Looking back to look forward: Maria Röschl and the beginning of the Youth Section
by Nathaniel Williams
The Section for the Spiritual Striving of the Youth was established in 1924, as part of the School for Spiritual Science, 100 years ago. This anniversary has led to moments of reflection on the inspiration and illumination that accompanied the beginning of the Section’s work and seeing what is happening today in its light. One way into these considerations is through the life of Maria Röschl, the first leader of the Youth Section, who worked at the Goetheanum between 1924-1931(1). What were the goals that Maria Röschl and Rudolf Steiner set for themselves when the work began and what has unfolded over the past century? How does the ongoing work align with these original intentions? For coworkers in the Section today this is a prelude, a possibility to align with these tasks more consciously.
Maria Röschl
Röschl is born in Lancut, which is today in Poland, in 1890, and already as a child moves to Vienna. When she enters the university, she studies the classics and philology, philosophy, German literature and art history. In 1914, at the age of 24, she completes the requirements for her doctorate with a dissertation on the significance of the dream in Goethe’s work. She was working on the theme of dreams in Vienna in the years that Sigmund Freud’s ideas were being developed and becoming known, yet she explores her interest in dreams through the works of Goethe. As contemporaries go, it was not Freud who lit her up with enthusiasm as a young person, but Wilhelm Dilthey. Much of his work revolved around the peculiar methods and tasks that can lead to knowledge of the spiritual dimensions of experience, the human mind, jurisprudence, ethical and creative phenomena. His understanding of the deeper spiritual sensibilities of Herder, Hegel and Fichte was coupled with a desire to develop a more chastened, less metaphysical approach. His ability to acknowledge and appreciate the wonderful movements, colors and tones of mental life, of art and spirituality reveal themselves in his efforts to refute the reductive and paltry “explanations” that are often attached to them when natural scientific methods are employed. He worked to clarify the differences between methods appropriate for the natural sciences and those required for the humanities. His work marks an epochal moment in the development of hermeneutics. The gravity, expansiveness and vitality of his spirit and his focus on creating a scientific method for spiritual knowledge spoke directly to Röschl’s aspirations. She eventually encountered Rudolf Steiner’s approaches to spiritual science which proved to be a watershed moment in her life.
While researching for her dissertation, she reads Rudolf Steiner’s “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How it is Achieved”, and it makes a deep impression. Her life brings her into contact with Karl Schubert, who introduces her to the anthroposophical society and soon thereafter she attends a lecture by Rudolf Steiner. As things develop, she learns about the new Waldorf school in Stuttgart and is invited to join the faculty in 1922 to teach Latin, Greek and religion classes. Rudolf Steiner suggests she speak with him directly about her spiritual work and questions, and it is evident from the references in the many letters she wrote to Rudolf Steiner that, when together in person, this topic was key to their relationship.
After the end of the war more and more young people find their way to Rudolf Steiner’s work. In 1922 there is a course specifically dedicated to them. Röschl is present and she takes on responsibility for some of the fruits, or perhaps tasks, that follow on this course. In 1923-24 the Anthroposophical Society is re-founded, and Rudolf Steiner establishes a “Section for the Spiritual Striving of the Youth” and asks Maria Röschl to be the first leader.
The pictures of Maria Röschl as a young person are arresting. In all of them there is a natural elegance. One in particular shows her seated with her torso slightly turned to the right, her right hand placed behind her upper neck on the same side, elevated by an arm rest. Her left-hand crosses over her lap and rests on the seat, its fingers almost touching the elbow of her other arm. Her left hand visible, her right hidden. Certain aspects of her appearance seem to have their own voice and draw the gaze. She is seated on a piece of furniture, with what appears to be a supple gown, rich with folds. The gaze is quickly drawn by its like, namely her eyes. They seem half shut, their dark centers partially covered by her eyelids, while invisible, appear as an impression that she is looking into a vast inner space. At the same time the darkness that is visible look decidedly into the camera. She is not facing the camera full on, but her right side is turned slightly away and there is a shadow on this half of her countenance. While there is presence and strength in her gaze it is at the same time restrained. Like her eyes and her face, she seems to come halfway to meet you while also withdrawing into some infinite distance. Is she suspicious? Is she guarded or injured? Her face itself is broad and the surface of her exposed cheek expresses warmth. Its form is round and broad. Lingering with this impression it shifts, a strength comes more and more to the fore, something almost imposing, or perhaps enduring, appears. The indention above her upper lip, the expression of her unsmiling mouth, and the subtleties of her chin are surprisingly shaped. While the forms themselves are not sharp they seem hard. No, they are not hard, they seem to express clarity, or perhaps resolution.
Her appearance feels like the point of contact of two contrasts, like a vortex where two movements meet, or some balancing fulcrum point. This impression also emerges through stories and events from her life.
She lost a brother to a long illness when she was five years old. She recounted that she does not recall anything from her surroundings until after his death. Her whole being participated in his experience. Childhood, that site of miracles and divine life, and death, the sublime source of earnestness, intersected for her.
There is another story from her early school days. She holds a certain teacher in reverence and awe but for health reasons she must leave school before the holidays commence. On her way to her last day of school she gathers her offering of wildflowers and presents her teacher with this gift. Her teacher receives them, thanks her, and lays them absent mindedly on the desk, allowing them to lie there and wilt through the day. The rose of reverence shifts into the crimson of pain in the child’s heart and is not forgotten.
She grew up in a multi-lingual household, German and Polish. She identified almost entirely as Polish until she was 20 when she experienced the influence of Goethe through her studies, bestowing her with a global vision. She experienced a creative, if sometimes difficult, tension between the dynamic and rich soul of her Polish self and her more structured and disciplined German heritage.
Throughout her life she worked as a teacher in different contexts. She was near sighted and wore thick glasses. She did not make the impression of a person who was keenly aware of the particular and subtle goings on around her. Yet, as a teacher, even with her back to the chalkboard she earned her student's respect by knowing what was going on behind her, and they credited her with a third eye.
She gave many people the impression of restraint and humility when they first met her. For some she came across as uptight and perhaps judgmental. It was only with time that the vivid and rich sensibilities that accompanied each encounter might be noticed by those she met. She certainly did not exhibit, in an outer way, the bold demands of authenticity and life characteristic of the youth movement of the time. Rudolf Steiner once said that one did not notice it from her outer appearance but she was exploding with the life at the heart of the youth movement.
As a speaker her demeanor could take very different forms. When she lectured in more public setting the gestures of her hands were expressive in a focused and articulate way, accompanied by the bold movements and intonations of her voice. There were other settings dedicated to explorations of inner life, inner work and experience where she appeared to almost occupy the side of the stage, as if she was making room for someone else, and her teachings were given in mood of quiet and delicacy.
As an older person, when she would receive visitors, she would welcome them in, sit them down, and then situate herself very close, so close that it was not right, and it made some uncomfortable, this physical proximity. And then she would listen. And the remarkable change was when the conversation began, and the way she listened and engaged, it was so clear, so impersonal, that the discomfort disappeared.
These few images call up a feeling of a rhythmic, lively dance between polarities. While polarities can torture one if they are not woven into time as rhythm, their dynamic yet balanced interaction refreshes and enlivens. We can think of the polarity of inhalation and exhalation of the lungs, or the contraction and expansion of the heart, and how life wells up as these contrasting movements pass, again and again, from one to the other. Each turn radiates with life.
Initial Goals of the Youth Section and the Spirituality of Youth
Röschl articulated three tasks to address in her work with Steiner. An intention that was not possible because of Steiner’s illness and death. One of the tasks involved “re-writing” the basic books in a style that spoke to being young. There are of course young people who can study the books as they were originally written, but Steiner was intending these new books to be for those for whom this was not right. He suggested that the Philosophy of Freedom, for example, was really only approachable by most people after their 28th year. The second task involved establishing a college for people as young as 16 years old at the Goetheanum. While it is widely thought that the Youth Section is dedicated to working with 18-35 year olds, the original goal was to create opportunities for 14-28 year olds, and especially the younger end of this range when the Section was established (the age group from 28-35 was added during the time of Jörgen Smit’s leadership). The third task involved courses that would build on the first youth course of 1922, exploring the essence and significance of the spirituality of youth.
The three tasks relate to the special spirituality of early life, as it can be approached through a certain spiritual orientation, understanding and inner practices. The youth work Steiner was involved with in the early 1920s encouraged the audacious thirst for deeper meaning and understanding that simultaneously ran through and chastened the youth movements of the time. The bold, inner call that can light up in adolescence to live authentically, charged with ethical power and the gravity of conscience, contrasts with the all-too-common resignations of older age. Reflecting on this time in life it is easy to sense the inner jolt of a second birth. A new self-consciousness emerges suffused with a fresh and vital energy. This energy has its own levity and gravity. The lethargy and dullness of elders will always disappoint, but especially in times of momentous change. The early 20th century was such a time, and we are in it still even if the contrasts have changed. In any case, a young person can feel that the texture, the color, the intensity of their thinking is so different than the repose of old age. The heart is involved. Thoughts reverberate with moods and feelings and feelings can blossom into grand visions of thought. The inner experience older people have of thinking, of understanding, of intelligence, what has it to do with this? Adults have thoughts that are more formed and clear, more easily separated from the heart, of spiritually creative pulse and rhythm.
Steiner suggests this be considered as a perspective on life and death, looking at a corpse versus looking at a living being. As we grow old the head’s inherent tendency towards clarity and stillness intensifies and the thoughts die (that placidly floating orb!). What if these thoughts, so clear in their stillness, are viewed as corpses? What if we rediscover their life through inner effort, reverence and creativity? Then they light up, as if they were asleep and we have given them the tonic of youth. We can feel that thoughts that express themselves as clear abstract meaning, with no artistic, no expressive and living dimension to them, are the end stages of an organic spiritual process. It is possible to follow them, even though this may seem strange, into their origin. Then it is possible to feel that consciousness as we know it, and increasingly so as we grow older, is the fruit of a great field of spiritual, creative life. The familiar, shadowy thoughts of consciousness are a kind of sleep across from this field of life. Young people are not only aware of it in themselves, but they are keenly aware of it in other young people, and some of the elders as well. Encounters of a certain kind, that courageously show up for the deeper meanings coursing through the young heart, have a religious dimension. The mutual understanding between true friends, when you are young, is a pinnacle of life. Part of the youth spirituality Steiner encourages involves strengthening this latent growing point through both speaking with heart and will and listening with heart and will(2). When this happens it is not only friends that can approach a sacred consciousness of the connection and the human being, but even a diverse youth group, or even a movement. It is also a key to being able to grow old without losing touch with the most essential dimensions of the self.
This all leads to the inherent pictorial, artistic thinking that suffuses youth spirituality. This relates to a broader understanding of the creative fields of spiritual life from which normal, static thinking originates. The second birth at adolescence involves the emergence of the spirit that has just come from these fields of life, where it existed before birth. The awareness that this inheritance is of the utmost importance, that staying connected with one’s spiritual source is crucial, awakens a subtle horror in young people when they confront elders who have lost touch. It is also a part of the mysterious loyalty (which is of course mixed with many other factors) that naturally arises between young people at this age.
In 1931 Röschl resigned her post. She saw the three tasks of the Section as dependent on Rudolf Steiner’s collaboration, and that his passing proved an obstacle for their realization. The discord at the Goetheanum that grew after Steiner’s death disrupted fruitful work not only in the Youth Section but in all directions. Over the past century many of the tasks that were originally foreseen finding their rightful center at the Goetheanum were pursued in decentralized and creative ways around the world. This includes countless initiatives and projects related to the spiritual heart of the Youth Section. The work of Christiane Haid is a good start for those readers interested in learning more about the past(3).
Looking back to look forward
Tasks like those of the Youth Section inherently require fresh approaches from generation to generation. This is perhaps especially true today. The current experience of young people is unprecedented. There are many creative ways to take steps forward. One area of great need involves creating enough opportunities for the youngest to encounter Anthroposophy in an appropriate way. One of the tasks of the Section has always been to develop creative and experiential opportunities for young people to encounter Anthroposophy. This last Summer an inspiring example unfolded in Brazil when young leaders arranged the conference “Weaving Wefts”, and in the lead up to it they visited the upper grades of high schools where they facilitated pertinent discussions, made connections and invitations. In the USA something like this happened in 2019 and there is talk of a similar school tour and event being organized for 2025. We can also see the International Students’ Conferences (ISC) that have been taking place for years as a great example of ongoing connection between the Section and high schools around the world. Existing groups and projects might create programs and offerings that meet high school students who are close to graduation, and offer to bring these into schools. These offerings would also provide an opportunity to invite students to stay connected, to show ways that they can reach out to youth programs or volunteer opportunities within initiatives that are inspired by Anthroposophy, or to join in carrying a students' conference (local or international). The idea of trying to support more regional students’ conferences around the world is important. There are certainly countless young people that are seeking anthroposophy and opportunities to grow spiritually in an age-appropriate context.
The possibilities for such programs are rich, and naturally those who are pursuing them will find the right tone and activities for their context. Still, considering examples can be helpful. A potent area for work relevant for almost all young people involves the spiritual dimensions of the human being, digital technology, and economics. New technologies are leading to amazing and inspiring results, and there is no doubt they will continue to. Even while acknowledging this it has become increasingly clear that particular areas of modern life have resulted in disaster for many young people(4). An anti-social economic approach and a crude psychology has turned toward young people with disconcerting results(5). In a recent survey in Great Britain nearly half of the young people queried acknowledged they do not feel free in their relationship with the new technologies(6). A program at a school might involve discussing, in small groups, the future of technology as well as current realities. Of course we cannot be caught up in a mood of complaining or resignation, we have to be able to talk about the future that we might want to create together. There are so many ways this could be approached when we consider how social media, video streaming, video games and pornography are interwoven with the experience of youth in different ways. One of the reasons for this is that individuals inspired by narrow commercial interests have aimed their most sophisticated tactics of manipulation at young people. Part of their power emerges through their instrumentalization of an image of the human being that simply avoids pain and seeks pleasure. This is of course well known. But what is not so common, what is not well known, is how to think about the human being as a free spirit. To approach this we have to look toward the inner-net as well as the inter-net. They share many features, while being very different in nature. While the digital-visual culture plainly resonates with the pictorial style of thinking indigenous to being young, it can also eclipse it. The videos and platforms of the internet occupy us in a peculiar way. They require a type of surrender. Of course, surrender is not necessarily bad, it is a great strength when seen from a spiritual perspective, but one need also be aware of what one surrenders to. The intentions behind the technologies as well as their medium are important. This is tied up with the new technology and the medium of electric light itself in a way that cannot be explored in detail here. It is not difficult to sense how the surrender to this field can lead to depletion and in excess to depression, anxiety and even phases of psychosis. Again, there can be no intention of demonizing the technology but there is a clear question of how we use it and redesign it from a perspective that seeks to encourage and protect freedom and the dignity of the human being.
The inner-net is a field of spiritual life out of which all forms of judgement and consciousness crystalize. If we do not surrender to a video game or movie but instead to a flower, or a friend in conversation (which is more difficult) we can become aware of this field, and we can feel enriched, enlivened and renewed. We wake up to a subtle stream of spiritual life that weaves between our personality and the world. When we exercise our spiritual hearts by deep listening and sincere speaking we find these subtle threads again. These threads relate to the wellspring of freedom. When we practice meditation and inner work we approach it directly. How would we design technology and screen culture so that this greatest legacy was supported and encouraged(7)?
This naturally brings up the current economic culture in which we are all implicated, that produces so many wonders but which is also connected with much destruction and suffering around the world. Even while mainstream thinking declares competition and egotism as the necessary root of all economic life, decades of research has been accumulating that says otherwise(8). And it is not as many think, that the minority are open to cooperate while the majority are fundamentally egotistical, it is the other way around. What great news! This encourages us to try to understand a sociology that brings together individual expression and social connectivity. There are forms of economic associations and enterprises that bring people from varying areas together, be they producers, software engineers or consumers, to create new technologies for the benefit of all. Can we see these among us and discuss them(9)? We might ask why this is hard to see. Is it hard because we believe that people cannot freely work together for the common good? But what if we are wrong, informed by a half-truth with a long biography, as so much research suggests today? Then we might learn to connect with a greater intelligence, a greater insight, and to live by it.
These ideas can be discussed not only as they relate to eco-villages or intentional communities but larger forms of cooperation(10). Might voluntary cooperation for the common good contain more potential than any central, governmental action ever could?
This is not only true when we think of positive possibilities for digital technology. The pressure of climate change and the varying aspects of the ecological crisis, the violent conflict and wars are asking if a positive path is possible(11). Anthroposophy might contribute to this moment of need to the young people who are carrying these questions. This is only offered as one example, the intersection of the experience of being young, digital technology and economics, that might be a starting point to connect with upper grades students in schools, but of course there are many more!
Social justice and social questions are important to young people for reasons that can easily emerge from what has already been described. Studying books about economics or political theory may be a poor decision when trying to cultivate this concern together. This year a circle of young people have sought out folk songs from various languages that have been re-written in the past and used by social movements. They are adding verses out of their understanding of Social Three-folding (which they have been studying in parallel), illustrating them, binding them into a book and preparing to sing them together at an upcoming event(12).
Building up this conversation between young people, in youth groups and schools, conferences and projects, also encourages us to think of the need for full time youth programs, another one of the goals of Röschl and Steiner. There are youth programs that exist, which is to be celebrated, but more groups and young people may find they are in a situation where they want to work with elders to establish one. Many of the elements of such a project can be discovered in the various successes of youth programs that exist in other places (seminar-style learning environments, artistically oriented learning opportunities, service work and team projects, economically meaningful learning opportunities, and internships, excursions into nature and field trips, among others…). These existing programs would also greatly benefit from more association together, which would also make them more visible to the young people who are looking for them(13).
While we celebrate the good work that is going on today we will necessarily feel that our efforts are inadequate but it is important not to be discouraged. By seeking the right connection to the spirit, putting our hearts into our work and by increasingly trying to work in cooperation we can contribute to the tasks set for the Youth Section in new ways.
Nathaniel Williams
Reinach, August, 2024
1. The following on Maria Röschl has been drawn from Maria Röschl. 2005. Es Erklingt Ein Ton…. ed. Elizabeth Wirsching. Dornach, Switzerland: Verlag am Goetheanum, Röschl-Lehrs, Maria. 1972. Vom zweiten Menschen in uns: zur Gestaltung des inneren Menschen auf dem geistigen Schulungswege. Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag and Maria Röschl’s letters at the Rudolf Steiner Archive.
2. See Rudolf Steiner. 2006. Becoming the Archangel Michael’s Companions: Rudolf Steiner’s Challenge to the Younger Generation (CW 217). SteinerBooks and Youth and the Etheric Heart: Rudolf Steiner Speaks to the Younger Generation (CW 217a). SteinerBooks.
3. Christiane Haid. 2000. Jugend auf der Suche nach dem Menschen: die anthroposophische Jugend- und Studentenarbeit in den Jahren 1920 - 1931 mit einem Ausblick auf die Arbeit bis zum Ende der 60er Jahre. Verlag am Goetheanum.
4. Jonathan Haidt. 2024. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Random House.
5. Shoshana Zuboff. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power: Barack Obama’s Books of 2019. Profile Books.
6. https://www.theguardian.com/li...
7. Considering the task of re-writing” the basic books in a style that spoke to being young 100 years later reading in general has taken a different position in society and culture. Presenting the ideas visually is an intriguing and important challenge, as is developing a new screen culture. One example of this work, which could also be a launching pad for exchange and creative projects in schools, involves the creation of analogue screen and projection instruments. A variety of such were created and a small performance was shared at a youth conference at the Goetheanum in February 2024 and the International Students Conference of the same year.
8. See Elinor Ostrom. 2015. Governing the Commons. Cambridge University Press and Yochai Benkler. 2011. The Penguin and the Leviathan: The Triumph of Cooperation Over Self-Interest. Crown Business.
9. https://www.ted.com/talks/armi...
10. This year a circle of co-workers in the Youth Section have been working on an event dedicated to discussions on such larger visions of cooperation in collaboration with the World Goetheanum Association “Working for Freedom and the Common Good, 100 years after the World Power Conference: https://www.worldgoetheanum.or....
11. See Psychiatry, The Lancet. 2024. “Prioritising Young People.” The Lancet Psychiatry 11(9): 665 and Christina Caron. 2024. “Global Issues Are Taking a Major Toll on Young People’s Mental Health.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/0... (August 23, 2024).
12. “Working for Freedom and the Common Good, 100 years after the World Power Conference: https://www.worldgoetheanum.or....
13. The “Youth Education Days” attended by youth programs and micro-colleges in May of 2024, in the Netherlands, were a good example of this.