Social issues with a focus on agricultural individuality - a lecture by Marcel Waldhausen, 2025

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Marcel Waldhausen on 22. November 2025 with his lecture on "Social issues with a focus on agricultural individuality" Video here

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Transcription of the lecture on November 22nd 2025

The Geological Foundation of Koberwitz 00:00:20

Yeah, we are all tired now a little bit, I guess. It was a long day, everybody, yeah, had a little bit for a while, so let's try to make a little effort to concentrate in this hour now. Yesterday I told you that it's very important to know what the geological foundation of the farm is that you are farming. I asked myself: What was the geological foundation of Koberwitz, where the course happened, where Rudolf Steiner came to tell the farmers?

So I was very lucky to be able to be three times to Koberwitz in the last two years. And at the first trip we visited a small biodynamic farm near of Koberwitz, and I asked them—you know, they are farmers—I asked them: "What is the geological foundation?" And they said: "Come, I show you." They had dug a big hole for the foundation of the new stables, so I was able to take a look inside the earth, about three metres deep. It was a gift, it was like, wow. And there were a lot of round stones, very hard round stones, red-coloured rounds. And I asked him: "Can I pick one just for, you know, like a small thing that I carry home?" So: "Yeah, take what you want." And I chose a red stone like this size, half round, half flat, and heart-shaped, and I asked him: "What is this? What is this material, what kind of stone is it?" And he told me: "These stones are from Norway." They made all the way down with the ice that was moving through the continents from Norway and finished there. So the geological foundation of Koberwitz is from Norway in some parts. It's amazing, this interrelation of the earth as a being and the connection from the Scandinavian countries. So we see every one of us is related in a special way with this place.

The Evolution of Human Consciousness 00:03:39

So, and I would like to take you very far back to understand really where we are now, and we will go very far back. So if we follow how Rudolf Steiner developed and describes how the earth and the human being developed over all the time, we arrive at a moment where we are on the earth, and the human being is totally connected with the spiritual world. It's like living in the spiritual world, living on the kind of earth, but there's just the difference is dreaming a little bit more and dreaming a little bit less, if you will. Okay, so that was the starting point. But the task for the human being on earth is to become a free being and to develop love. Those are the two big tasks that we have. So if we are part of the spiritual world, we can't be free. An angel or etheric beings, they are not free, they have to do their jobs, and it's our task to become a free being.

So we need to disconnect with the spiritual world in a certain way. So we started with the Golden Age, and we need to disconnect, so we passed the Silver Age, the Iron Age, and then we arrived to something that they are calling the Dark Age, where the human being is absolutely disconnected from the spiritual world. And this needs to be done like that, so we can freely decide to re-engage. Through all the times there were places where people were knowing about the spiritual world, but all of us as humanity, we needed to disconnect. So we have this Dark Age, and the darkest moment, at the bottom of this Dark Age, there's where the Christ is coming to earth. So, and the people didn't understand what was happening, in fact, but that was the moment. So, and then it's like rising up again, and this Dark Age ended 1899, and then it started the Light Age, the lightful age, and we are now inside this lightful age phase.

And from 1900, we needed to get the information again what the spiritual world is all about, to be prepared, if you will, so we can choose and look for an entrance or a knowing or something, but freely, without being forced. And that is the task that Rudolf Steiner had, to show us how this spiritual world is working. So he did that during 25 years, basically. And if you look at the history of the Anthroposophical Society and the development of Anthroposophy, it's very interesting, because it was never easy. It was a very, very tough and hard task that he had to do. He started in the Theosophical Society, because you have ever to connect with the old system to implement a new one. So he started there, and then after some years, they had to separate, because he had a different approach. He wanted to show the people how you can access the spiritual world.

Social Three-Folding and World War I 00:09:30

From 1900 till the First World War, there he interrupted this being a teacher and schooling the people about the spiritual world, and he started with something to implement a social idea that was very, very needed at that time. And this is called the Three-folding. Some of you may have heard about it, the Three-folding, and it's basically based on the human being: it's the thinking, the will, and the feeling. And this is transferred to the basic social parts. So you have economy with the will, you have the legal life connected with the feeling, and then the thinking is connected with the cultural life, with all schooling and having ideas and stuff.

So he tried to implement this. They were working a lot, many people were working during World War One, and they were so close. There was the Prince of Baden, he was in charge to step out and tell the people after the war what would be the new social order that we will have. And he said to Rudolf Steiner: "I go out and I will proclaim this Three-folding." And he stepped out, and he proclaimed the Wilson's 14 Points plan. And we all know what was the result of this act, we can see it till today, what was the result of not doing what he had promised before. Imagine Rudolf Steiner and the guy—the guy that is in charge to step out to the German society, the world has ended, all the kings and kingdoms are gone, you need a new system—so he agreed to step out and say "Let's do Three-folding." And he stepped out and he said: "I proclaim the Wilson's 14 Points plan." It's just history. And after that we had a lot of problems, yeah, you know, Second World War, all this. The moment is there to do the right thing, and they chose the wrong thing.

Karl von Keyserlingk and Rudolf Steiner 00:13:43

And after the First World War, there's a very important point for us, because Count Karl von Keyserlingk met Rudolf Steiner in 1918. The war is over, and he returned to Berlin, and Steiner was there, and they meet. And there's a connection from the very beginning. Steiner, his first lecture in Breslau was 1908, but they meet 10 years later. And they started a very strong connection, if you will, likely like a friendship, very special, very, very deep connection. And Keyserlingk trusted totally in Rudolf Steiner's advices, and yeah, he followed this until his death.

They tried to implement the Three-folding in a firm, in a corporation, and this is called "Der Kommende Tag" (The Coming Day). They started in Stuttgart in Germany, and there were factories and stuff, and some farms. And Keyserlingk advised these farms. He was a specialist, he runs a farm of 7,500 hectares, with a thousand people working there, so he was very specialised, and his reputation was all over Germany. He was very well known as a good farmer. And he saw that Rudolf Steiner knows a lot about farming, they talked, and he thought: "Wow, this guy knows a lot about farming." He was curious, and he said to his wife: "I think we need like a course for us as farmers." And this was 1920.

So 1920, it started being an idea and becoming more and more reality. It was necessary that—you know, Rudolf Steiner was unable to implement something on his own, he needed that someone asks for it. It was a law by the spiritual world. He was not allowed to implement a Waldorf school, he needed someone that asked for that. And so, if you study the history, you can see in each of these currents, or each of these sister or daughter movements, you can see this one person. And for the Agriculture Course, this is Karl von Keyserlingk. He was this person.

The Three Currents: Will, Feeling, Thinking 00:17:17

He [Keyserlingk] is representing, in the Three-folding, the Will. Because, you know, as human beings, we have all a thinking part, a willing part, and a feeling part, but one of these is the strongest. Keyserlingk is representing the Will. Steiner said to him: "You have an iron will."

In 1922, we have the two other currents asking Rudolf Steiner. First Ernst Stegemann, he was a farmer, he saw that the quality was going down of the products, so he was the guy that asked: "What can I do?" And Steiner said to him he had to try to make grains out of grass, and the meditation needed, he received this in Stuttgart in 1922. And Stegemann started immediately on his farm, and he's the representative of the Feeling. You know, they meditated together, it's a very social place, where the people are working very good together.

So, and at the same time, we see two young people at the Goetheanum, and they're asking Rudolf Steiner how to study the forces of life, how can we, as scientists, study this. These were Wachsmuth and Pfeiffer. And they were allowed to have a little small laboratory in the bottom of the Goetheanum. And they asked him: "How can we study the etheric forces?" And he said: "Make some preparations." So they started, and in autumn 1923, they put the first 500 [Horn Manure] in the soil. And at the same time, Stegemann on his farm did the same thing. So parallel, they were doing this first preparation.

The Burning of the Goetheanum and the Christmas Conference 00:22:03

Then happened something very strong in the anthroposophical movement, because the first Goetheanum at New Year '22, it was burnt down. It was a very big crisis. It was so close that there ends everything. And it's Pfeiffer, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who carried Rudolf Steiner through this situation. He helped him. He was a young guy, he was 20 years old, but he helped Rudolf Steiner in this outstanding situation. And you know, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer is a guy... Rudolf Steiner, in German it's like that, you have "Sie" for everyone—his wife, Frau Dr. Steiner, he was not saying "Oh Marie", no, "Frau Dr. Steiner"—and there were just a small amount of people who received the "Du" from him, and Ehrenfried Pfeiffer was one of these guys. Impressive.

So we have a big crisis, and like the Agriculture Course is a bit more far away than normally. Rudolf Steiner started in '23 after this crisis with a strong, strong work, he did sometimes three lectures a day. And at Christmas '23, there happened a great change for the anthroposophical movement, because they founded the Anthroposophical Society new, as we know it today. We have the sections, we have the High School of Spiritual Science and stuff. For all of you young people, that was a big question all the time, the difference between the young people and the elder anthroposophical people. So sometimes we had two societies, a free society of the youth, and the official society of the elder people. They were unable to interrelate. And now we are in the same situation again. We have to observe this moment now, it's the same, the only difference is we are climbing up a hill. We did a full round now, 100 years, we're looking at the same valley, but from a different angle.

The Agriculture Course in Koberwitz 00:26:05

So Keyserlingk sent his nephew to this Christmas Conference, and he asked for the date to have the Agriculture Course. So he said: "Yeah, I will come then." And he came. So they prepared everything. And Rudolf Steiner got very, very ill at that moment, ill to death, but he made it from Dornach to Breslau, more than 1000 kilometres, to give to the people this lecture. This is in June. From there he went to Jena to see the first place for children with special needs, and in July we have the course for Curative Education. It's the last two movements that are founded, then he is so ill he can't keep on.

So, and now the Agricultural Course is coming. Keyserlingk invited Rudolf Steiner and 130 people in his house to hear these lectures, and in the evening they had Karma lectures and stuff. It was 12 days of intense work, the last big anthroposophical congress that happened during his lifetime. And we have eight lectures that form the Agricultural Course, and the form that the course has is unique. We have the first lecture on Saturday 7th, the Whitsun Saturday, and then we have two days of break, Sunday and Monday, but in the evening we have Karma lectures. Why do we have this interruption there?

There, in the social context, there are things happening that are very important. Because Keyserlingk saw that it was necessary to found the movement, and he asked his colleagues to found the "Versuchsring" (Experimental Circle). Founding the movement—if you imagine you have the Christian Community, it's not the anthroposophical church, it's an independent movement. And if we just have the Agricultural Course, it's just an idea, it's like a book. But if you don't have a movement that is bringing that to earth, it will not happen in the correct way. So it was very necessary to found this movement.

The Conflict and the Foundation 00:31:07

In the first lecture, we have like the overture. And then you have two days of break. And at the Sunday evening, the farmers meet in Breslau, and they talked about founding a Versuchsring. First of all, Stegemann, who was working since 1922, told the other farmers his results and how he's working. And there Kaiserling and Stegemann got in a very strong conflict. Because Stegemann, imagine, it's a guy who was fully in the Feeling movement, and Kaiserling wanted facts: how many seeds you have seeded, how big was the surface? And the other one was unable to tell him: "I invite you to see it, but I don't have the results." And they yelled at each other.

Kaiserling got so angry about it that at the evening, after this discussion, he wanted to stop the conference. Imagine that. He was the one that paid for all, in his house was the congress, and he asked for stopping it. It was a very critical situation, it was so close to fail. But they continued. And before the third lecture on Wednesday, they were able to announce the foundation of the movement.

The Structure of the Lectures 00:34:12

And now, we can observe how Rudolf Steiner answered this situation for everybody, because he gave a lecture especially for the movement of the Will, he gives a lecture especially for the current of the Feeling, and he gave one for the Thinking. So every movement received their own lecture, their own entrance to the agriculture question.

• Will: Lecture 2 and 8.
• Feeling: Lecture 3 (Nitrogen and how they are related, what kind of being is behind) and 7 (Tree in the landscape, interrelation).
• Thinking: Lecture 4, 5, and 6.

Lecture 4, 5, and 6 are pure anthroposophy, if you will. But look at that: What a kind of force we need to do the spraying preparations? We need Will. But it's Will "squared", it's mathematics. Fifth lecture: compost preparations, mellifolium (yarrow) and stuff. It's about relationships all the time, and beings. And then we have lecture 6 about the ashes and stuff, that is anthroposophy plus anthroposophy squared, because you need the astronomy stuff. That is why it's so hard to understand and to apply.

Count Karl von Keyserlingk's Social Deeds 00:40:11

So we have this man, Count von Keyserlingk, who was responsible that all that is coming to earth at the end. After the course, Count Keyserlingk was the president of the new founded situation, and the same conflict that they had during the Agriculture Course keeps on going.

You need to know that he was a very, very special person. He was a Count, he was the member of the board of the sugar factory there, he was the leader of the entire agriculture, 7,500 hectares. But his soul was very special, he did a lot of things for the workers. For example, he built houses for the workers, and they ran a social department where everybody was allowed to come and to tell the problems that they have, without asking the foreman. Every month they had a meeting, and every farm was allowed to send two people there, and he attended in every one of these meetings. It was from his heart.

His brother was running the committee of the people who own the land, so they debated and were struggling officially in public. The presidents of the sugar factory, they didn't like that behaviour, they wanted him to leave. And there's one very important situation. We have hyperinflation in that time after the war. Kaiserling chose another way. For everyone, every day they had to write down the count of hours you had worked. And the value for the worked hour was cereal (grain). So it was stable. They were able to receive it in natural things, sugar or cereals, and they were allowed to sell it by their own, or get the same amount in money. For thousand people, every day. So for the factory, it was not the best deal, so they hated him.

The Strike and the Mantra 00:50:29

They tried to get him out. He returned to Koberwitz, and everything's gone: no more cars, no more food, no money. And he went to his office, and three days, he was sitting there in his office, no one entered. And on the third day, the door opened, and one of the presidents is coming in, and saying: "You know, there are the workers in front, and they will let the work down if you not will return to your work." It was not only the thousand people from the farms, everyone appeared, 3,000 workers, saying: "This man is coming back to his office, or we leave."

From that on, we have like a time of peace, and in this time of peace, the Agricultural Course is given. After the course, the conflict started again. Kaiserling let his presidency down, he left the Christian Community, he left the Anthroposophical Society, because the people were struggling against each other.

During the last weeks of his life—he died in December 1928—he found new people that wanted to found places, like they were talking about during the conference with Steiner: places with agriculture, with culture, with schools. And the government of that time wanted to support that. But he died. But he formed like a mantra, and this mantra was: "Found places with peace and love, where Christ is able to resurrect." This was a phrase that he repeats during the last weeks of his life. So when he died, they put this on his urn.

The Rediscovery of the Urn 00:55:43

After the Second World War, they lost this urn. The Russian army took the urn, they had taken the urns from the people there and spread the ashes away. The Countess took the urn and made a hole by her hands to dig a little place to put it in. One year later, she had to leave forever. She put the last papers in the roof of a small cabin in the school.

We did a 100 years anniversary at Whitsun, we went with 50 people there to Koberwitz. And on Monday, we went to see the place where this happened. In the school, we were asking: "Did you find something in your roof?" And they said: "Yes, we find some old papers in the roof. We gave it to a local museum."

We returned home. The day after this conference, the woman that helped us with Polish language called us and said: "Stop the car for a moment. I talked to the man [from the museum], and the man said, 'I was thinking about your question about the urn, and I have the urn here. I have the urn in my museum, I never put it for the public, it's like hidden, and I felt all my life that I had to return it to the family.'"

So he wanted to give it back to the family. I had contact with the son of Adalbert, one of the sons of Johanna and Karl. I made the contact with another daughter living in Canada. We need the paperwork. And Tuesday, the paperwork arrived, so we went there, and we pick her up. It was an official moment, with the mayor and television. I gave a little speech about his life. I took this urn home.

The Correct Wording of the Mantra 01:04:45

So we had this exposition, and he returned home to his family, and this month, he was buried in Canada, in Ontario. But you know, this is not happened just like this. You can imagine that the spiritual world is very interested in helping us in this very, very critical moment of the movement. Because we are in a very critical situation now, the original force is lost, we have to renew it.

So in this critical moment, the urn appeared in our movement. And it has this mantra. We knew this wording, because in the books of the Countess you have the wording, but there was a huge difference. Because this little word here, the "in", was changed, it says "auf" (on). And it's a huge difference if the Christ resurrects in that place or on that place. You can feel this difference. So it's so necessary that we have the original wording. And that he appeared in our movement again, like this could be the mantra for our movement: to really found places in his social ideas, to really work together with love and freedom, and really found these places where the youth can have their apprenticeship, where we can grow healthy food.

Thank you very much.

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