The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Personality of Friedrich Nietzsche — A Memorial Speech

[ 1 ] It must seem strange, within the enthusiasm for Nietzsche in our days, that someone whose feelings are no less drawn to this peculiar personality than many others, and who must nevertheless constantly bear in mind the deep contradiction that exists between the nature of this spirit and the ideas and feelings of those who behave like confessors of his world view. Such an outsider must above all remember the contrast between the relationship of his contemporaries to Nietzsche a decade ago, when the night of madness fell upon the "fighter against his time", and that which existed when death took him from us on August 25, 1900. The complete opposite seems to have happened to what Nietzsche predicted about his effect on his contemporaries in the last days of his work. The first part of the book through which he intended to reshape the values of millennia, his "Antichrist", was ready when he fell ill. He begins with the words: "This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them are alive yet. They may be those who understand my Zarathustra: how could I confuse myself with those for whom ears are already growing today? - Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously." It was as if the "day after tomorrow" had already been there when he died. You have to shout the words of Zarathustra into this apparent "day after tomorrow": "You say you believe in Zarathustra? But what is there in Zarathustra? You are my believers: but what is there in all believers! - - Now I bid you lose me and find you; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you." Whether Nietzsche, if he were still alive today in fresh creativity, would look with greater pleasure on those who doubtfully venerate him or on others - who would dare to decide that? But it must be permitted, especially today, to look over the heads of his current admirers to the time when he felt lonely and misunderstood in the midst of the spiritual life surrounding him and when some lived who would have considered it blasphemous to call themselves his "believers" because he appeared to them as a spirit who is not met with an intrusive "yes" or "no", but like an earthquake in the realm of the spirit, which shakes up questions for which premature answers could only resemble unripe fruit. Much more shocking than the news of his death now, a little over ten years ago, the "ears" of the Nietzsche admirers of the time were struck by two pieces of news that followed each other at not too great a distance in time. One concerned a cycle of lectures given by Georg Brandes on Nietzsche's world view at the University of Copenhagen in 1988. Nietzsche perceived this recognition as the kind that had to come from the "some" who are "born posthumously". He felt torn from his solitude in a way that corresponded to his spirit. He did not want to be evaluated: he wanted to be "described", characterized. And this news was soon followed by the other, that the spirit, thus torn from his solitude, had fallen into the terrible fate of mental derangement.

[ 2 ] And while he himself could no longer participate, his contemporaries had the leisure to sharpen the outlines of his image. By observing his personality, they were able to increasingly shape the image of his time, from which his spirit stands out like a Böcklinian figure. The worlds of ideas in his soul could be illuminated with the light cast on them by the spiritual stars of the second half of the century. Then it emerged with complete clarity in what he was actually great. But it also emerged why he had to walk so lonely. His nature took him to the heights of spiritual life. He walked along like one who was only concerned with the essentials of human development. But these essentials touched him as other people only touched the most intimate matters of their souls. Just as only very personal experiences weigh on the minds of others, so directly, so incisively did the great cultural questions, the enormous cognitive needs of his age run through his soul. What many of his contemporaries lived through with their heads alone, became a matter close to his heart.

[ 3 ] Greek culture, Schopenhauer's world view, Wagner's musical drama, the findings of the newer natural sciences triggered feelings in him that were as personal, as deep as the experiences of a strong passion for love in others. Nietzsche lived through the hopes and doubts, the temptations and the joys of knowledge that the entire age had experienced in his own special way, in solitary heights. He found no new ideas: but he suffered and rejoiced in the ideas of his time in a way that was different from that of his contemporaries. It was incumbent upon them to give birth to ideas: the difficult question arose before him: how to live with these ideas?

[ 4 ] His educational background had made Nietzsche a philologist. He had immersed himself in the great world of Greek intellectual culture to such an extent that his teacher Ritschl was able to recommend him to the University of Basel, which appointed the young scholar before he had become a doctor, with the words: Friedrich Nietzsche can do anything he wants. - In terms of the demands placed on philologists, he probably did the most excellent work. But his relationship to Greek culture was not just that of a philologist. He did not merely live with his mind in ancient Hellas; his heart was completely absorbed in Greek thought and feeling The Greek cultural figures did not remain the objects of his studies; they became his personal friends. In the first period of his teaching activity in Basel, he wrote a treatise on the philosophers of the tragic age before Socrates. It was published from his estate. He did not write about Thales, Heraclitus and Parmenides like a scholar; he conversed with these figures of the past as if they were personalities to whom his heart was intimately attached. The passion he feels for them makes him a stranger in Western culture, which, according to his perception, has taken a different path since Socrates than in those ancient times. Socrates becomes Nietzsche's enemy because he has blunted the great tragic mood of his predecessors. The doctrinaire spirit of Socrates strove to understand reality. He wanted reconciliation with life through virtue. But nothing, in Nietzsche's sense, can drag people down more than accepting life as it is. Life cannot be reconciled with itself. Man can only endure this life if he excretes over it. The Greeks understood this before Socrates. Nietzsche believed to find their basic sentiment expressed in the words that, according to legend, the wise Silen, the companion of Dionysus, gave in answer to the question of what was best for mankind. "Wretched, one-day-old, children of chance and toil, why do you force me to tell you what is most profitable for you not to hear? The very best is utterly unattainable for you: not to be born, not to be anything. But the second best thing for you is to die soon." Ancient Greek art and wisdom sought a consolation in the face of life. The servants of Dionysus did not want to belong to this community of life, but to a higher one. For Nietzsche, this was expressed in their cult. "Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way to flying up into the air dancing." Man has two ways of transcending existence: he can forget existence in blissful enchantment, as if in a state of intoxication, and "singing and dancing" feel at one with the All-Soul; or he can seek satisfaction in an ideal image of reality, as in a dream that flits lightly across existence. Nietzsche characterizes these two paths as Dionysian and Apollonian moods. Since Socrates, however, modern culture has sought reconciliation with existence, thereby degrading human worth. No wonder Nietzsche felt lonely in this newer culture with such feelings.

[ 5 ] Two personalities seemed to pull him out of this loneliness. Schopenhauer's view of the unworthiness of existence and Richard Wagner met him on his path through life. The way he related to both sheds light on the nature of his mind. He felt a devotion to Schopenhauer that could not have been more intimate. And yet his doctrine remained almost meaningless to him. The Frankfurt sage had countless followers who faithfully accepted what he said. Nietzsche was probably never one of these believers. At the same time that he sent his hymn "Schopenhauer as Educator" out into the world, he secretly wrote down his grave misgivings about the philosopher's views. He did not look up to him like a teacher; he loved him like a father. He felt the heroism of his thoughts even where he disagreed with them. His relationship with Schopenhauer was too intimate to need an outward belief in him, a commitment to him. He loved his "educator" in such a way that he attached his own thoughts to him in order to be able to venerate them in someone else. He did not want to agree in thought with one personality; he wanted to live in friendship with another. - This will also drew him to Richard Wagner. What were all the figures of pre-Socratic Greece with whom he had wanted to live in friendship? They were just shadows from a distant past. And Nietzsche strove for life, for the immediate friendship of tragic people. Greek culture remained dead and abstract to him, despite all the life that his imagination tried to breathe into it. The Greek intellectual heroes remained a longing for him, a fulfillment was Richard Wagner, who seemed to reawaken the old Greek world in his personality, in his art, in his world view. Nietzsche spent the most wonderful days when he was allowed to visit the Wagner couple on their Triebschen estate from Basel. What the philologist had sought in his mind, Greek air to breathe, he believed he found here in reality. He could find a personal relationship to a world that he had previously sought in his imagination. He could experience intimately what he could otherwise only have conjured up in his mind. He felt the idyll of Triebschen like his home. How characteristic are the words with which he describes this feeling in relation to Wagner: "A fruitful, rich, shattering life, quite different and unheard of among middle mortals! But he also stands there, firmly rooted by his own strength, with his gaze transcending everything ephemeral, and untimely in the most beautiful sense."

[ 6 ] In Richard Wagner's personality, Nietzsche believed he had the higher worlds that could make life as bearable for him as he imagined it to be in the sense of the old Greek world view. But did he not commit the greatest error in his sense? After all, he had sought in life what, according to his assumptions, life could never offer. He wanted to go beyond life; and he threw himself with all his strength into the life that Wagner lived. It is therefore understandable that his greatest experience was also his bitterest disappointment. In order to find what he was looking for in Wagner, he first had to enlarge Wagner's real personality into an ideal image. What Wagner could never be, Nietzsche made of him. He did not see and venerate the real Wagner, he venerated his image, which far surpassed reality. When Wagner had achieved what he was striving for, when he had reached his goal, Nietzsche felt the disharmony between his and the real Wagner. And he fell away from Wagner. However, only those who say that Nietzsche did not fall away from the real Wagner are psychologically correct in their interpretation of this apostasy, for he was never Wagner's follower; he only realized that he had been deceived. What he had sought in Wagner, he could never find in him; it had nothing to do with Wagner, it had to be detached from all reality as a higher world. Nietzsche later characterized the necessity of his apparent apostasy from Wagner himself. He stated that what he had "heard in Wagnerian music in his younger years had nothing at all to do with Wagner". "That when I described Dionysian music, I was describing what I had heard, that I instinctively had to translate and transfigure everything into the new spirit I carried within me. The proof of this, as strong as proof can be, is my writing 9Wagner in Bayreuth:: in all psychologically decisive passages there is only talk of me, one may ruthlessly put my name, or the word 9Zarathustra:, where the text gives the word Wagner. The whole picture of the dithyrambic artist is the picture of the pre-existent poet of 9Zarathustra: drawn with abysmal depth, and without even touching Wagner's reality for a moment. Wagner himself had an idea of it; he did not recognize himself in the writing."

[ 7 ] In "Zarathustra", Nietzsche drew the world that he had sought in vain in Wagner, detached from all reality. He placed his "Zarathustra ideal" in a different relationship to reality than his earlier ideals. After all, he had had bad experiences with directly turning away from existence. That he must have done this existence an injustice and that it had therefore taken such bitter revenge on him, this idea increasingly gained the upper hand in him. The disappointment that his idealism had caused him drove him into a hostile mood towards all idealism. His works after his break with Wagner became accusations against ideals. "One error after another is calmly put on ice, the ideal is not refuted - it freezes." This is how he expresses himself in 1888 about the goal of his work "Menschliches, Allzumenschliches", published in 1878. Nietzsche initially seeks refuge in reality. He immerses himself in the newer natural sciences in order to gain a genuine guide to reality through them. All the otherworldly worlds, which people of this became a matter close to his heart. The others fought the intellectual battle against old prejudices. Nietzsche asked himself: how he could live with the new idea. His struggle took place entirely within his soul. He needed to develop into a superhuman in order to endure man. In this way, his sensitive mind had to overcome the knowledge of nature that he had absorbed for himself at a solitary height. In his last creative epoch, Nietzsche sought to gain from reality itself what he had previously believed he could achieve in illusion, in an ideal realm. Life is given a task that is firmly rooted in life and yet leads beyond this life. One cannot remain in the immediate existence, in real life; not even in the life illuminated by natural science. This life must also be suffered. That remained Nietzsche's opinion. The "superman" is also a means of bearing existence. All of this indicates that Nietzsche was born to "suffer from existence". In his search for consolation, his reality insisted on leading him away, now becoming despicable background worlds, created from the fantasies of weak people who do not have enough strength to get their satisfaction from their immediate, fresh existence. Natural science has placed man at the end of a purely natural development. Everything that is below him has been given a higher meaning by the fact that it produced man from itself. Man should not now deny this meaning and want to make himself the image of something beyond. He should understand that he is not the meaning of a supernatural power, but the "meaning of the earth". What he wants to strive for above that which is there, he should not strive for in hostility to that which exists. In reality itself, Nietzsche also seeks the germs of the higher that is to make reality bearable. Man should not strive after a divine being; out of his reality he should give birth to a higher way of being. This reality itself carries beyond itself; humanity is capable of becoming superhumanity. Development has always been. Man should also develop. The laws of development are greater, more comprehensive than everything that has already developed. One must not only look at what is there; one must go back to the primal forces that created the real. An old worldview investigated how "good and evil" came into the world. It believed that it had to go back behind existence in order to discover the reasons for "good and evil" "in the eternal". But with the "eternal", with the "beyond", Nietzsche also had to reject the "eternal" validity of "good and evil". Man has become through the natural; and "good and evil" have become with him. Human creation is "good and evil". And the Creator is deeper than the created. The "human being" is "beyond good and evil". He has made the one good and the other evil. He must not allow himself to be shackled by his previous "good and evil". He can continue on the path of development that he has followed so far. He has gone from worm to man; he can go from man to superman. He can create a new good and evil. He can "revaluate" the present values. Nietzsche was torn from his work on his "revaluation of all values" by mental derangement. The development of the worm into a human being was the idea he gained from recent natural science. He did not become a researcher himself; he adopted the idea of development from others. For them it was a matter of reason. To him it was genius. The struggle for worldviews has often produced martyrs. Nietzsche did not produce any new worldview ideas. One will increasingly recognize that his genius does not lie in the production of new thoughts. But he suffered deeply from the thoughts of his environment. He found the captivating tones of his "Zarathustra" for this suffering. He became the poet of the new world view; the hymns to the "superman" are the personal, the poetic answer to the questions and findings of the newer natural sciences. Everything that the nineteenth century produced in terms of ideas would also be there without Nietzsche. He will not be an original philosopher, a founder of religion or a prophet for the future; he will be a martyr of knowledge who found words in poetry to say what he suffered.