The Rudolf Steiner Archive

33. A New Czerninism Must Not Replace the Old

[ 1 ] The world catastrophe has had the effect that today certain personalities are publicly speaking out in a direction in which they would have considered it an imperative of prudence only a short time ago to hide their opinions From the publications of men who were in leading positions before and during the time of calamity, the world can learn from which will impulses "history was made". What can be learned there now seems truly capable of bringing people to their senses who have hitherto tended to lull themselves into illusions about these volitional drives. In the book "Im Weltkriege" by Ottokar Czernin one can read: "It is well known that the common thread running through the character and the entire train of thought of Wilhelm II was his firm conviction of his 'divine right' and of the 'dynastic feelings ineradicably rooted in the German people'. Bismarck also believed in the dynastic sentiment of the Germans. It seems to me that there is just as little a general dynastic as a general republican feeling among the peoples, among the Germans just as little as anywhere else, but only a feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, which expresses itself either for or against the dynasty and the form of government.... . The monarchists, who imagine a merit in their ancestral loyalty to the ruling house, deceive themselves about their feelings; they are monarchists because they consider this form of government to be the most satisfactory. And the republicans, who supposedly glorify the 'majesty of the people', de facto mean themselves. In the long run, however, a people will always profess their allegiance to the form of government that is most likely to bring them order, work, prosperity and satisfaction. With ninety-nine percent of the population, patriotism and their enthusiasm for one form of government or another is always just a matter of the stomach."

[ 2 ] This is the sentiment of a man of whom it may even be said that he is not one of those who have shown the least spirit among leaders in public affairs. Thus speaks the man who, on behalf of his monarch, directed Austrian foreign policy in the decisive moments of world history. Such statements shed a bright light on the question: What must have been the ways in which personalities with such a view of life came to leading positions in the present? A man who speaks in this way has no feeling for the impulses that have pushed people into the communities from which civilization has emerged. He lacks any feeling for the forces that have prevailed in history. It is the result of a development of time that has brought into leading positions precisely those personalities who have lost all connection with the ideals of humanity.

[ 3 ] Czernin also says: "The lost war has swept away the monarchs." Well, contemporary events must also sweep people of his kind away from the leadership of public affairs. - But the point is that as many people as possible should come to their senses about the reason why people of this kind were able to "make history". The developmental current of humanity which has carried such personalities to the most important positions in public life once had its world-historical ideas. From these, it shaped the Europe that is now in decline. These ideas can be traced back to the times when this Europe was formed out of the declining Roman world. There were historical impulses at work that are certainly not "stomach issues". But these drives have lost their justification in more recent times. In reality, they have not existed as spiritual drives for a long time. But the institutions that arose from them have survived according to a certain inertial law of world history. People lived in these institutions after they had become an empty shell in which spirit once reigned. And these empty shells demanded for their administration men who were filled with a view of life without content, without ideas, without faith; men who made patriotism with the conviction that it was a "stomach issue" for ninety-nine percent of the population. The truth is that those institutions which are now approaching their dissolution have emerged from spiritual impulses because they have lost their old spirit, because those to whom the paths to leadership were last open have arrived at the complete bankruptcy of an outlook on life.

[ 4 ] A realization should shine forth from the experience that can emerge from publications of Czernin's kind. This realization is not yet there among those who, without appealing to a new spirituality, want to rebuild the collapsing Europe. The ruins of the old stock are like the pieces of a cupboard that has fallen apart. One stands before what has fallen apart. One would like to reorganize the whole with all kinds of ribbons and straps. But you don't realize that the parts themselves have become rotten.

[ 5 ] Rotting parts will be the structures in which, according to a popular catchphrase, even the smallest peoples are to achieve their right to self-determination. For they must be rotten, because the spiritual impulses that once poured life into them have disappeared. No matter how many "states" are founded and united by an abstractly conceived League of Nations, they will only join together rotten parts of a once legitimate whole that was once supported by a spirit that is no longer viable.

[ 6 ] The insight into this world-historical context is the necessary precondition for an improvement in European conditions. States of nations cannot flourish if they are not built on the realization that the spirit from which the people belonging to them have lived their spiritual lives has died.

[ 7 ] Those who see the "threefold structure of the social organism" as the way out of the turmoil of the present would like to proceed from this realization. They are convinced that this threefold structure counts on the new spirituality that must first come to life in the nations before we can think about building a new Europe.

[ 8 ] The Czernins are the successors of those who once gave Europe its character out of ideas. But the Czernins have lost the old ideas from their convictions, from their faith, and have not conquered any new ones. It is of no avail if the old Czernins are swept away with the old institutions without being replaced by people who have a connection with the spiritual driving forces of world history. In my "Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage" and repeatedly in this weekly I have tried to show how, with a change in the political and social direction of thought, the new Czernins reveal themselves as the faithful disciples of the old. It does not bear fruit if the old Czernins are replaced by new ones draped in democracy and socialism, who basically want to shape a new far out of the same spiritual impulses with which the old one wanted to hold together Austria, which had become rotten. Czernin worked in the Austria of which he now says (on page 41 of his book): "Austria-Hungary's clock had run out." He believes "that the disintegration of the monarchy would have occurred even without this war". Only a man who had been as effective as Czernin could speak in this way if he had no real inner stake in the process in which he played a prominent role. Such an inner part could only have arisen from a feeling for the driving forces of the historical development of mankind. But he worked out of institutions that had lost their meaning, their spirit. But they once had it. So it must be what is to arise from the ruins of old Europe. A sufficiently large number of people must come to this conviction. Without this conviction, only the fragments of the old can become a European whole that is impossible in itself.

[ 9 ] What the old say now clearly shows how the new must not think. The Czernine are the people in whom monarchism, republicanism, democracy and patriotism have become an "ideology". They were officially obliged to do their deeds in the service of the monarchy and they can now write (page 70 of Czernin's book): "All monarchs should be taught that their people do not love them at all, that at best they are quite indifferent to them, that it does not run after them out of love and does not stare at them out of love, but out of curiosity, that it does not cheer them out of enthusiasm, but out of amusement and out of 'Hetz' and would just as soon whistle, that there is not the slightest reliance on the 'loyalty of the subjects', that they have no intention of being loyal, but want to be satisfied, that they tolerate the monarchs as long as they are either induced to do so by their own satisfaction, or, if not, as long as they do not have the strength to chase them away. That would be the truth." All spirit has become "ideology" in a man who acts in the service of a monarch with the opinion that this is the truth.

[ 10 ] Think what would happen if public institutions were to be formed from a view of life that is already based on the opinion that everything spiritual is "ideology". The old Czernins formed this opinion half unconsciously; they slithered into it as, in Tirpitz's opinion, Germany slithered into the world war. The new Czernins want to rebuild Europe from the outset on the basis of this opinion. It will not help that many of them - certainly not all - have no ill will. In world-historical development, it is not an abstract good will, which has no idea of the real driving forces of life, but a living insight into reality that is decisive.