"I do not want to be revered! I want to be understood." --Rudolf Steiner (1915)This is the most comprehensive biography of Rudolf Steiner available, tracing his life and development through an in-depth look at his life and work, which encompassed numerous areas, including his Goethean research, philosophy, esoteric work, pedagogy, medicine, sociology, agriculture, architecture, painting, movement arts, and poetry. This biography, which tracks his divergent activities, shows how Rudolf Steiner was most concerned with bringing a new approach to knowledge through Spiritual Science and to revitalizing the most important areas of human culture and society. During the late 1890s, a student of Rudolf Steiner observed: "I never again had a teacher like him. He was gaunt, shabbily dressed. He always wore an old coat; his trousers looked like corkscrews, much too short and worn out. At first he sported a van Dyke, then a mustache, then he was clean shaven.... Everyone loved him dearly, and I would have, as would most of the others, gone through fire for him.... He was loving and concerned in a way that I have never again discovered in another person. Funny--I often asked my fiancée whether he was really as poor as he seemed to be; during breaks he always took a dry roll out of his pocket and ate it with visible enjoyment. But if you think that they left him in peace during the break, you are way off base. The whole group gathered around him and the questions were endless." This volume is a translation of Rudolf Steiner--eine Biographie, 2 vols., Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart (1997).