Waldorf News

“Your Teachers Think Day and Night About What Your Future Will Be Like” – Rudolf Steiner’s Words to the First Waldorf School Graduates

Written by Rudolf Grosse

After our graduation, our class asked Rudolf Steiner for advice about what professions and trainings we might choose. Some time later he said that it was not easy to advise a Waldorf student on this because Waldorf schooling would have awakened such a wide range of interests that he could see many possibilities.

We gathered on April 10, 1924, filled with the highest expectation in the teachers’ room, for this requested meeting. Seventeen students, eight girls and nine boys, sat around the big table that took up most of the room, while our teachers were sitting along the walls. A kind of feeling took hold of us all, as one experiences before making important life decisions, and all eyes were directed toward Rudolf Steiner who had taken his seat at the head of the table. It was very quiet when he addressed us in his calm, full voice. As we had asked for this gathering, he said, we should now say what we had in mind, and it would be best if we spoke one after the other. He asked the girl closest to him to begin. We now listened with amazement to the intimate dialogue that developed between each pupil and Rudolf Steiner—very factual, almost sober, with a hint of humor here and there.

The advice had a clarifying and directive effect. The students first spoke about their future plans. Rudolf Steiner listened and then gave his advice, which could also be critical. When one girl spoke with great sensitivity about her intention to study psychiatry, he advised strongly against it. Psychiatry, he said, had not advanced enough yet to understand the so-called mental illnesses, and was therefore unable to develop an appropriate method of therapy. For the time being nothing much could be done about that. She should devote herself to the sciences and study physics, chemistry, and philosophy in order to become a teacher of these subjects.

He gave the same advice about studying sciences to another girl. Yet another wanted to become a kindergarten teacher and asked how to go about it. A single sentence illuminated the essence of this profession. It was important that one was loved by the children; everything else would then fall into place. He said it was similar for a nurse whose healing quality lay in the fact that she had to be a personality whom the patients could trust. She had to be strong enough to bear the egotism of sick people, and to never weary of dong her duty. When a girl announced her intention to devote her life the arts, to painting and carving, he strongly supported her. And, after her training, she should go on as an artist at the new Goetheanum in Dornach. Some received very short indications, for example two boys, where one was told to embark on a business career and to become a craftsman. The other boy wanted to become an architect. To my astonishment, he quietly advised against it and tried to interest him in mechanical engineering. What are missing today, he said are aesthetically constructed machines. The design of an engine was entirely determined by its function without any consideration for beauty. Central Europe in particular should take hold of this impulse. It did not come from the West, but the West could then learn from it. It did matter what a machine such as a train engine looked like. It had to be beautiful. One should learn to pay attention to this and work also out of a sense of beauty when designing an engine.

Rudolf Steiner, who was now standing, concluded this mentoring session—which for other students was confined to questions about their further education and examinations, and would become more concrete in a meeting half-a-year later—with the following words: “You are leaving school now, but we will meet again in half a year. Each of you can then report how you got on during this time. The memory of your school will accompany you into the life that lies ahead of you, and if, in later life, you come to a point where you are at a loss, at you wits’ end and alone, pondering and searching for help, the spirit of the school will stand behind you, put a hand on your shoulder, and bestow advice and comfort to you. You have asked for a verse and I have written it down here.” He read the verse slowly, and we received it with the highest inner concentration. He said we should take this verse into our hearts and meditate on it. He then bid us farewell and we left the room, happy and reassured, because we would always be able to meet and consult with him. I felt a deep inner confidence because of his guidance that was quite palpable.

This important mentoring moment with Rudolf Steiner had been preceded by one of his greatest lectures, which he had given at the end of the school year, on March 27, 1924. We high school students who were about to leave the Waldorf School in order to go to universities, into professional training, or straight into practical work, were full of questions about the future. We also experienced a subtle wrench, because this was the last time that we were, in this familiar way, part of what had become our spiritual home of genuine human education. Rudolf Steiner’s parting words were like a gift that would last forever. The following sentences are forever engraved in my memory: “Your teacher think day and night about what your future will be like. I can tell you that in ten or twenty years’ time, the situation will be much worse than the terrible years we went through and that we are experiencing now. A deep sorrow darkens the soul when one thinks of the great suffering that this future holds for humankind. The teachers are also sad to dismiss you now from this school, but it will be a source of great strength for them to see you all prove yourselves as true human beings.” These were basically his words. Deep in thought, I went home after this assembly, working out agagin and again in my mind: Now it’s the year 1924; in then years it will be 1934 and in twenty years 1944. I will be between 30 and 40 then, and will have to live through a historical age that will be more terrible than anything I experienced before.

On the first of September the entire former class gathered again at the Waldorf School. Rudolf Steiner had not returned yet from England. We decided to write him a letter to let him know that we were waiting for him, as agreed; that we wanted to tell him what we had experienced so far and ask his further advice for the situations that had unfolded. These were our words:

Waldorf School, September 1, 1924

Dear Dr. Steiner,
When we had the privilege of meeting with you at the end of our time in the Waldorf School, you suggested that we should come together again once we had gone out into the world. This has happened now and almost the entire former class 12 is here in Stuttgart, hoping to be able to speak with you and our teachers again. The experiences we have had in the meantime urge us to come here.
With grateful respect
Class 12

The conference on the next day, when we met Dr. Steiner and Dr. Wegman, was in our view the beginning of a series of such meetings. Rudolf Steiner himself put it like this: “From now on, come every year at this time to the school and share with your teachers what you have experienced in your lives. The teachers will then give you lectures on what they have researched in the meantime. In this way, a kind of school for further education in the spirit of the Waldorf School will be established.” The reports that several of us now gave of our experiences seemed to be of the greatest interest to Rudolf Steiner. Especially when one student spoke about his life as a student working in a factory, about his relationship with the workers, their initial distrust and reticence which gradually disappeared and made way for open conversations. Steiner said that Waldorf students in particular should try to make this kind of contact, but that one had to always speak truthfully with the workers. That needed time, patience, and ever-new experiences.

Following similar reports, he said about medical studies that one should not ignore these areas, because they were spiritually not what they ought to be; and that the same was true for technology. Then: nursing is a difficult profession, because the nurse is dealing with people who are often totally moody and egotistic in soul and spirit. The essence of this profession is a kind of sacrificial service that one should see as inner development. A good nurse, just as a kindergarten teacher, should not know why she loves the patients or the children. The atmosphere that emanates from her is important. These comments were similar to the ones we had heard during our first meeting.

He gave further advice to the student who wanted to go into business. Here it was important to acquire thorough practical experience, and to develop, presence of mind. One should know the usages of world trade, which could be studied in their purest form in England or America. They were quite distasteful, but instructive. One could learn a lot for the development of the economic life of Central Europe from studying the practices and affairs that had become established among the great trading nations; not so that one would copy them, but so that one would be able to see through them.

Many other things were commented on; for example, the general pedagogical interest of adolescents at the time. It was important to refer to education as an art. It was no science, and as soon as one developed it into a system it was immediately a sign of decadence, because such an education no longer knew what to do with adolescents.

At the end he reminded us again of the verse he had given to us, and asked us to work with it more intensely than before.

May those things shine again
On the path through life
That in the time of youth
Were planted in the heart
As the seal of true humanity.

May those things be strong
In the depth of memory
Which the soul discovered
Through the heart
Under the spirit guidance
Of the powers that teach for life.

Rudolf Steiner’s verse for the graduates
Of the Stuttgart Waldorf School,
April 1924

The photos are of students from Waldorf high schools in Germany.

Rudolf Grosse’s memoir appears in the Addenda section of “A Grand Metamorphosis: Contributions to the Spiritual-Scientific Anthropology and Education of Adolescents” by Peter Selg and published by Steiner Books. Learn more about it here.