Practical answers to core social issues

At the end of the 1980s, a group of young people in Arlesheim near Basel worked through Rudolf Steiner’s key book «The Threefold Social Order», and based on this work began searching for starting points that would lead to concrete action. In 1990, some of them founded a charitable foundation to promote socially responsible housing and workplaces—and named it after Edith Maryon. The namesake was an English sculptor and close collaborator of Rudolf Steiner who had already been committed to promoting social housing projects a century before.

Edith Maryon was born in London in 1872. She grew up with five siblings in the centre of the city. After her school years, which she spent at a boarding school in Geneva and elsewhere, she studied sculpture at the Royal College of Arts in London. She managed to gain a foothold as a woman in this art form, that was predominantly practised by men at the time. Maryon’s early work, characterized by classicism at the transition to Art Nouveau, was exhibited in part at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her sculptures show a graceful, detailed anatomy and reflect Maryon’s deep understanding of the human form.

From London via Germany to Dornach

In search of answers to her spiritual questions, Edith Maryon first moved to Munich in 1913, then to Berlin, and a year later to Dornach. There, together with Marie von Sivers and Ita Wegman, she belonged to the innermost circle around Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy. She maintained an intensive correspondence with him over the years, which has been preserved. Together they designed the large sculpture «The Representative of Humanity» and the eurythmy figures, which Maryon also carved in wood.

In the early 1920s, there was a lack of affordable housing in Dornach. Edith Maryon therefore designed three houses for the staff of the Goetheanum on Dornach Hill, independently raised the necessary funds abroad and managed the houses in the first years after their construction. At that time they were called English houses, today they are known as the Eurythmy houses.

In 1923 Edith Maryon fell ill with tuberculosis. At the end of the year, she was appointed the head of the Section for Fine Arts at the Goetheanum but was never able to assume the post. On 2 May 1924, she died at the age of 52.

In 1990, two generations later…

… Christoph Langscheid, John Ermel and Michael Riggenbach set up a foundation «for the promotion of social housing and workplaces» with 12,000 Swiss francs in seed capital. Impressed by Edith Maryon’s pioneering work and her sense of practicality, they chose her as their namesake.