Navigating anthroposophical resources

From Anthroposophy

The student of spiritual science has a wealth of resources available, sometimes it takes time to discover or find some orientation in this wide landscape. There are indexes, lexicons, audio versions of the lectures, original typoscripts and unpublished lectures, blackboard drawings, reference search engines, library databases, etc.

Overview

Anthroposophical resources center around Rudolf Steiner's contribution consisting of the Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works (green), however in the last century a tremendous addition of secondary literature has extended and enriched this (blue). For this however there is little or no overview. This is why the Free Man Creator project started the SoSoG initiative (Standing on the Shoulders of Giants), to provide a selected overview on secondary literature. Currently only anthro libraries give an extensive overview.

Schema FMC00.040 below gives a navigation aid for the different types of resources available, whereby the different types of information materials are positioned.

In green is Rudolf Steiner's contribution, with The GA/CW at the bottom left. However lectures have not been published always in GA/CW format but often as thematic selections. The two green boxes on the right represent 'access tools', more on those in the next section below.

Secondary anthroposophical literature is shown in blue. Secondary literature is often by theme or topic-based, with the exception of 'study guides' specific to a certain GA volume (eg for Outline Esoteric Science, or the Agriculture course). Good study materials are the study essays, such as eg Maximilian Rebholz' work, or more recently the booklets by Peter Selg.

Indexes and Lexicons

Schema FMC00.039 provides a tabular overview of indexes and lexicons. It is most probably not exhaustive, but still gives an overview of some pioneer work and milestone references. For online links see the Study Tools page


The pioneers were Adolf Arenson, who discussed with Rudolf Steiner in 1918 and published his 'Leitfaden' in 1925, and Carlo Picht. Apparently the turbulence in the anthroposophical society, in Germany, and the world in period from the 1930's until after the second world war, caused a period with few remaining milestones or advances in this area.

We have to wait for the 1950-60s for the second pioneers: Hans Schmidt and Hella Wiesberger, and this also meant the start of the Gesamtausgabe project.

For English reference resources - besides Paul M. Allen's 140 page bibliography in 1956, we have to wait until the 1970s with Craig Haslett and Babbel/Giddens.

E.g. Craig Haslett: Bibliographical reference list of Rudolf Steiners work in English translation: Vol 1 in 1977, Vol 2 in 1979

Probably the most important multi-volume reference work - that was used for decades afterwards - was published by Emil Motteli in the 1980s. Examples of exceptional efforts in the period 1990-2010 were by Christian Karl and Urs Schwendener. The latter are also available online now.

With the advance of technology - computing and internet - things quickly changed as database and full text search enabled new ways of working. These were put online too. In the US, James Stewart's database started in 1982 and went online as early as 1992. n Germany Michael Schmidt (steinerquellen later steinerdatenbank) and Thierry Cassegrain (Uranosarchiv) were pioneers to bring Steiner's work online (also the work that had not been published in the GA), and Wolfgang Peter started his german wiki site in 2004.

Note: the above list goes from index via glossary to 'guidelines for study' (leitfaden).

Regarding the last category, Arenson's classic was added to Schema FMC00.039 because it was the first and very impactful, but there are further comprehensive works, an example being:

  • Herbert Wimbauer: 'Thematischer Leitfaden für das Studium der Anthroposophie' (5 Volumes) (1980-81)

What is next?

The ambition of the initiative GA2025 isto have all of the Gesamtausgabe published by 2025. Hopefully the contribution of Rudolf Steiner will then be fully available.

All materials are (or will become) available digitally with search tools and databases, so students have an overview that never existed before. Please do stand still on this point and appreciate the priviledge.

At the same time two things are missing or do not really exists, but they are being worked:

- an integrated edition of the Collected Works: preferably digital and in english, integrated meaning consolidated contents-wise. Here wiki projects like this site fit in. Another example would be anthrowiki, merged with the contents of lexicons like those by Schwendener and Motelli.

- a comprehensive overview on anthroposophical secondary literature and spiritual scientific literature at large. We are now one century after Rudolf Steiner's foundational contribution, and there is so much more today than in 1925. See for example the SoSoG page. This has to be living, and include and 'connect in' the work being done today.

The Free Man Creator initiative works on both these fronts.

Discussion

Note 1 - Study companions for GA volumes

In more recent times, certain people have started to publish study notes or companion guides for certain GA volumes. Here is an overview:

  • 1920-GA312
    • Peter Selg und Péter Barna: Studienkommentare zum medizinischen Werk Rudolf Steiners – „Die Zukunft des medizinischen Lebens“ Band 1: Geisteswissenschaft und Medizin (GA 312). Vorgeschichte, Intention und Komposition. Materialien zum ersten Ärztekurs Rudolf Steiners 1920. (2020)


Note: George O'Neil's group also has study notes for 1910-GA013 and lecture cycles such as 1911-GA131 ('From Jesus to Christ')

Note 2 - information about the RSarchive

taken from source here, SWCC

Since its creation in 1978, the online web-based Rudolf Steiner Archive has been used by people around the world. The Archive is the largest digital collection of works of Rudolf Steiner available online in English, holding more than 3.000 books and lectures and reaching approximately 6.000 unique visitors daily.

Early history of the Rudolf Steiner Archive: 1978-1996

In the late 1970s, Werner Glas and Hans Gebert were both working at the Rudolf Steiner Institute in Southfield, Michigan, USA when Jim Stewart, who was new to Anthroposophy, made their acquaintance. It occurred to Jim, who had over 15 years of experience in developing databases for the automotive industry, that questions might be more easily answered if Steiner's books and lectures could be collected in a searchable database. He suggested this to Dr. Glas who cautioned that this would be a very large undertaking, considering the sheer amount of data and the fact that there were no electronic copies of Steiner's writings at that time. He did, however, think it was a worthy effort and encouraged Jim to do it.

The work began slowly at first. Jim had many books by Steiner he wanted to digitize but he was a slow typist. Over the course of many years, as technology progressed, computers and scanners became more affordable and there was a significant improvement in character recognition software that would convert a scanned picture of text into text one could edit. These developments dramatically improved the speed at which Jim could work.

When the Internet became available to the public in the late 1980s, Jim began the Rudolf Steiner Archive as a computer “bulletin board service,” a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks, and other aspects of the Internet. Soon after this, he set up his own computers, which enabled people to download the lectures themselves anytime, night or day. Eventually, Jim was able to make around sixty documents available to the public in electronic form. It was at this point that he found an amazing piece of software that not only allowed people to download the files but to search them as well. The Archive was off and running.

In 1996, Jim began using the name 'The e.Lib' - short for electronic library - and incorporated a not-for-profit corporation e.Lib. Inc..

Growth of the initiative: 1996-2020

Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, a network of volunteers worldwidefound their way to the Rudolf Steiner Archive and offered to help with scanning, digitizing, and proofreading the new electronic versions of some of the many English translations of Steiner’s books, lectures, and articles. One of the contributors, Dr. Christopher Wietrzykowski, contributed hundreds of prepared documents to The e.Lib to be put online. Because Chris and Jim both lived in Michigan, they were able to cultivate a relationship and met personally on many occasions.

In 2012, when Jim was diagnosed with lung cancer, he began to think more deeply about who might succeed him as the "e.Librarian." Jim asked Chris if he would take over the Archive in the future and Chris agreed.

There was a bit of a lull in the activity on the Archive in the late 2010s, without much new material being added. Most materials that were easiest to digitize already had been converted to electronic form. Furthermore, the website was beginning to show its age, and keeping the computers running was occupying more and more of Jim's time. The original software used for running the web pages had served well in the early years but was increasingly becoming a liability as the technology was never designed for the sheer mass of information involved. The databases had become increasingly unstable, and the decades of layered computer code would often produce unexpected problems.

In early 2020, Chris retired and Jim was ready to begin the process of transitioning the Archive to Chris and his wife Karin. Chris and Jim held periodic phone and video calls and Chris began studying computer system administration and website technologies.

Transition and current phase: 2021 onwards

In 2021, the US-based organisation behind the Archive, The e.Lib. Inc., transferred the Rudolf Steiner Archive website of RSArchive.org to a new non-profit organisation formed by Chris and Karin, called the Steiner Online Library (SOL). Jim and his partner, Marylin Kraker, began bringing related all related materials, computers and books, to Chris and Karin.

Because the Archive was initially developed at the dawn of the digital age, it needs technical and functional upgrades to ensure its viability. Late 2021 brought a rocky start as the computers with the databases were misbehaving and sometimes caused the website to be unreachable. After much hard work, by spring 2022, the database problems had been solved and the website had become more stable and faster than before.

Further renewal work includes reformatting, and rebuilding the (15 year old) database model, and updating the reference of GA volumes and lectures.

Additionally, modern websites need to be readable on all devices that access the Internet whether they are computers, tablets, or phones. This means a website must automatically scale down in size to display properly on smaller devices, like mobile phones and tablets. The current Archive software cannot manage this process, so at the moment a user must manually resize the content inside the viewing area. End of 2022, a demo website steinerlibrary.org was created as a pilot to make Steiner’s work more clearly viewable on all devices. Since that worked well, the Rudolf Steiner Archive is being updated with the structure and flexibility of the demo website to allow phone and tablet users to always see an appropriately sized website.

Related pages

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