Torquay: In the footsteps of Rudolf Steiner

Summary

Torquay was the last foreign trip by Rudolf Steiner, and the last of ten trips to Britain. The International Summer School of the Anthroposophical Society held at Torquay came just two months after the Agriculture Course at Koberwitz. There were no lectures at Torquay devoted to agriculture. However, key figures that would shape the future of biodynamics were together at Torquay and at the side trip to Tintagel. There were at least two attendees from Koberwitz: Dr Guenther Wachsmuth, who would write the Preface to the first English translation of the Agriculture Course, and Dr Elizabeth Vreede whom Steiner nominated at Koberwitz to “give expert assistance from the Goetheanum in the guiding of the experiments”. There was George Kaufmann who would be the first translator of the Agriculture Course. There was Eleanor Merry, who has been described as “one of the founder members” of “the Biodynamic Movement” in Britain. And there was Marna Pease who would be a founder and President of Britain’s Anthroposophical Agricultural Foundation and who typed the numbered issues of Kaufmann’s English translation of the Agriculture Course which were issued in typescript to Anglo members of the Experimental Circle. The Torquay meeting brought together a group of pioneers who went on to shape the biodynamics movement in Britain and beyond in years that followed.