
A House for Humanity
Rudolf Steiner's Goetheanum -
a new experience of community building
Trinity Biomedical Science Institute, Pearse St, Dublin 2
In 1913 in Dornach, Switzerland, work began on the building that would become First Goetheanum. Throughout the First World War construction continued until the opening in September 1920. Barely two years later, on New Year’s Eve 1922, it was burned to the ground in an arson attack. An international community of artists and builders had been key to its construction, and its forms spoke directly out of a language of the esoteric. Steiner described the building in a fairy tale as an open secret; elsewhere as Gesamtkunstwerk - a holistic living work of art. What was its secret? And why was it destroyed?