David Voda: Pražská antroposofická moderna 1907–1953 / Prager anthroposophische Moderne 1907–1953

The book Pražská antroposofická moderna 1907–1953 (Prague Anthroposophical Modernism 1907–1953) is being published a hundred years after the death of Rudolf Steiner († 30 March 1925), the Austrian philosopher, occultist, architect, sculptor, designer, and founder of anthroposophy, Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and eurythmy. Rudolf Steiner “bequeathed” to Prague – a place he returned to repeatedly between 1907 and 1924 – a generation of spiritually oriented artists and “transformed the karma” of a city situated on the threshold between West and East, between German and Slavic cultural spheres, between the old epoch and modernity, and between “this world and the other”. Anthroposophically-affiliated art from Prague by artists of German-Jewish, Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian background appears here in an unexpected breadth: from painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, applied design, photography, jewellery, literature, eurythmy, and musical drama to artistic embroidery. Among the masterpieces of anthroposophical Prague, unparalleled globally and among the most remarkable artistic achievements by women in the Czech lands, are the fantastic silk-embroidered altarpieces by Hilde Pollak-Karlin. Other important figures of the Prague school include painters Richard Pollak-Karlin and Otty Schneider, printmaker Joseph Prinke, jeweller Josef Přikryl, and sculptors and designers Bogdan Cerovac and Bohumil Josef Jerie. Particularly noteworthy is the activity of five avant-garde composers creating anthroposophical music. Among them stands the opera Thy Kingdom Come by Alois Hába, a singular sixth-tone opus that approaches the social and spiritual questions of its time in a strikingly original way. Readers will also encounter other personalities of multicultural Prague between 1907 and 1953: printmaker Richard Teschner, painter Rudolf Adámek, writers Max Brod, Paul Leppin and Franz Kafka, publishers and art dealers František and Milada Topič, the Russian émigré poet Marina Tsvetaeva, writer Karel Čapek, anthroposophist and eurythmy organiser Marie Steiner, and over and over again, Dr Rudolf Steiner himself – the modern uomo universale. A major discovery is a set of bromo-silver portraits of Rudolf Steiner by Carolus Novák, a leading representative of pictorialism. The book demonstrates that alongside the well-known artistic movements, there existed between 1907 and 1953 an until-now undiscovered “ism”: Prague Anthroposophical Modernism. Thus, it becomes a fundamental contribution to the history of world culture.