1890-97 Weimar

Worked at the Goethe and Schiller Archives. Edited some parts of Goethe’s work on natural science which appeared 1891–1896.

Meetings with Hermann Grimm, Ernst Haeckel and Eduard von Hartman, friendship with the poetess Gabriele Reuter, Conrad Ansorge, a pupil of Liszt, John Henry Kackay, the biographer of Stirmer, Fritz Koegel, Nietzsche’s editor for the Cotta’s Library Edition.

Für die «Cotta’sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur» besorgt Steiner eine zwölfbändige Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke Schopenhauers sowie eine Jean-Paul-Ausgabe in acht Bänden. In der Reihe «Berliner Klassiker Ausgaben» (mit «Einleitungen namhafter Literaturhistoriker») erscheinen die Werke Wielands und Uhlands, herausgegeben und eingeleitet by Rudolf Steiner.

Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, Hermann Grimm, Ernst Haeckel

1891-92

Awarded Dr. Phil. by Prof. Heinrich von Stein at the University of Rostock with his dissertation ‘The basic question of theory of knowledge with special reference to Fichte’s theory of knowledge; introduction to an understanding of philosophcial self-consciousness’, published in 1892 under the title ‘Truth and Knowledge; introduction to a “Philosophy of Freedom”’ dedicated to Eduard von Hartmann.

 

1893

His main philosophic work, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, appears in autumn.

 

1894-96

Visits and works in the Nietzsche Archives in Naumburg. Acquaintance with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who wants to convince Steiner to co-publish her brother’s works. Encounters with the ailing Nietzsche. Steiner’s Nietzsche monograph, Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against His Time, appears in 1895.

 

1897

Steiner sums up his Goethe studies in Goethe’s Worldview.