On the occasion of the exhibition “Rudolf Steiner: Alchemy of the Everyday” at the Vitra Design Museum, Walter Kugler, Peter Sloterdijk, and Mateo Kries talk about the Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist Rudolf Steiner in Zaha Hadid’s Fire Station on the Vitra Campus (in German language, English subtitles available via YouTube Player settings.
Peter Sloterdijk (born 26 June 1947 in Karlsruhe) is a German philosopher, cultural scientist and publicist who has sparked numerous debates in Germany with his articles and books. He taught philosophy and aesthetics at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design until 2017.
Walter Kugler (born 1948 in Landshut, Germany) studied music, education and political science, completed his doctorate and taught at the University of Cologne and other academic institutions and was director of the Rudolf Steiner Archive in Dornach from 2003 to 2011 and co-curator of numerous Steiner exhibitions in Germany and abroad. From 2008 until his retirement, he was Professor of Fine Art at Brookes University in Oxford.
Mateo Kries (born 1974 in Müllheim in Markgräflerland) is a German art historian, curator and author. He has been Director of the Vitra Design Museum since 2011.
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein (Germany), October 14, 2011.
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Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (born 1861 in Donji Kraljevec, Kingdom of Hungary, part of the Austrian Empire, now Croatia; died 1925 in Dornach, Switzerland) was an Austrian writer, theosophist and reform pedagogue as well as the founder of anthroposophy, a spiritual worldview whose essential content, according to Steiner, was based on clairvoyant insights into a spiritual world (‘the higher worlds’) that he believed to be real. After 1902, he received the teachings of Theosophy as they existed in the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Between 1904 and 1910, Steiner presented his own form of theosophy in fundamental writings. He called it ‘spiritual science’, secret science and, from 1910, anthroposophy. Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, the philosophy of German Idealism and Goethe’s world view were also of great influence in its development.
Steiner’s work began in Vienna with the edition of Goethe’s scientific writings, editorial work on magazines and encyclopaedias and work as an editor. After working on the Weimar edition of Goethe’s works and philosophical treatises on epistemology, Steiner developed the foundations of anthroposophy in Berlin after 1900. Even at the beginning of his membership of the Theosophical Society, whose German section he had headed since 1902, he advocated his own esotericism of a Western character with an emphasis on the Christian element. From 1907, he became increasingly independent of the Theosophical Society, whose one-sided Eastern orientation he did not wish to follow.
On the basis of his anthroposophical world view, Steiner developed new concepts for various areas. These included anthroposophical architecture, Waldorf education, anthroposophical medicine, anthroposophical pharmacy, biodynamic agriculture, eurythmy and the Christian Community. From the very beginning, Steiner’s teachings and his approach had a strongly polarizing effect. The scientific nature of his ideas, which he claimed, is disputed by authors critical of anthroposophy.
