My Life as an Amish Electrician, viz. an Anthroposophical Comedian

by Ronald Koetzsch

First, we should to determine if you, the reader, are qualified to be reading this magazine and this article. To that end, please take the following “Rudolf Steiner Lifestyle Quiz.” For each “yes” answer, you receive one point. Five or more points is passing.

1. You do not own a television.

2. You own a television, watch it every day, but conceal thi s fact from everyone you know.

3. You own a Smartphone, but have not figured out how to turn it on yet.

4. You own two sheep fleeces. If you are a member of a Hell’s Angel’s motorcycle gang you must own thre e.

5. At a restaurant, regardless of the humiliation experienced by your children, you sing the verse “Bles sings on the blossoms …” then hold hands and say “Blessings on the meal.”

6. The last significant movie you saw was The Grad uate starring Dustin Hoffman.

7. You use only Weleda and Hauschka body care products on your skin and only on the part of the body indicated on the package.

8. You wear a scarf at all times, including in the shower.

Anthroposophy can seem very serious, even daunting. There is the vast collection of Dr. Steiner’s writings and talks, which are for the most part quite serious and not so easy to understand. And virtually all extant photos of Steiner show him tight-lipped and unsmiling.

However, according to his friends and close students, Steiner was a very humorous person. One eurythmist tells of a post- performance restaurant meal with the “Herr Doktor.” The eurythmists all ordered toast and salad, but Steiner, the last to order, asked for meat and potatoes. When Steiner noticed their surprise, he quipped, “Better to eat meat, than to think about eating meat.”

While taking a walk during a lecture tour in England,

Steiner noticed his very shy translator approaching him on the path, carrying a bouquet of flowers. Steiner plucked a flower and playfully tapped the man on his nose.

According to Steiner, humor is essential to human life and to spiritual development, and he spoke about it on many occasions. In fact, there is a 290-page book (published in 1985) by Henrich Eppinger titled Humor and Heiterkeit im Leben und Werk Rudolf Steiners (Humor and Cheerfulness in the Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner), which includes 60 pages of anecdotes about Steiner’s use of humor. More recently, eurythmist Stephanie Janisch wrote her graduation paper on Humor and Heiterkeit. The following are direct or paraphrased quotes from lectures of Dr. Steiner:

Something we cannot do without: humor

When the ‘I’ or higher self raises itself to laughter, it calls up its powers for self-liberation, for its exaltation, and for being fully contained within the world.

Oh, in laughter and weeping lie at the same time the means to educate the I and the powers of the I. Laughter on the face of a human being is the spiritual revelation that the human being strives for release, that he does not allow himself to be grasped by things not worthy of him, but rather that with a smile on his face he transcends those beings to whom he should not be enslaved.

The human being can truly rise to the spiritual only when he does not seek it with egoistic sentimentality, but only with purity of soul. This purity of soul can only come through humor.

It is easy to think that it is something terrible to satirize “holy things.” However if one wants to advance in the terms of the spiritual world view a basic requirement is that one not forget how to laugh about those things that must be laughed at in the world.

He who cannot find humor in the humorous also cannot in a true sense be serious regarding what is serious.