Steiner, Rudolf

(1861–1921)

   Sect Founder.

   Steiner was the son of a station master in Kaljevec, Yugoslavia, and he was educated at the University of Vienna. Initially he was attracted to Mme Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, but he was unhappy with its orientation towards Eastern spirituality. Consequently he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its first institute in Dornach. His aim was to ‘raise the faculties of the soul to develop organs of spiritual insight’. He taught that it was through the intervention of Jesus Christ that humanity, made in God’s image, could regain contact with the spiritual world. His followers maintain Rudolf Steiner schools which, through the use of music, light and quiet contemplation, do much to help difficult and maladjusted children. Steiner himself explained his system in several books, including Die Philosophie der Freiheit.

   G. Ahern, Sun at Midnight: The Rudolf Steiner Movement and the Western Esoteric Tradition (1984);

   A.W. Harwood (ed.), The Faithful Thinker: Centenary Essays on the Work and Thought of Rudolf Steiner (1961);

   A.P. Shepherd, A Scientist of the Invisible: An Introduction to the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner (1954).