The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XIII
[ 1 ] Just at this time my outward life was altogether happy. I was frequently with my old friends. Few as were the opportunities I had to speak of the things I am here discussing, yet the spiritual and mental ties that bound me to these friends were none the less strong. How often must I think over again the conversations, sometimes unending, which occurred at that time in a well-known coffee house on Michaelerplatz in Vienna. I had cause to think of these especially during that period following the World War when old Austria went to pieces. For the causes of this crumbling to pieces were at that time already present everywhere. But no one was willing to recognize this. Everyone had thoughts that would be the means of a cure, always according to his own special national or cultural leanings. And if ideals which manifest themselves at times of the ebbing tide are stimulating, yet they are ideals born out of the decadence itself, out of the desire to prevent this-themselves being no less tragic. Such tragic ideals worked in the hearts of the best Viennese and Austrians.
[ 2 ] I frequently caused misunderstandings with these idealists when I expressed a conviction which had been borne in upon me through my absorption in the period of Goethe. I said that a culmination in Occidental cultural evolution had been reached during that period. This had not been continued. The period of the natural sciences, with its effects upon the lives of men and of peoples, denoted a decadence. For any further advance there was needed an entirely new attack from the side of the spirit. There could be no further progress into the spiritual by those roads which had previously been laid out, except after a previous turning back.
Goethe is a climax, but therefore not a point of departure; on the contrary, an end. He develops the results of an evolution which goes as far as himself and finds in him its most complete embodiment, but which cannot be further advanced without first resorting to far more primal springs of spiritual experience than exist in this evolution. In this mood I wrote the last part of my Goethe exposition.
[ 3 ] It was in this mood that I first became acquainted with Nietzsche's writings. Jenseits von Gut und Böse1Beyond Good and Evil. was the first of his books that I read. I was fascinated by his way of viewing things and yet at the same time repelled. I found it hard to get a right attitude toward Nietzsche. I loved his style; I loved his keenness; but I did not love at all the way in which Nietzsche spoke of the most profound problems without immersing himself in these with fully conscious thought in spiritual experience. Only I then observed that he said many things with which I stood in the closest intimacy in my spiritual experience. And thus I felt myself close to his struggle and felt that I must find an expression for this proximity. Nietzsche seemed to me one of the most tragic figures of that time. And this tragedy, I believed, must be the effect of the spiritual attitude characterizing the natural-scientific age upon human souls of more than ordinary depth. I passed my last years in Vienna with such feelings as these.
[ 4 ] Before the close of the first phase of my life, I had the opportunity of visiting also Budapest and Siebenbürgen (Transylvania). The friend I have previously mentioned whose family belonged to Transylvania, who had remained bound to me with rare loyalty through all these years, had introduced me to a good many of the people from his district who were in Vienna. Thus it happened that, in addition to my other extensive social relationships, I had also this with persons from Transylvania. Among them were Herr and Frau Breitenstein, who became friends of mine at that time and who have remained such in the most heartfelt fashion. For a long time they have taken a leading part in the Anthroposophical Society in Vienna. This human relationship with “Siebenbürgers” led me to make a journey to Budapest. The capital of Hungary, in character so entirely unlike Vienna, made a deep impression upon me. One went there from Vienna through a region brilliant in the beauty of its scenery, its highly temperamental humanity, and the intensity of its musical interest. When one looked from the windows of the train, one had the impression that nature herself had become poetic in a special way, and that human beings, paying little heed to the poetic nature so familiar to them, plunged down within themselves in an often profoundly inward music of the heart. And, when one reached Budapest, there came to expression a world which may be viewed with the greatest interest from the point of view of the relationships to other European peoples, but which can from this point of view never be wholly understood. A dark undertone over which gleams a light playing amid colours. This character seemed to me as if it were forced together into visible unity when I stood before the Franz Drak [Ferenc Deák – e.Ed] monument. In this head of the maker of that Hungary which existed from the year 1867 to 1918 there lived a strong, proud will which laid hold with all its might, which forced itself through without cunning but with elemental mercilessness. I felt how true subjectively for every Hungarian was the proverb I had often heard: “Outside of Hungary there is no life; and, if there is a life, it is by no means such as this.”
[ 5 ] As a child I had seen on the western borders of Hungary how Germans were made to feel this strong, proud will; now I learned in the midst of Hungary how this will brings the Magyar people into an isolation from humanity which clothes them, as they rather naïvely think, in a certain glamour obvious to themselves which values much the showing of itself to the hidden eyes of nature but not to the open eyes of men.
[ 6 ] Half a year after this visit, my Transylvanian friends arranged for me to deliver a lecture at Hermannstadt. It was Christmas time. I traveled over the wide plains in the midst of which lies Arad. The melancholy poetry of Lenau sounded in my heart as I looked out over these plains where all is one expanse to which the eye can find no limit. I had to spend the night in a little border village between Hungary and Transylvania.
I sat in a little guest-room half the night. Besides myself there was only a group of card-players sitting round a table. In this group there were all the nationalities to be found at that time in Hungary and Transylvania. The men were playing with a vehemence which constantly broke loose at half-hour intervals, so that it took the form of soul-clouds which rose above the table, struggled together like demons, and wreathed the men about completely as if in the folds of serpents. What differences in vehement existence were there manifested by these different national types!
[ 7 ] I reached Hermannstadt on Christmas Day. Here I was introduced into “Siebenburger Saxondom.” This existed there in the midst of a Rumanian and Magyar environment. A noble folk which, in the midst of a decline that it could not perceive, desired to prove its gallantry. A Germanism which, like a memory of the transfer of its life centuries ago to the East, wished to show its loyalty to its origins, but which in this temper of soul showed a trait of alienation from the world manifesting itself as an elevated universal joy in life. I passed happy days among the German ministers of the Evangelical Church, among the teachers of the German schools, and among other German Siebenburgers. My heart warmed to these people who, in the concern for their folk life and in their duty to this, evolved a culture of the heart which spoke first of all likewise to the heart. [ 8 ] This vital warmth filled my soul as I sat in a sleigh, wrapped close in heavy furs, and travelled with these old and new friends through icy-cold and crackling snow to the Carpathians (the Transylvanian Alps). A dark, forested mountain country when one moves toward it from the distance; a wild, precipitous, often frightful mountain landscape when one is close at hand.
[ 9 ] The centre in all which I then experienced was my friend of many years. He was always thinking out something new whereby I might learn thoroughly Siebenburger Saxondom. He was still dividing his time between Vienna and Hermannstadt. At that time he owned a weekly paper at Hermannstadt founded for the purpose of fostering Siebenburger Saxondom. An undertaking it was which arose entirely out of idealism, utterly devoid of practical experience, but at which almost all representatives of Saxondom laboured together. After a few weeks it came to grief.
[ 10 ] Such experiences as this journey were brought me by destiny; and through them I was enabled to educate my perception for the outer world, a thing which had not been easy for me, whereas in the element of the spiritual I lived as in something self-evident.
[ 11 ] It was with sad memories that I made the journey back to Vienna. There fell into my hands just then a book of whose “spiritual richness” men of all sorts were speaking: Rembrandt als Erzieher.2Rembrandt as Teacher. In conversations about this book, which were then going on wherever one went, one could hear about the coming of an entirely new spirit. I was forced to become aware, by reason of this very phenomenon, of the great loneliness in which I stood with my temper of mind amid the spiritual life of that period.
[ 12 ] In regard to a book which was prized in the highest degree by all the world my own feeling was as if someone had sat for several months at a table in one of the better hotels and listened to what the “outstanding” personalities in the genealogical tables said by way of “brilliant” remarks, and had then written these down in the form of aphorisms. After this continuous “preliminary work” he could have thrown his slips of paper with these remarks into a vessel, shaken them thoroughly together, and then taken them out again After drawing out the slips, he could have made a series of these and so produced a book. Of course, this criticism is exaggerated. But my inner vital mood forced me into such revulsion from that which the “spirit of the times” then praised as a work of the highest merit. I considered Rembrandt as Teacher a book which dealt wholly with the surface of thoughts that have to do with the realm of the spiritual, and which did not harmonize in a single sentence with the real depths of the human soul. It grieved me to know that my contemporaries considered such a book as coming from a profound personality, whereas I was forced to believe that such dealers in the small change of thought moving in the shallows of the spirit would drive all that is deeply human out of man's soul.
[ 13 ] When I was fourteen years old I had to begin tutoring; for fifteen years, up to the beginning of the second phase of my life, that spent at Weimar, my destiny kept me engaged in this work. The unfolding of the minds of many persons, both in childhood and in youth, was in this way bound up with my own evolution. Through this means I was able to observe how different were the ways in which the two sexes grow into life. For, along with the giving of instruction to boys and young men, it fell to my lot to teach also a number of young girls. Indeed, for a long time the mother of the boy whose instruction I had taken over because of his pathological condition was a pupil of mine in geometry; and at another time I taught this lady and her sister aesthetics.
[ 14 ] In the family of these children I found for a number of years a sort of home, from which I went out to other families as tutor or instructor. Through the intimate friendship between the mother of the children and myself, it came about that I shared fully in the joys and sorrows of this family. In this woman I perceived a uniquely beautiful human soul. She was wholly devoted to the development of her four boys according to their destiny. In her one could study mother love in its larger manifestation. To co-operate with her in problems of education formed a beautiful content of life. For the musical part of the artistic she possessed both talent and enthusiasm. At times she took charge of the musical practice of her boys, as long as they were still young. She discussed intelligently with me the most varied life problems, sharing in everything with the deepest interest. She gave the greatest attention to my scientific and other tasks. There was a time when I had the greatest need to discuss with her everything which intimately concerned me. When I spoke of my spiritual experiences, she listened in a peculiar way. To her intelligence the thing was entirely congenial, but it maintained a certain marked reserve; yet her mind absorbed everything. At the same time she maintained in reference to man's being a certain naturalistic view. She believed the moral temper to be entirely bound up with the health or sickness of the bodily constitution. I mean to say that she thought instinctively about man in a medical fashion, whereby her thinking tended to be somewhat naturalistic. To discuss things in this way with her was in the highest degree stimulating. Besides, her attitude toward all outer life was that of a woman who attended with the strongest sense of duty to everything which fell to her lot, but who looked upon most inner things as not belonging to her sphere. She looked upon her fate in many aspects as something burdensome. But still she made no claims upon life; she accepted this as it took form so far as it did not concern her sons. In relation to these she felt every experience with the deepest emotion of her soul.
[ 15 ] All this I shared vitally – the soul-life of a woman, her beautiful devotion to her sons, the life of the family within a wide circle of kinsmen and acquaintances. But for this reason things did not move without difficulty. The family was Jewish. In their views they were quite free from any sectarian or racial narrowness, but the head of the family, to whom I was deeply attached, felt a certain sensitiveness to any expression by a Gentile in regard to the Jews. The flame of anti-Semitism which had sprung up at that time had caused this feeling.
[ 16 ] Now, I took a keen interest in the struggle which the Germans in Austria were then carrying on in behalf of their national existence. I was also led to occupy myself with the historical and the social position of the Jews. Especially earnest did this activity of mine become after the appearance of Hamerling's Homunculus. This eminent German poet was considered by a great part of the journalists as an anti-Semite on account of this work; indeed, he was claimed by the German national anti-Semites as one of their own. This disturbed me very little; but I wrote a paper on the Homunculus in which, as I thought, I expressed myself quite objectively in regard to the Jews. The man in whose home I lived, and who was my friend, took this to be a special form of anti-Semitism. Not in the least did his friendly feeling for me suffer on that account, but he was affected with a profound distress. When he had read the paper, he faced me, his heart torn by innermost sorrow, and said to me: “What you wrote in this in regard to the Jews cannot be explained in a friendly sense; but this is not what hurts me, but the fact that you could have had the experiences in regard to us which induced you to write thus only through your close relationship with us and our friends.” He was mistaken: for I had formed my opinions altogether from a spiritual and historic survey; nothing personal had entered into my judgment. He could not see the thing in this way. His reply to my explanations was: “No, the man who teaches my children is, after this paper, no ‘friend of the Jews.’” He could not be induced to change. Not for a moment did he think that my relation ship to the family ought to be altered. This he looked upon as something necessary. Still less could I make this matter the occasion for a change; for I looked upon the teaching of his sons as a task which destiny had brought to me. But neither of us could do otherwise than think that a tragic thread had been woven into this relationship. [ 17 ] To all this was added the fact that many of my friends had taken on from their national struggle a tinge of anti-Semitism in their view of the Jews. They did not view sympathetically my holding a post in a Jewish family; and the head of this family saw in my friendly mingling with such persons only a confirmation of the impression which he had received from my paper.
[ 18 ] To the family circle in which I so intimately shared belonged the composer of Das Goldene Kreuz, Ignatius Brüll. A sensitive person he was, of whom I was extraordinarily fond. Ignatius Brüll was something of an alien to the world, buried in himself. His interests were not exclusively musical; they were directed toward many aspects of the spiritual life. These interests he could enter into only as a “darling of destiny” against the background of a family circle which never permitted him to be disturbed by attention to everyday affairs but permitted his creative work to grow out of a certain prosperity. And thus he did not grow in life but only in music. To what degree his musical creations were or were not meritorious is not the question just here. But it was stimulating in the most beautiful sense to meet the man in the street and see him awaken out of his world of tones when one addressed him. Generally he did not have his waistcoat buttons in the right button-holes. His eye spoke in a mild thoughtfulness; his walk was not fast but very expressive. One could talk with him about many things; for these he had a sensitive understanding; but one saw how the content of the conversation slipped, as it were, for him into the sphere of music.
[ 19 ] In the family in which I thus lived I became acquainted also with the distinguished physician, Dr. Breuer, who was associated with Dr. Freud at the birth of psycho-analysis. Only in the beginning, however, did he share in this sort of view, and he was not in agreement with Freud in its later development. Dr. Breuer was to me a very attractive personality. I admired the way in which he was related to his medical profession. Besides, he was a man of many interests in other fields. He spoke of Shakespeare in such a way as to stimulate one very strongly. It was interesting also to hear him in his purely medical way of thinking speak of Ibsen or even of Tolstoi's Kreuzer Sonata. When he spoke with the friend I have here described, the mother of the children whom I had to teach, I was often present and deeply interested. Psycho-analysis was not yet born; but the problems which looked toward this goal were already there. The phenomena of hypnotism had given a special colouring to medical thought. My friend had been a friend of Dr. Breuer from her youth. There I faced a fact which gave me much food for thought. This woman thought in a certain direction more medically than the distinguished physician. They were once discussing a morphine addict. Dr. Breuer was treating him. The woman once said to me: “Think what Breuer has done! He has taken the promise of the morphine addict on his word of honour that he will take no more morphine. He expected to attain something by this, and he was deluded, since the patient did not keep his promise. He even said: ‘How can I treat a man who does not keep his promise?’ Would one have believed,” she said, “that so distinguished a physician could be so naïve? How can one try to cure ‘by a promise’ something so deeply rooted ‘in a man's nature’?” The woman may not, however, have been entirely right; the opinion of the physician regarding the therapy of suggestion may have entered then into his attempt at a cure; but no one can deny that my friend's statement indicated the extraordinary energy with which she spoke in a noteworthy fashion out of the spirit which lived in the Viennese school of medicine up to the time when this new school blossomed forth.
[ 20 ] This woman was in her own way a significant person; and she is a significant phenomenon in my life. She has long been dead; among the things which made it hard for me to leave Vienna was this also, that I had to part from her.
[ 21 ] When I reflect in retrospect upon the content of the first phase of my life, while I seek to characterize it as if from without, the feeling forces itself upon me that destiny so led me that I was not fettered by any external “calling” during my first thirty years. I entered the Goethe and Schiller Institute in Weimar also, not to take a life position, but as a free collaborator in the edition of Goethe which would be published by the Institute under a commission from the Grand-duchess Sophie. In the report which the Director of the Institute published in the twelfth volume of the Goethe Year Book occurs this statement: “The permanent workers have associated with themselves since 1890 Rudolf Steiner from Vienna. To him has been assigned the general field of ‘morphology’ (with the exception of the osteological part): five or probably six volumes of the ‘second division,’ to which important material is added from the manuscript, remains.”
Chapter XIII
[ 1 ] Gerade in dieser Zeit war mein äußeres Leben ein durchaus geselliges. Mit den alten Freunden kam ich viel zusammen. So wenig ich die Möglichkeit hatte, von den Dingen zu sprechen, die ich hier andeutete, so intensiv waren aber doch die geistigen und seelischen Bande, die mich an die Freunde knüpften. Ich muß oft zurückdenken an die zum Teil endlosen Gespräche, die damals in einem bekannten Kaffeehause am Michaelerplatz in Wien geführt wurden. Ich mußte es besonders in der Zeit, in der nach dem Weltkriege das alte Österreich zersplitterte. Denn die Bedingungen dieser Zersplitterung waren damals durchaus schon vorhanden. Aber keiner wollte es sich gestehen. Ein jeder hatte Heilmittel-Gedanken, je nach seinen besonderen nationalen oder kulturellen Neigungen. Und wenn Ideale, die in aufgehenden Strömungen leben, erhebend sind, so sind es solche, die aus dem Niedergange erwachsen und die ihn abhalten möchten, in ihrer Tragik nicht minder. Solche tragischen Ideale wirkten damals in den Gemütern der besten Wiener und Österreicher.
[ 2 ] Ich erregte oft Mißstimmung bei diesen Idealisten, wenn ich eine Überzeugung äußerte, die sich mir durch meine Hingabe an die Goethe-Zeit aufgedrängt hatte. Ich sagte, in dieser Zeit war ein Höhepunkt der abendländischen Kulturentwickelung erreicht. Nachher wurde er nicht festgehalten. Das naturwissenschaftliche Zeitalter mit seinen Folgen für das Menschen- und Volksleben bedeutet einen Niedergang. Zu einem weiteren Fortschritte bedürfe es eines ganz neuen Einschlages von der geistigen Seite her. Es läßt sich in den Bahnen, die bisher im Geistigen eingeschlagen worden sind, nicht fortgehen, ohne zurückzukommen. Goethe ist eine Höhe, aber auf derselben nicht ein Anfang, sondern ein Ende. Er zieht die Folgen aus einer Entwickelung, die bis zu ihm geht, in ihm ihre vollste Ausgestaltung findet, die aber nicht weiter fortgesetzt werden kann, ohne zu viel ursprünglicheren Quellen des geistigen Erlebens zu gehen, als sie in dieser Entwickelung enthalten sind. - In dieser Stimmung schrieb ich an dem letzten Teile meiner Goethe-Darstellungen.
[ 3 ] In dieser Stimmung lernte ich Nietzsches Schriften zuerst kennen. «Jenseits von Gut und Böse» war das erste Buch, das ich von ihm las. Ich war auch von dieser Betrachtungsart zugleich gefesselt und wieder zurückgestoßen. Ich konnte schwer mit Nietzsche zurecht kommen. Ich liebte seinen Stil, ich liebte seine Kühnheit; ich liebte aber durchaus die Art nicht, wie Nietzsche über die tiefsten Probleme sprach, ohne im geistigen Erleben mit der Seele bewußt in sie unterzutauchen. Nur kam mir wieder vor, wie wenn er viele Dinge sagte, die mir selbst im geistigen Erleben unermeßlich nahe standen. Und so fühlte ich mich seinem Kämpfen nahe und empfand, ich müsse einen Ausdruck für dieses Nahestehen finden. Wie einer der tragischsten Menschen der damaligen Gegenwart erschien mir Nietzsche. Und diese Tragik, glaubte ich, müsse sich der tiefer angelegten Menschenseele aus dem Charakter der geistigen Verfassung des naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalters ergeben. Mit solchen Empfindungen verlebte ich meine letzten Wiener Jahre.
[ 4 ] Vor dem Ende meines ersten Lebensabschnittes konnte ich auch noch Budapest und Siebenbürgen besuchen. Der früher erwähnte, aus Siebenbürgen stammende Freund, der all die Jahre her mit seltener Treue mir verbunden geblieben war, hatte mich mit mehreren seiner in Wien weilenden Landesgenossen bekannt gemacht. Und so hatte ich denn außer dem andern sehr ausgebreiteten geselligen Verkehr auch einen solchen mit Siebenbürgern. Unter diesen waren Herr und Frau Breitenstein, die mir damals befreundet wurden und die es in herzlichster Weise geblieben sind. Sie haben seit langem eine führende Stellung in der Wiener Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft. Der menschliche Zusammenhang mit Siebenbürgern führte mich zu einer Reise nach Budapest. Die Hauptstadt Ungarns, mit ihrem von dem Wiens so ganz verschiedenen Charakter, machte mir einen tiefen Eindruck. Man gelangt ja von Wien aus auf einer Reise dahin, die ganz in anmutvollster Natur, temperamentvollstem Menschentum und musikalischer Regsamkeit erglänzt. Man hat da, wenn man zum Fenster des Eisenbahnzuges hinaussieht, den Eindruck, daß die Natur selbst in einer besonderen Art poetisch wird, und daß die Menschen, gar nicht viel achtend der ihnen gewohnten poetischen Natur, sich in derselben nach einer oft tiefinnerlichen Herzensmusik herumtummeln. Und betritt man Budapest, so spricht eine Welt, die von den Angehörigen der anderen europäischen Volkstümer zwar mit dem höchsten Anteil angeschaut, die aber nie völlig verstanden werden kann. Ein dunkler Untergrund, über dem ein in Farben spielendes Licht glänzt. Mir erschien dieses Wesen wie in Eins für den Blick zusammengedrängt, als ich vor dem Franz Deak-Monument stand. In diesem Kopfe des Schöpfers jenes Ungarns, das vom Jahre 1867 bis 1918 bestand, lebte ein derb-stolzer Wille, der herzhaft zugreift, der sich ohne Schlauheit, aber mit elementarischer Rücksichtslosigkeit durchsetzt. Ich fühlte, wie subjektiv wahr für jeden echten Ungarn der von mir oft gehörte Wahlspruch ist: «Außer Ungarn gibt es kein Leben; und wenn es eines gibt, so ist es kein solches.»
[ 5 ] Als Kind hatte ich an Ungarns westlicher Grenze gesehen, wie Deutsche diesen derb-stolzen Willen zu fühlen hatten; jetzt lernte ich in Ungarns Mitte kennen, wie dieser Wille den magyarischen Menschen in eine menschliche Abgeschlossenheit bringt, die mit einer gewissen Naivität sich in einen ihr selbstverständlichen Glanz kleidet, der viel daran liegt, sich den verborgenen Augen der Natur, nicht aber den offenen des Menschen zu zeigen.
[ 6 ] Ein halbes Jahr nach diesem Besuche veranlaßten die Siebenbürger Freunde, daß ich in Hermannstadt einen Vortrag halten konnte. Es war Weihnachtszeit. Ich fuhr über die weiten Flächen, in deren Mitte Arad liegt. Lenaus sehnsuchtgetragene Poesien klangen in mein Herz herein, als meine Augen über diese Flächen sahen, an denen alles Weite ist, die dem hinschweifenden Blick keine Grenze setzt. Ich mußte in einem Grenznest zwischen Ungarn und Siebenbürgen übernachten. Ich saß in einer Gaststube die halbe Nacht. Außer mir war nur noch ein Tisch mit Kartenspielern. Da waren alle Nationalitäten beisammen, die in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen damals gefunden werden konnten. Menschen spielten da mit einer Leidenschaftlichkeit, die in Zeiten von einer halben Stunde sich immer überschlug, so daß sie wie in Seelenwolken sich auslebte, die sich über den Tisch erhoben, sich wie Dämonen bekämpften und die Menschen vollständig verschlangen. Welche Verschiedenheit im Leidenschaftlich-Sein offenbarte sich da bei diesen verschiedenen Nationen!
[ 7 ] Am Weihnachtstage kam ich nach Hermannstadt. Ich wurde in das Siebenbürger Sachsentum eingeführt. Das lebte da innerhalb des Rumänischen und Magyarischen. Ein edles Volkstum, das im Untergange, den es nicht sehen möchte, sich wacker bewahren möchte. Ein Deutschtum, das wie eine Erinnerung an sein Leben vor Jahrhunderten in den Osten verschlagen, seiner Quelle die Treue bewahren möchte, das aber in dieser Seelenverfassung einen Zug von Weltfremdheit hat, die eine anerzogene Freudigkeit überall im Leben offenbart. Ich verlebte schöne Tage unter den deutschen Geistlichen der evangelischen Kirche, unter den Lehrern der deutschen Schulen, unter andern deutschen Siebenbürgern. Mir wurde das Herz warm unter diesen Menschen, die in der Sorge um ihr Volkstum und in dessen Pflege eine Kultur des Herzens entwickelten, die auch vor allem zum Herzen sprach.
[ 8 ] Es lebte in meiner Seele diese Wärme, als ich mit den alten und neugewonnenen Freunden in dicke Pelze gehüllt durch eisige Kälte und knisternden Schnee eine Schlittenfahrt südwärts nach den Karpaten (den transsylvanischen Alpen) machte. Eine schwarze, waldige Bergwand, wenn man sich von der Ferne hinbewegt; eine wild zerklüftete, oft schauerlich stimmende Berglandschaft, wenn man da ist.
[ 9 ] Den Mittelpunkt in all dem, was ich da erlebte, bildete mein langjähriger Freund. Er dachte immer neue Dinge aus, durch die ich das Siebenbürger Sachsentum genau kennen lernen sollte. Er verbrachte auch jetzt noch immer einige Zeit in Wien, einige in Hermannstadt. Er hatte damals ein Wochenblatt in Hermannstadt für die Pflege des Siebenbürger Sachsentums begründet. Ein Unternehmen, das ganz aus Idealismus und aus keinem Milligramm Praxis bestand, an dem aber doch fast alle Träger des Sachsentums mitarbeiteten. Es ging nach wenigen Wochen wieder ein.
[ 10 ] Solche Erlebnisse wie diese Reisen wurden mir vom Schicksal zugetragen; und ich konnte mir durch sie den Blick für die Außenwelt anerziehen, der mir nicht leicht geworden ist, während ich in dem geistigen Element mit einer gewissen Selbstverständlichkeit lebte.
[ 11 ] In wehmütigen Erinnerungen machte ich die Reise zurück nach Wien. Da kam mir bald ein Buch in die Hand, von dessen «Geistesreichtum» damals die weitesten Kreise sprachen: «Rembrandt als Erzieher». In Gesprächen über dieses Buch, die damals überall sich entwickelten, wo man hinkam, konnte man von einem Aufkommen eines ganz neuen Geistes hören. Ich mußte gerade an dieser Erscheinung wahrnehmen, wie einsam ich mit meiner Seelenverfassung in dem damaligen Geistesleben stand.
[ 12 ] Ich empfand von einem Buche, das von aller Welt auf das höchste gepriesen wurde, so: es kam mir vor, als wenn jemand sich durch einige Monate jeden Abend in einem besseren Gasthause an einen Tisch gesetzt und zugehört hätte, was die «hervorragenderen» Persönlichkeiten an den Stammtischen an «geistvollen» Aussprüchen machten, und dann dies in aphoristischer Form aufgezeichnet hätte. Nach dieser fortlaufenden «Vorarbeit» könnte er die Zettel mit den Aussprüchen in ein Gefäß geworfen, kräftig durcheinander geschüttelt und dann wieder herausgenommen haben. Nach der Herausnahme hätte er dann das eine an das andere gefügt und so ein Buch entstehen lassen. Natürlich ist diese Kritik übertrieben. Aber mich drängte eben meine Lebensauffassung zu solcher Ablehnung dessen, was der damalige «Geist der Zeit» als eine Höchstleistung pries. Ich empfand «Rembrandt als Erzieher» als ein Buch, das sich ganz auf der Oberfläche sich geistreich geberdender Gedanken hielt und das in keinem Satze mit den wahren Tiefen einer menschlichen Seele zusammenhing. Ich fühlte es schmerzlich, daß meine Zeitgenossen gerade ein solches Buch für den Ausfluß einer tiefen Persönlichkeit hielten, während ich meinen mußte, daß mit solchem Gedankenplätschern in seichten Geist-Gewässern alles Tief-Menschliche aus den Seelen herausgetrieben wird.
[ 13 ] Als ich vierzehn Jahre alt war, mußte ich damit begin. nen, Privatunterricht zu geben; fünfzehn Jahre lang, bis zum Beginne meines zweiten in Weimar verbrachten Lebensabschnirtes, hielt mich das Schicksal in dieser Betätigung fest Die Entfaltung der Seelen vieler Menschen im kindlichen und Jugendalter verband sich da mit meiner eigenen Entwickelung. Ich habe dabei beobachten können, wie verschieden das Hineinwachsen in das Leben beim männlichen und weiblichen Geschlechte ist. Denn neben der Erteilung von Unterricht an Knaben und junge Männer fiel mir auch der an eine Anzahl junger Mädchen zu. Ja, eine Zeitlang wurde auch die Mutter des Knaben, dessen Erziehung wegen seines pathologischen Zustandes ich übernommen hatte, meine Schülerin in der Geometrie; zu einer andern Zeit trug ich dieser Frau und deren Schwester Ästhetik vor.
[ 14 ] In der Familie dieses Knaben habe ich durch mehrere Jahre eine Art von Heim gefunden, von dem aus ich bei anderen Familien der Erzieher- und Unterrichtstätigkeit oblag. Durch das freundschaftlich nahe Verhältnis zu der Mutter dieses Knaben kam es so, daß ich Freuden und Leiden dieser Familie völlig mitmachte. Mir stand in dieser Frau eine eigenartig schöne Menschenseele gegenüber. Ganz hingegeben war sie der Sorge um die Schicksalsentwickelung ihrer vier Knaben. Man konnte an ihr geradezu den großen Stil der Mutterliebe studieren. In Erziehungsfragen mit ihr zusammen arbeiten, bildete einen schönen Lebensinhalt. Für den musikalischen Teil des Künstlerischen hatte sie Anlage und Begeisterung. Die Musikübungen mit ihren Knaben besorgte sie, solange diese klein waren, zum Teile selbst. Mit mir unterhielt sie sich über die mannigfaltigsten Lebensprobleme verständnisvoll und mit dem tiefsten Interesse auf alles eingehend. Meinen wissenschaftlichen und sonstigen Arbeiten brachte sie die größte Aufmerksamkeit entgegen. Es war eine Zeit, wo ich das tiefste Bedürfnis hatte, alles, was mir nahe ging, mit ihr zu besprechen. Wenn ich von meinen geistigen Erlebnissen sprach, da hörte sie in einer eigentümlichen Art zu. Ihrem Verstande waren die Dinge zwar sympathisch, aber er behielt einen leisen Zug von Zurückhaltung; ihre Seele aber nahm alles auf. Sie behielt dabei dem Menschenwesen gegenüber eine gewisse naturalistische Anschauung. Die moralische Seelenverfassung dachte sie ganz in Zusammenhang mit der gesunden oder kranken Körperkonstitution. Ich möchte sagen, sie dachte instinktiv über den Menschen medizinisch, wobei dieses eben einen naturalistischen Einschlag hatte. Sich in dieser Richtung mit ihr zu unterhalten, war im höchsten Maße anregend. Dabei stand sie allem äußeren Leben wie eine Frau gegenüber, die das ihr Zufallende mit dem stärksten Pflichtgefühle besorgte, aber das meiste doch innerlich nicht als zu ihrer Sphäre gehörig betrachtete. Sie sah ihr Schicksal in vieler Beziehung als etwas Belastendes an. Aber sie forderte auch nichts vom Leben; sie nahm dieses hin, wie es sich gestaltete, sofern es nicht ihre Söhne betraf. Diesen gegenüber erlebte sie alles mit den stärksten Emotionen ihrer Seele.
[ 15 ] All dieses, das Seelenleben einer Frau, deren schönste Hingabe an ihre Söhne, das Leben der Familie innerhalb eines weiten Verwandten- und Bekanntenkreises lebte ich mit. Aber dabei ging es nicht ohne Schwierigkeit ab. Die Familie war eine jüdische. Sie war in den Anschauungen völlig frei von jeder konfessionellen und Rassenbeschränktheit. Aber es war bei dem Hausherrn, dem ich sehr zugetan war, eine gewisse Empfindlichkeit vorhanden gegen alle Äußerungen, die von einem Nicht-Juden über Juden getan wurden. Der damals aufflammende Antisemitismus harte das bewirkt.
[ 16 ] Nun nahm ich damals an den Kämpfen lebhaften Anteil, welche die Deutschen in Österreich um ihre nationale Existenz führten. Ich wurde dazu geführt, mich auch mit der geschichtlichen und sozialen Stellung des Judentums zu beschäftigen. Besonders intensiv wurde diese Beschäftigung, als Hamerlings «Homunculus» erschienen war. Dieser eminent deutsche Dichter wurde wegen dieses Werkes von einem großen Teil der Journalistik als Antisemit hingestellt, ja auch von den deutschnationalen Antisemiten als einer der ihrigen in Anspruch genommen. Mich berührte das alles wenig; aber ich schrieb einen Aufsatz über den «Homunculus», in dem ich mich, wie ich glaubte, ganz objektiv über die Stellung des Judentums aussprach. Der Mann, in dessen Hause ich lebte, mit dem ich befreundet war, nahm dies als eine besondere Art des Antisemitismus auf. Nicht im geringsten haben seine freundschaftlichen Gefühle für mich darunter gelitten, wohl aber wurde er von einem tiefen Schmerze befallen. Als er den Aufsatz gelesen hatte, stand er mir gegenüber, ganz von innerstem Leid durchwühlt, und sagte mir: ‹Was Sie da über die Juden schreiben, kann gar nicht in einem freundlichen Sinne gedeutet werden; aber das ist es nicht, was mich erfüllt, sondern daß Sie bei dem nahen Verhältnis zu uns und unseren Freunden die Erfahrungen, die Sie veranlassen, so zu schreiben, nur an uns gemacht haben können.» Der Mann irrte; denn ich harte ganz aus der geistig-historischen Überschau heraus geurteilt; nichts Persönliches war in mein Urteil eingeflossen. Er konnte das nicht so sehen. Er machte, auf meine Erklärungen hin, die Bemerkung: «Nein, der Mann, der meine Kinder erzieht, ist, nach diesem Aufsatze, kein ‹Judenfreund›.» Davon war er nicht abzubringen. Er dachte keinen Augenblick daran, daß sich an meinem Verhältnis zu der Familie etwas ändern solle. Das sah er als eine Notwendigkeit an. Ich konnte noch weniger die Sache zum Anlaß einer Änderung nehmen. Denn ich betrachtete die Erziehung seines Sohnes als eine Aufgabe, die mir vom Schicksal zugefallen war. Aber wir konnten beide nicht anders als denken, daß sich in dieses Verhältnis ein tragischer Einschlag gemischt hatte.
[ 17 ] Es kam zu alledem dazu, daß viele meiner Freunde aus den damaligen nationalen Kämpfen heraus in ihrer Auffassung des Judentums eine antisemitische Nuance angenommen hatten. Die sahen meine Stellung in einem jüdischen Hause nicht mit Sympathie an; und der Herr dieses Hauses fand in meinem freundschaftlichen Umgange mit solchen Persönlichkeiten nur eine Bestätigung der Eindrücke, die er von meinem Aufsatze empfangen hatte.
[ 18 ] Dem Familienzusammenhang, in dem ich so darinnen stand, gehörte der Komponist des «Goldenen Kreuzes», Ignaz Brüll, an. Eine feinsinnige Persönlichkeit, die ich außerordentlich lieb hatte. Ignaz Brüll hatte etwas Weltfremdes, in sich Versunkenes. Seine Interessen waren nicht ausschließlich musikalisch; sie waren vielen Seiten des geistigen Lebens zugewandt. Er konnte diese Interessen nur als ein «Glückskind» des Schicksals ausleben, auf dem Hintergrunde eines Familienzusammenhanges, der ihn von den Sorgen der Alltäglichkeit gar nicht berühren ließ, der sein Schaffen aus einem gewissen Wohlstande herauswachsen ließ. Und so wuchs er nicht in das Leben, sondern nur in die Musik hinein. Wie wertvoll oder nicht wertvoll sein musikalisches Schaffen war, davon braucht hier nicht die Rede zu sein. Aber es war im schönsten Sinne reizvoll, dem Manne auf der Straße zu begegnen, und ihn aus seiner Welt von Tönen erwachen zu sehen, wenn man ihn anredete. Er hatte auch gewöhnlich die Westenknöpfe nicht in die rechten Knopflöcher eingeknöpft. Sein Auge sprach in milder Sinnigkeit, sein Gang war nicht fest, aber ausdrucksvoll. Man konnte mit ihm über vieles sprechen; er harte dafür ein zartes Verstehen; aber man sah, wie der Inhalt des Gespräches sogleich bei ihm in das Reich des Musikalischen hineinschlüpfte.
[ 19 ] In der Familie, in der ich so lebte, lernte ich auch den ausgezeichneten Arzt kennen, Dr. Breuer, der mit Dr. Freud zusammen bei der Geburt der Psychoanalyse stand. Er hatte aber nur im Anfange diese Anschauungsart mitgemacht, und war wohl mit deren späterer Ausbildung durch Freud nicht einverstanden. Dr. Breuer war für mich eine anziehende Persönlichkeit. Die Art, wie er im ärztlichen Berufe drinnen stand, bewunderte ich. Dabei war er auch in andern Gebieten ein vielseitig interessierter Geist. Er sprach über Shakespeare so, daß man die stärkste Anregung davon empfing. Es war auch interessant, ihn mit seiner durch und durch medizinischen Denkungsart über Ibsen oder gar über Tolstois «Kreuzersonate» sprechen zu hören. Wenn er mit meiner hier geschilderten Freundin, der Mutter der von mir zu erziehenden Kinder, über solche Dinge sprach, war ich oft mit dem stärksten Interesse dabei. Die Psychoanalyse war damals noch nicht geboren; aber die Probleme, die nach dieser Richtung hinzielten, waren schon da. Die hypnotischen Erscheinungen hatten dem medizinischen Denken eine besondere Färbung gegeben. Meine Freundin war mit Dr. Breuer von Jugend an befreundet. Vor mir steht da eine Tatsache, die mir viel zu denken gegeben hat. Diese Frau dachte in einer gewissen Richtung noch medizinischer als der so bedeutende Arzt. Es handelte sich einmal um einen Morphinisten. Dr. Breuer behandelte ihn. Die Frau sagte mir einmal das Folgende: «Denken Sie sich, was Breuer getan hat. Er hat sich von dem Morphinisten auf Ehrenwort versprechen lassen, daß er kein Morphium mehr nehmen werde. Er glaubte damit etwas zu erreichen; und er war entrüstet, als der Patient sein Wort nicht hielt. Er sagte sogar: wie kann ich jemand behandeln, der sein Wort nicht hält. Sollte man glauben - so sagte sie -, daß ein so ausgezeichneter Arzt so naiv sein könne. Wie kann man etwas ‹in der Natur› so tief Begründetes durch ein Versprechen heilen wollen?» - Die Frau braucht doch nicht ganz recht gehabt zu haben; des Arztes Ansichten über Suggestionstherapie können da zu seinem Heilungsversuche mitgewirkt haben; aber man wird nicht in Abrede stellen können, daß der Ausspruch meiner Freundin von der außerordentlichen Energie spricht, mit der sie in merkwürdiger Art aus dem Geiste heraus sprach, der in der Wiener medizinischen Schule lebte gerade zu der Zeit, in der diese Schule blühte.
[ 20 ] Diese Frau war in ihrer Art bedeutend; und sie steht als bedeutende Erscheinung in meinem Leben darinnen. Sie ist nun schon lange tot; unter die Dinge, die mir den Fortgang von Wien schwer machten, gehört auch dies, daß ich mich von ihr trennen mußte.
[ 21 ] Wenn ich auf den Inhalt meines ersten Lebensabschnittes rückschauend hinblicke, so drängt sich mir, indem ich ihn wie von außen zu charakterisieren versuche, die Empfindung auf: das Schicksal hatte mich so geführt, daß ich mich in meinem dreißigsten Lebensjahre von keinem äußeren «Berufe» umklammert sah. Ich trat auch in das Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar nicht für eine Lebensstellung ein, sondern als ein freier Mitarbeiter an der Goethe-Ausgabe, die im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von dem Archiv herausgegeben wurde. In dem Bericht, den der Direktor des Archivs im zwölften Bande des Goethe-Jahrbuchs abdrucken ließ, steht: «Den ständigen Arbeitern hat sich seit dem Herbst 1890 Rudolf Steiner aus Wien zugesellt. Ihm ist (mit Ausnahme der osteologischen Partie) das gesamte Gebiet der ‹Morphologie› zugeteilt, fünf oder voraussichtlich sechs Bände der ‹zweiten Abteilung›, denen aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlaß ein hochwichtiges Material zufließt.»
Chapter XIII
[ 1 ] During this time in particular, my external life was a very sociable one. I got together with my old friends a lot. As little as I had the opportunity to speak of the things I have alluded to here, the spiritual and emotional ties that bound me to my friends were intense. I often have to think back to the sometimes endless conversations that took place in a well-known coffee house on Michaelerplatz in Vienna. I had to, especially at the time when the old Austria was splintering after the World War. Because the conditions for this fragmentation were already in place at the time. But nobody wanted to admit it. Everyone had ideas about remedies, depending on their particular national or cultural inclinations. And if ideals that live in rising currents are uplifting, then those that grow out of the decline and want to hold it back are no less tragic. Such tragic ideals were at work in the minds of the best Viennese and Austrians at the time.
[ 2 ] I often aroused displeasure among these idealists when I expressed a conviction that had been forced upon me by my devotion to Goethe's time. I said that a high point in the development of Western culture was reached at that time. It was not held afterwards. The age of natural science with its consequences for human and national life meant a decline. Further progress would require a completely new approach from the spiritual side. It is not possible to continue on the paths that have hitherto been taken in the spiritual realm without coming back. Goethe is a height, but not a beginning, but an end. He draws the consequences from a development that goes as far as him, finds its fullest form in him, but which cannot be continued without going to much more original sources of spiritual experience than are contained in this development. - It was in this mood that I wrote the last part of my portrayal of Goethe.
[ 3 ] I first became acquainted with Nietzsche's writings in this mood. "Beyond Good and Evil" was the first book I read by him. I was simultaneously captivated and repulsed by this way of looking at things. I found it difficult to come to terms with Nietzsche. I loved his style, I loved his boldness; but I did not at all love the way Nietzsche spoke about the deepest problems without consciously immersing himself in them in the spiritual experience of the soul. But it seemed to me again as if he were saying many things that were immeasurably close to my own spiritual experience. And so I felt close to his struggles and felt I had to find an expression for this closeness. Nietzsche seemed to me to be one of the most tragic people of that time. And this tragedy, I believed, must result from the character of the spiritual constitution of the scientific age in the deeper human soul. I spent my last years in Vienna with such feelings.
[ 4 ] Before the end of my first phase of life, I was also able to visit Budapest and Transylvania. The aforementioned friend from Transylvania, who had remained loyal to me all those years, had introduced me to several of his fellow countrymen who were staying in Vienna. And so, in addition to the other very extensive social intercourse, I also had such intercourse with Transylvanians. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Breitenstein, who became friends with me at the time and have remained so in the most cordial way. They have long held a leading position in the Vienna Anthroposophical Society. The human connection with Transylvanians led me on a trip to Budapest. The capital of Hungary, with its character so very different from that of Vienna, made a deep impression on me. You get there from Vienna on a journey that is completely resplendent in the most charming nature, the most spirited humanity and musical liveliness. When you look out of the window of the train, you get the impression that nature itself becomes poetic in a special way, and that the people, not paying much attention to the poetic nature they are used to, romp around in it according to an often deeply intimate music of the heart. And when you enter Budapest, you hear a world that the members of the other European nations look upon with the greatest interest, but which can never be fully understood. A dark background over which a light shines in a play of colors. To me, this being appeared as if compressed into one for the gaze as I stood before the Franz Deak monument. In this head of the creator of the Hungary that existed from 1867 to 1918 lived a coarse, proud will that grasps heartily, that asserts itself without cunning, but with elemental ruthlessness. I felt how subjectively true for every true Hungarian is the motto I have often heard: "There is no life outside Hungary; and if there is, it is not like this."
[ 5 ] As a child, on Hungary's western border, I had seen how Germans had to feel this rough and proud will; now, in the middle of Hungary, I got to know how this will brings Magyar people into a human seclusion, which, with a certain naivety, cloaks itself in a self-evident splendour that is very keen to show itself to the hidden eyes of nature, but not to the open eyes of man.
[ 6 ] Six months after this visit, the Transylvanian friends arranged for me to give a lecture in Sibiu. It was Christmas time. I drove across the wide open spaces in the middle of which lies Arad. Lenau's longing poetry resounded in my heart as my eyes looked across these expanses, where everything is vast and there is no limit to the wandering gaze. I had to spend the night in a border town between Hungary and Transylvania. I sat in an inn half the night. Apart from me, there was only one table with card players. All the nationalities that could be found in Hungary and Transylvania at that time were there. People were playing there with a passion that always overflowed in half an hour, so that it was like clouds of souls rising above the table, fighting each other like demons and completely devouring the people. What a difference in passionate being was revealed in these different nations!
[ 7 ] I arrived in Sibiu on Christmas Day. I was introduced to the Transylvanian Saxons. It lived there within Romanian and Magyar. A noble nation that wants to preserve itself bravely in the downfall it does not want to see. A Germanness that, like a memory of its life centuries ago in the East, wants to remain faithful to its source, but which in this state of mind has a trait of unworldliness that reveals an acquired joyfulness everywhere in life. I spent wonderful days among the German clergy of the Protestant church, among the teachers of the German schools, among other German Transylvanians. My heart was warmed by these people who, in caring for and nurturing their nationality, developed a culture of the heart, which above all spoke to the heart.
[ 8 ] This warmth lived in my soul when I went on a sleigh ride southwards to the Carpathians (the Transylvanian Alps) with old and new friends, wrapped in thick furs, through the icy cold and crackling snow. A black, wooded mountain face when you approach from afar; a wildly rugged, often eerie mountain landscape when you are there.
[ 9 ] The focal point of everything I experienced there was my friend of many years. He was always thinking up new things to help me get to know Transylvanian Saxon life. He still spent some time in Vienna and some in Sibiu. At that time, he had founded a weekly newspaper in Sibiu for the cultivation of Transylvanian Saxonism. An enterprise that consisted entirely of idealism and not a milligram of practice, but in which almost all of the bearers of Saxonism collaborated. It collapsed again after a few weeks.
[ 10 ] Experiences such as these journeys were brought to me by fate; and through them I was able to train myself to see the outside world, which did not come easily to me, while I lived in the spiritual element with a certain matter-of-factness.
[ 11 ] I made the journey back to Vienna with wistful memories. I soon came across a book whose "intellectual wealth" was talked about in the widest circles at the time: "Rembrandt as an educator". In conversations about this book, which at that time developed wherever one went, one could hear of the emergence of a completely new spirit. It was precisely this phenomenon that made me realize how alone I was with my state of mind in the intellectual life of the time.
[ 12 ] I felt this way about a book that was highly praised by the whole world: it seemed to me as if someone had sat down at a table in a better inn every evening for several months and listened to what the "more outstanding" personalities at the regulars' tables had to say in "spiritual" terms, and then recorded this in aphoristic form. After this continuous "preliminary work", he could have thrown the pieces of paper with the sayings into a container, shaken them up vigorously and then taken them out again. After taking them out, he would then have added one to the other, thus creating a book. Of course, this criticism is exaggerated. But my view of life urged me to reject what the "spirit of the time" at the time praised as a supreme achievement. I found "Rembrandt as Educator" to be a book that remained entirely on the surface of witty thoughts and that did not relate in any sentence to the true depths of the human soul. I felt it painfully that my contemporaries considered just such a book to be the outflow of a deep personality, while I had to think that with such ripples of thought in shallow spiritual waters everything deeply human is driven out of souls.
[ 13 ] When I was fourteen years old, I had to start giving private lessons; for fifteen years, until the beginning of the second period of my life spent in Weimar, fate kept me in this activity The unfolding of the souls of many people in childhood and adolescence combined with my own development. I was able to observe how differently the male and female sex grow into life. In addition to teaching boys and young men, I was also responsible for teaching a number of young girls. Indeed, for a time, the mother of the boy whose education I had taken over because of his pathological condition became my pupil in geometry; at another time, I taught this woman and her sister aesthetics.
[ 14 ] In the family of this boy I found a kind of home for several years, from which I was responsible for teaching and educating other families. Because of my close and friendly relationship with the boy's mother, I was able to fully share in the joys and sorrows of this family. In this woman I was confronted with a peculiarly beautiful human soul. She was completely devoted to caring for the development of her four boys. You could almost study the great style of motherly love in her. Working with her in matters of education was a wonderful part of her life. She had an aptitude and enthusiasm for the musical side of art. As long as her boys were small, she did some of the musical exercises herself. She talked to me about the most varied problems of life with understanding and the deepest interest in everything. She paid the greatest attention to my scientific and other work. It was a time when I had the deepest need to discuss everything that concerned me with her. When I spoke of my spiritual experiences, she listened in a peculiar way. Her mind was sympathetic to things, but it retained a quiet reserve; her soul, however, absorbed everything. She retained a certain naturalistic view of human nature. She thought of the moral constitution of the soul entirely in connection with the healthy or sick constitution of the body. I would like to say that she instinctively thought about people in medical terms, although this had a naturalistic touch. Talking to her along these lines was extremely stimulating. At the same time she faced all external life like a woman who dealt with what happened to her with the strongest sense of duty, but who did not regard most things as belonging to her inner sphere. In many respects she regarded her fate as something burdensome. But she didn't demand anything from life either; she accepted it as it turned out, as long as it didn't concern her sons. She experienced everything with the strongest emotions of her soul towards them.
[ 15 ] I experienced all of this, the life of a woman's soul, her beautiful devotion to her sons, the life of the family within a wide circle of relatives and acquaintances. But it was not without its difficulties. The family was Jewish. It was completely free of any denominational or racial restrictions. But the master of the house, to whom I was very attached, had a certain sensitivity towards all statements made by a non-Jew about Jews. The anti-Semitism that was flaring up at the time had a harsh effect.
[ 16 ] Now I was taking a lively interest in the battles that the Germans in Austria were waging for their national existence. I was also led to concern myself with the historical and social position of Judaism. This preoccupation became particularly intense when Hamerling's "Homunculus" was published. This eminently German poet was portrayed as an anti-Semite by a large part of journalism because of this work, and was even claimed by the German national anti-Semites as one of their own. None of this affected me much, but I wrote an essay on the "Homunculus" in which I spoke, as I believed, quite objectively about the position of Judaism. The man in whose house I lived, with whom I was friends, took this as a special kind of anti-Semitism. It didn't affect his friendly feelings for me in the slightest, but it did cause him deep pain. When he had read the essay, he stood opposite me, completely overwhelmed by deep sorrow, and said to me: 'What you are writing about the Jews cannot be interpreted in a friendly sense at all; but that is not what fills me, but that you, with your close relationship to us and our friends, can only have had the experiences that cause you to write like that about us." The man was mistaken, for I had judged entirely from an intellectual and historical perspective; nothing personal had entered into my judgment. He couldn't see it that way. In response to my explanations, he said: "No, the man who is bringing up my children is not, according to this essay, a 'friend of the Jews'." He could not be dissuaded. He didn't think for a moment that anything should change in my relationship with the family. He saw that as a necessity. I was even less able to take the matter as an opportunity for change. For I regarded the upbringing of his son as a task that had fallen to me by fate. But we both couldn't help but think that there was a tragic element to this relationship.
[ 17 ] In addition to all this, many of my friends had adopted an anti-Semitic nuance in their view of Judaism as a result of the national struggles of the time. They did not look upon my position in a Jewish house with sympathy; and the master of that house found in my friendly intercourse with such personalities only a confirmation of the impressions he had received from my essay.
[ 18 ] The composer of the "Goldenes Kreuz", Ignaz Brüll, belonged to the family circle in which I was so involved. A subtle personality whom I was extremely fond of. Ignaz Brüll had something unworldly and introverted about him. His interests were not exclusively musical; they were devoted to many aspects of intellectual life. He was only able to live out these interests as a "lucky child" of fate, on the background of a family relationship that did not let him be touched by the worries of everyday life, that allowed his work to grow out of a certain prosperity. And so he did not grow into life, but only into music. How valuable or not valuable his musical work was need not be discussed here. But it was delightful to meet the man on the street and to see him awaken from his world of sounds when you spoke to him. He did not usually have his vest buttons buttoned in the right buttonholes. His eyes spoke with mild sensuality, his gait was not firm, but expressive. You could talk to him about many things; he had a delicate understanding of them, but you could see how the content of the conversation immediately slipped into the realm of the musical with him.
[ 19 ] In the family in which I lived like this, I also got to know the excellent physician, Dr. Breuer, who stood together with Dr. Freud at the birth of psychoanalysis. However, he had only participated in this way of looking at things in the beginning and probably did not agree with its later development by Freud. Dr. Breuer was an attractive personality for me. I admired the way he was involved in the medical profession. He was also a man of many interests in other areas. He spoke about Shakespeare in such a way that one received the strongest stimulation from it. It was also interesting to hear him talk about Ibsen or even Tolstoy's "Sonata of the Cross" with his thoroughly medical way of thinking. When he talked about such things with my friend described here, the mother of the children I was raising, I was often most interested. Psychoanalysis had not yet been born at that time, but the problems that pointed in that direction were already there. The hypnotic phenomena had given a special coloration to medical thinking. My friend had been friends with Dr. Breuer since her youth. There is a fact that has given me a lot to think about. This woman thought in a certain direction even more medically than the eminent doctor. She was once a morphinist. Dr. Breuer treated him. The woman once said the following to me: "Think of what Breuer did. He had the morphinist promise him on his word of honor that he would no longer take morphine. He thought he would achieve something by doing so; and he was indignant when the patient did not keep his word. He even said: how can I treat someone who doesn't keep his word? Should one believe - she said - that such an excellent doctor could be so naive? How can one want to cure something so deeply rooted 'in nature' with a promise?" - The woman need not have been quite right; the doctor's views on suggestion therapy may have contributed to his attempt at healing; but one cannot deny that my friend's statement speaks of the extraordinary energy with which she spoke in a strange way out of the spirit that lived in the Viennese medical school at the very time when this school was flourishing.
[ 20 ] This woman was important in her way; and she stands as an important figure in my life. She has now been dead for a long time; among the things that made it difficult for me to leave Vienna was the fact that I had to part from her.
[ 21 ] When I look back on the content of the first period of my life, the following feeling comes to me as I try to characterize it from the outside: fate had led me in such a way that I did not see myself embraced by any external "profession" in my thirtieth year. Nor did I join the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar for a life position, but as a freelance contributor to the Goethe edition published by the Archive on behalf of Grand Duchess Sophie. The report, which the director of the archive had printed in the twelfth volume of the Goethe Yearbook, states: "Rudolf Steiner from Vienna has joined the permanent staff since the fall of 1890. He has been assigned (with the exception of the osteology section) the entire field of 'Morphology', five or probably six volumes of the 'second section', to which highly important material is flowing from the manuscript estate."