There are two new buildings worthy of awards in the Goetheanum Park: the expressive Preparation Pavilion (designed by Yaike Dunselman) received the 2025 Iconic Award and the 2026 German Design Award; the Bee Sculpture (designed by Barbara Schnetzler) an ‘Honourable Mentions’ award from the architecture and design platform March and an appreciation award from the Canton of Solothurn, Switzerland.
Rudolf Steiner is known as the originator of Waldorf Education, biodynamic agriculture and Anthroposophic Medicine. In his dissertation and other written works he also developed a philosophy based on the reality and spiritual activity of the human ‘I’.
Anthroposophical visions are being put into practice and developed around the world in business, education, agriculture and medicine. Brands such as ‘Alnatura’ or ‘Sonett’, ‘Waldorf Schools’ and ‘Demeter’ are examples of this and they all contribute to sustainable development, as is illustrated in the compendium ‘On the Earth We Want to Live’, published by Springer Nature.
Fertile soils with a diverse microbiome are an essential prerequisite for providing people with healthy and nurturing food. In promoting and enabling sustainable food systems, biodynamic farming supports the cause of World Food Day on 16 October 2025 which has the theme ‘Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future.’
The spreading of deserts worldwide constitutes a challenge for the earth’s climate and therefore also for plants, animals and humans. Biodynamic initiatives in the Sahara region prove that even deserts can be transformed into living spaces.
The use of specific preparations is a central part of biodynamics, but until recently there had been no scientific explanation for the way they work. Jürgen Fritz, agronomist at Kassel University, Germany, presents a model for the effectiveness of biodynamic preparations in ‘Living Farms’, a journal published by the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum in Switzerland.
The new issue of ‘red nose’ #9 shows why laughter is the best medicine, what part clowning plays in this through all ages of people. And why it is more about the universality of being human than about personal or cultural differences in humour.
Agriculture is under pressure due to climate change, monocultures and soil erosion. Fields are devastated by wars and the earth is poisoned by weapons. Fertile soil is being lost and deserts are spreading. Many farms are struggling to survive. With its action plan for 2025 to 2027, the Goetheanum‘s Section for Agriculture wishes to encourage a sustainable approach to farming.
On 8 May, the publishing company Philosophisch-Anthroposophische Verlage was entered in the Swiss commercial register. The publishers Rudolf Steiner Verlag and Verlag am Goetheanum have merged under this name.
Rudolf Steiner was the originator of pioneering achievements such as Waldorf Education, biodynamic farming and Anthroposophic Medicine. His scientific approach is not as well known. In his book ‘Rudolf Steiner und die Anthroposophie’, Peter Selg describes a man with a social impulse that includes the effectiveness of spiritual forces.
After six years of development and testing, the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, has handed over study modules on biodynamic farming to Heliopolis University in Cairo, Egypt, as part of a degree programme in organic agricultural science.
Waldorf schools and kindergartens, biodynamic farming and Anthroposophical Medicine are rooted in the anthroposophical approach developed by Rudolf Steiner. But the effectiveness of his work was not to be taken for granted, as events organized at and around the Goetheanum for the 100th anniversary of his death on 30 March will illustrate.
The staging of Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Parsifal’ at the Goetheanum under director Jasmin Solfaghari has made history by including eurythmy. It also brought together art and science. The book on ‘Parsifal’ at the Goetheanum offers multiple glimpses, personal and professional, into this complex undertaking, a cooperation of Schott Music and Pamy Media Productions.
The smallholder farmers of indigenous cultures seek to live in harmony with the earth. Biodynamic farming is for them a way of bringing together tradition and innovation to achieve a unity of earth, humans and cosmos.
What remains when all the knowledge from guidelines and textbooks does not suit the individual patients one meets as a physician or therapist? Erik Baars pursues this question in conversation with Julia Demming from the Medical Section at the Goetheanum. Erik Baars is professor of Anthroposophic Medicine at the University of Applied Sciences in Leiden (NL).
We need laughter, we need self-distance in order to develop. Since if we think we are doing everything right, there will be no development. And nothing to laugh about. Or even more so?
Anthroposophic physicians largely resisted Nazi ideology, particularly in terms of content, but some individuals accepted the system in the hope of gaining advantages for Anthroposophic Medicine. These are the findings of the study ‘Anthroposophy and National Socialism. The Anthroposophical Physicians’ by Peter Selg, Susanne H. Gross and Matthias Mochner.
Biodynamic projects give small farmers and their families access to food through self-sufficiency, promoting self-reliance and sustainable food systems along the way.
For 100 years the Sections of the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum have been working with an understanding of life under cosmic, earthly and human developmental conditions in order to take on civilizational tasks. At the Campus Fete on 8 September 2024, Goetheanum co-workers will make the work of the School tangible to visitors.
A study on the Biodynamic Movement and Demeter in Nazi Germany describes the proximity of the biodynamic movement to the Nazi regime, even though the movement never adopted any central Nazi ideologemes such as antisemitism.
