“When thousands are in the initial vanguard of a movement, these thousands have a higher, more potentized obligation...they have the obligation to practice, in every detail, greater courage, greater energy, greater patience, greater tolerance, and above all greater truthfulness in all things.” ―  Rudolf Steiner (Dornach, June 16, 1923) In light of the centenary of the Christmas Conference 1923/24, Peter Selg has written the four essays published here, which deal, each in its own way, with the past, present, and future of the Anthroposophical Society and its School for Spiritual Science. Selg outlines important historical background to the Christmas Conference, shedding light on the origins of the re-founding of the Society, what necessitated it, and what Rudolf Steiner was hoping to achieve. Though much good work has been done over the past hundred years, many of the issues that hindered the Society and movement in Steiner’s time still persist today. This book is intended as a call to self-knowledge for members of the Anthroposophical Society, a call to actively take up the work of “furthering the development of the task-centered worldwide Society that Steiner made so clearly visible in 1923.” Rudolf Steiner’s words, spoken one hundred years ago, retain their power and urgency today: “Try to grow together with the world! That will be the best, the most significant ‘program.’ That cannot be put in our statutes―but we should be able to take it as a flame into our hearts.” This book is a translation of Die anthroposophische Weltgesellschaft und ihre Hochschule, originally published in German by Verlag am Goetheanum (Dornach, 2023) in collaboration with the General Anthroposophical Section of the School for Spiritual Science. Peter Selg studied medicine in Witten-Herdecke, Zurich, and Berlin and, until 2000, worked as the head physician of the juvenile psychiatry department of Herdecke Hospital in Germany. Dr. Selg is director of the Ita Wegman Institute for Basic Research into Anthroposophy (Arlesheim, Switzerland), professor of medicine at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences (Germany), and co-leader of the General Anthroposophical Section at the Goetheanum. He is the author of numerous books on Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, medical ethics, and the development of culture and consciousness. Preface History never provides answers to the questions and challenges of the present, but it can have an orienting character―at least where tasks of the past are unresolved, or where concepts, plans, and utopias (in the sense of Ernst Bloch) were not implemented or have yet to be adequately implemented. It is not uncommon for the “presence of the past” to arise in realms that are considered unfulfilled, where what has been abandoned still awaits its realization, where what is destructive longs for healing―or simply where seeds of the future remain in a state of expectation. Rudolf Steiner’s vision of a worldwide Anthroposophical Society and a School for Spiritual Science―which he impressively formulated during the crisis year of 1923, after the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire in an act of arson―is part of such a movement toward the future. During the last hundred years, a great deal has been attempted to realize more and more the form of the Society and the School that Rudolf Steiner saw so clearly; in many countries around the world there has been considerable progress, valuable work undertaken towards this end. But it is also obvious how much in the Society and the School remains to be reconsidered, transformed, and further developed in order to really arrive in the land of the future. Of course, the question can be posed critically whether one hundred years later an orientation to Steiner’s concept makes sense, after everything that has happened and all that has changed, after all the upheavals in the historical existence of the human being. Nevertheless, a detailed visualization of Rudolf Steiner’s concepts demonstrates how precisely they articulate what anthroposophy requires for its life, indeed how inherently connected with it they are. Rudolf Steiner knew the being of anthroposophy best―there is no way around acknowledging this. Thus, examining his proposals is not only meaningful but remains as necessary as ever before―however not as a compulsory, laborious exercise of duty but rather in the breathing of inquiry, of possible inspiration and enthusiasm. It was in this sense that the following four essays arose and are intended, written as they were in 2023, in the present time of the Anthroposophical Society and the School but coming from the place of the past behind us or at least connected to it.1 For the Anthroposophical Society, the Goetheanum, and the School for Spiritual Science, the year 2023 is characterized by a substantive contemplation of the so-called “Christmas Conference” 1923/24, held in the main hall of the Carpentry Building―which signified and initiated a brilliant new beginning