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20 September 2025 22:53

An Encounter with Rudolf Steiner.

F.W.Zeylmans von Emmichoven

{ Dr. Zeylman"s book about Rudolf Steiner's life and work was published in the Hague in 1932. It contains a beautiful and remarkable chapter in which the author describes Rudolf Steiner as he met him. }

Winter, 1920. In the spurs of the Swiss Jura Mountains lies the little village of Dornach. On top of a hill , hemmened in on three sides by high mountain ridges , lies the Goetheanum, facing west. The pale, glittering slates on the double - domed roof are barely visible against the background of snow that covers most of the landscape.

Beside the Goetheanum stands a large wooden barn .One half of it is used as a carpentry workshop, as the Goetheanum, which was opened during the previous fall, is not yet completed. In the other half, which is furnished as a lecture hall and theatre, Rudolf Steiner delivers his lectures.

Hundreds of listeners sit on the simple wooden chairs. The front of the auditorium is separated from the stage by curtains of blue linen. They form the backdrop for a small wooden platform, draped with material of the same colour, on which Rudolf Steiner stands.

When he speaks, absolute silence reigns in the auditorium. The eyes of everyone focus constantly on the dark figure in front. Rudolf Steiner is of medium height, slender, almost frail. This strikes the listener immediately as a remarkable contrast to his heavy, powerful voice and speech. The sound of his voice has a quality that one will never forget. There is something deeply moving in it, as the speaker shares in the suffering of all mankind.

Sometimes the voice sounds warm and enveloping. Then the listening mind feels as if it were taken up and transported into other worlds, inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. At other times the voice sounds stronger.One senses a force in it that only higher powers can bestow. Words are spoken that resound over the earth like warning clarion calls .Then again, one is moved by a gentle heartiness, a tenderness, which frees something deep down in the listener, giving a feeling of awakening to an inner world, where a hidden light begins to shine.

But always it is as if every word spoken received a life of it's own. These words are not abstract symbols for communicating thoughts. They are born as living beings, and they continue to live in the hearts of the listeners.

Rudolf Steiner spoke freely, without notes, improvising as it were. In this way he delivers more that a hundred, and sometimes more than two hundred lectures a year. Almost all are different and range over the most diverse of topics. The shorthand records , uncorrected, show an unbelievable richness in the treatment of the language. The lectures are built up according to the highest standards of artistic taste and reason. Upon rereading them one frequently discovers a regularity in them that is reminiscent of organic growth. Even as a plant grows, germinating at first, unfolding one leaf after another, blooming in splendour, and then contracting again into the fruit and the seed, the contents of each of these lectures likewise grow and flourish. We always find a strong inner consistency and a free, living development.

Rudolf Steiner accompanies the spoken word with harmonious gestures of his arms and hands. It is not arbitrary gesticulation, not a passionate play of gestures. Rather, it is the natural extension of what lives in the soul of the language and finds expression from the chest through the arms and the hands.

An extraordinary vigor is characteristic of his entire manner of lecturing. Even when a great calm, a deep inner silence, predominates in what is being said, one still notices a delicate, continual mobility in the gestures of the face . The posture of Rudolf Steiner, almost sixty years old is remarkably youthful; his movements are supple and resilient. His figure is like that of a young and vigorous plant, standing freely between the heavens and the earth, its leaves supported by the air into which they expand.