The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Appendix: To the German people and the Cultured World!

[ 1 ] The German people believed that their imperial edifice, built half a century ago, was securely in place for an unlimited period of time. In August 1914, they believed that the military catastrophe at the beginning of which they saw themselves confronted would prove this edifice to be invincible. Today it can only look at its ruins. Self-reflection must come after such an experience. For this experience has proved the opinion of half a century, in particular the prevailing thoughts of the war years, to be a tragic error. What are the reasons for this fatal error? This question must drive self-reflection into the souls of the members of the German people. Whether the strength for such self-reflection is now available depends on the possibility of life for the German people. Its future depends on whether it is able to ask itself the question in a serious way: how did I fall into error? If it asks itself this question today, then the realization will dawn on it that it founded an empire half a century ago, but failed to give this empire a task arising from the essence of the German people. - The empire was founded. In the early days of its existence, efforts were made to organize its inner life possibilities according to the requirements that arose from old traditions and new needs from year to year. Later, efforts were made to consolidate and increase the external power based on material forces. This was combined with measures relating to the social requirements born of the new age, which took account of many things that the day proved to be necessary, but which lacked the great goal that should have resulted from a realization of the forces of development to which modern mankind must turn. Thus the empire was placed in the world context without an essential objective justifying its existence. The course of the war catastrophe revealed this in a sad way. Until the outbreak of the same, the non-German world could see nothing in the behavior of the empire that could have awakened the opinion: the administrators of this empire fulfill a world-historical mission that must not be swept away. The failure of these administrators to find such a mission has necessarily created the opinion in the non-German world, which for the truly insightful is the deeper reason for the German collapse.

[ 2 ] Much now depends for the German people on their unbiased assessment of this situation. In the face of adversity, the insight that has not wanted to show itself in the last fifty years would have to emerge. The small thinking about the most immediate demands of the present would now have to be replaced by a great train of outlook on life which strives to recognize the forces of development of modern humanity with strong thoughts and which devotes itself to them with courageous will. There should be an end to the petty urge that renders all those harmless as impractical idealists who direct their gaze to these forces of development. The presumption and arrogance of those who think of themselves as practitioners and yet have brought about misfortune through their narrow-mindedness masked as practice must cease. Consideration should be given to what the idealists, who are decried as idealists but are in fact real practitioners, have to say about the developmental needs of the new age.

[ 3 ] The "practitioners" of all schools of thought have long recognized the emergence of entirely new human demands. But they wanted to meet these demands within the framework of traditional habits of thought and institutions. The economic life of modern times has brought forth these demands. Satisfying them through private initiative seemed impossible. The transformation of private work into social work was necessary for one class of men in certain fields; and it was realized wherever it seemed profitable to this class of men according to their view of life. Radical transformation of all individual labor into social labor became the goal of another class, which, through the development of the new economic life, has no interest in preserving the traditional private goals.

[ 4 ] All endeavors that have emerged so far in view of the newer demands of humanity have one thing in common. They urge for the socialization of the private sphere and count on the takeover of the latter by communities (state, commune˃, which originate from preconditions that have nothing to do with the new demands. Alternatively, they are counting on newer communities (e.g. cooperatives) that have not emerged fully in line with these new demands, but are modeled on the old forms out of traditional habits of thought.

[ 5 ] The truth is that no community formed in the sense of these old habits of thought can absorb what one wants it to absorb. The forces of the times are pressing for the realization of a social structure of mankind which envisages something quite different from what is commonly envisaged today. Social communities have hitherto been formed for the most part out of the social instincts of mankind. To penetrate their powers with full consciousness will be the task of time.

[ 6 ] The social organism is structured like the natural organism. And just as the natural organism must think through the head and not through the lungs, so it is necessary for the social organism to be divided into systems, none of which can take over the task of the other, but each of which must work together with the others while maintaining its independence.

[ 7 ] Economic life can only flourish if it develops as an independent member of the social organism according to its own forces and laws, and if it does not bring confusion into its structure by allowing itself to be absorbed by another member of the social organism, the politically effective one. Rather, this politically effective member must exist in full independence alongside the economic one, just as the respiratory system exists alongside the head system in the natural organism. Their beneficial interaction cannot be achieved by the fact that both parts are supplied by a single legislative and administrative organ, but that each has its own legislation and administration, which work together in a living way. For the political system must destroy the economy if it wants to take it over; and the economic system loses its vital forces if it wants to become political.

[ 8 ] To these two members of the social organism must be added a third, fully independent and formed out of its own vital possibilities: that of spiritual production, to which also belongs the spiritual part of the other two areas, which must be handed over to them by the third member, endowed with its own lawful regulation and administration, but which cannot be administered and influenced by them in any other way than the co-existing member-organisms of a natural organism influence each other.

[ 9 ] It is already possible today to substantiate and expand in full scientific detail what has been said here about the necessities of the social organism. These explanations can only provide guidelines for all those who wish to pursue these necessities.

[ 10 ] The founding of the German Empire took place at a time when these necessities were being addressed by modern mankind. His administration did not understand how to set the empire a task by looking at these necessities. This view would not only have given it the right internal structure; it would also have given its external policy a justified direction. With such a policy, the German people would have been able to live together with the non-German peoples.

[ 11 ] Now the insight would have to mature from the misfortune. We must develop the will for a possible social organism. Not a Germany that is no longer there would have to face the outside world, but a spiritual, political and economic system in their representatives would have to want to negotiate as independent delegations with those by whom that Germany has been thrown down, which has made itself an impossible social entity through the confusion of the three systems.

[ 12 ] One hears in one's mind the practitioners, who are overcome by the complexity of what has been said here, who find it uncomfortable even to think about the interaction of three bodies, because they may know nothing of the real demands of life, but want to organize everything according to the convenient demands of their thinking. It must become clear to them: either they will be content to submit to the demands of reality with their thinking, or they will have learned nothing from misfortune, but will multiply the misfortune they have brought about by further misfortune to an unlimited extent.