Founding of the First Waldorf School - Waldorf Research Institute

The initiate-consciousness of Rudolf Steiner, which until thenwas the guiding principle of the School, is to be replaced bythe striving for knowledge on the part of the body of teachers.This is the “Eigenrat,” the self-counselling. Rudolf Steinerhanded the management over to the teachers. We must tryto make this quite clear to ourselves inwardly. I can onlysuggest that all of you ponder sometime what is expressedin these seven lines that have cryptic significance. Now, ifyou want this in a concrete manner — I shall try to expressit more and more concretely — you would have to translatethe conference of September 22, 1920. There, Rudolf Steinerdescribed his inner relationship to the body of teachers, whichhas validity for all future time. I will show it to you, it says soword for word. I can only give you the urgent advice, my dearfriends, that if we want to take our work seriously, we have tomake what Rudolf Steiner said here accessible to ourselves.Now, I refer once again to the conference of September22, 1920. That was when the lectures were given whichJørgen Smit has now suggested as a basis of study for theupcoming Easter Conference of 1983. What induced RudolfSteiner to speak about his inner relationship to the teachers?I must describe the earlier surrounding circumstances briefly.The teachers were originally employees of the Waldorf-Astoria firm, hence dependent on the director of this firm,Emil Molt. Being an employee of a business firm was anunworthy relationship for a teacher. Therefore a somewhatpainful process of separation took place. The teachers wantedto constitute themselves as an independent body and createtheir own legal and economic basis; hence a Waldorf schoolassociation came into being as the legal body of the school.Stockmeyer therefore formulated statutes which stated thatthe body of teachers is independent. We can hire as well as48