Elisabeth Vreede - Life and Work

Life and Work

Elisabeth Vreede was born in The Hague in 1879. She was her parents' second child. Her father was a lawyer and her mother devoted her time to charitable work. She was a sensitive person and later on played an important part in the Anthroposophical life in the Netherlands.

Elisabeth Vreede came into contact with Theosophy in her home growing up. She was interested early on in the starry sky, read the works of Camille Flammarion and learned French at the same time.Elisabeth first went to school at the age of 7. She completed her years in primary and higher schools and afterwards took private studies for two years, so as to gain qualifications for university entrance.

At the University of Leyden she studied mathematics, astronomy, philosophy (especially Hegel) and Sanskrit. She was also actively involved in student life, founding a boatclub, and was a council member of the students' union. She cultivated this more social life as well as her academics during this period.

The first meeting with Rudolf Steiner took place early on at the Theosophical Congress in London in 1903. Her parents were theosophists and she as well was a member of the Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner at the congress straightaway made a huge impression on her. A year later at the Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society at Amsterdam in 1904, she heard a lecture on 'Mathematics and Occultism' that Steiner gave. The next European Congress was in 1906 where Steiner held a cycle of 18 lectures there.

After receiving her diploma in 1906, she gave instruction at a higher girl school in mathematics until 1910. From 1910, she lived in Berlin, worked on her dissertation and occasionally worked as a secretary for Rudolf Steiner. In 1914 on April 17 she moved to Dornach in order to help in the building of the first Goetheanum. She would often be found there carving wood.

M. P. van Deventer who would become Vreede's biographer first meet her in the summer of 1915. She was living with her parents in a small house in Neu-Reinach. From a rather elevated position there was a beautiful view over the building and over the chain of the Canton of Jura, with the Gempen.

During the War years 1916/17 Elisabeth Vreede broke off from her residence in Dornach in order to work in Berlin as a coworker of Elisabeth Rotten, looking after prisoners of war. She was very much aware of the life and sufferings of her contemporaries.

After the War, Rudolf Steiner developed his idea of the threefold social order and she too an intense interest in this initiative and work. She was the first to bring this idea of a threefold social order to England. Around 1918 Vreede began to construct the library and archive at the Goetheanum. She purchased using her own means the very expensive lecture transcripts as soon as they were typed from the stenogram. Occasionally friends contributed to her efforts to build an archive.

In 1920 she moved to Arlesheim where she had built for herself her own little house. It was the second dwelling-house for which Rudolf Steiner himself had given the model in 1919 (see Erich Zimmer, Rudolf Steiner als Architekt von Wohn- und Zweckbauten, p. 105 ff., Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1971).

She became leader in 1924 of the mathematically astronomical section of the free university for humanity at the Goetheanum. She belonged to the board of directors of the general Anthroposophical Society from 1925 to 1935.

July 9 and 11, 1930 she held two lectures in Stuttgart with the title 'The Bodhisattva Question in the History of the Anthroposophical Society'.

In 1935 the separation within the Anthroposophical Society took place and she was expelled from the Vorstand and her Section passed into other hands. After internal discussions in the Anthroposophical Society, she was excluded along with Ita Wegman from the board of directors. She was cut off from the observatory and archives that she herself helped assemble.

The last years of her life became more lonely. She was cut off from her friends abroad by the War. The death of Ita Wegman was a great shock for her. At the internal commemoration in the clinic she spoke words at her eulogy. It was the first time she faced her former colleagues on the Vorstand.

On the anniversary of Rudolf Steiner's death she once again spoke to the circle of friends and co-workers in the clinic. They wanted to commemorate not just Rudolf Steiner but the many who were leading Anthroposophists but to most were no longer known. She spoke in a devoted way to Edith Maryon, and with a fine characterization of her being about Alice Sauerwein. She portrayed for us Count Keyserlingk and Louis Werbeck. Finally she told about Caroline von Heydebrand and Eugen Kolisko.

At the beginning of May she spoke once more on the 400th anniversary of the death of Copernicus. At the lecture it was noticed that only by exceptional exertion could she keep herself upright. Just a few days later on 6 May, she had to take her bed. She had never been ill nor depended on people until that point. Thanks to the devoted care of Frl. Schunemann she was treated at home.

It was a case of septic disease. Phases of high fever with shivering fits repeatedly recurred. Nourishment could not be taken and complications supervened, like cardiac insuffiency and blood-poisoning. For her treatment Dr. Kaelin and Dr. Martin stood beside me with advice and help.