About Us
The Rudolf Steiner Archive is the largest digital library of the works of Rudolf Steiner available in English. With over 100,000 unique visitors each month, the site serves a vast community of Anthroposophists and researchers throughout the world.
The Archive is a project of the US-based nonprofit corporation, Steiner Online Library (SOL). As an IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, donations are tax deductible in the United States.
Our Mission
Our mission is to increase public awareness of Anthroposophy, a philosophy created by the 20th-century polymath Rudolf Steiner, and foster research in that regard. Per this mission, SOL maintains the Rudolf Steiner Archive, a library of the works of Rudolf Steiner in English, and offers digital versions of the texts to the public online for research and educational purposes. SOL will also continue to translate the original German text of Steiner’s work into English and include such new translations in the library.
Our Team
Dr. Christopher Wietrzykowski
Co-Founder, Executive Director and President
Dr. Christopher Wietrzykowski has had an intense interest in Rudolf Steiner since reading How to Know Higher Worlds in 2003. He soon became a vital contributor to the Rudolf Steiner Archive, personally digitizing and editing approximately one third of the materials on the Archive. In 2012, James D. Stewart, the original founder of the Archive, asked Chris to succeed him as the maintainer of the website and announced this arrangement to the Anthroposophical community. In 2020, Dr. Wietrzykowski set aside his dentistry career and devoted himself full time to learning the computing technologies necessary to maintain the Archive. This included teaching himself several programming languages, learning website design, and becoming competent in system administration.
Karin Wietrzykowski, Esq.
Co-Founder, Director of Operations, Secretary and Treasurer
Karin Wietrzykowski is an accomplished attorney who has extensive experience supporting technology companies. Having served as General Counsel to a global consortium of digital content providers, technology companies and digital media retailers, she is well versed in corporate law, IP protection, and other legal issues pertaining to digital media. Karin has also worked with several nonprofit organizations. She is a long-time student of metaphysics and first encountered the works of Rudolf Steiner in the early 2000s. In the decades that followed, her interest in Spiritual Science grew exponentially and she has now dedicated her career to Anthroposophy and the Rudolf Steiner Archive.
The problem we aim to solve
The advent of the technological revolution has caused mankind to fall into a deep materialism. Much of our former cultural life has been stripped away and is now supplied for us through television and computerized devices. We no longer ask ourselves important life questions but instead seek authoritative answers from political leaders and scientific "experts". The cost we pay is a loss of our spiritual freedom. Instead of following our own unique path we are coerced to follow one that has been set for us.
Rudolf Steiner foresaw all these things in the early 20th century. His philosophy, Anthroposophy, provides a pathway back to a world that includes spirit. It explains how our material world is interwoven with an objectively real spiritual world that we can come to know through study and meditation. It explains the inner workings of reincarnation and karma. In whole, it provides a way for people to come to an understanding of their true place in relation to the world.
The solution: "Man, know thyself!"
Steiner Online Library aims to preserve the vast wealth of information contained in the books, articles and transcribed lectures given to the world through the personality of Rudolf Steiner.
A distinct summary of Steiner's message could be summed up by the Ancient Greek aphorism "Man, know thyself!" By studying his teaching, we begin to truly understand our whole being and its purpose in the world. SOL presents this information in a free and easily searchable format to English speakers throughout the world to enable them to carry out this task of self-knowledge.
Thus, through this endeavor to know ourselves we come to better understand the world around us and our unique place in it. We become no longer merely cogs in a wheel but rather a wonderful synergy of individual, free beings working together as a unity.
The History of this Initiative
Since its creation in 1978, the online web-based Rudolf Steiner Archive has been used by Anthroposophists and others around the world for personal and professional research. In 2021, the US-based organisation behind the Archive, The e.Lib. Inc., transferred the Rudolf Steiner Archive website of RSArchive.org and related technology, books, and materials to a new non-profit organisation, Steiner Online Library. What follows is a brief history of this whole development. [Read More]