Tue, 13 Mar 2007

Police search of General Anthroposophical Society disproportionate, prosecutor indicates

By Christian von Arnim

DORNACH (NNA) – The Swiss state prosecutor in charge of the raid on the offices of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum in Dornach last week on suspicion of misappropriation of funds has indicated that she accepts that the response of the authorities was disproportionate.

More than forty police officers were involved in the search in which documents and computer data were removed and the members of the GAS executive council were interviewed for several hours at a time. The action took all day.

The raid was the result of complaints made in July last year by the splinter group “Living the Christmas Conference” alleging financial wrongdoing. On its website, the group does not acknowledge itself as the source of the complaint, merely citing “members of the General Anthroposophical Society”.

The group claims that the members of the GAS executive council should be held personally liable for costs of over 800,000 Swiss francs arising from legal action taken by “Living the Christmas Conference” with regard to the dispute over the existence of the Anthroposophical Society re-founded by Rudolf Steiner at Christmas 1923 and its fusion with the present GAS and that the latter should not have paid the court costs.

The executive council denies all such claims and says that the court awarded costs against the society in dispute and not the council members personally. The council had merely been made liable to ensure compliance with the court order.

In a further clarification, Goetheanum spokesman Wolfgang Held said the actual court costs only amounted to 100,700 Swiss francs. The remaining amounts related to lawyers’ fees and other similar charges.

“The constitutional issue and its solution was always a matter for the Anthroposophical Society as an institution and was never a private matter of the individual members of the council or the society,” the executive council said in a statement.

In a note to the state prosecutor’s office, the GAS’ lawyer, Prof. Christian Brückner, protested in strong terms that it seemed unbelievable that the authorities had turned out in such force merely on the strength of an allegation by some members of “Living the Christmas Conference” that court costs should not have been charged to the Anthroposophical Society.

The whole process had been transparently handled by the executive council and GAS members had been kept informed. There was therefore no question of misleading the membership. Documentation to this effect could quite easily have been produced, making the police search superfluous.

Furthermore, prosecutors had not examined the claims of the complainants with sufficient rigour, assuming erroneously, for example, that the court had awarded costs of 800,000 Swiss francs (instead of just over 100,000 Swiss francs).

In a telephone call in response to the letter, the state prosecutor had not apologised directly but had indicated through her forthcoming manner that she appreciated the points made in the letter, sources say. However, the investigation would now be concluded with all thoroughness to prevent any future challenges to its conclusions, a point which the Goetheanum accepted as reasonable.

The dispute over the fusion plans started in March 2002, when the council of the General Anthroposophical Society announced its far-reaching constitutional plans to restructure the society with the intention of resolving long-standing issues connected with its disputed constitutional status and making its legal position more transparent.

The debate revolved around the issue whether or not the society re-founded by Rudolf Steiner as the General Anthroposophical Society at the Christmas conference of 1923 to be the vehicle for the spiritual tasks of anthroposophy – the Christmas Conference Society – still legally exists or whether it disappeared through merger with the original, administrative Johannes Building Association which was also renamed the General Anthroposophical Society on 8 February 1925.

The Solothurn superior court finally ruled in early 2005 that the “Christmas Conference Society” had ceased to exist as an independent entity and could not therefore be reactivated.

END/nna/cva

Item: 070313-01EN Date: 13 March 2007

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