and was cold, collected and rational. These two were balanced out by the representative at the centre who held them apart and was the spirit of man… I think. Steiner, Nicholas told me, had carved the sculpture over 8 years and had been carving it in his workshop the day the first Gotheanum had burnt to the ground. It was intended to be the centre piece for the great hall of the first Gotheanum and now stood secluded in this strange side room gallery.
“There’s a wood workshop?” I asked
“Oh yeah, you didn’t see it? It’s the oldest building here, I’ll show it to you”
We went down and out of the building and I saw the two low flat wooden buildings I had refused to take an interest in earlier. These were apparently the workshops and where the Gotheanum had operated during the building of it’s second iteration. They were also were Steiner lived in the last days of his life. Nicholas tried to unlock the door to the room where he died but did not have the key. I suggested he may have work to do and checking his watch he realised he ought to leave. He asked me if I was staying at the youth section. I said I didn’t know what that was but I was staying in a draughty caravan.
He pointed down to the cafe I had drunk a coffee in before scouting out the grounds and said that just opposite I would find a building labelled the youth section. I dutifully descended and found a group of young arian muscular German boys playing hakisak. I walked through the group and felt as though they were snickering at me, one of them said “Hallo” and I mumbled “Morgen” back. I entered the building and asked the girl cleaning up if she was working there, she said she wasn’t, that she didn’t know who was and that I should wait. I asked how much she had paid to stay there and she told me 15euros. I felt like a schmuck. I was paying 25 a night to stay in my possibly infested freezing box and breaking the Israeli boycott. I waited, plugged my laptop in and wrote down some notes from my experience thus far. The Youth section seemed to be a youth hostel, there was a communal kitchen, a piano, a bookshelf, from which I removed the book Theosophy to look like I was interested. I was interested, though I didn’t open the book, I sat watching the boys outside playing and watched as they picked up their camping bags and drove away. I was alone in the building and decided to call my girlfriend who had gone home for the weekend.
“How are you” she asked
“I’m good but it’s very strange here” I said in Italian
“Strange how” she asked
“It’s like a cult I think” I said again in Italian.
By this point a dark haired dark eyed youth of about my age had entered the kitchen and was also cleaning up. I assumed he was another guest and continued explaining the mysteries over the phone, in Italian, thinking no one else speaks Italian. We said our goodbyes “be careful” she said and I said I would and hung up. A girl entered and I asked if she perhaps worked there
“no” she said
“I work here” a voice came from behind me.
It was the dark haired youth, he said it dryly, as though he had heard my comments and I suddenly remembered I was in Switzerland where everyone speaks every language because its shoved in the middle of all three major European countries. He gave me a withering look from his dark eyes. I asked how much to stay the night there and he quoted me 25euros, I wasn’t sure whether to feel more or less like a schmuck now.
“Ok, I might come back later I have to get my things from my caravan” I lied
I went back to the caravan and had a nap, returned again later in the evening to the gotheanum hoping to catch someone called Johannes Kronenberg who Nicholas had suggested might be a good person to speak to. I had hoped he might be a little more radical and revolutionary as he was from the biodynamic agricultural section. I was excited but waiting around outside his office for 20 minutes while perusing another sub gallery of the building I finally decided he was a no show. In the meantime however I found from the many informative billboards that Parsifal was an Opera by Wagner (uh oh nazi) and that the goetheanum was the best place to see it as Steiner had semi purpose built the auditorium as a major fan of the work and it’s occult undertones. This slightly ruined my illusions of dark sexual rites at the top of the building and once again made me shrink.
I returned to the youth section with the plan to steal a glass of water from the communal kitchen and maybe charge my phone for a moment. The dark haired boy was not there, but there was a girl sat at the piano playing beautifully.
“Hello” she said “are you here for the dinner?” She had an American accent
“Dinner?” I said
“Yeah we’re having a dinner we do it every Friday all the youth section”
“Oh no” I said” I’m not staying here”
“Doesn’t matter it’s open you should come!”
“Ok I’ll come”
“Ok it’s three francs”
“Ok is there a cash point”
“Hmm I dont know”
I ran to a cash point and took out ten francs
“I will give this all as my donation to the cause” I said, still not knowing what the cause was.
“Thank you” she said
Others joined, around ten people, all around my age (I still think of myself as early 20s) there was someone from Tanzania, someone from Cape Town, someone from Argentina, someone from Cologne, someone from the Basque region. People seemed to have come from all over, and for all different reasons, a few told me they had had friends working here and they’d recommended it, others had been to Waldorf schools and liked the vibe so stuck to it’s natural course and came here.
Two girls (they weren’t all girls) asked me why I had come, and to seem mysterious and cool I said I had been drawn here by mystical forces in my life. They didn’t really like that. Then they asked me how I had liked my stay and I said it was cool. “Like a cult kinda” they frowned a little “but a cool cult, like… one I’d want to join.” They liked that.
I helped cook a little, there was pasta with a sauce, the chef refused to remove the lid of the sauce as it was simmering so it remained watery and didn’t drain the pasta after I said it was cooked so we had overcooked pasta in a watery sauce.
Thankfully someone had supplied an asparagus tart and the girl who invited me had made a strange salad of cornichons and olives and peppers that turned out to be quite good. Perhaps only in comparison to the pasta but it was decent fare after a day of walking around a lot and only eating ham sandwiches for two days.
They were all nice, all seemed to get along and everything seemed very un-culty.
That is until one of the girls asked “are we going to bless the meal” they all looked at me awkwardly and mumbled “yes lets do it”
“Shall we do bless the fruits?”
“Yeah sure”
And they all broke into a song that I think went like this
Blessing on the blossom
Blessing on the fruits
Bless the leaves and stem
Blessing on the roots
It was nice, there were harmonies, they had done it before (the Parsifal choir?). In fact, I’ve just looked it up and it appears to be some sort of peasant song for a good harvest. You can hear it here. Anyway after that we all chatted the night away and after exchanging a few contacts I returned through the dark and scary streets of Dornoch to my box where I slept in all my clothes for the second night in a row (I had packed badly).
Basel-Paris Day 3
I headed back into Basel the next day and visited an anthroposophist café I had been recommended by the piano lady. The only thing it had in common seemed to be its concrete decor, but it seemed poppin’. There I had a blueberry cake that was quite good and bought a apfelschogiguggl for my colleagues at the bakery. I also pulled up in a Mexican shop there and bought myself an intriguing malt Inca non alcoholic drink and perched on the bank of the chrystal clear river flowing through the centre of the city eating what remained of my supplies (just a bag of rocket).
There was much to think about. I was stewing on my own tragic need to return to my rich comfy boarding school where I was able to circulate with likeminded people and dabble in different arts without ever needing to confront the harsh realities of the world and yet act as though I was spiritually above it. But at the same time I was confronted with a reality in which this way of life was a movement, a movement that encompassed a multiplicity of people, people who, aside from esoteric blessings and slightly drank the cool aid eyes, were passably normal.
That is not to say I have been indoctrinated. Not yet. But part of me craves it and is no doubt genetically prone to it. My dad briefly joined a cult once and had to be reconditioned.
I was circling in my head on the Nazi point. Steiner was never a member per se but his actions and theories (praising of “pure racial traits”, criticism of jewish isolationism and the development of bio agriculture that was later used in the concentration camps) did leave me uneasy about the thought of reading all 50,000 tomes of spiritual nonsense he had written and others had written on him. My thoughts on the contrary were as follows: wasn’t everyone verging on nazi then? That’s not an excuse. Can’t we take from his teachings and trim the fatty ugly parts? Do we need to? Aren’t there others? Why are we focussing on this man? What did he do that makes his persona so important, so central to this movement? Can I become a follower and face jewish friends and defend this man with a light conscience? Do I want to be a part of a club with people like Nicholas as comrades?
I thought perhaps this is how all anthroposophists feel, hence the 100 year stagnation. I thought too that I needed more. I messaged the girl of the piano to ask if she had a friendly interlocutor for me. She came back to me and I emailed the man.
4 months later he has responded and I will talk with him next week.
