Emil Molt

Emil Molt ( born April 14, 1876 in Schwäbisch Gmünd, † June 16, 1936 in Stuttgart) was a German entrepreneur, social reformer and theosophist anthroposophist. He was the founder of the first Waldorf school.

Life and work

Personal career

Emil Molt in 1876 in Schwäbisch Gmünd is the only " viable " child - born of Jacob Conrad Molt and Marie Friedericke Goeller - at least two died shortly after birth. The father was a baker and pastry chef and owner of a grocery store. After his father's death in 1883, the mother sold the business and moved to her brother Gustav in the rectory to Alfdorf and some time later on to Stuttgart, where she opened a small grocery store. When the mother died in 1889, Molt came into the guardianship of his uncle, the (now Hermann Hesse -Gymnasium ) enabled him to visit the real Lyceum in Calw. In 1894 he met Berta hero Maier ( 1876-1939 ), whom he married in 1899. 1906 her son Walter was born, they took to another foster son on.

Professional career

After school, he completed a three-year commercial apprenticeship at a trading house in Calw. After a year as a clerk in Calw and military service in 1896 he took a job with a Greek trading company in Patras. In 1899 he returned to Germany and worked at a Stuttgart cigarette dealer. Here he had the idea to start their own in this industry. With two partners, he founded in 1906, the Waldorf -Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart and Hamburg. The company quickly grew to 1919 and employed about 1,000 people. After 1925, the company came with their outdated production increasingly in trouble, and Molt had in 1929 a majority share to a competitor - the house New Castle - give, the liquidated the factory immediately. The loss of the company consumed probably because of his health: in the age of 61, he succumbed to a heart condition in Stuttgart.

Encounter with Theosophy

In 1900 came Molt with Theosophy in touch and learned later Rudolf Steiner know, then First Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society ( DSdTG ), an offshoot of the Theosophical Society Adyar ( Adyar -TG). 1906 Molt was with his wife a member of the DSdTG; both took a keen interest in theosophy - the Stuttgart branch they met about the two leading members of Adolf Arenson and Carl Unger - and visited a number of Steiner's lectures, in the Esoteric School, they were added in 1908. After the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, they followed the direction and Steiner were anthroposophy.

Founding of the first Waldorf School

In November 1918, Molt had a conversation with one of his workers. Whose gifted son could - unusual for a worker child of that time - to visit a high school and hope for a better there by the acquired education vocational opportunities. This Molt had the idea to set up a school for the children of employed workers with him. On April 23, 1919, Steiner was at the invitation of molts in the Waldorf -Astoria factory in Stuttgart before the workers a lecture on this topic. Molt asked him to see if such a training center could be established, then Steiner with some helpers put together the teaching staff in the following months, this trained and organized running of the school.

Molt bought from his private funds to a building in Stuttgart and equipped the school with 100,000 marks the beginning of capital. On September 7, 1919, the first Waldorf school was opened with initially eight classes. In total, there were 256 students, 191 of them working-class children - their school fees paid the factory - as well as 65 children from better-off, anthroposophic families.

Molt promoted the school life and paid after selling his company the school fees "his" workers' children personally. After the Nazi seizure of power, he sat down with all his strength against the threat - a ban the Waldorf School - realized in March 1938.

Writings

• Emil Molt: design of my biography. With a documentary appendix. Free spiritual life, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-7725-0620-8.