Goetheanum | The World of Ita Wegman

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The World of Ita Wegman

She was a born cosmopolitan – and came via Java, the Netherlands and Berlin to Switzerland, where she studied in Zurich and practised medicine in Arlesheim near Basel. From her base in Arlesheim, her ‹Clinical-Therapeutic Institute›, she ventured far out into the world again.

She spent half the year travelling, in France, Scotland and England, in Belgium and the Netherlands, in Palestine, Turkey and Greece, in Sicily, Italy and Scandinavia, in Germany and Iceland, in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Croatia. These were, with very few exceptions, journeys to new therapeutic locations that had arisen at her initiative – or through people who had learned at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute. They were medical practices and first anthroposophical clinics, numerous curative education homes and day centres. Ita Wegman visited the people, saw patients and staff, gave therapeutic advice, advised on the political situation, mediated internal crises, helped with financing, held class lessons and anthroposophical meetings to deepen the community and intensify the work, also to gain inner resilience in difficult times. However, she visited Greece in 1932 without a therapeutic assignment. After seven difficult years on the board in Dornach, she withdrew from the general assembly and travelled with Ilse Knauer to the old mystery sites.

On the return journey by ship to Venice, she wrote to Fried Geuter on 26 May 1932: "I have thoroughly enjoyed this journey and have absorbed all of Greece within me. Like a healing balm, the old, wonderful has affected me and I feel reborn and strong, to continue Rudolf Steiner’s work, as I carry it in my heart, unwaveringly. And if you all help, we will enforce at least the part of R. Steiner’s intentions that also relate to me, to my individuality, as much as our strength allows, or as much as must be saved for the future. The deepest tragedy actually rests on our work in this and the previous life, and yet Rudolf Steiner once told me that this tragedy will be lifted in the future, indeed, is already lifted now. And yet all that has happened could happen! There must also be people who have understanding, I think, understanding of karma’s workings! […] It is significant to have visited Greece and these sites, and even if one finds nothing of the old mysteries but rubble heaps, the landscape is still there and the human heart, which has witnessed much in those old times. It is then as if everything is reborn anew in the picture and the heart softly speaks of the old times."1

She would have liked to travel more often beyond Europe by ship to other continents, which was no longer possible in this life. According to George Adams Kaufmann, she wanted to go to the USA with Rudolf Steiner after his recovery. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, she considered, according to Liane Collot d’Herbois, founding a clinic in Canada and moving there westwards, following a corresponding invitation.

With her international network of contacts, her many friends, acquaintances and former patients, she was also able to act in times of need. When it was a matter of helping threatened people in Nazi Germany, especially Jewish friends and acquaintances, to escape to non-German countries, she acted quickly, purposefully and successfully – as no one else in the Anthroposophical Society at that time did to this extent.

This text is an excerpt from an article published in the weekly magazine ‹Das Goetheanum›. You can read the full article on the weekly magazine’s website. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can get to know the weekly magazine for 1 CHF/€.

Title image Ita Wegman at Jungfraujoch, 1922, photo: Ita Wegman Archive, Arlesheim (IWA)