The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XV
[ 1 ] Two lectures which I had to deliver shortly after the beginning of the Weimar phase of my life are associated for me with important memories. One took place in Weimar, and was entitled, “Fancy as the Creatress of Culture”; it preceded the conversation I have described with Herman Grimm concerning his views on the history of the evolution of fantasy.
Before I delivered the lecture, I summarized in my own mind what I could say on the basis of my spiritual experience concerning the streaming of the real spiritual world into the human fantasy. What lives in the imagination seemed to me to be stimulated by human sense-experiences only as regards its material form. That which is truly creative in the genuine forms of fantasy seemed to me a reflection of the spiritual world existing outside of man. I desired to show that fantasy is the gateway through which the Beings of the spiritual world work creatively indirectly through man in the evolution of civilizations.
[ 2 ] Because I had arranged my ideas for such a lecture toward this objective, Herman Grimm's exposition made a deep impression upon me. He felt no need whatever to seek for the supersensible sources of fantasy; what enters the human mind as fantasy he took as matter of fact and proposed to observe this in the course of its evolution
[ 3 ] I first set forth one pole of the fantasy – dream-life. I showed how external sense-experiences are perceived, because of the subdued life of the consciousness, not as in waking life, but transformed into symbolic pictures; how inner bodily processes are experienced through the same symbolization; how experiences rise in consciousness, not in sober memories, but in a way that indicates a powerful elaboration of the thing experienced in the depths of the soul-life.
[ 4 ] In dreams consciousness is subdued; it sinks down into the sensible physical reality and perceives the control within the sensible existence of something spiritual which during ordinary awareness remains concealed, and which even to the half-sleeping consciousness appears only as a play of colours from the shallows of the sensible.
[ 5 ] In fantasy the mind rises as far above the ordinary state of consciousness as it sinks below this in dream-life. The spiritual which is concealed within the sense-existence does not appear, yet the spiritual influences man; but he cannot grasp this in its very own form but pictures it unconsciously to himself by means of a soul-content which he borrows from the sense-world. The consciousness does not penetrate all the way to the perception of the spiritual; but it experiences this in pictures which draw their material from the sense. world. In this way the genuine creations of fantasy are evidences of the spiritual world even though this does not penetrate into human consciousness.
[ 6 ] By means of this lecture I wished to show one of the ways in which the Beings of the spiritual world influence the evolution of life. It was thus that I strove to discover means by which I might bring to expression the spiritual world I experienced and yet in some way connect it with what is adapted to the ordinary consciousness. I was of the opinion that it was necessary to speak of the spirit, but that the forms in which one is accustomed to express oneself in this scientific age must be respected.
[ 7 ] The other lecture I gave in Vienna at the invitation of the Scientific Club. It dealt with the possibility of a monistic conception of the world on the basis of a real knowledge of the spiritual. There I set forth that man by means of his senses grasps the physical side of reality “from without” and by means of his spiritual awareness grasps its spiritual side “from within,” so that all which is experienced appears as an unified world in which the sensible manifests the spirit and the spirit reveals itself creatively in the sensible.
[ 8 ] This occurred at the time when Haeckel had formulated his own monistic philosophy through his lecture on Monismus als Band Zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft.1Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science. Haeckel, who knew of my being in Weimar, sent me a copy of his speech. I reciprocated his courtesy by sending him the issue of the newspaper in which my lecture at Vienna was printed. Whoever reads this lecture must see how opposed I then was to the monism advanced by Haeckel when occasion rose for me to express what a man has to say about this monism for whom the spiritual world is something into which he sees.
But there was at that time another occasion for me to give thought to monism in the colouring given it by Haeckel. He seemed to me a phenomenon of the scientific age. Philosophers saw in Haeckel the philosophical dilettante, who really knew nothing except the forms of living creatures to which he applied the ideas of Darwin in the order in which he had rightly arranged them, and who explained boldly that nothing further is required for the forming of a world-conception than what can be grasped by a Darwinian observer of nature. Students of nature saw in Haeckel a fantastic person who drew from natural-scientific observations conclusions which were arbitrary.
[ 9 ] Since my work required that I should realize what was the inner temper of thought about the world and man, about nature and spirit, as this had been dominant a hundred years earlier in Jena, when Goethe interjected his natural-scientific ideas into this thought, I saw in Haeckel an illustration of what was then thought in this direction. Goethe's relation to the views of nature belonging to his period I had to visualize inwardly in all its details during my work. At the place in Jena from which came the important stimulations to Goethe to formulate his ideas on natural phenomena and the being of nature, Haeckel was at work a century later with the assertion that he could draw from a knowledge of nature the standard for a conception of the world.
[ 10 ] In addition it happened that, at one of the first meetings of the Goethe Society in which I participated during my work at Weimar, Helmholtz read a paper on Goethes Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen.2Goethe's Previsions of Coming Scientific Ideas. I was then informed of much in later natural-scientific ideas which Goethe had “previsioned” by reason of fortunate inspirations; but it was also pointed out how Goethe's errors in this field bore upon his theory of colour.
[ 11 ] When I turned my attention to Haeckel, I wished always to set before my mind Goethe's own judgment of the evolution of natural-scientific views in the century following that which saw the development of his own; as I listened to Helmholtz I had before my mind the judgment of Goethe by this evolution.
[ 12 ] I could not then do otherwise than say to myself that, if one thought of the being of nature in the dominant spiritual temper of that time, that must necessarily result which Haeckel thought in utter philosophical naïveté; those who opposed him showed everywhere that they restricted themselves to mere sense-perception and would avoid the further evolution of this perception by means of thinking.
[ 13 ] I had at first no occasion to become personally acquainted with Haeckel, about whom I was impelled to think very much. Then his sixtieth birthday came. I was invited to share in the brilliant festival which was being arranged in Jena. The human element in this festival attracted me. During the banquet Haeckel's son, whom I had come to know at Weimar, where he was attending the school of painting, came to me and said that his father wished to have me presented to him. The son then did this.
[ 14 ] Thus I became personally acquainted with Haeckel. He was a fascinating personality. A pair of eyes which looked naïvely into the world, so mild that one had the feeling that this look must break when the sharpness of thought penetrated through. This look could endure only sense-impressions, not thoughts which reveal themselves in things and occurrences. Every movement of Haeckel's was directed to the purpose of admitting what the senses expressed, not to permit the ruling thoughts to reveal themselves in the senses. I understood why Haeckel liked so much to paint. He surrendered himself to physical vision. Where he ought to have begun to think, there he ceased to unfold the activity of his mind and preferred to fix by means of his brush what he had seen.
Such was the very being of Haeckel. Had he merely unfolded this, something human unusually stimulating would have been thus revealed.
[ 15 ] But in one corner of his soul something stirred which was wilfully determined to enforce itself as a definite thought content – something derived from quite another attitude toward the world than his sense for nature. The tendency of a previous earthly life, with a fanatical turn directed toward something quite other than nature, craved the satisfaction of its passion. Religious politics vitally manifested itself from the lower part of the soul and made use of ideas of nature for its self-expression.
[ 16 ] In such contradictory fashion lived two beings in Haeckel. A man with mild love-filled sense for nature and in the background something like a shadowy being with incompletely thought-out, narrowly limited ideas breathing out fanaticism. When Haeckel spoke, it was with difficulty that he permitted the fanaticism to pour forth into his words; it was as if the softness which he naturally desired blunted in speech a hidden demonic something. A human riddle which one could but love when one beheld it, but about which one could often speak in wrath when it expressed opinions. Thus I saw Haeckel before me as he was then preparing in the nineties of the last century what led later to the furious spiritual battle that raged over his tendency of thought at the turning-point between the centuries.
[ 17 ] Among the visitors to Weimar was Heinrich von Treitschke. I had the opportunity of meeting him when Suphan included me among the guests invited to meet Treitschke at luncheon. I received a deep impression from this very comprehensive personality. Treitschke was quite deaf. Others conversed with him by writing whatever they wished to say on a little tablet which Treitschke would hand them. The effect of this was that in any company where he chanced to be his person became the central point. When one had written down something, he then talked about this without the development of a real conversation. He was present in a far more intensive way for the others than were these for him. This had passed over into his whole attitude of mind. He spoke without having to reckon upon objections such as meet another when imparting his thoughts in a group of men. It could clearly be seen how this fact had fixed its roots in his self-consciousness. Since he could not hear any opposition to his thoughts, he was strongly impressed with the worth of what he himself thought.
The first question that Treitschke addressed to me was to ask where I came from. I replied that I was an Austrian. Treitschke responded: “The Austrians are either entirely good and gifted men, or else rascals.” He said such things as this, and one became aware that the loneliness in which his mind dwelt because of the deafness drove him to paradoxes, and found in these a satisfaction. Luncheon guests usually remained at Suphan's the whole afternoon. So it was this time also when Treitschke was among them. One could see this personality unfold itself. The broad-shouldered man had something in his spiritual personality also through which he impressed himself upon a wide circle of his fellow-men. One could not say that Treitschke lectured. For everything he said bore a personal character. An earnest craving to express himself was manifest in every word. How commanding was his tone even when he was only narrating something! He wished his words to lay hold upon the emotions of the other person also. An unusual fire which sparkled from his eyes accompanied his assertions. The conversation touched upon Moltke's conception of the world as this had found expression in his memoirs. Treitschke objected to the impersonal way – suggestive of mathematical thinking – in which Moltke conceived world-phenomena. He could not judge things otherwise than with a ground-tone of strongly personal sympathies and antipathies. Men like Treitschke, who stick so fast in their own personalities, can make an impression on other men only when the personal element is at the same time both significant and also interwoven deeply with the things they are setting forth. This was true of Treitschke. When he spoke of something historical, he discoursed as if everything were in the present and he were at hand with all his pleasure and all his displeasure. One listened to the man, one received the impression of the personal in unmitigated strength; but one gained no relation to the content of what he said.
[ 18 ] With another visitor to Weimar I came into a friendly intimacy. This was Ludwig Laistner. A fine personality he was, in harmony with himself, living in the spiritual in the most beautiful way. He was at the time literary adviser to the Cotta publishing house, and as such he had to work at the Goethe Institute. I was able to spend with him almost all the leisure time we had. His chief work, Das Rätzel des Sphinx3The Riddle of the Sphinx. was then already before the world. It is a sort of history of myths. He follows his own road in the interpretation of myths. Our conversation dealt very much with the field which is treated in that very important book. Laistner rejected all interpretation of fairy-lore, of the mythical, which maintains the more or less consciously symbolizing fantasy. He sees in dreams, and especially in nightmares, the original source of the myth-making conception of nature formed by the folk. The oppressive nightmare which appears to the dreamer as a tormenting questioning spirit becomes the incubus, the elf, the demonic tormentor; the whole troop of the spirits arise for Ludwig Laistner out of the dreaming man. The riddling sphinx is only another metamorphosed form of the simple midday-woman who appears to the sleeper in the fields at midday and puts questions to him which he has to answer. All that the dream creates by way of strange and fanciful and meaningful, tormenting and delightful shapes – all this Ludwig Laistner traces out in order to point to it again in the images of fairy-lore and myths. In every conversation I had the feeling: “The man could so easily find the way from the creative subconscious in man, which works in the dream-world, to the super-conscious which touches the real world of spirit.” He listened to my explanations of this sort with the utmost good will; opposed nothing against these, but gained no inner relationship to them. In this matter he, too, was hindered by the fear belonging to that time of losing the “scientific” ground from under him the moment he should enter into the spiritual as such. But Ludwig Laistner stood in a special relationship to art and poetry by reason of the fact that he traced the mythical into the real experiences of dreams and not into the abstraction-creating imagination. Everything creative in man thus took on, according to his view, a world-significance. In his rare inner serenity and mental self-sufficiency he was a discriminating poetic personality. His utterances in regard to every sort of thing had a certain poetic quality. Conceptions which are unpoetic he simply did not know at all. In Weimar, and later during a visit in Stuttgart, when I had the pleasure of living near him, I spent the most delightful hours in his company. Beside him stood his wife, who entered completely into his spiritual nature. For her Ludwig Laistner was really all that bound her to the world. He lived only a short while after his sojourn at Weimar. The wife followed her vanished husband after an exceedingly brief interval; the world was empty for her when Ludwig Laistner was no longer in it. An altogether lovable woman, in the true sense of that word. She always knew how to be absent when she feared she might disturb; she never failed when there was anything requiring her care. Like a mother she stood by the side of Ludwig Laistner, whose refined spirituality was contained in a very delicate body.
[ 19 ] With Ludwig Laistner I could talk as with few other persons regarding the idealism of the German philosophers-Fichte, Hegel, Schelling. He had a vital sense for the reality of the ideal that lived in these philosophers. When I spoke to him once of my solicitude regarding the one-sidedness of the natural-scientific world-conception, he said: “Those people have no sense of the significance of the creative in the human soul. They do not know that in this creative within man there lives a cosmic content just as in the phenomena of nature.”
[ 20 ] In dealing with the literary and the artistic, Ludwig Laistner did not lose touch with the directly human. Very distinctive were his bearing and approach; whoever possessed an understanding for such things felt the significant element in his personality very quickly after forming his acquaintance. The official researchers in mythology were opposed to his view; they scarcely paid any attention to it. Thus there remained scarcely observed at all in the spiritual life of the time a man to whom by reason of his inner worth belonged the very first place. From his book The Riddle of the Sphinx the science of mythology might have received entirely fresh impulses; it remained almost wholly without influence. Ludwig Laistner had at that time to undertake for the Cotta Bibliothek der Weltliteratur editions of the complete works of Schopenhauer and of selections from Jean Paul. He entrusted both of these to me. And thus I had to unite with my Weimar tasks the thorough working through of the pessimistic philosopher and of the paradoxical genius, Jean Paul. I devoted myself to both undertakings with the deepest interest, because I loved to transplant myself into attitudes of mind utterly opposed to my own. Ludwig Laistner had no ulterior motive in making me the editor of Schopenhauer and of Jean Paul; the assignment was due entirely to the conversations we had held about the two persons. Indeed, the thought of entrusting these tasks to me came to him during a conversation.
[ 21 ] There were then living in Weimar Hans Olden and Frau Grete Olden. They gathered about them a special group of those who desired to live in “the present” in contrast with everything which considered the very central point in a spiritual existence to consist in the furtherance, through the Goethe Institute and the Goethe Society, of a life that was past. Into this group I was admitted; and I look back upon all that I experienced there with great appreciation. [ 22 ] However fixed one's idea might have become in the Institute through association with the “philological method,” they must again become free and fluid when one entered the home of the Oldens, where every one was received with interest who had the idea in his head that a new way of thinking must find place among men, but likewise every one who in the depths of his soul found painful many an old cultural prejudice and was thinking about future ideals. [ 23 ] Hans Olden was known to the world as the author of slight theatrical pieces such as Die Offizielle Frau4The Official Wife in his Weimar circle at that time his life expressed itself quite otherwise.
He had a heart receptive to the highest interests which were manifest in the spiritual life of that time. What lived in the plays of Ibsen, in what thundered in the spirit of Nietzsche – in regard to these things there were endless discussions in his house, but always stimulating.
[ 24 ] Gabrielle Reuter, who was then writing the novel, Aus guter Familie5Of a Good Family. which soon afterward won for her by storm her literary place, was a member of Olden's circle, and filled it with earnest questions of all sorts which were then stirring men in reference to the life of woman.
[ 25 ] Hans Olden could be captivating when, with his rather sceptical way of thinking, he instantly put an end to a conversation which was about to lose itself in sentimentality; but he himself could become sentimental when others fell into easy-going ways. The desire in this circle was to evolve the deepest “understanding” for everything “human”; but criticism was unsparing of whatever did not suit one in this or that human thing. Hans Olden was penetrated through and through with the idea that it was the only sensible course for a man to apply himself through literature or art to the great ideals about which there was a good deal of talk in his circle; but he was too scornful of men to realize his ideals in his own productions. He thought that ideals could live in a social circle of select men, but that any one would be “childish” who should think that he could bring forth such ideals before a greater public. At that very time he was making a beginning toward the artistic realization of wider interests by means of his Klüge Käte.6Clever Kate. This play had only a moderate success in Weimar. This confirmed him in the view that one should give to the public that to which it has now attained, and should keep one's higher interests for the small circle which has an understanding for these.
[ 26 ] To a far greater degree than Hans Olden was Frau Grete Olden filled with this idea. She was the most complete feminine sceptic in her estimation of the world's capacity for receiving things spiritual. What she wrote was plainly derived from a certain form of misanthropy.
[ 27 ] What Hans Olden and Grete Olden offered to their circle out of such a temper of mind breathed in the atmosphere of an aestheticizing world-feeling, which was capable of reaching up to the most earnest matters, but which did not hesitate to pass by many of the most serious questions with a vein of light humour.
Chapter XV
[ 1 ] An zwei Vorträge, die ich bald nach dem Beginne meines weimarischen Lebensabschnittes zu halten hatte, knüpfen sich für mich wichtige Erinnerungen. Der eine fand in Weimar statt und hatte den Titel «Die Phantasie als Kulturschöpferin»; er ging dem charakterisierten Gespräch mit Herman Grimm über dessen Anschauungen von der Geschichte der Phantasie-Entwickelung voran. Bevor ich den Vortrag hielt, faßte ich in meiner Seele zusammen, was ich aus meinen geistigen Erfahrungen heraus über die unbewußten Einströmungen der wirklichen Geisteswelt in die menschliche Phantasie sagen konnte. Mir erschien, was in der Phantasie lebt, nur dem Stoffe nach angeregt von den Erlebnissen der menschlichen Sinne. Das eigentlich Schöpferische in den echten Phantasiegestaltungen zeigte sich mir als ein Abglanz der außer dem Menschen bestehenden geistigen Welt. Ich wollte zeigen, wie die Phantasie das Tor ist, durch das die Wesenheiten der geistigen Welt schaffend auf dem Umwege durch den Menschen in die Entfaltung der Kulturen hereinwirken.
[ 2 ] Weil ich für einen solchen Vortrag meine Ideen nach einem solchen Ziele hin orientiert hatte, machte mir die Auseinandersetzung Herman Grimms einen tiefen Eindruck. Dieser hatte gar nicht das Bedürfnis, nach den übersinnlich geistigen Quellen der Phantasie zu forschen; er nahm, was in Menschenseelen als Phantasie auftrat, seiner Tatsächlichkeit nach hin und wollte es seiner Entwickelung nach betrachten.
[ 3 ] Ich stellte zunächst den Einen Pol der Phantasie-Entfaltung, das Traumleben, dar. Ich zeigte, wie äußere Sinnesempfindungen durch das herabgedämpfte Bewußtseinsleben im Traume nicht wie im Wachleben, sondern in symbolisch-bildlicher Umgestaltung erfahren werden; wie innere Leibesvorgänge in ebensolcher Symbolisierung erlebt werden; wie Erlebnisse nicht in nüchterner Erinnerung, sondern in einer Art im Bewußtsein aufsteigen, die auf ein kraftvolles Arbeiten des Erlebten in den Tiefen des Seelenseins hinweist.
[ 4 ] Im Traume ist das Bewußtsein herabgedämpft; es versenkt sich da in die sinnlich-physische Wirklichkeit und schaut das Walten eines Geistigen im Sinnensein, das in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung verborgen bleibt, das aber auch dem halbschlafenden Bewußtsein nur wie ein Heraufschillern aus den Untiefen des Sinnlichen erscheint.
[ 5 ] In der Phantasie erhebt sich die Seele um ebensoviel über den gewöhnlichen Bewußtseinsstand, wie sie sich im Traumleben unter denselben heruntersenkt. Es erscheint nicht das im Sinnensein verborgene Geistige, sondern das Geistige wirkt auf den Menschen; er kann es aber nicht in seiner ureigenen Gestalt erfassen, sondern er verbildlicht es sich unbewußt durch einen Seeleninhalt, den er aus der Sinneswelt entlehnt. Das Bewußtsein dringt nicht bis zur Anschauung der Geisteswelt vor; aber es erlebt diese in Bildern, die ihren Stoff aus der Sinneswelt entnehmen. Dadurch werden die echten Phantasie-Schöpfungen zu Erzeugnissen der geistigen Welt, ohne daß diese selbst in das Bewußtsein des Menschen eindringt.
[ 6 ] Ich wollte durch den Vortrag einen der Wege zeigen, auf denen die Wesenheiten der geistigen Welt an der Entwickelung des Lebens arbeiten. So bemühte ich mich, Mittel zu finden, durch die ich die erlebte Geisteswelt zur Darstellung bringen und doch in irgend einer Art anknüpfen konnte an das, was dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein geläufig ist. Ich war eben der Ansicht: vom Geiste müsse gesprochen werden; aber die Formen, in denen man sich in diesem wissenschaftlichen Zeitalter auszusprechen gewohnt ist, müßten respektiert werden.
[ 7 ] Den andern Vortrag hielt ich in Wien. Der «Wissenschaftliche Club» hatte mich dazu eingeladen. Er handelte von der Möglichkeit einer monistischen Weltauffassung unter Wahrung einer wirklichen Erkenntnis vom Geistigen. Ich stellte dar, wie der Mensch durch die Sinne von außen die physische Seite der Wirklichkeit, durch die geistige Wahrnehmung «von innen» deren geistige Seite erfaßt, so daß alles, was erlebt wird, als einheitliche Welt erscheint, in der das Sinnliche den Geist abbildet, der Geist sich im Sinnlichen schaffend offenbart.
[ 8 ] Es war das in der Zeit, in der Haeckel seiner monistischen Weltauffassung eine Formulierung gegeben hatte durch seine Rede über den «Monismus als Band zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft». Haeckel, der von meinerAnwesenheit in Weimar wußte, schickte mir einen Abdruck seiner Rede. Ich erwiderte die mir erwiesene Aufmerksamkeit, indem ich Haeckel das Heft der Zeitschrift übersandte, in dem meine Wiener Rede abgedruckt war. Wer diese Rede liest, der muß sehen, wie ablehnend ich mich damals gegen den von Haeckel vorgebrachten Monismus verhielt, wenn es mir darauf ankam, bemerklich zu machen, was ein Mensch über diesen Monismus zu sagen hat, für den die Geisteswelt etwas ist, in das er hineinschaut. Aber es gab damals für mich noch eine andere Notwendigkeit, auf den Monismus in Haeckel'scher Färbung hinzuschauen. Er stand vor mir als eine Erscheinung des naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalters. Philosophen sahen in Haeckel den philosophischen Dilettanten, der in Wirklichkeit nichts anderes kannte als die Gestaltungen der Lebewesen, auf die er die darwinistischen Ideen anwandte, in der Form, die er sich zurecht gelegt hatte, und der kühn erklärte: nichts anderes dürfe zum Ausgestalten einer Weltanschauung verwendet werden, als was sich ein darwinistisch gebildeter Naturbeobachter vorstellen kann. Naturforscher sahen in Haeckel einen Phantasten, der aus den naturwissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen Schlüsse zieht, die willkürlich gezogen sind.
[ 9 ] Indem ich durch meine Arbeit genötigt war, die innere Verfassung des Denkens über Welt und Mensch, über Natur und Geist, wie sie ein Jahrhundert zuvor in Jena geherrscht hat, da Goethe seine naturwissenschaftlichen Ideen in dieses Denken hineinwarf, darzustellen, veranschaulichte sich mir im Hinblicke auf Haeckel, was in der damaligen Gegenwart in dieser Richtung gedacht wurde. Goethes Verhältnis zur Naturanschauung seiner Zeit mußte ich während meiner Arbeit in allen Einzelheiten mir vor das Seelenauge stellen. An der Stätte in Jena, von der für Goethe die bedeutsamen Anregungen ausgegangen waren, seine Ideen über Naturerscheinungen und Naturwesen auszubilden, wirkte ein Jahrhundert später Haeckel mit dem Anspruch, aus der Naturerkenntnis heraus Maßgebliches für eine Weltanschauung sagen zu können.
[ 10 ] Dazu kam, daß an einer der ersten Versammlungen der Goethe-Gesellschaft, an der ich während meiner Weimarer Arbeit teilnahm, Helmholtz über «Goethes Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen» einen Vortrag hielt. Da wurde ich auf manches hingewiesen, das Goethe durch eine glückliche Eingebung von späteren naturwissenschaftlichen Ideen «vorausgeahnt» habe, da wurde aber auch angedeutet, wie sich Goethes Verirrungen auf diesem Gebiete an seiner Farbenlehre zeigten.
[ 11 ] Wenn ich auf Haeckel blickte, wollte ich mir immer Goethes eigenes Urteil vor die Seele stellen über die Entwickelung der naturwissenschaftlichen Anschauungen in dem Jahrhundert, das auf die Ausgestaltung der seinigen gefolgt war; als ich Helmholtz zuhörte, stand das Urteil dieser Entwickelung über Goethe vor meiner Seele.
[ 12 ] Ich konnte damals nicht anders, als mir sagen, wenn aus der herrschenden Geistesverfassung der damaligen Zeit über das Wesen der Natur gedacht wird, so muß das herauskommen, was Haeckel in vollkommener philosophischer Naivität denkt; die ihn bekämpfen, zeigen überall, daß sie bei der bloßen Sinnesanschauung stehen bleiben und das Fortentwickeln dieser Anschauung durch das Denken vermeiden wollen.
[ 13 ] Ich hatte zunächst kein Bedürfnis, Haeckel, an den ich viel zu denken gezwungen war, persönlich kennen zu lernen. Da kam sein sechzigster Geburtstag heran. Ich wurde veranlaßt, an der glänzenden Festlichkeit teilzunehmen, die damals in Jena veranstaltet wurde. Das Menschliche an dieser Festlichkeit zog mich an. Während des Festessens trat Haeckels Sohn, den ich in Weimar, wo er an der Malerschule war, kennen gelernt hatte, an mich heran und sagte, sein Vater möchte, daß ich ihm vorgestellt werde. Das tat denn nun der Sohn.
[ 14 ] So lernte ich Haeckel persönlich kennen. Er war eine bezaubernde Persönlichkeit. Ein Augenpaar, das naiv in die Welt blickte, so milde, daß man das Gefühl hatte, dieser Blick müßte sich brechen, wenn Schärfe des Denkens sich durch ihn durchdränge. Der konnte nur Sinnes-Eindrücke vertragen, nicht Gedanken, die sich in den Dingen und Vorgängen offenbaren. Jede Bewegung an Haeckel war darauf gerichtet, gelten zu lassen, was die Sinne aussprechen, nicht den beherrschenden Gedanken in ihr sich offenbaren zu lassen. Ich verstand, warum Haeckel so gerne malte. Er ging in der Sinnesanschauung auf. Wo er beginnen sollte, zu denken, da hörte er auf, die Seelentätigkeit zu entfalten und hielt lieber das Gesehene durch den Pinsel fest. So war die eigene Wesenheit Haeckels. Härte er nur sie entfaltet, etwas ungemein reizvoll Menschliches hätte sich geoffenbart.
[ 15 ] Aber in einem Winkel dieser Seele wühlte etwas, das eigensinnig als ein bestimmter Gedankeninhalt sich geltend machen wollte. Etwas, das aus ganz anderen Weltrichtungen herkam, als sein Natursinn. Die Richtung eines früheren Erdenlebens, mit fanatischem Einschlag, auf ganz anderes gerichtet als auf die Natur, wollte sich austoben. Religiöse Politik lebte sich aus den Untergründen der Seele herauf aus und benützte die Natur-Ideen, um sich auszusprechen.
[ 16 ] In solch widerspruchvoller Art lebten zwei Wesen in Haeckel. Ein Mensch mit mildem, liebeerfülltem Natursinn, und dahinter etwas wie ein Schattenwesen mit unvollendet gedachten, engumgrenzten Ideen, die Fanatismus atmeten. Wenn Haeckel sprach, dann ließ seine Milde den Fanatismus nur schwer sich in das Wort ergießen; es war, wie wenn naturgewollte Sanftheit ein verborgenes Dämonisches im Sprechen abstumpfte. Ein Menschenrätsel, das man nur lieben konnte, wenn man es sah; über das man oft in Zorn geraten konnte, wenn es urteilte. So sah ich Haeckel vor mir, als er in den neunziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts das vorbereitete, was dann zu dem wilden Geisteskampfe führte, der um die Jahrhundertwende wegen seiner Gedankenrichtung tobte.
[ 17 ] Unter den Weimar-Besuchern war auch Heinrich v. Treitschke. Ich konnte ihn kennen lernen, da Suphan mich miteinlud, als er Treitschke einmal zum Mittagsmahle bei sich hatte. Ich hatte einen tiefen Eindruck von dieser viel umstrittenen Persönlichkeit. Treitschke war völlig taub. Man verständigte sich mit ihm, indem er kleine Zettel reichte, auf die man schrieb, was man an ihn heranbringen wollte. Das ergab, daß in einer Gesellschaft, in der er sich befand, seine Persönlichkeit in dem Mittelpunkte stand. Hatte man etwas aufgeschrieben, so sprach er dann darüber, ohne daß ein wirkliches Gespräch entstand. Er war für die Andern in viel intensiverer Art da, als sie für ihn. Das war in seine ganze Seelenhaltung übergegangen. Er sprach, ohne daß er mit Einwänden zu rechnen hatte, die einem andern begegnen, der unter Menschen seine Gedanken mitteilt. Man konnte deutlich sehen, wie das in seinem Selbstbewußtsein Wurzel gefaßt hatte. Weil er keine Einwände gegen seine Gedanken hören konnte, empfand er stark den Wert dessen, was er selber dachte. Die erste Frage, die Treitschke an mich richtete, war, woher ich stamme. Ich schrieb auf das Zettelchen, ich sei Österreicher. Treitschke erwiderte: Die Österreicher sind entweder ganz gute und geniale Menschen oder Schurken. Er sprach solches, indem man wahrnahm, die Einsamkeit, in der seine Seele durch die Taubheit lebte, drängte zum Paradoxen und hatte an diesem eine innere Befriedigung. Die Mittagsgäste blieben bei Suphan gewöhnlich den ganzen Nachmittag zusammen. So war es auch damals, als Treitschke unter ihnen war. Man konnte diese Persönlichkeit sich entfalten sehen. Der breitschultrige Mann hatte auch in seiner geistigen Persönlichkeit etwas, durch das er sich breit unter seinen Mitmenschen zur Geltung brachte. Man kann nicht sagen, Treitschke dozierte. Denn es trug alles, was er sprach, den Charakter des Persönlichen. Leidenschaftliche Lust, sich auszusprechen, lebte in jedem Wort. Wie befehlend war sein Ton, auch wenn er nur erzählte. Er wollte, daß auch der andere im Gefühle von seinem Worte ergriffen werde. Seltenes Feuer, das aus seinen Augen sprühte, begleitete seine Behauptungen. Das Gespräch kam damals auf Moltkes Weltanschauung, wie sich diese in dessen Lebenserinnerungen ausgesprochen fand. Treitschke verwarf die unpersönliche, an das mathematische Denken erinnernde Art, in der Moltke die Welterscheinungen auffaßte. Er konnte gar nicht anders, als mit dem Unterton starker persönlicher Sympathien und Antipathien die Dinge beurteilen. Menschen, die wie Treitschke so ganz in ihrer Persönlichkeit stecken, können auf andre Menschen nur einen Eindruck machen, wenn das Persönliche zugleich bedeutend und tief mit den Dingen verwoben ist, die sie vorbringen. Das war bei Treitschke so. Wenn er von Historischem sprach, so redete er so, als ob alles gegenwärtig wäre und er persönlich dabei mit all seiner Freude und all seinem Ärger. Man hörte dem Manne zu, man behielt den Eindruck des Persönlichen in einer unbegrenzten Stärke; aber man bekam zu dem Inhalt des Gesagten kein Verhältnis.
[ 18 ] Einem andern Weimar-Besucher trat ich freundschaftlich sehr nahe. Es war Ludwig Laistner. Eine feine, auf die schönste Art im Geistigen lebende, in sich harmonische Persönlichkeit. Er war damals literarischer Beirat der Cotta'schen Verlagsbuchhandlung und hatte als solcher im Goethe-Archiv zu arbeiten. Ich konnte fast alle Zeit, die uns frei blieb, mit ihm zubringen. Sein Hauptwerk, «Das Rätsel der Sphinx», lag damals schon der Welt vor. Es ist eine Art Mythengeschichte. Er geht in der Erklärung des Mythischen seine eigenen Wege. Unsere Gespräche bewegten sich viel auf dem Gebiete, das in dem so bedeutenden Buche behandelt ist. Laistner verwirft alle Erklärung des Märchenhaften, des Mythischen, die sich an die mehr oder weniger bewußt symbolisierende Phantasie hält. Er sieht den Ursprung der mythisierenden Naturauffassung des Volkes in dem Traume, namentlich dem Alptraume. Der drückende Alp, der sich als peinigender Fragegeist für den Träumenden zeigt, wird zum Alb, zur Elfe, zum dämonischen Quäler; die ganze Schar der Geister entsteigt für Ludwig Laistner aus dem träumenden Menschen. Die fragende Sphinx ist eine andere Metamorphose der einfachen Mittagsfrau, die dem auf dem Felde am Mittag Schlafenden erscheint und ihm Fragen aufgibt, die er zu beantworten hat. - Alles, was der Traum an paradoxen, sinnigen und sinnvollen, an peinigenden und lusterfüllten Gestaltungen schafft, das verfolgte Ludwig Laistner, um es in den Märchen- und Mythen-Bildungen wieder aufzuweisen. Ich hatte bei jedem Gespräche das Gefühl: der Mann könnte so leicht den Weg finden von dem im Menschen schaffenden Unterbewußten, das in der Traumwelt wirkt, zu dem Überbewußten, das auf die reale Geistwelt trifft. Er hörte meine diesbezüglichen Auseinandersetzungen mit dem größten Wohlwollen an; wendete nichts dagegen ein, aber ein innerliches Verhältnis dazu gewann er doch nicht. Daran hinderte auch ihn die in der Zeitgesinnung liegende Furcht, sogleich den «wissenschaftlichen» Boden zu verlieren, wenn man an das Geistige als solches herantritt. Aber Ludwig Laistner stand zu Kunst und Poesie dadurch in einem besonderen Verhältnis, daß er das Mythische an die realen Traumerlebnisse und nicht an die abstrakt schaffende Phantasie herantrug. Alles Schöpferische im Menschen bekam dadurch in seiner Auffassung eine Weltbedeutung. Er war bei einer seltenen inneren Ruhe und seelischen Geschlossenheit eine feinsinnige, poetische Persönlichkeit. Seine Aussagen über alle Dinge hatten etwas Poesievolles. Begriffe, die unpoetisch sind, kannte er eigentlich gar nicht. Ich habe mit ihm in Weimar, dann bei einem Besuche in Stuttgart, wo ich bei ihm wohnen durfte, schönste Stunden verlebt. An seiner Seite stand seine ganz in seiner geistigen Wesenheit aufgehende Gattin. Für sie war Ludwig Laistner eigentlich alles, was sie mit der Welt verband. Er lebte nach seinem Besuche in Weimar nur noch kurze Zeit. Die Frau folgte dem Dahingeschiedenen in der allerkürzesten Zeit nach; die Welt war für sie leer, als Ludwig Laistner nicht mehr in ihr war. Eine ganz selten liebenswürdige, in der Liebenswürdigkeit wahrhaft bedeutende Frau. Sie wußte immer abwesend zu sein, wenn sie zu stören vermeinte; sie fehlte nie, wenn sie für etwas zu sorgen hatte. Mütterlich stand sie an Ludwig Laistners Seite, der mit seiner feinen Geistigkeit in einem sehr zarten Körper steckte.
[ 19 ] Mit Ludwig Laistner konnte ich wie mit wenigen andern Menschen über den Idealismus der deutschen Philosophen Fichte, Hegel, Schelling sprechen. Er hatte den lebendigen Sinn für die Realität des Ideellen, die in diesen Philosophen lebte. Als ich ihm einmal von meinen Sorgen über die Einseitigkeit der naturwissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung sprach, sagte er: die Leute haben eben keine Ahnung von der Bedeutung des Schöpferischen in der Menschenseele. Sie wissen nicht, daß in diesem Schöpferischen gerade so Weltinhalt lebt wie in den Naturerscheinungen.
[ 20 ] Über dem Literarischen und Künstlerischen verlor Ludwig Laistner nicht das Verhältnis zu dem unmittelbar Menschlichen. Bescheiden war bei ihm Haltung und Auftreten: wer Verständnis dafür hat, der fühlte bald nach der Bekanntschaft mit ihm das Bedeutende seiner Persönlichkeit. Die offiziellen Mythenforscher standen zu seiner Auffassung gegnerisch; sie berücksichtigten sie kaum. So blieb im Geistesleben ein Mann fast unbeachtet, dem nach seinem inneren Werte eine erste Stelle gebührt. Von seinem Buche «Rätsel der Sphinx» hätte die Mythen-Wissenschaft ganz neue Impulse empfangen können; es blieb fast ganz ohne Wirkung. Ludwig Laistner hatte damals in die «Cotta'sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur» eine vollständige Schopenhauer-Ausgabe und eine Ausgabe von ausgewählten Werken Jean Pauls aufzunehmen. Er übertrug mir diese beiden. Und so hatte ich in meine damaligen weimarischen Aufgaben die vollständige Durcharbeitung des pessimistischen Philosophen und des genial-paradoxen Jean Paul einzugliedern. Beiden Arbeiten unterzog ich mich mit dem tiefsten Interesse, weil ich es liebte, mich in Geistesverfassungen zu versetzen, die der meinigen stark entgegengesetzt sind. Es waren bei Ludwig Laistner nicht äußerliche Motive, durch die er mich zum Schopenhauer- und Jean Paul-Herausgeber machte; der Auftrag entsprang durchaus den Gesprächen, die wir über die beiden Persönlichkeiten geführt hatten. Er kam auch zu dem Gedanken, mir diese Aufgaben zu übertragen, mitten in einem Gespräche.
[ 21 ] In Weimar wohnten damals Hans Olden und Frau Grete Olden. Sie versarnmelten einen geselligen Kreis um sich, der «Gegenwart» leben wollte, im Gegensatz zu allem, was wie die Fortsetzung eines vergangenen Lebens in Goethe-Archiv und Goethe-Gesellschaft den Mittelpunkt des geistigen Daseins sah. In diesen Kreis wurde ich aufgenommen; und ich denke mit großer Sympathie an alles zurück, was ich in ihm erlebt habe.
[ 22 ] Man konnte seine Ideen im Archiv noch so stark versteift haben an dem Mit-Erleben der «philologischen Methode»; sie mußten frei und flüssig werden, wenn man in Oldens Haus kam, wo alles Interesse fand, was sich in den Kopf gesetzt hatte, daß eine neue Denkweise in der Menschheit Boden gewinnen müsse; aber auch alles, was mit Seelen-Innigkeit manches alte Kultur-Vorurteil schmerzlich empfand und an Zukunfts-Ideale dachte.
[ 23 ] Hans Olden kennt die Welt als den Verfasser leichtgeschürzter Theaterstücke wie die «Offizielle Frau»; in seinem damaligen weimarischen Kreise lebte er sich anders aus. Er hatte ein offenes Herz für die höchsten Interessen, die zu dieser Zeit im geistigen Leben vorhanden waren. Was in Ibsens Dramen lebte, was in Nietzsches Geiste rumorte, darüber wurden in seinem Hause endlose, aber immer anregende Diskussionen geführt.
[ 24 ] Gabriele Reuter, die damals an dem Roman «Aus guter Familie» schrieb, der ihr bald darauf wie im Sturm ihre literarische Stellung eroberte, fand sich in Oldens Kreis ein und erfüllte ihn mit allen ernsten Fragen, die damals die Menschheit in bezug auf das Leben der Frau bewegten.
[ 25 ] Hans Olden konnte reizvoll werden, wenn er sofort mit seiner leicht-skeptischen Denkweise ein Gespräch stoppte, das sich in Sentimentalität verlieren wollte; aber er konnte selbst sentimental werden, wenn andere ins Leichtlebige verfielen. Man wollte in diesem Kreise für alles «Menschliche» tiefstes «Verständnis» entwickeln; aber man kritisierte schonungslos, was einem an diesem oder jenem Menschlichen nicht gefiel. Hans Olden war tief durchdrungen davon, daß es für einen Menschen nur Sinn habe, sich literarisch und künstlerisch den großen Idealen zuzuwenden, von denen in seinem Kreise recht viel gesprochen wurde; aber er war zu stark Menschenverächter, um in seinen Produktionen seine Ideale zu verwirklichen. Er meinte, Ideale können wohl in einem kleinen Kreise auserlesener Menschen leben; der aber sei ein «Kindskopf», der glaubte, solche Ideale vor ein größeres Publikum tragen zu können. Er machte gerade in der damaligen Zeit einen Ansatz zur künstlerischen Verwirklichung weiterer Interessen mit seiner «Klugen Käte». Dies Schauspiel konnte es in Weimar nur zu einem «Achtungserfolg» bringen. Das bestärkte ihn in der Ansicht, man gebe dem Publikum, was es nun einmal verlangt, und behalte seine höheren Interessen in den kleinen Kreisen, die dafür Verständnis haben.
[ 26 ] In einem noch viel höheren Maße als Hans Olden war Frau Grete Olden von dieser Anschauung durchdrungen. Sie war die vollendetste Skeptikerin in der Schätzung dessen, was die Welt an Geistigem aufnehmen kann. Was sie schrieb, war ganz offensichtlich von einem gewissen Genius der Menschenverachtung eingegeben.
[ 27 ] Was Hans Olden und Grete Olden aus solcher Seelenverfassung ihrem Kreise boten, atmete in der Atmosphäre einer ästhetisierenden Weltempfindung, die an das Ernsteste herankommen konnte, aber die auch nicht verschmähte, über manches Ernste mit leichtem Humor hinwegzukommen.
Chapter XV
[ 1 ] I have important memories of two lectures that I had to give soon after the beginning of my Weimar period. One took place in Weimar and was entitled "The imagination as a creator of culture"; it preceded the discussion with Herman Grimm about his views on the history of the development of the imagination. Before I gave the lecture, I summarized in my soul what I could say from my spiritual experiences about the unconscious influences of the real spiritual world on the human imagination. To me, what lives in the imagination only appeared to be inspired by the experiences of the human senses. What is actually creative in the genuine forms of fantasy showed itself to me as a reflection of the spiritual world that exists outside of man. I wanted to show how the imagination is the gateway through which the entities of the spiritual world have a creative effect on the unfolding of cultures via a detour through man.
[ 2 ] Because I had oriented my ideas towards such a goal for such a lecture, Herman Grimm's discussion made a deep impression on me. He did not feel the need to research the supersensible spiritual sources of fantasy; he accepted what appeared in human souls as fantasy according to its actuality and wanted to consider it according to its development.
[ 3 ] I first presented the one pole of the unfolding of the imagination, the dream life. I showed how external sensory perceptions are not experienced in dreams as in waking life, but in symbolic-pictorial transformation; how inner bodily processes are experienced in just such a symbolization; how experiences do not arise in sober memory, but in a way that indicates a powerful working of the experience in the depths of the soul being.
[ 4 ] In dreams, consciousness is subdued; it immerses itself in the sensual-physical reality and sees the workings of a spiritual being in the senses, which remains hidden in sensual perception, but which also appears to the half-asleep consciousness only like a shimmering out of the depths of the sensual.
[ 5 ] In fantasy, the soul rises above the ordinary level of consciousness by as much as it sinks below it in dream life. It is not the spiritual hidden in the senses that appears, but the spiritual affects the human being; however, he cannot grasp it in its very own form, but he visualizes it unconsciously through a soul content that he borrows from the sensory world. Consciousness does not penetrate as far as the perception of the spiritual world; but it experiences it in images that take their material from the sensory world. Thus the genuine creations of the imagination become products of the spiritual world without this world itself penetrating the consciousness of man.
[ 6 ] I wanted to show through the lecture one of the ways in which the entities of the spiritual world work on the development of life. Thus I endeavored to find means by which I could represent the experienced spiritual world and yet in some way link it to what is familiar to the ordinary consciousness. I was of the opinion that the spirit must be spoken of, but the forms in which one is accustomed to express oneself in this scientific age must be respected.
[ 7 ] The other lecture I gave was in Vienna. The "Scientific Club" had invited me. It dealt with the possibility of a monistic view of the world while maintaining a real knowledge of the spiritual. I explained how man grasps the physical side of reality from the outside through the senses and its spiritual side "from within" through spiritual perception, so that everything that is experienced appears as a unified world in which the sensory depicts the spirit and the spirit reveals itself creatively in the sensory.
[ 8 ] It was at the time when Haeckel had given his monistic view of the world a formulation through his speech on "Monism as a bond between religion and science". Haeckel, who knew of my presence in Weimar, sent me a copy of his speech. I returned the attention shown to me by sending Haeckel the issue of the journal in which my Vienna speech was printed. Anyone who reads this speech must see how hostile I was at that time to the monism put forward by Haeckel, when it was important to me to make it clear what a person had to say about this monism, for whom the spiritual world is something into which he looks. But at that time there was another necessity for me to look at monism in Haeckel's coloring. He stood before me as a phenomenon of the scientific age. Philosophers saw in Haeckel the philosophical dilettante who in reality knew nothing other than the forms of living beings to which he applied Darwinian ideas in the form he had devised, and who boldly declared that nothing else could be used to form a world view than what a Darwinian observer of nature could imagine. Naturalists saw Haeckel as a fantasist who drew arbitrary conclusions from scientific observations.
[ 9 ] Since my work compelled me to depict the inner state of thinking about the world and man, about nature and spirit, as it prevailed in Jena a century earlier, when Goethe threw his scientific ideas into this thinking, it became clear to me with regard to Haeckel what was being thought in this direction at that time. During my work I had to visualize Goethe's relationship to the view of nature of his time in all its details. A century later, Haeckel worked at the same place in Jena that had provided Goethe with the significant impetus to develop his ideas about natural phenomena and natural beings, claiming to be able to say something decisive for a world view based on his knowledge of nature.
[ 10 ] In addition, at one of the first meetings of the Goethe Society, which I attended during my work in Weimar, Helmholtz gave a lecture on "Goethe's premonitions of future scientific ideas". There I was pointed to many things that Goethe had "foreshadowed" through a lucky intuition of later scientific ideas, but it was also indicated how Goethe's aberrations in this field were shown in his theory of colors.
[ 11 ] When I looked at Haeckel, I always wanted to place before my soul Goethe's own judgment of the development of scientific views in the century that had followed the development of his own; when I listened to Helmholtz, the judgment of this development on Goethe stood before my soul.
[ 12 ] I could not help saying to myself at the time that if, from the prevailing state of mind of the time, the essence of nature is thought about, then what Haeckel thinks in perfect philosophical naivety must come out; those who oppose him show everywhere that they remain with the mere sense view and want to avoid the further development of this view through thinking.
[ 13 ] At first I had no desire to get to know Haeckel personally, whom I was forced to think about a lot. Then his sixtieth birthday approached. I was prompted to take part in the splendid festivities that were organized in Jena at the time. I was attracted by the human aspect of this celebration. During the banquet, Haeckel's son, whom I had met in Weimar, where he was at the school of painting, approached me and said that his father wanted me to be introduced to him. So the son did.
[ 14 ] This is how I got to know Haeckel personally. He was an enchanting personality. A pair of eyes that gazed naively into the world, so mildly that one had the feeling that this gaze would have to break if sharpness of thought penetrated it. He could only tolerate sensory impressions, not thoughts that reveal themselves in things and processes. Haeckel's every move was directed towards accepting what the senses expressed, not allowing the dominant thought to reveal itself. I understood why Haeckel liked to paint so much. He was absorbed in the view of the senses. Where he should begin to think, he stopped developing the activity of his soul and preferred to capture what he saw with his brush. Such was Haeckel's own nature. If he had only unfolded it, something immensely appealingly human would have been revealed.
[ 15 ] But in a corner of this soul something was stirring that stubbornly wanted to assert itself as a certain thought content. Something that came from completely different directions in the world than his sense of nature. The direction of an earlier life on earth, with a fanatical touch, directed towards something quite different from nature, wanted to let off steam. Religious politics emerged from the depths of the soul and used the ideas of nature to express themselves.
[ 16 ] Two beings lived in Haeckel in such a contradictory way. A man with a mild, love-filled sense of nature, and behind him something like a shadowy being with unfinished, narrowly defined ideas that breathed fanaticism. When Haeckel spoke, his mildness made it difficult for the fanaticism to flow into the word; it was as if natural gentleness blunted a hidden demonic element in his speech. A human enigma that one could only love when one saw it; about which one could often become enraged when it judged. This is how I saw Haeckel before me when, in the nineties of the last century, he prepared what then led to the fierce intellectual battle that raged around the turn of the century because of his direction of thought.
[ 17 ] Among the visitors to Weimar was Heinrich v. Treitschke. I was able to get to know him because Suphan invited me along when he once had Treitschke over for lunch. I had a deep impression of this controversial personality. Treitschke was completely deaf. People communicated with him by handing him small pieces of paper on which they wrote what they wanted to say to him. As a result, his personality was at the center of the society he was in. Once something had been written down, he would talk about it without any real conversation taking place. He was there for the others in a much more intense way than they were for him. This had passed into his whole attitude of mind. He spoke without having to reckon with the objections that another person would encounter when sharing his thoughts among people. One could clearly see how this had taken root in his self-confidence. Because he could not hear any objections to his thoughts, he strongly felt the value of what he himself thought. The first question Treitschke asked me was where I came from. I wrote on the piece of paper that I was Austrian. Treitschke replied: "Austrians are either very good and ingenious people or scoundrels. He said this, as one realized that the loneliness in which his soul lived due to his deafness urged him on to paradoxes and found inner satisfaction in them. The lunch guests at Suphan's usually stayed together all afternoon. It was the same when Treitschke was among them. You could see this personality unfolding. The broad-shouldered man also had something in his intellectual personality that made him stand out among his fellow men. One cannot say that Treitschke lectured. For everything he said had the character of the personal. A passionate desire to express himself lived in every word. How commanding was his tone, even when he was only talking. He wanted the other person to be moved by his words. His assertions were accompanied by a rare fire that sparkled from his eyes. The conversation then turned to Moltke's world view, as expressed in his memoirs. Treitschke rejected the impersonal way in which Moltke perceived world phenomena, which was reminiscent of mathematical thinking. He could not help but judge things with an undertone of strong personal sympathies and antipathies. People who, like Treitschke, are so completely absorbed in their personality can only make an impression on others if their personalities are both significant and deeply interwoven with the things they say. This was the case with Treitschke. When he spoke of historical matters, he spoke as if everything was present and he was personally present with all his joy and all his anger. One listened to the man, one retained the impression of the personal in an unlimited strength; but one got no relation to the content of what was said.
[ 18 ] I became very friendly with another visitor to Weimar. It was Ludwig Laistner. A fine, harmonious personality who lived in the spiritual realm in the most beautiful way. At the time he was literary advisor to the Cotta publishing house and as such had to work in the Goethe Archive. I was able to spend almost all the free time we had with him. His main work, "The Riddle of the Sphinx", was already available to the world at the time. It is a kind of myth story. He goes his own way in explaining the mythical. Our conversations focused a great deal on the subject dealt with in this important book. Laistner rejects all explanations of the fairy-tale, of the mythical, which adhere to the more or less consciously symbolizing fantasy. He sees the origin of the people's mythicizing conception of nature in dreams, especially nightmares. The oppressive Alp, which shows itself as a tormenting questioning spirit for the dreamer, becomes the nightmare, the elf, the demonic tormentor; for Ludwig Laistner, the whole host of spirits emerges from the dreaming person. The questioning sphinx is another metamorphosis of the simple midday woman who appears to the man sleeping in the field at midday and asks him questions that he has to answer. - Ludwig Laistner pursued everything that the dream creates in terms of paradoxical, sensible and meaningful, tormenting and lust-filled forms, in order to show it again in the fairy tale and myth formations. In every conversation I had the feeling that the man could so easily find the way from the subconscious, which creates in the human being and works in the dream world, to the superconscious, which meets the real spirit world. He listened to my arguments in this regard with the greatest benevolence; he did not object to them, but he did not gain an inner relationship to them. He was also prevented from doing so by the fear, inherent in the spirit of the times, of immediately losing "scientific" ground if one approached the spiritual as such. But Ludwig Laistner had a special relationship to art and poetry in that he brought the mythical to the real dream experiences and not to the abstractly creative imagination. Everything creative in man thus took on a world significance in his view. He was a subtle, poetic personality with a rare inner calm and spiritual unity. His statements about all things had a poetic quality. He didn't really know any terms that were unpoetic. I spent some wonderful hours with him in Weimar and then during a visit to Stuttgart, where I was allowed to stay with him. At his side was his wife, who was completely absorbed in his spiritual being. For her, Ludwig Laistner was actually everything that connected her to the world. He only lived for a short time after his visit to Weimar. The wife followed the deceased in the shortest possible time; the world was empty for her when Ludwig Laistner was no longer in it. She was a woman of rare kindness, truly great in her kindness. She always knew how to be absent when she thought she was disturbing; she was never absent when she had to take care of something. She stood motherly at Ludwig Laistner's side, whose fine mind was contained in a very delicate body.
[ 19 ] I was able to discuss the idealism of the German philosophers Fichte, Hegel and Schelling with Ludwig Laistner as with few other people. He had a vivid sense of the reality of the ideal that lived in these philosophers. When I once told him of my concerns about the one-sidedness of the scientific view of the world, he said: The people have no idea of the importance of the creative in the human soul. They don't know that the content of the world lives in this creativity just as it does in natural phenomena.
[ 20 ] Above the literary and artistic, Ludwig Laistner did not lose his relationship to the directly human. His attitude and demeanor were modest: those who understood this soon felt the significance of his personality after meeting him. The official myth researchers were opposed to his views; they hardly took them into account. Thus a man remained almost unnoticed in intellectual life who, according to his inner value, deserved first place. His book "Riddles of the Sphinx" could have given completely new impulses to the science of myths; it remained almost completely without effect. Ludwig Laistner had to include a complete edition of Schopenhauer and an edition of selected works by Jean Paul in the "Cotta'sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur". He transferred these two to me. And so I had to incorporate the complete work through of the pessimistic philosopher and the ingenious-paradoxical Jean Paul into my Weimar tasks at the time. I undertook both works with the deepest interest because I loved to immerse myself in mental states that were very different from my own. Ludwig Laistner's motives for making me the editor of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul were not external; the commission arose from the conversations we had had about the two personalities. He also came up with the idea of assigning these tasks to me in the middle of a conversation.
[ 21 ] Hans Olden and Mrs. Grete Olden lived in Weimar at the time. They gathered a convivial circle around them that wanted to live the "present", in contrast to everything that saw the Goethe Archive and Goethe Society as the center of intellectual existence, like the continuation of a past life. I was accepted into this circle; and I think back on everything I experienced in it with great fondness.
[ 22 ] No matter how strongly one's ideas in the archives might have been hardened by the co-experience of the "philological method", they had to become free and fluid when one came to Olden's house, where everything that had taken it into one's head that a new way of thinking must gain ground in humanity found interest; but also everything that painfully felt many an old cultural prejudice with soulful intimacy and thought of future ideals.
[ 23 ] Hans Olden is known to the world as the author of light-hearted plays such as "The Official Wife"; in his Weimar circle at the time, he lived out his life differently. He had an open heart for the highest interests that were present in intellectual life at the time. What lived in Ibsen's dramas, what rumbled in Nietzsche's mind, were the subject of endless but always stimulating discussions in his house.
[ 24 ] Gabriele Reuter, who was writing the novel "Aus guter Familie" at the time, which soon afterward took her literary position by storm, found herself in Olden's circle and filled him with all the serious questions that moved humanity at the time with regard to women's lives.
[ 25 ] Hans Olden could become charming when he immediately stopped a conversation that wanted to lose itself in sentimentality with his slightly skeptical way of thinking; but he could become sentimental himself when others lapsed into frivolity. In this circle, one wanted to develop the deepest "understanding" for everything "human"; but one criticized relentlessly what one did not like about this or that human being. Hans Olden was deeply imbued with the idea that it only made sense for a person to turn to the great ideals in literature and art, of which there was much talk in his circle; but he was too much of a despiser of humanity to realize his ideals in his productions. He believed that ideals could live in a small circle of select people, but that he was a "child's head" who believed he could present such ideals to a larger audience. It was precisely at this time that he made a start on the artistic realization of further interests with his "Kluge Käte". This play was only a "respectable success" in Weimar. This reinforced his view that he should give the audience what it wanted and keep his higher interests in the small circles that understood them.
[ 26 ] Mrs. Grete Olden was imbued with this view to an even greater degree than Hans Olden. She was the most consummate skeptic in her estimation of what the world can absorb spiritually. What she wrote was quite obviously inspired by a certain genius of contempt for humanity.
[ 27 ] What Hans Olden and Grete Olden offered their circle from such a state of mind breathed in the atmosphere of an aestheticizing perception of the world, which could approach the most serious, but which also did not disdain to get over some seriousness with light humour.