The first Waldorf school was founded in 1919 at a factory in Germany. Today, Waldorf education is the largest free school movement in the world. In 1919, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture to workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Steiner was a philosopher, social reformer, and scientist — and his lecture made quite an impression. The workers wanted a new, more humanist education for their children in the wake of the World War I. They asked Steiner