Goethe, philosophy and a new society
Steiner studied in Vienna and earned a doctorate at Rostock with a dissertation on the theory of knowledge. In Weimar he edited Goethe’s scientific writings and wrote The Philosophy of Freedom. After moving to Berlin he worked as an editor and teacher and began addressing Theosophical audiences. The lectures became the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, established in 1913.
At Dornach, Steiner designed the Goetheanum as a home for performances and teaching. He and Marie Steiner developed eurythmy, an art of movement used on stage and in education. In 1919 Emil Molt, director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, supported the opening of a school in Stuttgart. Steiner prepared its teachers through lectures and remained its director until his death in 1925.
How the initiation books fit together
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds began as sixteen instalments in Lucifer-Gnosis in 1904–05. Early English editions divided the material between The Way of Initiation and Initiation and Its Results. Later versions brought the sequence together and revised it. The exercises ask students to cultivate attention and examine their responses to ordinary experiences before attempting the spiritual perceptions Steiner describes. Atlantis and Lemuria applies his claimed access to spiritual records to the distant past. Max Gysi translated the 1911 English edition, giving readers an account of vanished continents and changing human consciousness.
