Violetta Plincke
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Violetta Elsa Plincke (17 June 1883 in St Petersburg Russia – 7 January 1968 London UK) was a Waldorf teacher and lecturer on education who contributed much to the establishment of Steiner education in Britain.[1]
Violetta Plincke was born the daughter of an English architect at the imperial court of the Tzar and a German mother in St Petersburg.[citation needed] Fluent in three languages: Russian, German, and English, she initially studied History of Art and History at the University of St Petersburg. In 1912, she commenced her studies in Philosophy at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. From a fellow student, Lutz Kricheldorff, who was the first actor to perform Ahriman in Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays, she was introduced to the literature of Anthroposophy, about which she had previously heard in Russia and Finland. In 1913, Kricheldorff took her with him to the performances of the Mystery Plays in Munich and a short time later, the two got married. The marriage lasted but a few years, and she continued her studies in Berlin, where she was present at Rudolf Steiner’s public lectures in the “Architektenhaus” (GA 52 – 67) and left deeply impressed by the rhetorical skills of the lecturer, which inspired her for her later work as a lecturer in Britain.[citation needed]