The Building and its History

After the founding of the Christian Community in Dornach in September 1922, a full programme of courses was introduced. Alongside the rapidly growing tasks of the Seminar the wish for an independent Seminary building became ever more pressing. However, it was not until February 1933 that the Foundation Stone laying took place.

The first ten-week Seminar course consisted of 15 participants. Forty priests, all of whom did their training in the newly constructed Seminary building, were ordained by the time the Christian Community was banned by the Nazis on the 9th June 1941. The Gestapo appeared at the Seminary and confiscated the entire library apart from a small remnant of a few hundred books.

The valuable chalice, which had been made out of gold donations from the goldsmith, Marietta Rapp, could be hidden just in time on a farm in the Swabian Alps, where it survived the Second World War undamaged. On the 19th October 1944, the Seminary building was destroyed in a bomb attack. Until the end of the war the Seminary existed only in the memories of those who had lived and worked there. Then on 13th October 1945 the Priest Training was able to begin again, with its temporary home on the premises of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart.

Plans for a new building were only realised several years later and the respective consecration took place on 25th-26th April 1953. Further plans for a larger building for the Seminary were set in motion in the middle of the 1970s.

On 16th October 1982, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Christian Community, the present Seminar building was consecrated.

Over 30 students can now live in the building and all courses take place under the one roof. Besides the chapel there are larger and smaller teaching spaces, a eurythmy room, a large library with workspaces, a craft room, a kitchen and a dining room.

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