(1879-1943)
Dr. Elisabeth Vreede
Elisabeth Vreede was born in The Hague, Holland on 16 July
1879. She was the second child of her father, who was a lawyer and her mother,
who was devoted to charitable work. She was a sensitive person and later on in
her life she played an important part in the Anthroposophical life in Holland.
Elisabeth Vreede came into contact with
Theosophy in her home growing up. She was interested early on in the starry
sky, and while learning French, she read the works of Camille Flammarion, a
French astronomer and author. Because of his scientific background, he
approached spiritism and reincarnation from the viewpoint of the scientific
method, writing, “It is by the scientific method alone that we may make
progress in the search for truth. Religious belief must not take the place of
impartial analysis. We must be constantly on our guard against illusions.”
Other than his books of fiction, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly
closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy.
At the University of Leyden she studied
mathematics, astronomy, Sanskrit, and philosophy (especially Hegel). She was
also actively involved in student life, founding a boat club and was a council
member of the students' union. She cultivated this more social life as well as
her academics during this period.
The first meeting with Rudolf Steiner took
place early on at the Theosophical Congress in London in 1903. Her parents were
theosophists and she as well was a member of the Theosophical Society. Rudolf
Steiner at the congress straightaway made a huge impression on her. A year
later at the Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the
Theosophical Society at Amsterdam in 1904, she heard a lecture on ‘Mathematics
and Occultism’ that Steiner gave. The next European Congress was in 1906 where
Steiner held a cycle of 18 lectures there.
After receiving her diploma in 1906, she
gave instruction at a higher girl’s school in mathematics until 1910. From
1910, she lived in Berlin, worked on her dissertation, and occasionally worked
as a secretary for Rudolf Steiner. In April 1914, she moved to Dornach to help
in the building of the first Goetheanum and was often found there carving wood.
During the War years (1916/17) Elisabeth
Vreede broke off from her residence in Dornach in order to work in Berlin as a
coworker of Elisabeth Rotten (15 February 1882, Berlin – 2 May 1964, London,
who was a Quaker, peace activist and educational progressive), looking after
prisoners of war. She was very much aware of the life and sufferings of her
contemporaries.
After the War, Rudolf Steiner developed
his idea of the threefold social order and she too had an intense interest in
this initiative and work. She was the first to bring this idea of a threefold
social order to England. Around 1918, Dr. Vreede began to construct the library
and archive at the Goetheanum. Using her own means, she purchased the expensive
lecture transcripts as soon as they were typed from notes. In 1920 she moved to
Arlesheim, Switzerland, where she had built a little house for herself. It was
the second house for which Steiner had given the model in 1919. In 1924,
Steiner appointed her to head the Mathematical-Astronomical Section of the
School of Spiritual Science of the recently reestablished Anthroposophical
Society, and she belonged to the board of directors of the general
Anthroposophical Society from 1925 to 1935. In 1935 the separation within the
Anthroposophical Society took place and she was expelled from the executive
council, while her section was passed to other leadership. After internal
discussions in the Anthroposophical Society, she was excluded along with her
long-time friend and co-member, Dr. Ita Wegman from
the board of directors. She was also cut off from the observatory and archives
that she herself helped assemble. Rudolf Steiner is reputed to have said that
Dr. Vreede understood his work more deeply than anyone else.
Dr. Vreede gave a lecture on 3 January
1926, which was first publish in the Anthroposophical Movement in
Vol. 6, Nos. 42 to 46, called The World of the Stars and Human Destiny.
In it she addressed the appropriate use of Astrology in our time:
“You will now understand to what purpose
we have a horoscope, and that it is not there in the first instance for our own
sake. You will understand that when a horoscope is made for a person’s
satisfaction, there is always a certain amount of egoism connected with it; for
he does not possess it for this purpose! And if you take the passages in our
literature where Dr. Steiner speaks about Astrology (there are passages in many
of the cycles and lectures) you will find how he emphasizes again and again
that Astrology must be something social, which pays no attention to the
individual but has social aims. In a true Astrology only what is universally
human is considered and not the satisfaction of the egoism of the human being.
By considering it egoistically, that deed of Michael is undone whereby other
beings ought to be saved from plunging into the abyss.
When Dr. Steiner asked the position of
the stars at the moment of a birth, it was always with reference to children
who lacked one or other of the forces just described. It was then possible to
learn from it which of these forces was not there in the right sense; thus it
could be gathered what this human soul lacked before birth. And then it might
be possible under certain circumstances to find a cure. Here we see how the
matter is carried away from what is egoistic and into the social, when such
abnormal children may in this way find a cure, which otherwise might perhaps
not be possible. But in those children in whom certain forces were not brought
in at birth these influences remain present. …Thus we see how Astrology can be
used when it is kept in Michael's sense, and not in the sense in which it is so
often practiced today.”
In 1928 she invited Willi Sucher to
come to Dornach and collaborated with him in working out the death asterograms
of historical personalities, which was part of his substantial historic
research, and which he further worked out in the late 30’s and 40’s, doing the
charts and therapeutic research of special needs children in England and
Scotland.
In 1935 the separation within the
Anthroposophical Society took place and she was expelled from the Vorstand and
her Section passed into other hands. After internal discussions in the
Anthroposophical Society, she was excluded along with her long-time friend and
co-member, Ita Wegman from the board of directors. Rudolf Steiner is reputed to
have said that Dr. Vreede understood his work more deeply than anyone else.
On the anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's
death she once again spoke to the circle of friends and co-workers in the
clinic. They wanted to commemorate not just Rudolf Steiner but the many who
were leading Anthroposophists but to most were no longer known. She spoke in a
devoted way about Edith Maryon, who also died in 1924, and with a fine
characterization of her being about Alice Sauerwein. She portrayed for us Count
Keyserlingk and Louis Werbeck. Finally she told about Caroline von Heydebrand
and Eugen
Kolisko.
At the beginning of May she spoke once
more on the 400th anniversary of the death of Copernicus. At the lecture it was
noticed that only by exceptional exertion could she keep herself upright. Just
a few days later on 6 May, she had to take to her bed. She had never been ill
nor depended on people until that point. Thanks to the devoted care of Frl.
Schunemann, she was treated at home until her passing on 31 August 1943 in Ascona.
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