The “Red Series”

Regarding a new series of publications by the General Anthroposophical Section.

Under the series title “The 19 Class Lessons: Studies on the Foundations of the School of Spiritual Science,” works are published that arise out of engagement with the Lessons of the “First Class,” a path of Schooling which Rudolf Steiner developed for the School of Spiritual Science and its specialist areas (Sections). The book series is issued by the leadership of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum; responsibility for the content of the individual contributions lies with the respective authors.

At the Christmas Conference of the Anthroposophical Society in 1923/24, Rudolf Steiner, on December 2, 1923, presented the paragraph of the new Society statutes in which the future publication of the “Publications of the School of Spiritual Science” was mentioned, with the note: “printed as manuscript for the members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum.” The spirit of the age, Rudolf Steiner emphasized, could not tolerate the “outer secret,” but it could tolerate the “inner secret.”1 Steiner wished his lecture courses, including those already printed, to be provided with this note and henceforth to be published; they were to become “public,” appear at the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Dornach, and be available through the book trade.

Asked whether one might recommend the reading of the courses also to someone who was not yet a member of the School and of its intended three Classes, Rudolf Steiner replied that “no general directives” could be given in that regard.

The further dissemination—or even the acquisition—of Rudolf Steiner’s specialist courses for certain professional groups (such as his medical or agricultural lectures) was, after the Christmas Conference, placed under the responsibility of the Section leaders of the School. These Lessons, Steiner said, were given only “under [certain) conditions,” [unter Klauseln] before a specific audience possessing the relevant professional prerequisites.

Therefore, individual decisions about further distribution had to be made —and the specialist courses were, for the time being, not available through the book trade. The esoteric Class Lessons, whose stenographic transcripts likewise existed, were, on the other hand, not printed at all during Steiner’s lifetime nor in the decades immediately following. Rudolf Steiner had consented to the stenographic recording of the Lessons and their typewritten transcription by Helene Finckh, but he did not want the texts to circulate; rather, he wished the mantric material to be lived with meditatively, as heard and passed on within the School itself. “He wanted […] a kind of independent working with the mantras, on the basis of the wisdom content received, of course. But above all, the experiencing of the mantras themselves” (Marie Steiner-von Sivers)

Read the full article in Das Goetheanum.