The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

November 7, 2023

A woman posted online that someone asked her if she had plans for the Fall. It took her a while to realize the person meant Autumn—not the fall of humanity! As in Rudolf Steiner’s time, the future can sometimes look quite bleak, but with a sense of humor, the support of others, and our own spiritual development we can shine as bright lanterns through the darkness of this world.

We are grateful for your support of the Rudolf Steiner Archive. In the past year, the website has doubled its users from 5,000 to 10,000 unique visitors per day and over 110,000 per month. If you would like to help us to continue to grow, please consider making a donation. Through your financial contributions, we have accomplished significant improvements to our service.

Content Additions. We added approximately 250 new searchable English translations including over 150 previously unsearchable education lectures that had only been available in PDF. Visit our Recent Additions list to see newly added works of Rudolf Steiner. See our list of Other Authors as well.

Bookshop. We are preparing to launch an online bookstore of Anthroposophical books. Donate books to our nonprofit; we will post what we can online, keep a copy and resell the rest. The profits will go directly to support the Archive.

Original English Translations. We are producing our own English translations of what is not yet available on our website as well as replacing poor translations. We added The Theory of Color and Light in GA 91, Nature and Spirit Beings in GA 98, and are currently working on four other GAs.

Multilingual. We added a translation tool so people from around the world can read our website in almost any language.

Customized Search. We built a new database and a unique search engine that delivers greatly expanded search capability. Highlights include:

  • Custom search tools help avoid censorship, such as in mainland China
  • Extensive synonym list to account for alternate spellings
  • Improved faceting to easily narrow search results
  • Sortable table headings for lectures and recent additions

Updated Date and GA Search. Our search by date and GA tools now list the full corpus of Steiner’s work—what we have and what we don’t yet have available. We organized our content to reflect the changing classifications used by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag in Dornach, Switzerland.

Responsive Screen Size. We made the entire website responsive to your screen size. It now adjusts to suit mobile devices and tablets.

Automated Practice Tools. We added features for automatic updates of the Calendar of the Soul and an index of Foundation Stone Meditation translations.

Festival and Topic Summaries. We expanded our list of Topics including festivals and other areas of interest and published articles about them in our Blog.

Print Tool. We vastly improved the print layout of individual documents both in English and after using the embedded translation tool. This can be accessed with our new print/download option found in the sidebar. Embedded footnotes are automatically changed to endnotes.

Text Improvements. We corrected a seemingly endless number of typos and errors in historical text and images.

Newsletter. We added a sign-up form for our Newsletter. Add your email address to our contact list to receive periodic updates. Right away you will receive tips on how to better use the Archive.

Now, more than ever, we feel the importance of helping the Anthroposophical community in the inevitable trend toward digital media. It is of the utmost importance to make the vast scope of Steiner’s works available in an accessible, searchable format in English. For those who enjoy a physical book, we aim to offer gently used books that need a good home.

If you would like to help us with this effort, please donate either financially or by contributing books to our bookshop. We appreciate your support!