Who was Rudolf Steiner?

The first school to be based on his ideas was founded in Stuttgart in 1919 for the children of the employees of the Waldorf Astoria factory - hence the name “Waldorf’. Within a few years others followed in Germany, Switzerland, Holland and Britain. The movement is now world-wide, with over 900 schools, 1,700 kindergartens and 60 teacher training colleges, and it is the largest independent educational movement in the world offering the full range of education for children from Kindergarten through to school-leaving.

After a brilliant, if largely conventional early career as a scholar, scientist, philosopher and writer, Steiner decided to openly discuss his inner faculties of spiritual perception, that he had experienced and developed since childhood. It was not until after the First World War and the massive social upheaval which followed in its wake, that Steiner’s ideas gained wider recognition, and  many people, among them doctors, farmers, businessmen, scientists, priests and teachers, sought him out for help and advice.