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Rudolf Steiner's 150th Birthday,
Karl König and the Soul Calendar:
Three Anniversaries, One Impulse for Humanity
“The Soul Calendar can indeed be
seen as a path of initiation
that leads into the planetary spheres
and into the realm where the etheric Christ Being lives."
Karl
König, Advent 1947
Karl König, physician and founder of the Camphill Movement,
came from a Jewish background in Vienna, where he studied
zoology, biology and medicine. He found his way early on to
a deep connection with Christianity. His search for answers
to the question of evolution and the nature of Life Forces
led him to study Goethe, to find Anthroposophy and become
a life-long pupil of Rudolf Steiner.
Meeting Ita Wegman gave him the direction for his work and
life. After assisting her at Arlesheim he became one of the
pioneers of Anthroposophic medicine and curative education,
first of all in Silesia. Together with a small group of European
refugees coming to Britain in 1938, he founded a therapeutic
community on the Camphill Estate near Aberdeen, which has
since given its name to a world-wide movement for curative
and social work.
Studies done with a group attempting to overcome imprisonment
by spiritual activity led to coloured drawings for each of
the 52 verses of the "Anthroposophic Soul Calendar"
during internment in 1940. These artistic imaginations show
an amazing meditative depth.
König must have been the first student of Anthroposophy
to explore the fourfold structure of the Calendar of the Soul
which revealed new images to him and a path of metamorphosis
of the cross in the cycle of the year became subject of 13
further pictures, to which he wrote explanitory texts for
the use of his closest pupils. Many lectures and addresses
followed to encourage the co-workers of the Camphill Movement
to follow such an inner path. Later he took this theme far
afield but did not manage to finish the planned publication.
This 150th year since Rudolf Steiner's birth
also marks
100 years since he gave the Calendar of the Soul
and the 70th Anniversary of the Camphill Movement.
To celebrate there will be an
Exhibition of all the originals of Karl
König's pictures at
Rudolf Steiner House, London,
January 15th - 25th 2011
and two volumes of the new Karl König Collected
Works will be issued:
An Inner Journey through the Year
-Drawings for the Anthroposophical Calendar of the Soul
and
A Guide to the Use of the Soul Calendar
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