This interview has been made during the 2010-2011 Shakespeare year of the Steiner Seminar. Andrew Wolpert was asked by Brigitta Brassay.

"...to know a man well, were to know himself."
William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Act V. Scene II.

STEINER SEMINAR IN RUDOLF STEINER HOUSE

REPORT WITH ANDREW WOLPERT,
THE LEADER OF THE SEMINAR

Andrew Wolpert is different.
He gives lectures, teaches people, coordinates conversations, leades study groups. But in his presence you will not have the feeling that you are in school, you can be sure of that.  You don’t have to answer or to be up to the task.   No, this is not what happens. What happens is this: he is curious in a good sense, he is interested in you. His aim is not to give you what he already knows, instead of that he wants to create with you what you both know.  He invites you as a friend, as a companion. Or as his own teacher. Because it happens as well. That you are the one who teaches him. Thats what we constantly do in our lives, isnt it? We are both students and teachers at the same time. I always have the feeling that being involved in this seminar means that you are involved in life, not in school. And it is a life that we would be happily lead. A life where there is attention, wisdom, truth, humour, freedom but mostly where there is love. This is what you get there.
Because Andrew Wolpert is different indeed.

This year the theme of the Steiner Seminar is William Shakespeare and his works and you suggested that Shakespeare was an anthroposophist.  What did you mean this?

The impulse of Renaissance Art comes out of the supersensible School of Michael that Rudolf Steiner describes in the 1924 Karma-lectures.  So much of what came in Italy in Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, came 100 years later in the Anglo-Saxon culture in Poetry and Drama, mainly through Shakespeare.  All this tremendous artistic treasure is a revelation on earth through art of part of what was being celebrated   and prepared by Michael and his Companions in the spiritual world, prepared for the next Age of Michael when it was brought to earth by Rudolf Steiner as Spiritual Science, as Anthroposophy.  The art of the Renaissance is an open secret, so much of what had been occult knowledge reserved until then for the secret brotherhoods was now revealed through art as (maybe largely unconscious) soul nourishment, in public culture.  Then in the 20th century it was Rudolf Steiner’s task to bring that wisdom in thoughts, words, ideas, as well as in the modern arts, and social deeds.  And if we look at the art of the 16th century we find so much there that already points to the content of Anthroposophy, and today we are challenged to find a conscious relationship to this Michaelic substance.

How did you get connected to Hungary? And where does the idea of the Steiner Seminar come from?

There were many students from Hungary at Emerson College  more than 20 years ago, that was my first contact with Hungarians interested in the work of Rudolf Steiner.  Georg Kuehlewind was in important individuality who created many opportunities for these contacts to be made at that time.  Then life took its course, people’s paths led in different directions, and it was the about five years ago that these connections, particularly with Eva Ujlaky, Andras Gajdos and Laszlo Vargas-Semes led to conversations about how we might work together in Budapest.

What could be the purpose of a Seminar like this? Did you set out your main aims? Or in a work like this you cannot have definite ideas concerning the process of the work?

We were all so glad that our work in the Seminar could be based in Rudolf Steiner House and be part of the work of the Anthroposophical Society in Hungary.  The task we recognised together, and there were many additional colleagues involved, was to work in such a way that those individuals who are looking for opportunities to awaken their inner longing for Anthroposophy might find connections through our courses to their own destiny.  It has never been our aim to „convert” people to Anthroposophy or persuade them about Rudolf Steiner.

What were the themes of your former Seminars and maybe you already have plans for the next year as well?
In our first year we took the theme of the Festivals of the Year as a way of introducing many different aspects of Anthroposophy, the esoteric Christain themes, spiritual and earthly history, the paradigms of the human being and aspects of the life of Rudolf Steiner.  In the second year we offered a course that explored this esoteric Christianity and the questions of our humanity through art, mainly Renaissance art.  It seemd an organic continuation this year to work with Shakespeare.  In his dramas we find the same spiritual sources and visions that belong to all the wonderful, joyful, terrible and and challenging realities that we face in life today.  Next year we will work with Parzival, and I invite your readers to get a glimpse of what that will be from our website (www.steinerseminar.hu)

Lets talk about you a little. Who is Andrew Wolpert? What is that we should know about him? As far as I know you are art historian and anthoroposophist at the same time. Wonderful combination!

I am glad to be known through my work.  My love of Anthroposophy became the most important element in my life when I was in my twenties.  I had been to a Waldorf school and enjoyed the benefits of being brought up by loving parents who recognised the significance of who Rudolf Steiner was, but my own conscious connection to all this awoke when I began to work with the Philosophy of Freedom forty years ago.  Again, it was my parents who took me to Italy as a child and where I first encountered all the art, and it was thirty years ago when I began to discover how intimately connected the Christian Heart of Anthroposophy is with all that poured into our culture during the Renaissance.

I mention this „wondeful combination” because Rudolf Steiner speaks a lot about the artistic element that needs to get involved into the process that helps Anthroposophy being realized on Earth. What do you think? What is this artistic element? Is that art itself or something deeper?

Artistic activity lives in the rhythms of time, and a vital part of our work in the Steiner Seminar has been to offer music, eurythmy, drama, recitation, painting, modelling and Bothmer Gymnastics as fully integrated process that complement the cognitive and cerebral challenges.  Engaging in such creative activities does not have the aim of making us into professional artists, but rather of allowing the artist that slumbers in each of us to come to healthy organic expression through the life-supporting rhythms of time and repeated opportunities to develop confidence and new competance.  This is all about doing art.  Looking at art is a different process, but it also needs time and the support of repeated rhythmical processes.

At this point the question arises in me: maybe its possible for the students to realize what this seminar gives them, how grows and develops a certain subject in them. But what is that the students give into the process of the common work? Were there many changes during the last seminars? I mean did you and your collegues manage to follow the claims or wishes of your students?
 

It is not for me to say what the students got from these courses, but I certainly can say that asking for and listening to their comments and suggestions enabled us in the last three years to change and re-organise both the structure and sometimes the content of our work.  This co-operation is an essential aspect of modern adult education.  Honest discussion is vital.

Can you tell me something about the structure of the seminar?

For us it has been important to include lectures, preparatory reading, artistic activities, seminars, discussions, excursions, joint celebrations of meals, individual conversations, and projects.  It is constantly a challenge to find the right combinaton and proportions of time to give all these their healthy place.  Punctuality and also flexibility are ongoing aims where our creativity and sensitivity are given ample opportunities to grow!  The structure of the seminar is conceived to enable participants to awaken to their own deeper longings and questions through the encounter with content, artistic processes, dialogue, other individuals, and themselves in a group.  As facilitators, organisers and carriers of this course we know that the health of this structure reveals itself to us when in the work we too awaken to new insights and deeper understandings in our encounters with the participants the students, who are our colleagues.

The theme of the Seminar on Friday and on Saturday is not the same as on Sundays, can you say a little about this?

We knew that it was not easy for all our students to commit to a full weekend and so we are offering the Shakespeare on Fridays and Saturdays.  We also wanted to offer a theme on Sundays that would more explicitly address the deeper questions of those who already have a more conscious connection to Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society.  All three days are open to everybody, and some participants come for the whole weekend, some just for Fridays, some for Fridays and Saturdays, and some just on Sunday mornings.  I like this eclectic freedom.  If you look at our website you will see we plan to continue this structure next year.  The interesteing aspect of this, not unexpected but also not planned, is that the work on Sundays very often reveals inner connections with some of the themes we have been busy with in the Shakespeare.

I know you travel a lot. Do you like this kind of life? Isnt it difficult for you to adapt yourself to different conditions, to the new environments?

Do you lead seminars like this in other countries as well?

The pattern of work is different in each place.  In Stuttgart I work mainly with the students at the Teachers’ Seminar who want to be English teachers, there the work is language teaching as well as literature, history and aspects of British Culture in Japan I have been working with teachers and parents at some of the Waldorf Schools as well as with the students in the upper schools, Anthroposophical study groups and seminars.  In Australia the work has History of Art lectures in public galleries for the Temenos Organisation as well as for the Anthroposophical Society, and in Italy more opportunities to celebrate Renaissance art with Teachers and parents at the Schools or in the Anthroposophical Society, and Shakespeare Workshops as well.

Please, tell me something about those processes that are growing and developing in you in connection with those subjects you work with. How a particular theme that you are engaged with, for example the theme of the Parzival, moves in your soul during the years?

„We have to live in this world but not for this world” – thats what you said once. How can we achieve this? What does this mean?

Thank you for this conversation!