Rudolf Steiner e.Lib 

Olin D. Wannamaker was a noted University lecturer, and translator. He was born on July 16th 1875, in Bamberg, South Carolina and died on April 14th 1974 in Los Angeles, California. During his almost 100 years of American and international life, Olin Wannamaker laid the foundations for anthroposophical work in the USA, translated important works by Rudolf Steiner and was chairman of the Anthroposophical Society in the USA.

Olin Dantzler Wannamaker's father, Francis Marion Wannamaker, fought for the South in the American Civil War. When Lincoln was assassinated, Olin's father remarked, “The South has lost its best friend!” His mother, Eleanor Margaret, was a woman of uncommon strength of character, beloved by all, including her slaves, for whom she cared as she did for her 11 own children. When Olin was 16 years old, his father was stabbed to death by a fanatical political opponent in the bitter conflicts of the reconstruction period in the southern states after the Civil War. An older brother gave up his own education to enable Olin to attend college.

Olin became the principal of the high school in the small town where the family had moved when he was a young boy. In 1900, he received his master's degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He then spent a year at Harvard University, where he also studied philosophy, German and Greek. It seemed that a successful career as an English professor awaited him when he surprised his family by deciding to take a job in an educational project in China. On an island near Canton, he helped establish a small educational institution modeled on the American high school that would become Lingnan University. He taught English, wrote a grammar of the English language and became chairman of the faculty. Lingnan has been described as “the union of the American and Chinese souls against all separating forces”. In 1908, Olin met Katherine Hume, the daughter of well-known American missionaries and a talented musician, in the climatic health resort of Kuling. They married, but later had to leave the country again due to the difficult climatic conditions in southern China and returned to the United States. Olin taught at several American colleges and in 1915 became director of the English Department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Their daughter Margaret was born in 1913.

During the First World War, Olin worked for the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) in Italy and published a newspaper for the American soldiers in Italy. After the war, he was commissioned by the YMCA to write a book about Italy's role in the war. “With Italy in her Final War of Liberation” was well received by critics. Katherine and Margaret Wannamaker stayed in Italy until Olin's future was settled. He accepted a position with the Sino-US educational institution Princeton-in-Beijing and the family moved to Princeton, New Jersey. At the age of eight, Margaret's parents gave her the choice of attending one of two particular schools. Her decision led to Margaret attending a summer camp in Vermont run by Katherine Jewell Everts, who gave Katherine Wannamaker a book by Rudolf Steiner to read. She immediately took an interest and passed the book on to her husband. Olin had a hard time with it at first, but eventually recognized the profound truth that lay within. In 1922, Katherine and Olin Wannamaker became members of the Anthroposophical Society. The family moved to New York, where Olin co-founded the Rudolf Steiner Educational Union, the first Waldorf School in America, in 1926-27.

In 1924, his wife and daughter moved to Dornach and later to Stuttgart so that Margaret could attend the Waldorf School there. Olin visited them every summer.

He translated Rudolf Steiner's “The Philosophy of Freedom”, “My Life” (GA 28), Guenther Wachsmuth's Steiner biography, as well as the “Foundations of an Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview” (GA 2) and the lecture cycles “The Orient in the Light of the Occident” (GA 113), “The Secrets of the Biblical Creation Story” (GA 122) and “The Consciousness of Initiates” (GA 243). He was a leader in the Anthroposophic Press. In 1935, Mrs. Wannamaker returned to New York, where she was treated by Christoph Linder. She died on November 26, 1939.

Olin served as president of the Anthroposophical Society in the U.S. from 1958-62. In 1962, he moved to Los Angeles to be near Margaret and her family. He wrote a study guide for the Philosophy of Freedom. In 1965, he married Anna Koffler, a professor from Ada, Ohio. His health deteriorated and he moved back to California. On July 16, 1972, he spoke to the members in Los Angeles - without revealing that it was his 97th birthday that day - on the topic “Life Questions in Anthroposophical Light”. One member of the audience remarked: “The tone of the lecture was positive, undaunted, forward-looking.” It was followed by a lively discussion, and he dismissed his audience “filled with warmth, courage and enthusiasm”.

On the morning of Easter Sunday 1974, his daughter Margaret visited him. That same evening, her father died. No one was with him. A friend, a priest in the Christian Community, later said to Margaret that her father had had such a strong bond with her that crossing the threshold would have been easier for him without her presence.

Henry Barnes