Section Communications

School of Spiritual Science Goetheanum Section for the Social Sciences Section Communications

We are the Revolution!

The Challenges of Globalization On the Future of Human Dignity Family Workplace Warmth in Organizational Enterprise Section Work in Various Countries Events 2009 - 2010

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Summer 2009

Contents Greetings Section Work We are the Revolution!

Walter Kugler, Professor in Oxford Congratulations to Gerald Häfner

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Event Review and Workgroups The Challenges of Globalization Movement and Perception Thinking the Developing Human Being On the Future of Human Dignity Family Workplace Cultivating Family Life Colloquium on Conflict Research Warmth in Organizational Enterprise Lecture Series on Financial Crisis

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Section Work in Various Countries Egypt: Sekem – A Social Art Brazil: Monte Azul Workshop for Humanity India: Sadhana Village India: Update on the Demeter Movement India: Gateway-Branch in Mumbai Prague: The Soul of Europe

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Events Preview Coming into Conversation Events 2009 - 2010

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Impressum

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Greeting Dear Section Member, We are pleased that we can send you this report on our section activities in 2008 and 2009.

We convey our cordial thanks to Helen Lubin, who translated many of the articles in this report.

This new form of the Section Communications was created with the help of Benjamin Kohlhase-Zöllner, whom we thank very much for this.

Concepts, projects and initial results shall be presented and discussed with the Section members all over the world.

members of the Section will intensify.

If you would like to write a contribution dealing with the Section‘s themes for the next Section report (end of the year 2009), please send your text to our office before Christmas.

With best wishes, Paul Mackay and Ulrich Rösch

We hope that this new form of the Section Communications the conversation among the

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Section Work

We are the Revolution! (Joseph Beuys) Individuality as the Nucleus of Social Transformation

by Ulrich Rösch

Nowadays when people hear the word revolution they often feel a little uncomfortable. And perhaps this is justified, because in the past, revolutions have brought a lot of suffering to innocent people. However, revolutions are caused by the fact that necessary changes did not happen at the right time. In nature, something is always born out of something similar to itself. Stagnation or resistance to change, blocks these necessary developments from evolving as they need to. This creates a situation in which a leap needs to be made – this has often resulted in a violent revolution. If we look at any organism we can see what happens when there is congestion, the organism must resist it otherwise it will die. In this way Beuys looks at the social organism which needs urgent changes, so that it does not completely collapse.

With his multiple „La rivoluzzione siamo Noi“ (We are the revolution) Beuys points out, that real transformation must evolve from the human being. Only man can be the source for transformation in human dimension. But it needs also a „we“, an agreement with others. In modern times the

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individual being has to connect with others in agreement. Such a Revolution would be the solid base for a healthy way of living together.

Our social life has come into a deep crisis.

The financial crisis is only an outside phenomenon. Everything calls for a change.

However, in the world today it is hard to act quickly and as the saying goes people are more comfortable with „the devil they know“. Where are the models for the future?

We first need to find new imaginations of what our future could look like. We need visions. These new imaginations must arise from clear, deepened thinking that requires our will – thinking that is an activity, which touches upon the true essence of what we are searching for.

The concepts and ideas that form a basis for our visions of new social processes and organizations must not be made arbitrarily.

First each individual needs to consciously and actively touch upon what wants to emerge from the phenomena itself. This is an indispensable condition to make our world a better place. Although this is already difficult enough to carry out, it is not sufficient. We also need a large enough group of people, to come into communication and action, so that the new vision can become effective.

We have two requirements for each individual working in the social realm. The first is that through thinking each of us has to find the essence – or the archetype of the phenomena and the second is that we have to become artists. A Goethean scientist observes a plant, from here he can see the eternal and natural laws within the plant, which allows him to imagine new plants that haven’t existed before but obey to the eternal laws. An artist then makes a new, unique piece of art out of the archetype they have touched upon. This is the process we must also follow in the social realm. In doing so we move from social science to social art, that is we work with not only the scientist within us but also the artist. Therein we can become ‚experimenters‘ out of the concepts of Beuys. In my opinion Beuys is the most important social artists of our time. As I have already touched upon it is important to realize that this social artistic process cannot be carried out by only one human being – it needs a community, a faculty, an association of free individuals. It is here that a social sculpture can and must grow, as a renewed and in Beuys‘ terms extended art process.

Thus we come to the social art: where human relations and organizations are the materials that the social artist works with and whose inner laws he seeks to know organically. The ‚beautiful‘ artistic social form has to be created. The social abilities we develop and acquire are like the crafts of the social artist. The idea, out of which we work, rises from the inner laws of the social organism. It requires from us the artistic intuition, to act with other human beings at the right time and in the right way. So the social organism or parts of it can appear as a work of art coming out of the cooperation of free individuals. This does not mean creating a ‚Utopia‘ but instead it means to transform the world in such a way that in Schiller‘s words it creates the appearance of ‚the beautiful‘ of a real human society.

It is in this way that one can find the first political actions of Beuys in complete

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agreement with the democratic and threefold impulse, particularly in his exhibition at the ‘Dokumenta’ 1972 in Kassel. There Beuys exhibited his office for Direct Democracy for 100 days and discussed with thousands of visitors patiently the threefold social organism and the impulse of Social Sculpture. It is here that you see the connection with the new threefold movement in Germany the most clearly.

Joseph Beuys was inspired to meet Wilhelm Schmundt after attending meetings with active groups advocating threefolding.

Schmundt was one of the most important Goethean scientists of that time and was also a member of the School of Spiritual Science of the Goetheanum. After studying Schmundt’s books, Beuys then met him personally at a yearly congress in Achberg organized by Wilfried Heidt. Schmundt investigated and conducted independent research on the reality of the social organism. He was obviously a Platonist, who lived completely in his experienced ideas.

Phenomenology instead of ideology was his principle. His primary publication „The Social Organism in its Shape of Freedom“ was published by Herbert Witzenmann (the leader of the Section for Social Science at the Goetheanum) as study material for people connected to the Goetheanum.

Many faithful anthroposophical social scientists found Schmundts work too independent and not compatible with their own studies.

Beuys felt completely different, he understood Schmundt’s meaning of Goetheanistic social scientific work from the start. Beuys admired him greatly as „our

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great teacher“ and in a letter to „the dear, admired Wilhelm Schmundt“, Beuys ends with „in undiminishing love to you and your work, truly yours, Joseph Beuys.“ In order to understand Beuys’ work it is important to take into consideration this crucial meeting with Schmundt.

The social organism is always developing, changing and going through a constant metamorphosis, sometimes it moves slowly and at other times it leaps quickly. It is in this way our economic system has also developed. The bartering economy evolved into a money economy and then now into an economy of faculties (abilities). Production is based on human abilities and on working in broad, comprehensive collaborations. As Eugen Loebl has said, our economic life has developed into an „integral system“.

Eugen Loebl was a very interesting individual.

He became a communist when he was a young man. Due to the fact he was Jewish he was persecuted. He flew to England and became member of the Czechoslovakian exile government in London. After 1945 he went back to Czechoslovakia, this talented economist was rewarded with a position as First Deputy Minister of Commerce. But in 1948 he was accused, along with Rudolf Slansky. The Slansky trial eviscerated the old Czech communist officials. Loebl and two of his companions were ‘only’ sentenced to life imprisonment whilst the other eleven, including Mr. Slansky were hanged after a show trial. Loebl served eleven years in prison, five years he was kept in solitary confinement.

He found it very difficult to understand what had happened to him and so he started

having imaginary discussions with Karl Marx. He would say to Marx „Come on, we followed all your concepts and proposals but we did not create a better human society, in fact the opposite has happened we created a system that is even more inhumane and cruel. What did we do wrong, or where do you think we went wrong? Or what did you think wrong?“ He was only allowed to have the books of Marx and Lenin in prison. And paragraph after paragraph he studied the

main works of Karl Marx – including „The Capital“. Remember he was condemned to a life in prison, so he had enough time! One of the problems he faced in doing this study was that he could not write his results on paper because if the guard had found them, it would have increased his sentence and the conditions of his imprisonment were changed for the worse. So he memorized all of his ideas and concepts from his studies by heart. After eleven years Loebl fell ill and

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he was pardoned and released from prison.

He immediately wrote down what he had discovered in his imaginary discussions with Karl Marx. The manuscript was smuggled to Vienna and printed as a book. The result of his research was also the title of his book: „Spiritual work as the true source of common wealth“.

Eugen Loebl was a communist and a materialist, through being grounded in reality, he came to a deep spiritual knowledge of the social realm. Fifteen years later when he came to know that Rudolf Steiner had come to similar results through his occult research he was very astonished.

Loebl became president of the state bank in Bratislava and was one of the promoters of the Prague Spring in 1968, where they tried to shape a new human society. Because the leaders of the Soviet Republic did not want a socialist society based on freedom and democracy, the Russian tanks stopped this Czechoslovakian experiment. So Eugen Loebl had to go into exile again, this time he became a professor at the Vasar College in New York. He died in Manhattan on August 8, 1987, 80 years old.

In 1974 Löbl became a research fellow at the Institute for Social Research in Achberg where he also collaborated with Joseph Beuys and Ota Sik the former Czech secretary of state (minister for economy) and where I worked as a research assistant in the mid seventies. As Loebl stated the modern economic system is an ‘integral system’.

In the economic realm we only deal with goods and services, and the flow of economic values. This social realm of

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economy stands in polarity to the realm of spirituality which includes all aspects of human faculties and skills. Between these two we have a third, the realm of the rights, and law. In the spiritual or cultural realm each human is treated individually.

In the economic realm it is always about groups, communities, joining and working together. In the rights realm, we have the rights that are the same for each human being, so we could say it is the ‘generally human sphere’. It is in this sphere that human dignity can and has to be saved.

When money is given to a worker or an employee from an enterprise it means the worker is obligated to give his skills to the work in this enterprise. These processes and agreements that come out of the rights life are physically manifested in money, which then guide economic processes. But today the realms are mixed and the boundaries are blurry. Money has in its essence no economic value; it is drawn from the central bank system in a free and independent act. This free drawn money is given, based on credit to the entrepreneur. Such short-term credit is financing the production of enterprises. In the hands of the entrepreneur the money then becomes the money of the enterprise.

There it is used to give an income to all the co-workers including the entrepreneur. In the hand of the co-workers the money is transformed into the right to purchase the produced goods and services in the market. The circulation of money is similar to the circulation of our blood. It is a closed system with growing and withering processes. So the bank system has to take care that the money that has been

dispatched finally comes back to the central bank. The circulation has to be closed after a certain time. These few aspects make it clear that in the modern economy, money

initiatives. A producer offers goods or services and then a group of consumers judge the value of these. Rudolf Steiner refers to these relationships as associations. People

has metamorphosized into a paper representing a rights document.

working together create the economic values, which are always directed toward the needs of other human beings. Herein the principle of the fraternity realizes itself in an objective way. Between them we have a third sphere, the rights sphere. This is the sphere of agreement, obligation and entitlement. Out of the principle of freedom, we must also grant freedom to every human being. Every human being is equally entitled to freedom therefore the social principle we must work with in this third sphere is equality.

Everywhere where money gets stuck in the sphere of goods and services within the economy hinders healthy social processes – it obstructs and destroys. „We need only recall the fact that money, by becoming a real object in economic transactions, deludes men as to its true nature and by producing this imaginary effect, at the same time tyrannizes over them.“ (Rudolf Steiner: The Social Future, New York, 1972, P. 38).

The third social area, the rights life, thus contains everything that has to do directly with the human individuality and not with the circulation of the economic values. This concerns each human being in the same way, therefore this is the realm where humanity can and must be restored.

One can see from unprejudiced study of the phenomena that the social organism has developed in the more recent times in a three-fold way: First of all we have the sphere, which has to do with the abilities of humans, which is bound to the expression of each individuality. The faculties of each human being are the source for the spiritual and cultural life. What each particular person brings from his or her personal fate down to earth, can only be recognized and judged from an individual consciousness. Only freedom can be the base of this sphere.

The other sphere is the area of social

There are three false concepts that strongly influence our economy today. The first false concept is private property in the production sphere. Here we need a new concept of ownership of enterprises, so that the entrepreneur can realize his free initiative and his creativity. To be able to do this he needs the appropriate means of production.

He has to be free to do with the means of production what he feels to be right within the framework that the associations have assigned. The means of production should not be sold or inherited arbitrarily. The concept of private ownership falls away – it makes no sense in a modern economy.

The second false concept is profit as a driving force of the economy. Just because a surplus can be made in an enterprise does not give the entrepreneur the right to dictate the use of economic values. Making profit cannot be the only aim of an enterprise. We need to replace the material incentive, with an

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incentive that comes out of the interest in the other, our incentive therefore becomes meeting the needs of other human beings.

This requires an insight into the general context of social conditions around the world – which includes every human being on earth.

The third false concept is paid labor. It’s a concept from the bartering economy of the middle ages. Most of the social conflicts and problems in industrial society have evolved from this false concept. The demand by Karl Marx ‘work cannot become a commodity’, results from his reaction against this false concept. The modern human being feels that his integrity is diminished by selling his skills. In reality giving an income to the co-workers and the entrepreneur is not an economic fact but a matter of the rights life. Paying for labor is not in line with the modern economy. The question is to give to all co-workers in accordance with the whole, a fair and just income. So the procedure of giving an income must be taken out of the economic sphere into the rights sphere. Each human being has a right to an income, so that they can live with dignity and integrity.

Only if each human being is given such an income can they share their skills and abilities with their fellow human beings.

You can see that if we transform our view on capital that tremendous change could happen in the social realm. I would like to point out again that I am not interested in making any suggestions for how one could arrange the world in a better way. I have just tried to think and describe the reality of the social processes – the social essence. We often handle these social processes in the modern world, but we do not always have

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the appropriate depth of understanding.

Beuys had this understanding and deep insights. He was able to think these new concepts of capital and money and he used this understanding for a brought movement for social renewal.

Beuys exhibiting a photograph of Rudolf Steiner I believe that Beuys has achieved the strongest movement for threefolding and social sculpture after Rudolf Steiner. If a large enough number of people start to shape the world out of these new spiritual insights it will be possible to make our social conditions healthier. The aim will not be to create a new paradise but to delete the illnesses of our modern society, so that the social organism can follow its inner being and laws and develop in a healthy way. All people who are collaborating in this task are partners in creating this social sculpture.

In this way ‘we are the revolution!’

The blackboard sketch “Kunst = Kapital” is exhibited in Beuys‘s installation “Das Kapital Raum 1970 – 1977” in ‚Hallen für neue Kunst‘ in Schaffhausen / Switzerland.

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Appendix Beuys’ concept of money can be clearly understood through the sketches he made on the blackboard (see figure). What stands out especially on the blackboard is the circulation of money, on top of which is written: Kunst = Kapital (art is capital).

In the diagram „Art = Capital“, one sees the money circuit in a widened context.

Under this title, Beuys has drawn an arrow from Art to Economy and underneeth another arrow which runs counter to the first, representing mutual dependence.

Above this, he clarifies by writing „Art – Creativity = labour, work“. This explains Beuys’ concept of work. Work has its source in the potential of human creativity.

It becomes active in enterprises where nature is transformed into a consumable commodity.

A very essential point of view contained in this diagram is that the democratic central bank is depicted as the heart (middle/left).

Beuys links this with a new physiological perspective that has been established in Goethean science which sees the heart as a harmonizing organ and by no means, as a pump. The central bank is, therefore, not to be looked upon as a hierarchical organ that pumps money into the economy at it’s discretion, but as a regulating and harmonizing social organ.

The creation of money is determined by the initiative of people. Next to „enterprises“ (Unternehmungen, on the right), Beuys writes that the „abilities“ of people are credited. They are also called „production capital“, as written on the blackboard.

In this picture we can see both the production and consumption sides,

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marked by a horizontal line. „Documents for rights“ („Rechtsdokumente“) is written on the left under Central Bank. Money is not an economic value anymore, instead it has become an element of rights life. On the production side, Beuys lists the various forms of enterprises, characterized by geometric figures and below this „Nature“ in its manifold forms. People, by working together collectively in production, transform nature through their skills into consumer goods. The expression hired labor („Lohn-Arbeit“) is indicated by a bold „X“; this is the past. In today’s world it is „Separation of work and income“. One is activity in the economic realm and the other is in the legal rights sphere.

On the right hand side, at the bottom of the diagram, Beuys mentions the Czechoslovakian economist, Eugen „Loebl“ who was the President of the National Bank of Bratislava for some time (in 1968) and who, in his research said that today the entire production side has, developed into an integral system („Integrales System“).

Consumer goods manufactured by enterprises flow into the market (right/top „Schwelle“ or threshold under capital „M“= market). All the money which is given out to the enterprises within the domain of currency must be taken into consideration when calculating the prices („Preise“) of the product. At the threshold of the market, all produced goods are taken o the economic circuit and the money flows back to the enterprises. One has to now ensure that the money, as put by Beuys „without connection to any economic value“ (middle/ top), comes back to the democratic central bank system. Above the heart of the modern money circuit, Beuys has written the name of the Goethean scientist Wilhelm „Schmundt“ whom he reveres as „our great teacher“.

Section Work

Walter Kugler, director of Rudolf Steiner Archives, is offered appointment at Oxford

by Vera Koppehel In March of this year, Dr Walter Kugler, longtime director of the Rudolf Steiner Archives in Dornach, was appointed Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford Brookes University. A communication from the university states that his broad range of experience in the fields of science and art were pivotal to his nomination.

Following studies in music, philosophy, education and political science, and subsequent teaching at the University of Cologne and the Waldorf School in Kassel, Walter Kugel came to Dornach in 1982, where he first worked as a scientific scholar within the framework of Rudolf Steiner’s collected works, editing and processing lectures on social science and rendering Steiner’s life and work accessible through the publication of numerous subject-specific documentation-publications. At the same time, he was being published by acclaimed publishing houses (DuMont, Fischer), and in the ’90’s was actively involved in art exhibitions focusing on Steiner’s blackboard drawings, which brought him as a guest curator to Tokyo, Berkeley, Helsinki, Buenos Aires and many other places. At the same time he authored several contributions to exhibition catalogues, including articles on Belyj, Beuys, Federle, Steiner and Wittgenstein for, among others, the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen near Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Bunkler Sztuki Museum in Krakow, Moscow’s Belyj Museum and the National Gallery in Melbourne.

as oversee doctoral candidates and develop, accompany and document projects within the Social Sculpture Research Unit. – With characteristic intensity, he will continue his work with Rudolf Steiner Archives, albeit with a reduced workload. www.rudolf-steiner.com

At Oxford Brookes University, Walter Kugler will work with students of music and art on interdisciplinary creative strategies, as well

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Section Work

Gerald Häfner voted into the European Parliament

Congratulations to our friend Gerald Häfner of Munich on being voted into the European Parliament.

Following various legislative periods in the German Parliament, this is now a new development for him.

We are already looking forward to the reports that he will give in the Section on his work as a member of the European Parliament.

Hopefully this will be possible soon – alongside the strenuous meeting times in Brussels and Strasbourg.

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Event Review and Work Groups

The Challenges of Globalization

by Katharina Offenborn Short report on conference of March 13-15 in Rudolf Steiner House, Stuttgart In the middle of March a weekend conference took place in Stuttgart on the theme ‘Challenges of Globalization’, put on by the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum in Dornach and the Social Science Research Society, Inc. in Stuttgart.

Anthroposophical speakers such as Prof.

Götz Werner, Thomas Jorberg, Paul Mackay, Ulrich Rösch, Gerald Häfner, Dr. Dietrich Spitta and Dr. Christoph Strawe created for some 350 people a many-facetted picture of economic connections in an era of global financial crisis and global economic crisis.

The speakers were in agreement on one point: It’s time for a change of paradigm in the economy and for new consciousness that is open to solutions oriented toward the future. Competition, wage labor and antiquated structures which have thrown us into crisis worldwide need to be replaced by joint economic activity. This joint activity has to deal with the heretofore insufficiently recognized fact that the diverse economic interests of producers, merchants and consumers need to be balanced through contractual collaboration. We MUST come into conversation with each other; we must increasingly come together in economic alliances – in associations – and come to agreements in which no one is the loser.

Economic life of the future has to be built

on ‘fraternal’ cooperation and not on competition.

The times are over in which politicians and economic experts alone can decide how things should be. In the face of a crisis in which there is by far no telling what the consequences will be, co-shaping the social sculpture (Beuys) that we ARE is more relevant than ever. It is high time to actually BECOME the populace from which all public authority originates (German Constitution, article 20).

On the whole, the contributions offered a balanced mixture of thoughts directed to the future and approaches already in practice. What remains is a strong impulse „to come together in one movement“, as Gerald Häfner expressed this.

You will soon be able to find more on this in a collection of all of the lectures, soon to be published by Johannes M. Mayer Publishers, as well as in an essay by Dietrich Spitta, Cooperation Instead of Competition – Autonomy of the Economic Life as an Answer to the Global Economic Crisis in the March 2009 issue of Die Drei.

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Event Review and Work Groups

Germany: „Social Sculpture“ Study Days : Movement and Perception

by Edda Dietrich «When we get along we meet in the Rights Sphere» The Association for the Promotion of the General Arts and Social Plastic invited interested parties for the second time to the Study Days ‹Social Sculpture› in Achberg (Germany). 16 participants attended from10th to 13th January, 2008 and worked with social sculpture presented

by Ulrich Rösch – and on dance and rod fighting with Miriam Lenz.

Since October 2007 Ulrich Rösch of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum has been known as <guide> within the realm of social sculpture, leading participants deeper into the essence of social sculpture. The perception and realisation of social laws stood at the centre of this year’s work. Ulrich Rösch says: «When we get along we meet in the rights sphere» But how do we know that it is so?

How do I reach this conclusion? How do I know that I am not again being taken in by the ingenious net of an ideology?

Phenomenology instead of ideology is Rösch’s basic approach. An analysis of what is given, the laws, the creative force, recognising the essence of the appearance; this method of perception is what the social scientist attempts to bring to the participants as a tool with which self examination is possible.

«The crux of human dignity, the free development of the individual, is only possible within modern society, if a democratically shaped rights sphere and an economic life based on mutual cooperation can deliver the necessary conditions», says Rösch. To enable this ideal of being-in-theworld is the task of social art today.

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Tearing down old Patterns Miriam Lenz from Stuttgart (Germany) offered a continuation to the work on ‹theoretical› foundations. She introduced participants to the practical side of rod fighting and dance. But what does rod fighting have to do with social sculpture?

Lenz:«It is important to me that we dare to break down old patterns. With rod fighting I can practice this with unfamiliar movements » Rod fighting and dance became a form of non-verbal dialogue with the own self, but also with the self of the other. The first unfamiliar movements grew more familiar and new ‹dialogues› developed within the group leading to a cooperatively created sculpture.

Sociale Sculpture without a mention of the work of Joseph Beuys is hard to imagine and therefore the group travelled to Schaffhausen to the Halls for New Art where they studied the Beuys exhibit ‹Das Kapital. Raum 1970 – 1977›. Whilst some took in Rösch’s observations and comments, other explored the work in their own way.

This was virtually an impossible task within the short time available but it is a beginning to understand social art in its rudiments.

Small Aspects It was one of the ‹high arts› of this conference to recognise that the essence of social sculpture is more likely to be expressed in small aspects than in the whole.

In its changeability and its capaciousness it appears to be an ongoing process of learning and grasping. As in this case, the art is to learn to trust that the knowledge that we gradually develop and that we already carry within us the essence of becoming a new humanity is slowly unfolding.

Event Review and Work Groups

Germany: „Social Sculpture“ Study Days: Thinking the Developing Human Being

by Edda Dietrich The December 18–21 Study Days, held at Humboldt House in Achberg, focused on the question: Can we understand money anew, and use it differently? The fifteen participants from Germany and Austria heard this realm of consciousness discussed by the speakers (Ulrich Rösch, Christian Felber, and Rainer Rappmann).

Sensitized by the current financial crisis, the participants worked with Ulrich Rösch to seek a closer look at the reality of processes in the economic sphere, and to understand the laws inherent in a social activity founded on the dignity of the human being. In this respect, the meeting differed from one of those meetings where an attempt is made to salvage the „capital“ that remains. Here the question was: How would an economy have to be organized to serve the human being?

Referring to Wilhelm Schmundt, Ulrich Rösch developed the picture of a circulation of money that encourages freedom — a river feeding a living social organism where human beings can use their capacities to become creative and meet the needs of other human beings. In this image of a society with human dimensions, money is not a commodity but a legal document that regulates the relationship among individual rights and responsibilities within the community, laws that can always be reformulated through a democratic vote. That is the knowledge side. But: „Knowledge untempered by the senses can never produce a truth that is not harmful“ (Leonardo da Vinci).

Vigilance and Trust Christian Felber opened up a space for approaching this kind of knowledge. In a fluid movement from the theoretical to the artistic, his contact improvisations stimulated the sensory perceptions of the participants: Where am I? Where is my neighbor? Where are we joined? Every moment produced a nonverbal communication which gradually enabled the I (in orbit around itself) to find its way into a shared dance with its opposite number. These unfamiliar exercises in vigilance and trust soon brought a transition to the question: Do we still need money at all? How would it be to think of a world without money, one based on trust, vigilance, and sympathy?

It may be a dumb question, but certainly one permitted here since we are „on a quest for the dumbest“ (Joseph Beuys). This utopia soon appeared on the blackboard next to the picture of monetary circulation according to Schmundt — a careful drawing by Christian Felber. His sketch gave the participants quite a bit to think about and quickly brought us to the limit of capitalism’s untested assumptions. Without money? How would that work? How, then, will the productive labor of the one be balanced against that of another? Who would still work? There was a embarrassed silence; then creative ideas began to flow. Like a kind of mandala, the delicate blackboard drawing invited us to think of the developing human being; it quietly delineated a world based not on competition but on cooperation among all people in accord with the principle of humanity. www.fiu-verlag.com

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Event Review and Work Groups

On the Future of Human Dignity Research Colloquium

by Johanna Guhr, in collaboration with Simon Mugier of KunstRaumRhein Focus: Ethics The initiator of KunstRaumRhein [art in the Rhein region], Dorothée Deimann, together with her colleagues and the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum, as well as with the post-graduate studies program Interdisciplinary Conflict Research and Conflict Analysis, put on the sixth research colloquium, ‘On the Future of Human Dignity’ – this time on the theme of ethics, and for the first time at the University of Basel.

Klaus Leisinger of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development spoke about the opportunities and problems that arise within the frame of activity of a globalized conglomerate.

The presenter’s recognition that the society’s fundamental values are shared worldwide is not selfevident: „I believe that people everywhere in the world have similar values – a more judicious, less polluted world. But whoever wants to see change in the world has to live [those changes] himself.“ Problems for people and for the environment often arise more from systemic and human error than from cynical calculation. Moral blame contributes less today to solutions of problems. What is called for is coresponsible action.

Ted van Baarda, expert on international law,

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also referred to individual aspects. In the Department of Defense in the Netherlands, he trains policy makers of global, active armed forces. These armed forces often find themselves in a sheer intractable conflict between neutrality according to international law and being faced with demands for partisanship and allegiance.

Military commanders have to be prepared for situations that demand immediate action and are matters of life and death. What is important for this is the development of the moral capacity to judge in face of the facts at the same times as out of oneself. It often happens that people lose their ability for clear judgment due to strong emotions in exceptional circumstances.

Baarda referred to deciding and acting out of an overriding and simultaneously spiritual-individual sovereignty as – in military jargon – the „helicopter view“. This makes it possible, even in extreme situations, to retain overview, composure and dignity. This requires schooling of one’s ‘I-sensibilities’, which can become a firm foundation for action. Only when one’s own dignity is lost, said Baarda, is it possible to breach the dignity of another. This needs to be averted.

Paul Mackay, leader of the Section for Social Sciences and member of the Executive Council of the General Anthroposophical

Society at the Goetheanum referred to the question of the relationship of karma and reincarnation to freedom. He referred explicitly to a Swiss television broadcast of ‘Sternstunde Philosophie’ [Great Moments in Philosophy], in which Helmut Zander, author of the book Anthroposophy in Germany, said that the idea of freedom along with reincarnation and karma feels cynical.

Is freedom at all possible if we meet up in this life with consequences and encounters that are contingent on past lives? The answer: Reincarnation and karma are what makes freedom possible. Due to the fact that deeds have consequences, and these consequences later come to meet us again, it becomes possible for us to conduct ourselves in freedom vis-à-vis that which comes to meet us again, and for us to give a new direction to destiny in connection with other people. Through a new positioning there is the opportunity for transformation. „Knowing that I am confronted with my last life on earth is what makes me capable of development. That gives me the opportunity to become a human being, to develop human dignity, to develop freedom.“ Reinhard Erös, former physician and officer in the German Armed Forces, reported on his experiences in Afghanistan, where he has lived with his family for quite some time. Of his own initiative he and his family have built up 25 schools, and is undoubtedly one of the foremost connoisseurs of the socio-political conditions in Afghanistan.

His lecture was, as he announced already at the beginning, a „mixture of reporting on experience and scolding politicians.“ The realization for the listener was that in the media and therefore also in our undiscerning

heads – and for politicians as well – a lot of prejudice and false assumptions exist.

Erös remarked that not one single Afghan is being sought either nationally or internationally because of Islamist terrorism or suspicion of terrorism, and yet since 2001 there is a war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

The problem of the radical Taliban does exist, but is not to be confused with the international terrorism of Al-Qaeda. In spite of this, the war in the Hindu Kush is leading to political radicalization. The Taliban is organizing itself with a lot of energy. There is also the current situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

According to Erös, the best measures against the spreading of a radical Islam is to build schools. The solution is to be found in the next generation. Children are the country’s future policymakers, and the decisive question is whether they will grow up in the radical Koran schools or in schools that convey other values.

The greatest threat for Afghans themselves is not primarily the war, but poverty: „The main problem for most Afghans is: How do I not starve?“ Thus the motto for ‘Kinderhilfe Afghanistan’ [Aid to Children in Afghanistan] is „bread and education, not fatalism and fundamentalism.“ Donations, contact or further information on ‘Kinderhilfe Afghanistan’ can go via KunstRaumRhein.

Common to all of the speakers was that they referred to the ethical capacities of the individual, which are not accessible just like that, but have to be fought for through individual effort. For this, comprehensive approaches are unavoidable, which also incorporate deeper aspects of the whole complex of problems.

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Dialogue is possible when there is a foundation of intelligence and willingness to recognize humanity as rooted in spirituality, when the Western world is prepared to enter into a connection with Islam, and when Islam comes to know and accept the foundations of Christianity. This holds true for within the country as well. Moderator Dorothée Deimann said: „In addition to the increasingly positive knowledge of the intellectual world – that serves mainly our heads – we have to muster the courage to consciously turn again toward spiritual forces.“ The lectures can be found at www.kunstraumrhein.com. A DVD of all of the presentations will be available soon (information also on the website). Information on Afghanistan: www.kinderhilfeafghanistan.de

Event Review and Work Groups

Familiy as Workplace

by Sibylle Engstrom Continuing Education Days for Parents of Children in the First Seven-Year Period October 17-18, 2008 Taking seriously the family as a workplace means, among other things, basic and advanced training for this task for oneself, as a parent. Franziska Schmidt-von Nell, one of the organizers of the conference, spoke at the beginning about the fact that in every profession there are standards for competence in the workplace as well as continuing education offerings that ensure and develop this competence. For mothers, however, the range of such options in many places is restricted to catching up on education rather than continuing it. For this reason, her humorous and yet also serious call is for „progression, not regression“ in parent education. This blend of earnestness

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and easiness also mirrors the atmosphere of the continuing education days as a whole: There was intensive and serious work together in groups, there were very interesting lectures, as well as space for open conversation and relaxed interchange.

Some 200 people – mainly parents, but also educators – had made their way here, many with kit and caboodle. The fact that many participants came with their families, and that there was a variety of childcare offered for children of different age-groups, shows that this was about practical life and not theory removed from day-to-day family life.

The workshop offerings linked up concretely with issues of everyday life. These included nurturing the parents’ partnership, running a household and shaping the living space, experiencing one’s own limitations in the daily task of raising children, configuring how one lives with the course of the year and its seasons, fostering religion, and

learning children’s songs and finger games.

In the morning practice sessions various ways were shown for how parents can tap into inner resources in everyday life and consciously take hold of daily family life as a place for personal development.

Each day was introduced by a lecture, all three of which offered a deepening as well as informative, thought-provoking impulses for daily life. Cristina and Christoph Meinecke of Havelhöhe Family Forum described in a living way the changing situation and challenges that a couple has to master from initially getting to know each other, to partnership, to shared parenthood. They made us aware that the quality of the parents’ relationship as a couple is the foundation for the family and for the well-being of the child. When children sense that the parents are doing well, they too can thrive. Caring for the partnership and careful handling of a crisis or separation is therefore not a luxury but is of fundamental importance for everyone involved, especially for the children.

Linda Thomas, who has made a name for herself through numerous seminars and lectures, brought home to the audience the everyday theme that probably enjoys the least esteem: cleaning and creating order at home. She made it clear that this is about much more than we are usually aware of. It is about caring for the family’s living environment and, for this reason, consciously shaping and maintaining this space in such a way that it is a place where everyone can feel comfortable and at ease, do their activities, and rest, relax and revive.

The self-education that this requires, said Thomas, is a help to one’s own development and has a deeply pedagogical and healing effect on children.

Monika Kiel-Hinrichsen held the closing lecture on the theme „When Children Don’t Listen – Paths of Education and SelfEducation.“ She drew awareness to the fact that behind the not-listening there is usually a concealed conflict concerning the relationship between the parents and the child. The adult’s behavior toward the child is – in spite of loving attention – often not taken hold of, is inconsistent and marked by excessive demands. Children need parents to be an authentic ‘other’, communicating security and love on the one hand, but also clarity and orientation on the other. The other aspect to which M. Kiel-Hinrichsen drew attention was how pivotal it is that children be able to develop all of their senses in a healthy way. This is the foundation for their becoming self-aware and social beings. She described what an upbringing that takes this into account can look like in everyday life.

At the close of the continuing education days, there was a palpable wish for a continuation of this type of parent seminar, and that a forum come about where parents can find information on regional initiatives for ongoing education and for interchange among parents. The organizers are indeed already planning further events, and a forum of this kind is already in preparation.

Further information can be found at www.spielundzukunft.de www.familienkultur.ch

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Event Review and Work Groups

Cultivating Family Life

by Anneka Lohn Brief report on the conference.

On Warmth and on Life after Death (with 16th Class lesson)

sequences, the forces of attentiveness that can be mobilized if, at the same time, there is openness to receiving – „awaken – create – entreat/invite“.

Childhood: a kind of „heavenly echo“; family: a „school for social community“.

Seeing family in this way means including other dimensions – dimensions that extend beyond – or even change – the daily, sometimes tiring, run of things. What is needed is quality in encounters: feeling as though one were the other person, living into the other, understanding through the other.

Brief sketches of ideas from Paul Mackay, Urs Pohlman and Franziska Schmidt von Nell demonstrated, in very different ways, areas of experience in which the after-death world unfolds its relationship to here and now. Just as sleep can be seen as the little brother of death, so can one’s awareness – when directed toward waking and sleeping – allow one to sense was it means to exist in ‘the air [atmosphere] of the threshold’.

This can be practiced, and one can fail at it.

Is one not closest to oneself? Really entering into what is ‘other’ requires a capacity of seeing conditions from the periphery and of discerning experiences.

If one extends one’s considerations to the question of how after-death perspectives are sounded in life here and now, this can be illumined by biographical studies, for example.

Perspectives and experiential dimensions in regard to these issues are sounded in the substance of the 16th Class lesson. Paul Mackay gave a free rendering of this lesson on Friday evening.

Andreas Worel presented in-depth considerations on warmth. Warmth always has something to do with one’s own state of being and that of the surrounding: warmth in us and around us as a dimension that grants earthly-cosmic life; warmth as enthusiasm, as a ‘burning’ for what is ‘other’; warmth as a source of one’s very own, deepest morality, from the inside out; warmth as an all-pervading force.

Doing eurythmy together with Gioia Falk allowed us to experience, in calm practice-

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It is also clear that giving up habits of thinking, feeling and will can accompany the process of „conscious dying“. Consciously forming one’s soul forces makes it possible to come to responsibility for oneself out of the periphery.

This attitude, as was shown in the ensuing conversation, is the foundation for openness toward the children and toward everything – an openness that needs to be achieved anew every day.

The next gathering within the context of the School for Spiritual Science on the theme of cultivating the family will take place on January 22-23, 2010. It will be based on the 17th Class lesson.

Event Review and Work Groups

What is between you and me?

by Reinald and Rotraut Eichholz Conference Impressions Whoever brings to mind the wedding feast at Cana will recall that this title expresses an archetypal image of encounter. This is what the conference of the Section for Social Sciences from November 21 to 23, 2008 in Dornach was about. The subtitle, ‘Rights-Sensibility and Ability to Handle Conflict’ conveys, however, that we are able to approach this archetypal image only in a concerted effort. The trade-off for our growing self-reliance in the age of the consciousness soul is that we live a life of differences. This gives its stamp to judicial practice as well as to the workaday life of conflict counseling. What specialists of both kinds work with is something known to everyone in everyday life, be it in partnership, family, school and other institutions, right up to the enormous conflicts in world events. It is obvious in such situations that capacities for dealing with conflict need to be developed – but how? And why is there also the need for a sensibility for rights? These questions engaged the nearly 60 conference participants in in-depth considerations.

In the context of the overall theme, we attempted to have the direct, interpersonal encounter-quality of the conference objectives become the determining element. For this reason, there was an open conversation at the beginning, rather than a lecture. Peter Lüdemann-Ravit spoke out of his experience with conflict resolution, Reinald Eichholz out of many years of

working toward a broadened understanding of the rights sphere through anthroposophy.

Lüdemann-Ravit made it clear that people who are in the midst of a conflict are not brought one step forward by abstract ideas about how things are supposed to be. Only when a person feels recognized and taken seriously in his/her needs and feelings, does the opportunity open up for a common solution. When we feel attacked, we are not in a position to have an eye-to-eye conversation if there is not a process of ‘de-angsting’.

From the rights-perspective, Reinald Eichholz described that this kind of starting point for conflict resolution is deeply connected with a sensibility for the area of rights, even if this is hardly conscious to begin with. In taking the other person seriously, one expresses a feeling of respect. This rights-sensibility is indispensable if interpersonal issues are to succeed. In order to bring this to realization, this rights-sensing can’t be glued to sections and articles, but needs to reveal that the source for readiness for reciprocal recognition is found within oneself. The judicial realm is akin to the human being.

With its rules and regulations it reacts to the dark side of the human being – and therefore requires sections and articles.

But in a much more primordial sense, it is that which the human being, the ‘inner lawmaker’, configures out of the wholeness of his forces, in freedom and with sensitivity to the rights-realm.

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With the engagement of the circle of participants, facilitated by Lilla BorosGmelin as moderator, the dialogue was soon multifariously deepened and enriched.

‘Disempowering’, among other things, was placed alongside the perspective of ‘deangsting’ as a necessary renunciation of ‘power-posturing’. Adding to the discussion of the sense for what is right, it was said that we can find support in an inner authority within ourselves that directs this rightssensing. Yet doubt arose as well: Doesn’t this put into question its very foundations, due to the subjective nature of our feeling life, cultural relativity and changes in how one thinks about rights?

Despite (or because of) the questions that remained open, everyone felt that this kind of conference beginning made it possible to enter into the theme, and to awaken vibrancy and activity. The many facets of the theme engendered curiosity about the following ‘day of conversations’. The morning was fed by the experiences of the conflict colloquium worked on in the Section. Raymond di Ronco depicted a „fictitious, true case’ in the life of a Waldorf school. Five discussion groups on the theme were soon formed. Spontaneous roleplaying facilitated living into the situation of those involved in the conflict. All of the groups sought possibilities for how this tightening and tension – characteristic of such conflict situations – can be resolved.

This requires not only conflict management to deal with the actual predicament, but also the cultivation of ongoing, patient conversation, for which the disposition has to be there already long before concrete problems turn up. And this is lacking most of all.

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How a sense of what is right can be developed in these situations was then the theme in the afternoon. The members of the Jura-Nova-Initiative, founded by Johannes Wessel, introduced ten different conversation/practice groups. They had gathered ‘material’ in the past 12 years through deepening their work on rights and anthroposophy. The fact that the ‘rights sense’ was singled out for this conference from a plethora of themes resulted from the striving to discover, together with people other than legal experts, the universal nature of rights. To this end, there was quite an unorthodox selection of themes for the work groups: active rights-life; eurythmy to experience ‘the middle’; ‘juri-genesis’; a meditation on context as an aid in viewing the interpersonal; conversation on Goethe’s fairy tale and on the baptism in the Jordan; and mediation as a path from conflict event to rights-deed.

To close the conference, Paul Mackay shared that we can find that which is at work in ‘rights-sensing’ as the „soul within the soul“. This is what makes it possible for us to place ourselves face to face with our own feelings and to open ourselves in empathy to another person: a path of practice for which the supplementary exercises can be fruitful in schooling ‘rights-sensibilities’.

Thus from this perspective as well it could be seen that the schooling of these capacities, as a task that conflict requires, is deeply connected with the path of development of the individual, and that it is out of an anthroposophical perspective that we can overcome the inner distance that we usually feel towards rights matters.

Event Review and Work Groups

Colloquium on Conflict Research

by Peter Gutland On April 24th and 25th, 2009 the Conflict Research Colloquium met for the 25th time since its first meeting in September, 1996 – this time at Hofgut Hohenkarpfen near Villingen-Schwenningen in Baden Württemberg.

and conflict management.

After welcoming three new members to the circle, we reviewed the last conference on the theme ‘What is Between You and Me? – Conflict Competence and RightsSensibility’ from November 21-23, 2008.

For the first time, the conference was organized in collaboration with the juristic study group ‘Jura Nova’, under the umbrella of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum. The event was positively received, both in regard to its content as well as the number of attendees. A circle

On Friday afternoon Peter Gutland of Wuppertal presented the results of his research on the theme ‘The Working of the Zodiac and its Significance for Community Building’. These results are briefly summarized below (a more encompassing version is in preparation).

In the age of the development of the consciousness soul, and in view of the ‘basic social law’, it is doubtful whether this formative process can be expected to take its course automatically. It cannot be presumed that new members joining a community will fit in and be assimilated smoothly. Community building today must take place in an increasingly conscious and active dialogue between the community and the individual. When working on the foundation of anthroposophy, the goal needs to be to form a spiritual organism.

Not only are a number of people working together in an institution on its goals and tasks, but the community must be actively striven for and further developed from both sides. (Twelve senses, colors, tones, consonants, the human form, etc.) In this context there are some influences of particular significance.

The point of departure was a presentation of the significance of community building for the evolution of human development (preparing the sixth cultural epoch), for the spiritual world and for the hierarchical beings. Beyond this, community building is of pivotal importance for conflict research

The twelve world views characterize just how diverse people’s possibilities can be to recognize the spiritual world and strive to understand it. These indications can help to recognize the capacities of new colleagues or members of a community to connect to, and understand, the substance

of eight people is to prepare a subsequent conference.

The approach involves understanding community building as a process toward spiritual community, and of finding 12 qualities, originating in the working of the zodiac, which converge in an ideal.

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of anthroposophy. (For example: the materialist who denies the spiritual world, in contrast to the spiritualist, who, taken to the extreme, is in danger of denying

be able to shape this process ever more consciously and purposefully. Preliminary results of this were presented, and will be worked on further.

material life.) It has been the situation for a while already that not everyone in anthroposophical institutions is familiar with the substance of anthroposophy and finds a connection to it. Being exposed to anthroposophical subject matter doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t guarantee that it is understood. Do all of our colleagues really understand us when we speak about anthroposophy? What do they understand? (And what have we understood?) New questions, especially from young people, as well as sometimes great intensity and a high level of readiness to engage are coming toward us. Hiring interviews could really change, were one to take these aspects into account.

The afternoon was framed by doing eurythmy together under the guidance of Lilla Boros-Gmelin. Friday closed with an impressively intensive free rendering of a Class lesson by Hans Dackweiler.

The virtues can provide an individual with impetus for self-knowledge and self-education. These ethical-moral values modify the capacities that an individual brings into the community. Further knowledge is possible from the zodiac gestures that Steiner gave for eurythmy; they depict the entire human being. These more individual aspects of the world views, the virtues and the zodiac gestures also need to find their counterparts in the community.

The individual awaits something from the community and would like to find this there. The Twelve Moods have particular significance for this theme. They hold many more secrets and indications for community building.

The intention of this work is to find qualities for the above-mentioned dialogue between individual and community, in order to

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On Saturday morning there was conversation on the possibilities of applying to daily life what had been presented on the zodiac. It was decided to continue working with this theme. This was followed by conversation regarding the circle of those participating in the research colloquium, and the varying continuity. Since a certain level of quality of the work, as well as both membership in the Class of the School of Spiritual Science and oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own active work on the theme are all regarded as being closely connected with the continuity of the core group, all those who have taken part until now will be contacted.

Those unable to assure continuity will in future no longer receive the invitations.

Michael Rein then presented a youth project with the high school of the Waldorf school in Reutlingen, and invited collaboration.

In closing, the dates for the next meetings were set. These are: October 23/24, 2009; April 16/17, 2010; October 29/30, 2010.

Event Review and Work Groups

Warmth in Organizational Enterprise

by Christine Blanke How can coworkers’ strength of initiative be furthered and how can an angst-free and yet engaged work climate come about? For Christine Blanke, Wolfgang Held and Paul Mackay, questions and impulses discussed during the preparatory phase of the conference became the starting point for cultivating interest in the conference theme.

This first interdisciplinary economic forum at the Goetheanum, from September 11 to 12, 2008, drew some 80 people active in the economic and cultural sectors for discourse on cultivating the ways of organizational enterprise in our time, within the framework of the conference theme, ‘Warmth in the Workplace’. „Warmth and light are two main elements of world evolution. They are always present in matters concerning growth and change. In the workplace, too, they are indispensable.

The element of light comes to expression in setting objectives, for example, or in the overall concept or mission statement.

An enterprise needs this element in order to provide itself with clarity in regard to its core competence. The warmth-element, in my view, attracts too little interest as an integrative component of an enterprise’s leadership,“ said Paul Mackay, who opened the conference.

Randolf Jessl, editor in chief of Personalmagazin [a professional journal for management and rights in the area of personnel management] held the first lecture, which included an appraisal of the

current economic situation: Being cold is taken as an indication of objectivity and striving for success. So it is no wonder that coldness is commonly used as a main metaphor for modernity, and that it is generally presumed that one cannot afford to be warmhearted in economic matters. Yet it is long since clear: Things don’t work without trust and enthusiasm among colleagues. The business workplace as a cozy place? It is clear that a business enterprise is spanned in a field of energies, in which it needs to find its balance between extremes of warmth and cold.

Professor J. Menno Harms, chairman of the board of Hewlett Packard in Germany

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reports that founder Bill Packard gave him the following advice for his managerial task: „Take good care of your people and be creative.“ Caring concern for employees and living one’s values have become for him a motto-in-action.

For the Duschl engineering firm, the question is how the freedom of the individual professional can be brought to realization alongside the demand for performance.

Taking the example of a firm’s adoption of its mission statement, it becomes clear how the enthusiasm of the employer affects the other colleagues. Working together with a musician has shown how fruitful the exchange between art and business can be.

Florian Theilmann, physicist at the University of Leipzig and former coworker of the Natural Science Section, enriches the forum from the perspective of natural science: „Allowing warmth free range gives rise to a world that is uniformly warm and, ultimately, to heat death. Vitality needs both: warmth and cold.“ And Michaela Glöckler, leader of the Medical Section, adds: „If it doesn’t work to engage individually with differences of temperature, of opinion and of attitude, when management clings to regulations, this amounts to illness for an enterprise.“ Another highlight is the lecture by Michael J. Kolodziej, a member of the management team for ‘dm-drogerie markt’ [a German drugstore chain]. Based on examples from dm’s business culture, his vote is: „Leadership’s role is to bring the individual’s motivation into the enterprise. There’s nothing more difficult than enabling, and nothing is easier than preventing.“ The headquarter of the GLS community bank is a clear example of how the culture

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of an enterprise can be mirrored in its architecture, as was presented by Thomas Jorberg (CEO of GLS) and Lothar Bracht, the architect responsible for the project. Last but not least, Torsten Blanke, theatre director of the Goetheanum Stage, presented the ‘Rose of Temperaments’ [based on Goethe’s color theory]: using masks, he showed in a humorous way the role played by one’s own temperament in working with other people.

In the closing plenum of all of the presenters, moderated by Paul Mackay, the day and a half of concentrated content gelled to perspectives on the developmental potential of each individual, right up to the societal conditions necessary to administer and guide an enterprise in a manner befitting our time. Participants’ unanimous feedback: The forum must continue. A particular wish: More time for conversations and exchange, as well as more participant involvement. On September 10th and 11th, 2009, the forum goes into its second round with the theme ‘Tempo in the Workplace’, in the hope of further developing the form and the content of this conference and of again addressing a circle of people involved in economic and cultural endeavors – with enough time and space for exchange, initiative and professional discussion. The detailed program is to find at www.goetheanum.org.

Event Review and Work Groups

Lecture Series on Financial Crisis

by Cornelia Rösch In Basel’s „unternehmen mitte“, (an Anthroposophical Center with a Coffee Shop, Theatre, Lecture Halls, offices, an alternative Bank and a Restaurant) a lecture series on ‘Financial Crisis – an Opportunity to Rethink’ began in November 2008.

Nowhere else are our societal shortcomings revealed as clearly, former German President Roman Herzog put it drastically: „The financial markets have become a monster.“ Sociology professor Ueli Mäder of Basel University opened the series and spoke of our „poor, rich world of finance“. He gave a lot of touching examples of poorness in the rich Swiss country. Social scientist Ulrich Rösch from the Goetheanum spoke about ‘Global finance problems – what does this matter to me?’ Starting with the actual crisis he gave a perspective for a future human economy in a globalized world. Paul Mackay, leader of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum and board president of the GLS Bank in Bochum spoke on ‘Financial Crisis – where is this going?’ and gave a lot of deep insights in the current money system. Bankers Felix Staub and Markus Jermann of the Anthroposophical Community Bank in Basel on the reasons for the financial crisis and ‘Finding another way of working with money!’. They made it clear, that it is up to everyone to change the present situation. At least in Central Europe there are many opportunities to change the social world. The first step is to think about

new concepts but then you have to walk your talk.

Otmar Donnenberg, entrepreneurial consultant and activist for ‘Regiogeld’ (new money for the region), then gave a lecture on ‘Monetary Reform Nears – How I as a Citizen Can Collaborate’. In Europe many regional groups just started with their own money circulation to practice a new acquaintance with money. They call it after the region where they live: „Dreiecker“ (money of the three countries Switzerland, France and Germany), „Chiemgauer“ (money of the southeast Bavarian region) or „Wiesentaler“ (money of the valley of the river Wiese). Many citizens already use this money and many shops, farmers and small producers accept it as payment for their products and services.

Contributions from the lecturers were brief, allowing ample time for active conversation.

The numerous participants expressed the wish for a sequel lecture series next year, which this year’s organizers, Michel Moser and Cornelia Rösch, would be glad to arrange. Conversation is to focus on current social issues and giving visions based on deeper insights in our social life.

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Section Work in Various Countries

Egypt SEKEM – A Social Art – Bridge Between East and West

by Elisabeth Bessau From March 7 to 9, 2008 a conference of the Section for Social Sciences took place at the Goetheanum under the title ‘SEKEM – A Social Art’, with SEKEM founder Ibrahim Abouleish. The conference was framed by eurythmy and music, as well as by an exhibition of paintings and photographs by the architect Winfried Reindl. Participants were enthusiastic to hear Abouleish on the opening evening: Connecting something to the spiritual world means bringing it alive.

To begin with, SEKEM was an idea that came to Abouleish as he was getting to know Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science.

He made the decision to bring the idea of social threefolding down onto the earth in a form suitable for Egypt. For people in Egypt, deeds are more convincing than words.

The actions of many Egyptians follow the example of a leader.

Thus it belongs to Abouleish’s greatest successes that the enormous amounts of pesticides that used to come down on Egypt from helicopters by order of the state were reduced by 95 percent. Another of his remarkable accomplishments is the beginning of school education for children who have to earn money starting at approximately eight years of age. They work throughout the country in the fields

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or in the manufacture of rugs. They received from Abouleish the same wage for a half day’s work as for a full day elsewhere, plus a warm, wholesome meal, medical care, and, during the other half of the day, free schooling. If they remain until the age of 14, they can then complete an apprenticeship at SEKEM. This provides them with a real opportunity to overcome uncertainty and poverty.

Abouleish knows that it will be a long time until the seeds he has planted will improve people’s situation throughout Egypt. In this vein, he said: Maybe we will manage to transform the entire country in 200 years – that’s seven generations. What’s important

is to have a true image of the human being and to love people. In this SEKEM needs interchange with Europe. – Education from kindergarten up to the university level is one of SEKEM’s goals. Ten to fifteen percent of each coworker’s work time is dedicated to education.

Physician Hans Werner described how unerringly Abouleish has pursued his destiny since the age of 18. He knew that he had to go to the German-speaking countries – the land of the language of Goethe. In Graz, Austria, following a lecture on Egypt, he met an anthroposophist. As he then began to bring his vision to realization, there were people from Europe who gave their entire existence for SEKEM. People who were linked to him by destiny found their way to him. After seven years, there was an advisor from Europe for each of the areas of medicine, agriculture and education.

Abouleish has created a bridge between East and West.

Schaette. Ulrich Walter of Lebensbaum [Tree of Life], Ltd., described over 20 years’ collaboration between his firm and SEKEM. – The contributions of Ulrich Rösch, coworker of the Section for Social Sciences, and of Paul Mackay, leader of the Section, touched upon basic interconnections within the threefold social organism.

Representatives of Friends of SEKEM spoke during the closing plenum, and Abouleish asked who would like to work together on SEKEM University, which is about to be founded. (from Erziehungskunst [Art of Education], May 2008)

Götz Rehn, from Alnatura Ltd., focused on economics as an art. In SEKEM, the entire space has been created with an esthetic sense. The desert has been transformed. Art lifts nature and the human being beyond themselves. SEKEM can be an example for us as well.

Much of the harmony in SEKEM’s buildings is thanks to architect Winfried Reindl. How things take shape socially can be influenced by architecture. Reindl showed how form can become dynamic through simple means.

In the presentation by Volkert Engelsman of Eosta, Holland, the consumer was the focal point, as was the idea of metamorphosis in regard to plants for pharmacist Roland

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Section Work in Various Countries

Brazil Monte Azul: Workshop for Humanity

by Peter Guttenhöfer Workshop for Humanity On October 3–5, over 300 participants experienced and discussed the connection implied in „Social Sculpture — Monte Azul.“ The conference took its start from Hermann Pohlmann’s experience of the Monte Azul Favela Community Association as social sculpture. Its founder, Ute Craemer, also took an active part in the conference.

It was quite a festival! At the end, when we all said goodbye, every eye was damp.

And it happened in this way: many years ago, when Hermann Pohlmann visited São Paulo’s Monte Azul favela for the first time, he had the impression: „Here everything Joseph Beuys placed in our hearts as an idea as become a reality! Monte Azul is a social sculpture.“ That led to the conference.

The conference was meant to bring Beuys’ idea together with a working social sculpture. Activists could understand their work in a new and perhaps deeper way; the thinkers, however, could test their idea by perceiving something in real life and finding out if it had living content or was simply a dream.

The Power of St. Michael Were these aspects brought together? In his

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closing lecture, Johannes Stüttgen sought to find an answer as he struggled for words. He had arrived with a finished lecture but now, after his experience of Ute Craemer and her Monte Azul troupe, he simply did not know what to say. It was as though he had been holding lectures about architecture for 30 years and now he suddenly stood before the pyramids! Stüttgen’s lecture then took a nice turn: „Monte Azul is perhaps the being of humanity as it strives to be born.“ The high point was the dramatic portrayal of Monte Azul’s 30 years: it was the story of a young man who prepares to incarnate into the darkness of earth in order to bring light. He is accompanied by the hand of the archangel Michael. But now, in the slums of São Paulo, he is in danger of forgetting his promise to the archangel. He begins to despair and becomes entangled in much that is dark. The cardboard boxes that serve as slum dwellings are thrown into sudden chaos when they are swept by evil, and almost everything is destroyed. But the startled actors quickly rebuilt their huts and formed the Assosiação Comunitária anew, giving it an inward order. Hunger, murder, prostitution, and drug traffic were again suppressed through the power of St. Michael.

Driven by a Thought Susanne Rotermund, a coworker at Monte Azul, had introduced the theme with a creation myth told by the Brazilian Guarani Indians. It ended in this way: „One day the aged Titari, an old wise man, dreamt about how this age of crisis might end. In his dream, he traced the route taken by the tribe across the great water. There they had split into various groups and populated parts of the earth. These were the black, yellow, and white races. Then — in his dream — he saw how the people of these three races returned to the race that had remained behind, the red race. Initially, great confusion arose when the four races met, but after the wheel of time had turned it was possible for the seed of a new people to appear, the golden people.“ Whether Monte Azul is really a social sculpture never became clear, probably because this concept is still unborn. Did this unique conference help the concept progress toward its birth? We were able to see how an idea is at work in driving the activities of all the favela’s coworkers.

What they radiated is nourished by the fact that this idea is being thought. The archangel, too, must be thought; the concept of an archangel is needed. Where and how can we find it? Can we strengthen it contemplatively so that it begins to radiate warmth and courage? And this difficult concept of social sculpture! In the seething city of São Paulo, the slums! There?

worked in that way. She had discussed the idea of social sculpture with her coworkers for months before this conference. The intent was to bring about a union of willing and thinking, and intensify it into a power to act that will continue to flow when the pioneers are gone. Her teachers are Friedrich Schiller, Rudolf Steiner, and Joseph Beuys.

A Toy for Kosovo It is hard to tell whether the conference itself had social-sculptural qualities as a communal event. A drive for form and a drive for sensuality mingled in a way that was truly Brazilian. It was wonderful! There is still a need to gather what was done in the various working groups. But one thing could be gained immediately: a toy produced by one of the groups was given to Beatrice Rutishauser’s initiative to help refugee children in Kosovo. In addition, Monte Azul International was founded to support the work there.

One thought served as a leitmotif during the closing plenum: „Hearing what the other really means“ is required for a culture of peace. We felt a painful lack of this in ourselves during the conference. Finally, Ute Craemer said that the conference had not closed, but had opened — like a hyperbola — to the future.

Contact: Monte Azul International, Edda Riedel, edda@monteazul.org.br

A social-artistic work like Monte Azul can flourish only if its feet are firmly planted on the ground of knowledge. Ute Craemer has kept her eye unerringly on the star of anthroposophy from the beginning, and has

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Section Work in Various Countries

India Sadhana Village

by Ulrich Rösch Social Awareness Near Pune lies the curative pedagogical institution Sadhana Village. It was established 15 years ago by V. N. Deshpande with the help of the CamphillCommunity Copake (US). Besides its curative pedagogical tasks, the community of Sadhana Village is also concerned with improving social conditions in the neighbourhood.

Sadhana Village lies in a beautiful valley around 35 kilometres north-easterly of Pune. Although the institution is fairly remote, surrounded by native villages, it has placement students not only through its link to the American Camphill-institutions, but many from Europe who have come via the „Friends of the Waldorf School Movement“.

The community is housed in three different buildings. Besides the curative pedagogical work, children come to Sadhana Village by bus to enable them to be educated in“Vacation Schools“. Many of the children refuse to attend state schools. During my visit I noticed from the way all residents happily and enthusiastically joined in the eurythmy with Aban and Dilnawaz Bana, that this was not the first time they had worked there. It was pleasing to observe how those being looked after helped each

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other. Everyone joined in. The residents, coworkers and friends.

New Social Structures After eurythmy I spoke to the placement students,many of whom are ex Waldorf pupils, about the social impulse on which an institution like this is based. This is a subject not much touched upon in their schools. All the more animated was the conversation which followed my outline. It might well have filled the whole evening if one of the groups would not have to had to start their 36 hour journey to Kolkata, where a collective meeting of all students in India was to take place by invitation of the „Friends“.

Next day we drove to the neighbouring villages. The social structures there are starting to break up. What once had a stabilising effect is now a shambles. Once the community had become aware of this following a lecture, it started on projects with the villagers. The construction of irrigation plants, toilets and rudiments of sewage disposal. In particular the women formed self-help groups developing economic aid and a consciousness for clean drinking water. In addition the women are being helped to fend off domestic violence and to become entrepreneurial thanks to small credits.

Desire for a Waldorf School in the Village The next day the founder of Sadhana Village came to talk to us about the possibility of establishing a Waldorf School for the village children. It would have the format of an English Middle School able to work fairly freely up to class 8.

The problem, as everywhere else, is to find suitable teachers for such a school.

Aban Bana confirmed her help and recommended that all those interested should come to her teacher training course,which takes place every May, in the nearby Kandhala. It was impressive to experience with what social insight the septuagenarian V. N. Deshpande planned the first steps for their own school.

Section Work in Various Countries

India Update on the Demeter-Movement

by Ulrich Rรถsch Viewing the Whole Ulrich Rรถsch of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum travelled to the annual meeting of the Bio-dynamic Association of India (BDAI) in Bangalore on the 10th January 2009. The theme was the relationship to the worldwide movement.

Our journey to the South of India led through Kerala, where a number of farmers are growing coffee, tea, spices and fruit bio-dynamically. It passed through the Kardamom-mountains, the West Ghats of

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the Kurinji-Farm close to Madurai, where especially mangos and pears are cultivated and processed. Many of the Demeter juices marketed in Europe contain KurinjiMangos. Kerala in India means „God’s own land“. Seeing the fertility of this country and the friendly people, one may believe that this is correct. But it is not just paradise.

Deforestation makes room for monocultures of tea, coffee and rubber. Despite much effort – Kerala has the lowest number of illiterates; the population has grown too fast and with it the destructive traffic.

Despite Much Success Isolation is a Danger With the BDAI president, Jakes Jayakaran, we drove from Kurinji-Farm to Bangalore.

Here the annual meeting of the BDAI took place. The bio-dynamic movement, however successful it may be in India, must not see itself as isolated from other anthroposophical activities, said Ulrich Rösch from the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum. Umesh Chandrasekar, Director of the Institute for market ecology in India, too, pointed to the fact that despite much successful work during the past years but due to the heavy workload of individual initiatives, a view of the whole has been lost somewhat. Carolin Hedman of the Initiative Sophia, Järna (SE), re-iterated the importance of worldwide networking. She accompanies young people who are being sent from Sweden to India where they mainly help in rural initiatives, for example in Sevapur.

As part of a larger social and pedagogical project there is also a bio-dynamic farm.

Nirmala Diaz of the Sloka-Waldorf School

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in Hyderabad gave an overview of the work in Waldorf Schools in India. Some of the agricultural initiatives asked for a Waldorf School. Biodynamic training in India was the subject of David Hogg, the BDAI secretary. In Central India mainly women converted the agriculture of a whole village to bio-dynamic.

Hogg reported from the growing MaikaalProject and from the agricultural college led

by Rithu Baruah. He thanked Peter Proctor who has been running bio-dynamic training courses in India for many years and who is revered as teacher ‹par excellence›. Now he had to return to New Zealand for health reasons. Jakes Jayakaran reported on his work in China, where he has met great interest and runs a number of courses. There, they put more emphasis on bio-dynamic agriculture as a method and technique; the ideological motif has to be put aside.

Section Work in Various Countries

India Gateway- Branch in Mumbai

by Ulrich Rösch Social Significance During Christmas 2008 Ulrich Rösch from the Goetheanum visited the GatewayBranch in Mumbai.This is a short impression of the mood found there.

It is really quite strange for a Middle European to fly into Mumbai in the early hours of Christmas morning and to experience 26 degrees Celsius into the middle of the night. Despite the attacks, that took place in Mumbai less than four weeks ago, there is hustle and bustle everywhere. On Boxing Day I met with some of the members of the GatewayBranch of the Anthroposophical Society at the Bana’s house in the centre of Mumbai.

This is where, in the centre of the city, near the noisy Grant Road, the branch members have their meetings. In this modest flat, surrounded by Muslim families, live Aban and her sister Dilnawaz together with their 98 year old father, who still studies daily and writes short poems. In the room I immediately notice the („Ostheim“) crib with the shepherds, kings, Maria and Joseph and the Christ Child. This encourages me to speak about the Christmas event, its social significance, the arrival of wisdom through the kings, the social interaction of the shepherds and the central Christ

child, all of which calls us to enter into social discourse with one another. I am aware that I am facing Hindus from different casts, Brahmans, Muslims, Christians and Parsis, who have evolved out of the Zarathustra stream. An intense atmosphere makes us forget the roaring traffic noise of the centre of Mumbai.

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Section Work in Various Countries

Prague The Soul of Europe

by Monika Clément Interest in Others Counts Some 300 people from 21 nations met from August 21 to 24 in Prague for the conference of the Section for Social Sciences on ‘The Soul of Europe – On the Threshold of a New Society’ 1 Here, when 40 years ago the image of a new society flashed up with the ‘Prague Spring’, Rudolf Steiner’s idea of social threefolding, shared in the conference’s presentations and conversations, pointed to big, still-to-be taken steps.

According to legend, Prague acquired its name from the word ‘práh’, meaning ‘threshold’. Thus the conference location became a symbol for the ‘in-between’, the overcoming of the chasm between individuals, peoples, continents – between You and Me. And, to jump ahead to the end: Paul Mackay of the Executive Council at the Goetheanum in Dornach and leader of the Section for Social Sciences summarized the three days as follows: „Social structure is meaningless when it isn’t formed out of inner substance, and the nature of this inner substance is such that the human being cannot create it alone.

It comes about only ‘in between’, in deep human encounter.“

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The Child of Europe Co-organizer Ane ka Janátová, psychologist and director of TABOR Academy for Social Art (Prag), began by drawing attention to the small portrait, above the lectern, of Casper Hauser. Janátová saw in this being – whose humanness was indestructible even under the worst living conditions, and who, in the cold and dark of his cell, still had compassion, even for his jailer, and empathy with even the smallest creature, and was filled with the longing to find himself – the true child of Europe. This could be experienced in the impressive production of Carlo Pietzner’s play ‘…and from the night, Casper’ on the last evening of the conference, with students of the TABOR Academy. No less impressive was the first evening of the conference, with witnesses of the Prague Spring, including Milan Horácek, who was 22 years old at the time and is today a member of the European Parliament, and Antonin Liehm, publisher of Literamy noviny and one of the most important preparers of the Prague Spring, who, at the age of 84, still spoke enthusiastically about the time in which one fought for the freedom of the cultural sphere.

Tripartite Organism Between this beginning and end were days

of multifarious expositions and discussion on the threefold social organism, composed, according to Rudolf Steiner, of the spiritualcultural life, the area of rights and the economic sphere.2 To begin with, the speakers each developed their perspectives in a dialogue-form. These were then further deepened in conversation groups and workshops. On the theme of spiritual life and individual capacities, for example, there arose the question of a leadership style befitting the times – a question which is also increasingly relevant for the economic sphere: leadership no longer as a position, but rather as a task in the sense of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures, The Karma of Vocation 3 (Mathieu v.d. Hoogenband from the Netherlands), as „leadership that serves“ (Paul Mackay) or as „an orchestra without a conductor“ (Ane ka Janátová).

Just how connected the individual areas are, was revealed by a conversation on professional development, i.e. forming

individual capacities, which, seen as an ‘economic innovation’, is very much tangent to the spiritual sector. Whereas one could readily grasp that in the economic sphere a for-and-with-each-other is achieved by fulfilling needs through the division of labor in production, and in the rights sphere the freedom of inter-personal agreements for co-existing is addressed, the requirement for equality in the sphere of rights, with regard to the sheer unbelievable diversity among individuals today, emerged as a challenge of our time. „The area of rights is the point of intersection of every modern society,“ said Ulrich Rösch of the Section for Social Sciences in Dornach, who, with a group of Czechs, Slovaks and the Swiss Hans Hasler, had prepared the conference for over a year.

Interest in the Other In his closing presentation, ‘Rudolf Steiner and Christ-Activity in the Social Realm’, Peter

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Selg (Ita Wegmann Archives, Arlesheim, Switzerland) called on us to uncover in ourselves what Casper Hauser preserved in himself even under the most terrible

Endnotes 1 Previous conferences on ‘The Soul of Europe’: Amsterdam, 2005, Budapest, 2007.

circumstances: interest (inner space, interspace) as a real living with – suffering with – the other. „Only interest in the other person can further social life,“ in quoting Rudolf Steiner. Tomáš Bonek, Christian Community priest in the Prague congregation, also sees this as the focal point of the conference: „With all of the difficulties, we shouldn’t forget that it is our task to stand in the world! How else and from whom else shall otherwise something new come?“ Here Peter Selg refers to tremendous sources of help: „We are supported by powers interested in humanity reaching its developmental goal!“4 With threefolding as well as with his main social principle5, Rudolf Steiner pointed to forms, said Selg, which can prepare the working of Christ in the social realm. In this respect, he said, Rudolf Steiner – in accordance the principle of John the Baptist – is preparing the way for a future in the sense of the Christ.

2

As to what the soul of Europe is – this often remained an open question. That Prague is a center of Europe, however, could be deeply experienced. In this sense, it was left totally open in the end, too, whether there would be a sequel to this conference.

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3

4

5

“Humanity will not be able to have any further influence without arranging its social organism according to its tripartite nature: socialism (fraternity) for the economic life, democracy (equality) for matters of the state and human rights, and freedom or individualism for spiritual life.” Rudolf Steiner, lecture of August 9, 1919 in Education as a Force for Social Change. Anthroposophic Press (now SteinerBooks), 1997 (GA 296).

Rudolf Steiner, The Karma of Vocation. Anthroposophic Press (now SteinerBooks), 1984 (GA 172) Rudolf Steiner, The Work of the Angel in Our Astral Body. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2006 (GA 182) Rudolf Steiner, in Anthroposophy and the Social Question. Mercury Press, 1982 (GA 34)

Events Preview

Coming Into Conversation: Encouraging Social Commitment

by Katie Dobb Event dates: 2009/11/27 to 2009/11/29 „What is more quickening than light?“ „Conversation.“ – From Goethe‘s ‚The Green Snake and and beutiful Lily.

This is an invitation to re-imagine the world we live in through the art of conversation and conversations in art.

Several months ago the Section for Social Sciences and the YouthSection at the Goetheanum came into conversation.

Through our conversations one thing became clear: that the activity of conversation itself was important.

Perhaps you have had the experience of possibilities arising, or something special being born, because of a conversation.

Out of these discussions this event came into being.

Conversation is not only created with words but also with the will to listen to what arises between us – it is a dance, an improvisation, a co-written story. It is our wish that this event will be a place where many people can experience the creative, quickening possibilities of conversation.

We also hope it will shed more light on the contemporary social situation and our tasks in the world.

Come with us on the adventure of exploring and experiencing social themes of our time. There will be conversation groups on a range of social topics (including social three-folding, economics, social sculpture, and more). There will also be space for you to bring the topic you are currently passionate about. In addition, there will be short ‘conversational’ contributions from Elizabeth Wirsching, Paul Mackay, Seth Jordan, Shelley Sacks, Ulrich Rösch and Katie Dobb.

Through the arts we will seek to meet each other in new ways. There will be ‚conversations‘ in music, sculpture, painting, creative writing, numbers, movement and more.

During our planning meetings we came to realise that three-folding is not just a theory but that it is a living thing. Throughout our

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preparation time we have tried to practice three-folding. We have asked ourselves what quality of thinking is needed in order that social institutions (or even situations) can evolve (or unfold) in the right way.

We have wondered how an understanding of the three-folded organism could help us orientate ourselves to develop good relationships with our fellow human beings and shape society as a whole. And we have raised the question, „How can we take responsibility for creating the world we live in?“ We have also been living with a recent Bob Dylan quote: „The real power is in the hands of small groups of people and I don‘t think they have titles.“ It is our hope that many different generations, nationalities, professions and points of view can come together at this event. We aim to create a space where each human being can be valued for their uniqueness, where we can develop an active empathy, and where we can recognise that each one of us is an important piece of ‘the puzzle.’

And so it is with great warmth and enthusiasm that the YouthSection and the Section for Social Sciences invite you to come into conversation – to take part in shaping this unique social-artistic event – to re-imagine the world!

We hope that you join us as we attempt to leap from speaking about social commitment to entering a conversation, with commitment!

The event will be held at the Goetheanum.

It begins Friday November 27 at 5pm, and ends on Sunday November 29 at 12: 30pm. For those who are connected to the YouthSection, this event ends on Saturday

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November 28 at 6:30pm. The YouthSection Weekend will start at 8pm. This event will be in English and German.

With social life as a central motif, we want to work consciously with money. We wish to enable every interested person to participate. The suggested price for students is CHF 50. However, the real costs of the conference for the full weekend is CHF 250 per person. Bearing in mind that the conference will be supported and carried by your contribution, you are free to choose the amount.

(This article is a written conversation between Caitlin Balmer, Elizabeth Wirsching, Guy Collins, Hanna Koskinen, John Stubley, Katharina Ludwig, Katie Dobb, Martin Stenius, Paul Mackay, Silvia Zuur, Ulrich Rösch.)

For more information on this event please email: katie@youthsection.org www.conversation.goetheanum.org

Events Preview

Events Preview 2009 – 2010 2009 08.-11. August

Inner Transformation and Social Renewal Conference, with Art and Science Exhibition Sponsored by Threefold Educational Center and The Center for Social and Environmental Responsibility at Hawthorne Valley The Social Sciences Section of North America

11.-12. August

Meeting of the Members of the Social Science Section in North America at the Threefold Community, Spring Valley, N.Y. with contributions from Bernie Wolf, Meg Gorman, Shawn Sullivan and Ulrich Rösch

04.-05. September

Sustainable Development as a Destiny Question – Confronting Evil Values & More (Alexandra Traun) and the Goetheanum

05. September

Spiritual Culture of Mothers and Fathers Work day of the group Family Culture

10.-11.September

Tempo in Organizational Enterprise 2nd Interdisciplinary Economic Forum at the Goetheanum Perspectives for persons carrying responsibility in the economy and in cultural life Christine Blanke

12. September

Religion – Activity of Freedom and LoveContinuing Education in Self-Development through Family Life Claudia Stockmann

20.-21. September

Economics – Methodology and Concepts in the Economics Course of Rudolf Steiner Their Connection to Current Economic Practices Introduction by Paul Mackay, Prof. Dr. Marcelo da Veiga and Ulrich Rösch

24.-27. September

Community Building in the Light of Michael Michaelmas Conference The General Anthroposophical Section

08.-11. October

Darwin and the Social Organism (Colloquium) The Natural Science Section and the Section for Social Sciences (by invitation only)

23.-24. October

Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)

13.-14. November

Nervousness and Self-Awareness Continuing Education on Self-Development through Family Life Rudy Vandercruysse

26.-27. November

Conversation about the Challenges of our Times (by invitation only)

27.-29. November

Coming into Conversation – Encouraging Social Commitment Open Section Conference The Section for Social Sciences and the Youth Section

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2010 22.-23. January

School for Spiritual Science: Conference on Family Culture 17th Class lesson

05.-07. March

With Differences – In Cooperation: The Struggle for the Middle Public Conference about the Rights Life

16.-17. April

Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)

10. October

Meeting on Working with Elders

29.-30. October

Colloquium on Conflict Research (by invitation only)

Tickets online at: www.goetheanum.org More information about us: www.goetheanum.org/59.html

If you would like to donate, our bank details are: Please earmark as follows: 60445/KST1300 Worldwide:

From Germany:

Owner: Allgemeine Anthroposophische Gesellschaft

Owner: Allgemeine Anthroposophische Gesellschaft

Raiffeisenbank Dornach, CH–4143 Dornach

GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG, DE-44708 Bochum

Account-Nr. 10060.71 BCL: 80939-1

Account-Nr. 988 100 BLZ 430 609 67

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IBAN: DE53 4306 0967 00

Impressum

Editor and Copyright: School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum - Section for Social Sciences Editors: Ulrich Rösch, Hanna Koskinen Layout and Design: Kohlhase Publishing and Consulting www.kohlhase-consulting.com Legal Notice: All articles are copyrighted. The texts do not necessarily reflect the view of the Section.

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