Newsletter 4: Sunday 26 January 2025Anthroposophy in Hawkes BayCalendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ANNIVERSARY YEAR This year is Taikura Rudolf Steiner School’ 75th birthday (being founded in 1950 through the purchase of Queenswood) and the 100th anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death on 30 March 1925. The Branch Committee meets this week. We would love to know what members and readers would like to happen to honour these anniversaries. Who can help or make suggestions or lead or support activities and events? Please let us know. Write/email to info@anthrohb.nz ******** Over the next weeks I will share some notes about the early years of Anthroposophy in New Zealand. Over the years several histories have been written. In 2013 Garth John Turbott presented his thesis "Anthroposophy in the Antipodes - A Lived Spirituality in New Zealand 1902-1960s" to Massey University for his MA. [Massey Research Online: www.mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/296 ] ............... “Anthroposophy first came to New Zealand in the early twentieth century, within a few years of Steiner starting his lecture cycles. Initially it was studied and discussed in small groups in Christchurch, Wellington and Havelock North. A national organization, the Anthroposophical Society in New Zealand, incorporating the various existing groups around the country and officially sanctioned by Dornach, was established in Havelock North in 1933. It has grown since to its present size of around 550 active members with branches and groups throughout New Zealand.” P2 “The first appearance of Anthroposophy in New Zealand is … through the lives and work of two early pioneer women, Ada Wells (1863-1933) and Emma Richmond (1845-1921).” P7 “… the initial leadership in New Zealand Anthroposophy as it emerged in the early twentieth century came from women, both Emma Richmond and Ada Wells demonstrated social activism and leadership well before becoming Anthroposophists.” P8. Ada was a suffragette with Kate Sheppard in Christchurch. “Certainly, the Hawke’s Bay area around Havelock North was home to a succession of vigorous spiritual movements in the early twentieth century, around the time that Emma Richmond arrived there with the anthroposophical impulse in 1912. ... The growth of Anthroposophy in Havelock North was centred about Emma Richmond, her daughter Rachel Crompton Smith (1876-1967), son-in-law Bernard Crompton-Smith (1874-1958), and two redoubtable women who were to provide leadership for the Anthroposophical Society in New Zealand for over 40 years, Ruth Nelson (1894-1977) and Edwina (Edna) Burbury (1890-1978). The work of these Anthroposophists contributed to the formal establishment of the Anthroposophical Society in New Zealand in 1933, and to the emergence of Steiner Education in New Zealand at Queenswood School in Hastings in 1950. While early Anthroposophy was centred on Havelock North, … vigorous development in Wellington, where a group at York Bay led by Hal Atkinson (1895-1975) was closely involved with a variety of artistic and creative activities.” p8-9. “,,, the contribution of two German scholars and Anthroposophists. Alfred Meebold (1863-1952) was a botanist and a wandering seeker after spiritual truth who visited New Zealand several times in the 1920s and 30s. He then settled in Havelock North after World War II, making a major impact on the intellectual content and philosophical underpinnings of New Zealand Anthroposophy. It seems that Ada Wells had contact with a Theosophical group in Christchurch before travelling. More next week. RB
Posted: Sun 26 Jan 2025 |
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