Rudolf Steiner

(1861 - 1925)

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. Steiner gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher and was born in 1861 in the small village of Kraljevec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Croatia) and died in Dornach, Switzerland in 1925. In university, he concentrated on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Having written his thesis on philosophy, Steiner earned his doctorate and was later drawn into literary and scholarly circles and participated in the rich social and political life of Vienna.

During the 1890s, Steiner worked for seven years in Weimar at the Goethe archive, where he edited Goethe's scientific works and collaborated in a complete edition of Schopenhauer's work.Weimar was a center of European culture at the time, which allowed Steiner to meet many prominent artists and cultural figures.