Glastonbury Conference

Carl Mirbt lectures on Anthroposophical Agriculture and Walter Johannes Stein lectures on history

David Clement recalled the conference a life time later:

I was bicycling over the Mendips and he [recently deceased brother] was in my mind all the time. I looked out over the plain of Avalon towards Glastonbury Tor to the west of me. The sun was just setting behind the Tor and I had the extraordinary impression that the Tor was the base, the church tower the stem and the sun the cup (because the cloud took the top out of the sun). I was riveted. This was a picture of the Grail and my brother was showing to me what should I do. I told this to Dr Wegman and asked ‘What should I do?’ She asked me what was my most important problem. I said ‘How to find your way into life and that is the way of my generation now. We do not follow our fathers any more but we have to find our own way’. So she said that I should ask one or two experienced anthroposophists to help organise a conference for young people. She said that if I arranged it properly it with ‘proper people’ she would come. So we did and it was held in Glastonbury in 1932.

I was absolutely astonished that Dr Wegman came, as did many other well known anthroposophists both from England and the continent. About 100 people came. I was absolutely shattered. I had to organise it with the help of the people at Sunfield where Dr Wegman had suggested I should go. When I arrived at the conference they said that I should take the chair. I was scared stiff but everyone was very kind. Now, when my brother died he left about two or three hundred pound and my mother gave me £100. That’s all the money I had, I normally managed on 10 shillings a week. When I paid the bills and came to settle up at the end, I found that I owed nothing and it had cost £100 exactly! I felt that was a confirmation that it was right.

Dr Walter Johannes Stein lectured every morning on the history of the world and we had no programme apart from this lecture. We then met in the evening with Wegman and reflected on the conversations we had had that day and formed the programme for the following day. We had one day devoted to education, agriculture medicine and so on.