The Story of My Life
GA 28
Chapter XIX
[ 1 ] The loneliness I then experienced in respect to that which I bore in silence within me as my world-conception, while my thoughts were linked to Goethe on one side and to Nietzsche on the other – this loneliness was my experience also in relation to many other personalities with whom I felt myself united by bonds of friendship but who none the less energetically opposed my spiritual life.
[ 2 ] The friend whom I had gained in early years but whose ideas and my own had become mutually so divergent that I had to say to him: “Were that true which you think concerning the essential reality of life, then I had rather be the block of wood under my feet than a man” – this friend still continued bound to me in love and loyalty. His welcome letters from Vienna always carried me back to the place which was so dear to me, especially because of the human relationships in which I was there privileged to live.
[ 3 ] But if this friend undertook in his letters to speak about my spiritual life, a gulf then opened between us.
[ 4 ] He often wrote me that I was alienating myself from what is primal in human nature, that I was “rationalizing the impulses of my soul.” He had the feeling that in me the life of feeling was changed into a life of mere thought, and this he sensed as a certain coldness proceeding from me. Nothing which I could bring to bear against this view of his could do any good. I could not avoid seeing that the warmth of his friendship gradually diminished because he could not free himself of the belief that I must grow cold as to what was human since I passed my soul-life in the region of thought.
That, instead of being chilled in this life of thought, I had to take with me into this life my full humanity in order by this means to lay hold upon reality in the spiritual sphere – this he would never grasp.
[ 5 ] He failed to see that the purely human persists, even when it is raised to the realm of the spirit; nor could he see how it is possible to live in the sphere of thought; it was his opinion that one can there merely think and must lose oneself in the cold region of abstractions.
[ 6 ] Thus he made me out a “rationalist.” In this view of his I felt there was the grossest misunderstanding of what was reached by my spiritual paths. All thinking which turns away from reality and spends itself in the abstract – for this I felt the innermost antipathy. I was in a condition of mind in which I would develop thought drawn from the sense world only to that stage at which thought tends to veer off into the abstract; at that point, I said to myself, it ought to lay hold upon the spirit. My friend saw that I moved in thought out of the physical world; but he failed to realize that in that very moment I stepped over into the spiritual. Therefore, when I spoke of the really spiritual, this was to him quite non-existent, and he received from my words merely a web of abstract thoughts.
[ 7 ] I was deeply grieved by the fact that, when I was really uttering that which had for me the profoundest import, yet to my friend I was talking of a “nothing.” Such was my relationship to many persons.
[ 8 ] What so entered into my life I had to perceive also in my conception of the understanding of nature. I could recognize as right only that method of nature-research in which one applies one's thought to the task of looking through the objective relationships of sense-phenomena; but I could not admit that one should by means of thought elaborate concerning the region of sense-perception hypotheses which then are to be referred to a supersensible reality but which, in fact, constitute a mere web of abstract thoughts. At that moment in which thought has completed its work in fixing that which is rendered clear by the sense-phenomena themselves, when rightly viewed, I did not desire to begin with the framing of hypotheses, but in perception, in the experiencing of the spiritual which in reality lives, not behind the sense world, but within it.
[ 9 ] What I then held firmly as my own view in the middle of the 'nineties I later set down briefly as follows in an article I published in 1900 in No. 16 of the Magazin für Literatur: “A scientific analysis of our activity in cognition leads ... to the conviction that the questions which we have to address to nature are a result of the peculiar relationship in which we stand to the world. We are limited individualities, and for this reason we can become aware of the world only in fragments. Each piece, of and for itself, is a riddle; or, otherwise expressed, it is a problem for our understanding. But the more we come to know the details, the clearer does the world become to us. One act of becoming aware makes clear the others. Questions which the world puts to us and which cannot be answered with the means which the world gives us – these do not exist. For monism, therefore, there are on general principles no limits to knowledge. At one time this or that may not be clarified, because we are not yet in position, as to either space or time, to find the things which are there concerned. But what is not found to-day may be found to-morrow. Limits determined in this manner are only accidental, such as will vanish with the progress of experience and of thought. In such cases the formation of hypotheses legitimately comes into play. Hypotheses should not be formed in regard to anything which by its nature is inaccessible to our understanding. The atomic hypothesis is utterly without foundation when it is considered, not merely as an aid to abstract thought, but as a declaration regarding real being beyond the reach of our qualitative experience. A hypothesis must be merely an opinion regarding a group of facts which, for accidental reasons, is inaccessible to us but which belongs by nature to the world given to us.”
[ 101 ] I stated this view regarding the forming of hypotheses because I wished to show that “limitations of knowledge” were not proven, and that the limitations of natural science were a necessity. At that time I did this as to the understanding of nature only in a side reference. But this way of forming thoughts had always laid down the road for me to advance farther by means of the knowledge of spirit beyond that point at which one dependent upon the knowledge of nature reached the inevitable “limitation.”
[ 11 ] A contentment of soul and profound inner satisfaction were mine at Weimar by reason of the artistic element brought into the city by the art school and the theatre, and the musical people associated with these.
[ 12 ] In the teachers and students of painting in the art school there was revealed what was then struggling out of the ancient traditions toward a new and direct perception and reflection of nature and life. A good many among these painters might properly have been considered “seekers.” How that which the painter had as colour on his palette or in his colour-pot could be applied to the surface in such a way that what the artist created should bear a right relationship to Nature as she lives and becomes visible to man's eyes in creating – this was the question which was constantly heard in the most varied forms, in a manner stimulating, often pleasantly fanciful, and from the artistic experience of which there originated the numerous paintings that were displayed by Weimar artists in the frequent art exhibitions.
[ 13 ] My artistic experience was not then so broad as my relation to experiences in the realm of knowledge. Yet I sought in the stimulating intercourse with the Weimar artists for a spiritual conception of the artistic.
[ 14 ] To retrospective memory, that which I then experienced in my own mind seems very chaotic – when the modern painter who sensed the mood of light and atmosphere and wished to give these back took up arms against the “ancients” who knew from tradition how this or that was handled. There was in many of them a spiritualized striving – derived from the most primitive forces of the soul – to be “true” in the reproduction of nature.
[ 15 ] Not thus chaotic, however, but in most significant forms appeared to my mind the life of a young painter whose artistic way of revealing himself harmonized with my own evolution in the direction of artistic fantasy. This artist, then in the bloom of youth, was for some time in the closest intimacy with me. Him also life has borne far away from me; but I have often recalled in memory the hours we spent together.
[ 16 ] The soul-life of this young man was all light and colour. What others expressed in ideas he uttered by means of “colours in light.” Indeed, his understanding worked in such a way that he combined things and events of life as one combines colours, not as mere thoughts combine which the ordinary man shapes from the world.
[ 17 ] This young artist was once at a wedding festival to which I also had been invited. The usual festival speeches were being made. The pastor took as content of his talk the meaning of the words bride and groom. I endeavoured to discharge the duty of speaking – which rested upon me because I was a frequent visitor at the friendly home from which the bride came – by talking of the delightful experiences which the guests were permitted to enjoy at that home. I spoke because I was expected to speak. And I was expected to make the sort of speech “belonging to” a wedding feast. So I took little pleasure in “the role” I had to play. After me arose the young painter, who also had long been a friend of the family. From him no one expected anything; for everybody knew that such ideas as are embodied in toasts simply did not belong to him. He began somewhat as follows: “Over the glimmering red crest of the hill the glance of the sun poured lovingly. Clouds breathing above the hill and in the gleam of the sun; glowing red slopes facing the sunlight, blending into triumphal arches of spiritual colours giving a pathway to earth for the downward striving light. Flower surfaces far and wide; above these the air, gleaming yellow, slips into the flowers awakening the life in them ...” He spoke in this way for a long while. He had suddenly forgotten all the wedding merriment about him and begun “in the spirit” to paint. I do not know why he ceased thus to speak in painter fashion; I suppose his coat-tail was pulled by someone who was very fond of him, but who also wished equally that the guests should come to a peaceful enjoyment of the wedding roast meat.
[ 18 ] The young painter's name was Otto Fröhlich. He often sat with me in my room, and we took walks and excursions together. While Otto Fröhlich was with me, he was always painting “in the spirit.” In his company one could forget that the world has any other content than light and colour.
[ 19 ] Such was my feeling about this young friend. I know that whatever I had to say to him I placed before his mind clothed in colours in order to make myself intelligible to him.
[ 20 ] And the young painter really succeeded in so guiding his brush and so laying on the colours that his pictures were in a high degree a reflection of his own luxuriant, living colour fantasies. When he painted the trunk of a tree, there appeared on the canvas, not the delineated shapes of a picture, but rather that which light and colour reveal from within themselves when the tree-trunk gives them the opportunity to manifest their life.
[ 21 ] In my own way I was seeking for the spiritual substance of colour in light. In him I was forced to see the secret of the being of colour. In Otto Fröhlich there stood beside me a man who individually bore instinctively within him as his experience that which I was seeking for the taking up of the colour-world through the human soul.
[ 22 ] It gave me pleasure to be able through this very search of mine to give the young friend many a stimulus. The following was an instance. I myself experienced in a high degree the intensive colours which Nietzsche describes in the Zarathustra chapter on “the most hateful man.” This “Valley of Death,” described like a painting by Nietzsche, held for me much of the secret of the life of colour.
[ 23 ] I gave Otto Fröhlich the advice to paint poetically the picture done by Nietzsche in word colours of Zarathustra and the most hateful man. He did this. And now something really remarkable came to pass. The colours concentrated themselves, glowing and very expressive, in the figure of Zarathustra. But this figure as such did not come out fully, since in Fröhlich the colours themselves could not yet unfold themselves to the extent of creating Zarathustra. But so much the more living did the colour variations boil up into the “green snakes” in the valley of the most hateful man. In this part of the picture all of Fröhlich lived. But now the “most hateful man” There it would have required the line, the characteristic of painting. This Fröhlich refused. He did not yet know how there actually lives in colour the secret of causing the spiritual to take on form through the very handling of the colour itself. So “the most hateful man” became a reproduction of the model called by the Weimar painters “Füllsack.” I do not know whether this was really the name of the man always used by the painters when they wished to deal with the characteristically hateful; but I know that “Füllsack's” hatefulness was no longer merely conventional, but had something of genius in it. But to place him thus unchanged as a copy in the picture where Zarathustra's soul revealed itself shining in countenance and in apparel, when the light conjures forth true colour-being out of its intercourse with the green snakes – this ruined the painting of Fröhlich. Thus the picture failed to become what I had hoped might come to pass through Otto Fröhlich.
[ 24 ] Although I could not but realize the sociability in my nature, yet at Weimar I never felt in overwhelming measure the impulse to betake myself where the artists, and all who felt socially bound up with them, spent the evenings.
[ 25 ] This was in a romantic “Artists' Club” remodeled out of an old smithy opposite the theatre. There, united together in a dim-coloured light, sat the teachers and students of the Academy of Painting; there sat actors and musicians. Whoever sought for sociability must feel himself impelled to go to this place in the evenings. And I did not feel so impelled just for the reason that I did not seek companionship, but thankfully accepted it when circumstances brought it to me.
[ 26 ] In this way I became acquainted with individual artists in other social groups, but did not come to know the artistic world.
[ 27 ] To know certain artists at Weimar in those days was of vital value. For the tradition of the Court and the extraordinarily sympathetic personality of the Grand-duke Carl Alexander gave to the city an artistic standing which drew to Weimar, in one relation or another, everything artistic which was active in that period.
[ 28 ] There, first of all, was the theatre with the good old traditions – disinclined in its leading representatives to allow a naturalistic flavour to come into evidence. And where the modern would fain show itself and expunge many a pedantry, which nevertheless was always associated with good traditions, there modernity was kept far away from that which Brahm propagated on the stage and Paul Schlenther through the press as the “modern conception.” Among these “Weimar moderns” the chief of all was that wholly artistic noble fire-spirit, Paul Wiecke. To see such men take in Weimar the first steps of their artistic career gave one an ineradicable impression, and was a comprehensive school of life. Paul Wiecke used the basement of a theatre which, because of its traditions, annoyed the elemental artist. Very stimulating hours have I spent at the home of Paul Wiecke. He was on terms of intimate friendship with my friend Julius Wahle, and because of this I came very close to him. It was often delightful to hear Wiecke grumbling over almost everything that he must endure when he had to do the dress rehearsals for a new performance. Then, with this in mind, to see him play the role that he had so abused, and which nevertheless, through his noble endeavour after style and through his beautiful spiritualizing fire, afforded one a rare enjoyment.
[ 29 ] Richard Strauss was then making his beginning in Weimar. He was second director along with Lassen. The first compositions of Richard Strauss were performed in Weimar. The musical craving of this personality revealed itself as a piece of the very spiritual life of Weimar. Such a joyful unreserved acceptance of something which in the act of its acceptance became an exciting problem of art was then possible at Weimar alone. Round about one the peace of the traditional – a highly prized and worthy mood; now enters amid this Richard Strauss with his Zarathustra Symphony or even his music for the buffoon. Everything wakes up in tradition, reverence, worth; but it wakes up in such a way that the assent is lovable, the dissent harmless – and the artist can find in the most beautiful way the reaction to his own creation.
[ 30 ] How many hours long we sat at the first performance of Richard Strauss's music drama Guntram, in which the lovable and humanly so distinguished Heinrich Zeller played the leading role and almost sang himself out of voice!
[ 31 ] Indeed, this profoundly sympathetic man, Heinrich Zeller – even he had to leave Weimar in order to become what he did become. He had the most beautiful elemental gift of song. He needed for his unfolding an environment which, with the utmost patience, permitted that such a gift should in developing itself experiment over and over again. And so the evolution of Heinrich Zeller is to be numbered among the most human and beautiful things which one could ever experience. Besides, Zeller was such a lovable personality that one must count the hours one could spend with him among the most stimulating possible.
[ 32 ] And thus it came about that, although I did not often think of going in the evening to the Artists' Club, yet, if Heinrich Zeller met me and said I must go with him, I always yielded gladly to this demand.
[ 33 ] The state of things at Weimar had also its dark side. That which is traditional and peace-loving often held the artist back as if in a sort of seclusion. Heinrich Zeller became very little known to the world outside of Weimar. What was at first suited to enable him to spread his wings later crippled these wings. And so it was always with my dear friend Otto Fröhlich. He needed, like Zeller, the artistic soil of Weimar, but the dim spiritual atmosphere absorbed him too much in its artistic comfort.
[ 34 ] And one felt this “artistic comfort” in the pressure of Ibsen's spirit and that of other moderns. There one shared with everything – the battle waged by the dramatist, for example, in order to find the style for a Nora. Such a seeking as one could there observe occurs only where, through the propagation of the old stage traditions, one meets with difficulties in the effort to represent what comes from poets who have begun, not like Schiller with the stage, but like Ibsen with life.
[ 35 ] But one also shares in this reflection of this modernism out of the “artistic comfort” of the theatrical public. One ought to find a middle way between the two circumstances: first, that one is a dweller in “classical Weimar,” and, on the other hand, that what has made Weimar great has been its constant understanding for the new.
[ 36 ] It is with great happiness that I remember the productions of Wagner's music dramas at which I was present in Weimar. The Director von Bronsart developed a specially understanding devotion to this type of theatrical productions. Heinrich Zeller's voice then reached its most exquisite value. A remarkable gift as a singer belonged to Frau Agnes Stavenhagen, wife of the pianist Bernhard Stavenhagen, who was also for a long time director at the theatre. Frequent music festivals brought the representative artists of the time and their works to Weimar. One saw there, for example, Mahler as director at a music festival when he was just getting his start. Ineradicable was the impression of the way in which he used the baton – not aiding music in the flood of forms, but as the experience of a supersensible hidden something visibly pointing amid the forms.
[ 37 ] What came before my mind from these Weimar events – seemingly quite unrelated to me – is really deeply united with my life. For these were excitations and states which I experienced as pertaining in the deepest manner to me. Often afterwards, when I have encountered a person, or the work of a person, with whom I have shared experiences at his beginning at Weimar, I have recalled with gratitude this Weimar period through which so much became intelligible because so much had gathered from elsewhere there to pass through its germinal stage. Thus I then experienced in Weimar the artistic strivings in such a way that in regard to most of these I had my own opinion, often very little in harmony with those of other persons. But at the same time I was just as intensely interested in everything which others felt as in my own feelings. Here also there came to pass within me a twofold mental life.
[ 38 ] This was a genuine discipline of the mind, brought to me by life itself in the course of destiny, in order that I might find my way out from the “either or” of abstract intellectual judgment. This sort of judgment erects barriers separating the mind from the spiritual world. In this there are not beings and occurrences which admit of such an “either or” judgment. In the presence of the supersensible one must become many-sided. One must not merely learn theoretically, but must take everything to dwell in the innermost emotions of the soul's life, in order to view everything from the most manifold points of view. Such standpoints as materialism, realism, idealism, spiritualism, as these have been elaborated in the physical world by personalities with abstract ways of thinking into comprehensive theories in order that they may signify something for things in themselves, – these lose all interest for one who knows the supersensible. He knows, for example, that materialism cannot be anything else but the view of the world from that point from which it reveals itself in material phenomena.
[ 39 ] It is a practical training in this direction when one finds oneself in the midst of an existence which brings the life whose waves beat outside of one's own so inward as to become as close as one's own judgments and feelings. But for me this was true of much in Weimar. It seems to me that at the close of the century this ceased to be true there. Until then the spirit of Goethe and of Schiller still rested upon everything. And the lovable old Grand-duke, who moved about with such distinction in Weimar and its vicinity, had as a boy seen Goethe. He truly felt very strongly his “Your Highness,” but he always showed that he felt himself a second time ennobled through the work that Goethe did for Weimar.
[ 40 ] It was the spirit of Goethe which worked so powerfully from all directions at Weimar that to me a certain side of the experience of what was happening there became the practical mental discipline in the right conception of the supersensible worlds.
Chapter XIX
[ 1 ] Wie einsam ich damals mit dem stand, was ich im stillen als meine «Weltanschauung» in mir trug, während meine Gedanken auf Goethe einerseits und Nietzsche andererseits gelenkt waren, das konnte ich auch empfinden an dem Verhältnis zu mancher Persönlichkeit, mit der ich mich freundschaftlich verbunden fühlte, und die doch mein Geistesleben energisch ablehnte.
[ 2 ] Der Freund, den ich in jungen Jahren gewonnen hatte, nachdem unsere Ideen so aneinandergeprallt waren, daß ich ihm sagen mußte: «Wäre richtig, was du über das Wesen des Lebens denkst, so wäre ich lieber das Holzstück, auf dem meine Füße stehen, als ein Mensch», verblieb mir in Liebe und Treue zugetan. Seine warm gehaltenen Briefe aus Wien versetzten mich immer wieder an den Ort, der mir so lieb war; namentlich durch die menschlichen Beziehungen, in denen ich da leben durfte.
[ 3 ] Aber wenn der Freund in seinen Briefen auf mein Geistesleben zu sprechen kam, da tat sich ein Abgrund auf.
[ 4 ] Er schrieb mir oft, daß ich dem ursprünglich Menschlichen mich entfremde, daß ich «meine Seelen-Impulse rationalisiere». Er hatte das Gefühl, daß bei mir das Gefühlsleben sich umwandle in ein reines Gedankenleben; und er empfand dieses als eine von mir ausgehende Kälte. Es konnte mir alles nichts helfen, was ich auch dagegen geltend machte. Ich mußte sogar bemerken, daß zeitweilig die Wärme seiner Freundschaft abnahm, weil er den Glauben nicht los werden konnte: ich müsse in dem Menschlichen erkalten, da ich mein Seelenleben in der Region des Gedankens verbrauche. Wie ich, statt im Gedankenleben zu erkalten, das ganze Menschliche in dieses Leben mitnehmen mußte, um mit ihm in der Sphäre des Gedanklichen die geistige Wirklichkeit zu ergreifen, das wollte er nicht begreifen.
[ 5 ] Er sah nicht, daß das Rein-Menschliche verbleibt, auch wenn es in das Gebiet des Geistes sich erhebt; er sah nicht, wie man im Gedankengebiet leben könne; er vermeinte, man könne da bloß denken und müsse sich in der kalten Region des Abstrakten verlieren.
[ 6 ] Und so machte er mich zu einem «Rationalisten». Ich empfand darin das größte Mißverständnis dessen, was auf meinen Geisteswegen lag. Alles Denken, das von der Wirklichkeit hinwegführte und in Abstraktheit auslief, war mir im Innersten zuwider. Ich war in einer Seelenverfassung, die den Gedanken aus der sinnenfälligen Welt nur bis zu der Stufe herausführen wollte, wo er droht, abstrakt zu werden; in diesem Augenblicke, sagte ich mir, müsse er den Geist ergreifen Mein Freund sah, wie ich mit dem Gedanken aus der Welt des Physischen heraustrete; aber er gewahrte nicht, wie ich in demselben Augenblicke in das Geistige hineintrete. Und so war ihm, wenn ich von dem wirklich Geistigen sprach, dies alles ein Wesenloses; und er vernahm in meinen Worten nur ein Gewebe von abstrakten Gedanken.
[ 7 ] Ich litt schwer unter der Tatsache, daß ich eigentlich, indem ich das mir Bedeutungsvollste aussprach, für meinen Freund von einem «Nichts» sprach. - Und so stand ich vielen Menschen gegenüber.
[ 8 ] Ich mußte, was mir so im Leben gegenübertrat, auch an meiner Auffassung des Naturerkennens sehen. Ich konnte die rechte Methode des Forschens in der Natur nur darin anerkennen, daß man die Gedanken dazu verwendet, um die Erscheinungen der Sinne in ihren gegenseitigen Verhältnissen zu durchschauen; nicht aber konnte ich zugeben, daß man durch die Gedanken, über das Gebiet der Sinnesanschauung hinaus, Hypothesen bilde, die dann auf eine außersinnliche Wirklichkeit deuten wollen, die in Wahrheit aber nur ein Gespinnst von abstrakten Gedanken bilden. Ich wollte in dem Augenblicke, wo der Gedanke an der Feststellung dessen, was die Sinneserscheinungen, recht angeschaut, durch sich selbst aufklären, genug getan hat, nicht mit einer Hypothesenbildung, sondern mit der Anschauung, mit der Erfahrung des Geistigen beginnen, das in der Sinneswelt und im wahren Sinne nicht hinter der Sinnesanschauung wesenhaft lebt.
[ 9 ] Was ich damals, Mitte der neunziger Jahre, intensiv als meine Anschauung in mir trug, das faßte ich später in einem Aufsatz, den ich 1900 in Nr.16 des «Magazin für Literatur» schrieb, so zusammen: «Eine wissenschaftliche Zergliederung unserer Erkenntnistätigkeit führt... zu der Überzeugung, daß die Fragen, die wir an die Natur zu stellen haben, eine Folge des eigentümlichen Verhältnisses sind, in dem wir zur Welt stehen. Wir sind beschränkte Individualitäten, und können deshalb die Welt nur stückweise wahrnehmen. Jedes Stück, an und für sich betrachtet, ist ein Rätsel, oder, anders ausgedrückt, eine Frage für unser Erkennen. Je mehr der Einzelheiten wir aber kennen lernen, desto klarer wird uns die Welt. Eine Wahrnehmung erklärt die andere. Fragen, welche die Welt an uns stellt und die mit den Mitteln, die sie uns bietet, nicht zu beantworten wären, gibt es nicht. Für den Monismus existieren demnach keine prinzipiellen Erkenntnisgrenzen. Es kann zu irgendeiner Zeit dies oder jenes unaufgeklärt sein, weil wir zeitlich oder räumlich noch nicht in der Lage waren, die Dinge aufzufinden, welche dabei im Spiele sind. Aber was heute noch nicht gefunden ist, kann es morgen werden. Die hierdurch bedingten Grenzen sind nur zufällige, die mit dem Fortschreiten der Erfahrung und des Denkens verschwinden. In solchen Fällen tritt dann die Hypothesenbildung in ihr Recht ein. Hypothesen dürfen nicht über etwas aufgestellt werden, das unserer Erkenntnis prinzipiell unzugänglich sein soll. Die atomistische Hypothese ist eine völlig unbegründete, wenn sie nicht bloß als ein Hilfsmittel des abstrahierenden Verstandes, sondern als eine Aussage über wirkliche, außerhalb der Empfindungsqualitäten liegende wirkliche Wesen gedacht werden soll. Eine Hypothese kann nur eine Annahme über einen Tatbestand sein, der uns aus zufälligen Gründen nicht zugänglich ist, der aber seinem Wesen nach der uns gegebenen Welt angehört.»
[ 10 ] Ich habe diese Anschauung über Hypothesenbildung damals ausgesprochen, indem ich die «Erkenntnisgrenzen» als unberechtigt, die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaft als notwendige hinstellen wollte. Ich habe es damals nur im Hinblick auf die Naturerkenntnis getan. Aber diese Ideengestaltung hat mir immer den Weg gebahnt, da wo man mit den Mitteln der Naturerkenntnis an der notwendigen «Grenze» steht, mit den Mitteln der Geisteserkenntnis weiterzuschreiten.
[ 11 ] Seelisches Wohlbefinden und etwas innerlich tief Befriedigendes erlebte ich in Weimar durch das künstlerische Element, das in die Stadt durch die Kunstschule und durch das Theater mit dem sich daranschließenden Musikalischen gebracht wurde.
[ 12 ] In den malenden Lehrern und Schülern der Kunstschule offenbarte sich, was damals aus älteren Traditionen heraus nach einer neuen, unmittelbaren Anschauung und Wiedergabe von Natur und Leben strebte. Recht viele waren unter diesen Malern, die im echten Sinne als «suchende Menschen» erschienen. Wie dasjenige, was der Maler als Farbe auf seiner Palette oder in seinem Farbentopfe hat, auf die Malfläche zu bringen ist, damit, was der Künstler schafft, ein berechtigtes Verhältnis habe zu der im Schaffen lebenden und vor dem menschlichen Auge erscheinenden Natur: das war die Frage, die mit anregender, oft wohltuend phantasievoller, oft auch doktrinärer Art in den mannigfaltigsten Formen erörtert wurde, und von deren künstlerischem Erleben die zahlreichen Bilder zeugten, die von Weimarer Malern in der ständigen Kunstausstellung in Weimar vorgeführt wurden.
[ 13 ] Meine Kunstempfindung war damals noch nicht so weit wie mein Verhältnis zu den Erkenntnis-Erlebnissen. Aber ich suchte doch auch im anregenden Verkehr mit den Weimarer Künstlern nach einer geistgemäßen Auffassung des Künstlerischen.
[ 14 ] Ziemlich chaotisch steht vor der rückschauenden Erinnerung, was ich in der eigenen Seele empfand, wenn die modernen Maler, die Licht- und Luftstimmung im unmittelbaren Anschauen ergreifen und wiedergeben wollten, zu Felde zogen gegen die «Alten», die aus der Tradition «wußten», wie man dies oder jenes zu behandeln habe. Es war in Vielen ein begeistertes, aus den ursprünglichsten Seelenkräften stammendes Bestreben, «wahr» zu sein im Erlauschen der Natur.
[ 15 ] Aber nicht so chaotisch, sondern in den deutlichsten Formen steht vor meiner Seele das Leben eines jungen Malers, dessen künstlerische Art, sich zu offenbaren, mit meiner eigenen Entwickelung nach der Seite der künstlerischen Phantasie hin innig zusammenhing. Der damals in der Vollblüte der Jugend stehende Künstler schloß sich für einige Zeit eng an mich an. Das Leben hat auch ihn wieder von mir entfernt; aber ich lebte oft in der Erinnerung an die gemeinsam verbrachten Stunden.
[ 16 ] Das Seelenleben dieses jungen Menschen war ganz Licht und Farbe. Was andere in Ideen ausdrücken, sprach er durch «Farben im Lichte» aus. Selbst sein Verstand wirkte so, daß er durch ihn die Dinge und Vorgänge des Lebens verband wie sich Farben verbinden, nicht wie sich die bloßen Gedanken verbinden, die der gewöhnliche Mensch von der Welt sich bildet.
[ 16 ] Dieser junge Künstler war einmal auf einer Hochzeitsfeier, bei der ich auch eingeladen war. Es wurden die üblichen Festreden gehalten. Der Pastor suchte für den Inhalt seiner Rede in der Bedeutung der Namen von Braut und Bräutigam; ich suchte mich der Rednerpflicht, die mir oblag, weil ich oft in dem befreundeten Hause verkehrte, dem die Braut entstammte, dadurch zu entledigen, daß ich von den entzückenden Erlebnissen sprach, die die Gäste dieses Hauses haben konnten. Ich redete, weil man erwartete, daß ich rede. Und man erwartete von mir eine Hochzeitstischrede, wie «sich's gehört». Und so hatte ich an «meiner Rolle» wenig Freude.
[ 17 ] - Nach mir erhob sich der junge Maler, der längst auch Freund des Hauses geworden war. Von ihm erwartete man eigentlich nichts. Denn man wußte, solche Vorstellungen, wie man sie in Tischreden bringt, die hat der nicht. Er fing an etwa so: «Uber den rot erglimmenden Gipfel des Hügels liebend der Sonnenglanz ergossen. Wolken über Hügel und im Sonnenglanz atmend; glühend rote Wangen dem Sonnenlichte entgegenhaltend, zum Geistes-Farben-Triumphbogen sich vereinend, das Geleite gebend dem zur Erde strebenden Lichte. Blumenflächen weit und breit, über sich gelb erglimmende Stimmung, die in die Blumen schlüpft, Leben aus ihnen erweckend...» Er sprach so noch lange fort. Er hatte ja plötzlich all das Hochzeitgewühle um sich vergessen und «im Geiste» zu malen begonnen. Ich weiß nicht mehr, warum er aufgehört hat, so malend zu sprechen; ich glaube, es hat ihn jemand an seinem Samtrock gezupft, der ihn sehr lieb hatte, der es aber nicht weniger lieb hatte, daß die Gäste zum ruhigen Genusse des Hochzeitsbratens kamen.
[ 18 ] Der junge Maler hieß Otto Fröhlich. Er saß viel bei mir auf meiner Stube, wir machten zusammen Spaziergänge und Ausflüge. Otto Fröhlich malte «im Geiste» immer neben mir. Man konnte neben ihm vergessen, daß die Welt noch einen andern Inhalt hat als Licht und Farbe.
[ 19 ] So empfand ich den jungen Freund. Ich weiß, wie, was ich ihm zu sagen hatte, ich vor seiner Seele in ein Farbenkleid hüllte, um mich ihm verständlich zu machen.
[ 20 ] Und der junge Maler brachte es auch wirklich dahin, den Pinsel so zu führen, die Farbe so zu4egen, daß seine Bilder bis zum hohen Grade ein Abglanz wurden seiner lebend-üppigen Farbenphantasie. Wenn er einen Baumstamm malte, dann war auf der Leinwand nicht die Linienform des Gebildes, wohl aber, was Licht und Farben aus sich heraus offenbaren, wenn der Baumstamm ihnen die Gelegenheit gibt, sich darzuleben.
[ 21] Ich suchte in meiner Art nach dem Geistgehalt des leuchtend Farbigen. In ihm mußte ich das Geheimnis des Farbenwesens sehen. In Otto Fröhlich stand ein Mensch an meiner Seite, der persönlich instinktiv als sein Erleben in sich trug, was ich für das Ergreifen der Farbenwelt durch die menschliche Seele suchte.
[ 22 ] Ich empfand es als beglückend, gerade durch mein eigenes Suchen dem jungen Freunde manche Anregung geben zu können. Eine solche bestand im folgenden. Ich erlebte selbst das intensiv Farbige, das Nietzsche in dem Zarathustra-Kapitel vom «häßlichsten Menschen» darbietet, in einem hohen Maße. Dieses «Tal des Todes», dichtend gemalt, enthielt für mich vieles von dem Lebensgeheimnis der Farben.
[ 23 ] Ich gab Otto Fröhlich den Rat: er möge Nietzsches dichtend gemaltes Bild von Zarathustra und dem häßlichsten Menschen nun malend dichten. Er tat dieses. Es kam nun eigentlich etwas Wunderbares zustande. Die Farben konzentrierten sich leuchtend, vielsagend in der Zarathustra-Figur. Diese kam nur nicht als solche voll zustande, weil in Fröhlich noch nicht die Farbe selbst bis zur Schöpfung des Zarathustra sich entfalten konnte. Aber um so lebendiger umwellte das Farbenschillern die «grünen Schlangen» im Tal des häßlichsten Menschen. In dieser Partie des Bildes lebte der ganze Fröhlich. Nun aber der « häßlichste Mensch». Da hätte es der Linie bedurft, der malenden Charakteristik. Da versagte Fröhlich. Er wußte noch nicht, wie in der Farbe gerade das Geheimnis lebt, aus sich, durch ihre Eigenbehandlung, das Geistige in der Form erstehen zu lassen. Und so wurde der «häßlichste Mensch» eine Wiedergabe desjenigen Modells, das unter weimarischen Malern der «Füllsack» hieß. Ich weiß nicht, ob dies wirklich der bürgerliche Name des Mannes war, den die Maler immer benützten, wenn sie «charakteristisch ins Häßliche» werden wollten; aber ich weiß, daß «Füllsacks» Häßlichkeit schon keine bürgerlich-philiströse mehr war, sondern etwas vom «Genialischen» hatte. Aber ihn so ohne weiteres als den »häßlichen Füllsack» in das Bild hineinzusetzen, als Modellkopie, da, wo Zarathustras Seele leuchtend in Antlitz und Kleid sich offenbarte, wo das Licht wahres Farbenwesen aus seinem Verkehr mit den grünen Schlangen hervorzauberte, das verdarb Fröhlich das malerische Werk. Und so konnte das Bild doch nicht das werden, was ich gehofft hatte, daß es durch Otto Fröhlich zustande käme.
[ 24 ] Obwohl ich Geselligkeit im Charakter meines Wesens sehen muß, so fühlte ich in Weimar doch nie in ausgiebigerem Maße den Antrieb, mich dort einzufinden, wo die Künstierschaft und alles, was gesellschaftlich sich mit ihr verbunden wußte, die Abende zubrachte.
[ 25 Das war in einem romantisch aus einer alten Schmiede umgestalteten, gegenüber dem Theater gelegenen «Künstlervereinshaus». Da saßen im dämmerigen, farbigen Licht vereint die Lehrer und Schüler der Maler-Akademie, da saßen Schauspieler und Musiker. Wer Geselligkeit «suchte», der mußte sich gedrängt fühlen, am Abend dahin zu gehen. Und ich fühlte es eben deshalb nicht, weil ich doch Geselligkeit nicht suchte, sondern sie dankbar hinnahm, wenn die Verhältnisse sie mir brachten.
[ 26 ] Und so lernte ich in anderen geselligen Zusammenhängen einzelne Künstler kennen; nicht aber «die Künstierschaft».
[ 27 ] Und einzelne Künstler in Weimar in jener Zeit kennen zu lernen, war schon Gewinn des Lebens. Denn die Traditionen des Hofes, die außerordentlich sympathische persönlichkeit des Großherzogs Karl Alexander gaben der Stadt eine künstlerische Haltung, die fast alles, was Künstlerisches sich in jenem Zeitabschnitt abspielte, in irgend ein Verhältnis zu Weimar brachte.
[ 28 ] Da war vor allem das Theater mit den guten alten Traditionen. In seinen wichtigsten Darstellern durchaus abgeneigt, naturalistischen Geschmack aufkommen zu lassen. Und wo das Moderne sich offenbaren und manchen Zopf ausmerzen wollte, der immer auch mit guten Traditionen doch verknüpft ist, da war die Modernität doch weitab gelegen von dem, was Brahm auf der Bühne, Paul Schlenther journalistisch als die «moderne Auffassung» propagierten. Da war unter diesen «Weimarer Modernen» vor allem der durch und durch künstlerische, edle Feuergeist Paul Wiecke. Solche Menschen in Weimar die ersten Schritte ihres «Künstlertums machen zu sehen, gibt unauslöschliche Eindrücke und ist eine weite Schule des Lebens. Paul Wiecke brauchte den Untergrund eines Theaters, das, aus seinen Traditionen heraus, den elementarischen Künstler ärgert. Es waren anregende Stunden, die ich im Hause von Paul Wiecke verleben durfte. Er war mit meinem Freunde Julius Wahle tief befreundet; und so kam es, daß ich zu ihm in ein näheres Verhältnis trat. Es war oft entzückend, Wiecke poltern zu hören fast über alles, was er erleben mußte, wenn er die Proben für ein neu aufzuführendes Stück absolvierte. Und im Zusammenhang damit dann ihn die Rolle spielen zu sehen, die er sich so erpoltert hatte; die aber immer durch das edle Streben nach Stil und auch durch schönes Feuer der Begeisterung einen seltenen Genuß darbot.
[ 29 ] In Weimar machte damals seine ersten Schritte Richard Strauß. Er wirkte als zweiter Kapellmeister neben Lassen. Die ersten Kompositionen Richard Strauß' wurden in Weimar zur Aufführung gebracht Das musikalische Suchen dieser Persönlichkeit offenbarte sich wie ein Stück weimarischen Geisteslebens selbst. Solche freudig-hingebungsvolle Aufnahme von etwas, das im Aufnehmen zum aufregenden künstlerischen Problem wurde, war doch nur im damaligen Weimar möglich. Ringsum Ruhe des Traditionellen, getragene, würdige Stimmung: nun fährt da hinein Richard Strauß' «Zarathustra-Symphonie», oder gar seine Musik zum Eulenspiegel. Alles wacht auf aus Tradition, Getragenheit, Würde; aber es wacht so auf, daß die Zustimmung liebenswürdig, die Ablehnung harmlos ist - und der Künstler so in der schönsten Art das Verhältnis zu der eigenen Schöpfung finden kann.
[ 30 ] Wir saßen so viele Stunden lang bei der Erst-Aufführung von Richard Strauß' Musikdrama «Guntram», wo der so liebwerte, menschlich so ausgezeichnete Heinrich Zeller die Hauptrolle hatte und sich fast stimmlos sang.
[ 32] Ja, dieser tief sympathische Mensch, Heinrich Zeller, auch er mußte Weimar haben, um zu werden, was er geworden ist. Er hatte die schönste elementarste Sängerbegabung. Er brauchte, um sich zu entfalten, eine Umgebung, die in voller Geduld entgegennahm, wenn sich eine Begabung nach und nach hinaufexperimentierte. Und so war die Entfaltung Heinrich Zellers zu dem Menschlich-Schönsten zu zählen, das man erleben kann. Dabei war Zeller eine so liebenswürdige Persönlichkeit, daß man Stunden, die man mit ihm verlebte, zu den reizvollsten zählen mußte.
[ 33 ] Und so kam es, daß, obwohl ich nicht oft daran dachte, abends in die Künstlervereinigung zu gehen: wenn Heinrich Zeller mich traf und sagte, ich solle mitgehen, ich dieser Aufforderung jedes Mal gerne folgte.
[ 34 ] Nun hatten die weimarischen Zustände auch ihre Schattenseiten. Das Traditionelle, Ruhe-Liebende hält nur zu oft den Künstler wie in einer Art von Dumpfheit zurück. Heinrich Zeller ist der Welt außerhalb Weimars wenig bekannt geworden. Was zunächst geeignet war, seine Schwingen zu entfalten, hat sie dann doch wieder gelähmt Und so ist es ja wohl auch mit meinem lieben Freunde Otto Fröhlich geworden. Der brauchte, wie Zeller, Weimars künstlerischen Boden; den nahm aber auch die abgedämpfte geistige Atmosphäre zu stark in ihre künstlerische Behaglichkeit auf.
[ 35 ] Und man fühlte diese «künstlerische Behaglichkeit» in dem Eindringen des Geistes Ibsens und von anderem Modernen. Da machte man alles mit Den Kampf, den die Schauspieler kämpften, um den Stil z. B. für eine «Nora» zu finden. Ein solches Suchen, wie man es hier bemerken konnte, findet nur da statt, wo man durch die Fortpflanzung der alten Bühnentraditionen eben Schwierigkeiten findet, um das darzustellen, was von Dichtern herrührt, die nicht wie Schiller von der Bühne, sondern wie Ibsen von dem Leben ausgegangen sind.
[ 36 ] Man machte aber auch die Spiegelung dieses Modernen aus der «künstlerischen Behaglichkeit» des Theaterpublikums mit. Man sollte nun doch den Weg finden mitten durch das, was einem der Umstand auferlegte, daß man ein Bewohner des «klassischen Weimar» war, und auch durch das, was Weimar doch groß gemacht hat, nämlich daß es immerdar Verständnis für das Neue gehabt hat.
[ 37 ] Mit Freude denke ich an die Aufführungen der Wagner'schen Musikdramen zurück, die ich in Weimar mitgemacht habe. Der Intendant v. Bronsart entwickelte besonders für diese Seite der Theaterleistungen verständnisvollste Hingabe. Heinrich Zellers Stimme kam da zur vorzüglichsten Geltung. Eine bedeutende «Kraft als Sängerin war Frau Agnes Stavenhagen, die Frau des Pianisten Bernhard Stavenhagen, der auch eine Zeitlang «Kapellmeister am Theater war. Wiederholte Musikfeste brachten die die Zeit repräsentierenden Künstler und deren Werke nach Weimar. Man sah z. B. da Mahler als «Kapellmeister bei einem Musikfest in seinen Anfängen. Unauslöschlich der Eindruck, wie er den Taktstock führte, Musik nicht im Flusse der Formen fordernd, sondern als Erleben eines Übersinnlich-Verborgenen, zwischen den Formen sinnvoll pointierend.
[ 38 ] Was sich mir hier von Weimarer Vorgängen, scheinbar ganz losgelöst von mir, vor die Seele stellt, ist aber in Wirklichkeit doch tief mit meinem Leben verbunden. Denn es waren das Ereignisse und Zustände, die ich eben als das erlebte, das mich in intensivster Art anging. Ich habe oftmals später, wenn ich einer Persönlichkeit oder deren Werk begegnete, die ich in ihren Anfängen in Weimar miterlebt habe, dankbar zurückgedacht an diese Weimarer Zeit, durch die so vieles verständlich werden konnte, weil so vieles dorthin gegangen war, um dort den Keimzustand durchzumachen. So erlebte ich gerade damals in Weimar das «Kunststreben so, daß ich über das meiste mein eigenes Urteil in mir trug, oft recht wenig in Übereinstimmung mit dem der andern. Aber daneben interessierte mich alles, was die andern empfanden, ebenso stark wie das eigene. Auch da bildete sich in mir ein inneres Doppelleben der Seele aus.
[ 39 ] Es war dies eine rechte, durch das Leben selbst schicksalsgemäß herangebrachte Seelen-Übung, um über das abstrakte Entweder-Oder des Verstandes-Urteiles hinauszukommen. Dieses Urteil errichtet für die Seele Grenzen vor der übersinnlichen Welt. In dieser sind nicht Wesen und Vorgänge, die zu einem solchen Entweder-Oder Anlaß geben. Man muß dem Übersinnlichen gegenüber vielseitig werden. Man muß nicht nur theoretisch lernen, sondern man muß es in die innersten Regungen des Seelenlebens gewohnheitsmäßig aufnehmen, alles von den mannigfaltigsten Gesichtspunkten aus zu betrachten. Solche «Standpunkte» wie Materialismus, Realismus, Idealismus, Spiritualismus, wie sie von abstrakt orientierten Persönlichkeiten in der physischen Welt zu umfangreichen Theorien ausgebildet werden, um etwas an den Dingen selbst zu bedeuten, verlieren für den Erkenner des Übersinnlichen alles Interesse. Er weiß, daß z. B. Materialismus nichts anderes sein kann, als der Anblick der Welt von dem Gesichtspunkte aus, von dem sie sich in materieller Erscheinung zeigt.
[ 40 ] Eine praktische Schulung in dieser Richtung ist es nun, wenn man sich in ein Dasein versetzt sieht, das einem das Leben, das außerhalb seine Wellen schlägt, innerlich so nahe bringt wie das eigene Urteilen und Empfinden. Das aber war so für mich mit vielem in Weimar. Mir scheint, mit dem Ende des Jahrhunderts hat das dort aufgehört. Vorher ruhte doch noch der Geist Goethes und Schillers über allem. Und der alte, liebe Großherzog, der so vornehm durch Weimar und seine Anlagen schritt, hatte als «Knabe noch Goethe erlebt. Er fühlte wahrhaftig seinen «Adel» recht stark; aber er zeigte überall, daß er sich durch «Goethes Werk für Weimar» ein zweites Mal geadelt fühlte.
[ 41 ] Es war wohl der Geist Goethes, der von allen Seiten in Weimar so stark wirkte, daß mir eine gewisse Seite des Mit-Erlebens dessen, was da geschah, zu einer praktischen Seelen-Übung im rechten Darstellen der übersinnlichen Welten wurde.
Chapter XIX
[ 1 ] How lonely I was at that time with what I quietly carried within me as my "world view", while my thoughts were directed towards Goethe on the one hand and Nietzsche on the other, I could also feel this in my relationship with many a personality with whom I felt a friendly connection, and who nevertheless energetically rejected my intellectual life.
[ 2 ] The friend I had made when I was young, after our ideas had clashed so much that I had to say to him: "If what you think about the nature of life were true, I would rather be the piece of wood on which my feet stand than a human being", remained devoted to me in love and loyalty. His warm letters from Vienna always took me back to the place that was so dear to me, especially through the human relationships I was allowed to live in there.
[ 3 ] But when the friend came to talk about my spiritual life in his letters, an abyss opened up.
[ 4 ] He often wrote to me that I was alienating myself from the originally human, that I was "rationalizing my soul impulses". He had the feeling that my emotional life was being transformed into a pure thought life; and he perceived this as a coldness emanating from me. Nothing I did could help me, no matter what I said against it. I even noticed that the warmth of his friendship waned at times, because he could not get rid of the belief that I must grow cold in the human, because I was consuming my soul life in the region of thought. He did not want to understand how, instead of growing cold in the life of thought, I had to take the whole of the human into this life in order to grasp spiritual reality with it in the sphere of thought.
[ 5 ] He did not see that the purely human remains, even if it rises into the realm of the spirit; he did not see how one could live in the realm of thought; he supposed that one could merely think there and must lose oneself in the cold region of the abstract.
[ 6 ] And so he turned me into a "rationalist". I found this to be the greatest misunderstanding of what lay on my spiritual path. All thinking that led away from reality and ended in abstraction was repugnant to me at heart. I was in a state of mind that only wanted to lead thought out of the sensual world to the stage where it threatened to become abstract; at that moment, I told myself, it must seize the spirit My friend saw me step out of the world of the physical with my thought; but he did not realize how I entered the spiritual at the same moment. And so, when I spoke of the truly spiritual, it was all an insubstantial thing to him; and he heard in my words only a web of abstract thoughts.
[ 7 ] I suffered greatly from the fact that I was actually speaking of a "nothing" for my friend by expressing what was most meaningful to me. - And so I faced many people.
[ 8 ] I had to see what I encountered in life in my view of the knowledge of nature. I could only recognize the right method of research in nature in the fact that one uses thought to see through the phenomena of the senses in their mutual relationships; but I could not admit that one forms hypotheses through thought, beyond the realm of sensory perception, which then want to point to an extrasensory reality, but which in truth only form a web of abstract thoughts. At the moment when thought has done enough to ascertain what the sensory phenomena, properly viewed, reveal by themselves, I did not want to begin with the formation of hypotheses, but with the view, with the experience of the spiritual, which lives in the sensory world and in the true sense not behind the sensory view.
[ 9 ] What I then, in the mid-nineties, carried intensely within me as my view, I later summarized in an essay that I wrote in 1900 in no. 16 of the "Magazin für Literatur": "A scientific dissection of our cognitive activity leads... to the conviction that the questions we have to ask of nature are a consequence of the peculiar relationship in which we stand to the world. We are limited individualities, and can therefore only perceive the world piecemeal. Each piece, considered in and of itself, is a riddle, or, to put it another way, a question for our cognition. However, the more details we get to know, the clearer the world becomes. One perception explains another. There are no questions that the world poses to us that cannot be answered with the means it offers us. For monism, therefore, there are no fundamental limits to knowledge. This or that can be unresolved at any given time because we have not yet been able to find the things that are involved in it in terms of time or space. But what has not yet been found today may be found tomorrow. The limits imposed by this are only accidental ones that disappear with the progress of experience and thought. In such cases, the formation of hypotheses comes into its own. Hypotheses may not be formed about something that is supposed to be inaccessible to our knowledge in principle. The atomistic hypothesis is a completely unfounded one if it is not to be thought of merely as an aid to the abstracting intellect, but as a statement about real beings lying outside the qualities of sensation. A hypothesis can only be an assumption about a fact that is not accessible to us for accidental reasons, but which by its nature belongs to the world given to us."
[ 10 ] I expressed this view on hypothesis formation at the time by presenting the "limits of knowledge" as unjustified and the limits of natural science as necessary. At the time, I only did this with regard to knowledge of nature. But this shaping of ideas has always paved the way for me to go further with the means of spiritual knowledge where one stands at the necessary "limit" with the means of natural knowledge.
[ 11 ] I experienced a sense of well-being and something deeply satisfying in Weimar through the artistic element that was brought into the city by the art school and the theater with the subsequent music.
[ 12 ] The painting teachers and students at the art school revealed what was then striving for a new, direct view and reproduction of nature and life from older traditions. Quite a few of these painters appeared to be "seekers" in the true sense of the word. How that which the painter has as paint on his palette or in his paint pot is to be brought onto the painting surface so that what the artist creates has a legitimate relationship to the living nature that appears before the human eye: that was the question that was discussed with a stimulating, often pleasantly imaginative, often doctrinaire manner in the most diverse forms, and to whose artistic experience the numerous paintings presented by Weimar painters in the permanent art exhibition in Weimar bore witness.
[ 13 ] My perception of art was not yet as advanced as my relationship to cognitive experiences. But I also sought a spiritual understanding of the artistic in my stimulating contact with the Weimar artists.
[ 14 ] What I felt in my own soul when the modern painters, who wanted to capture and reproduce the atmosphere of light and air in their immediate vision, went up against the "old ones", who "knew" from tradition how to treat this or that, is rather chaotic in retrospect. In many, it was an enthusiastic endeavor, stemming from the most primal forces of the soul, to be "true" in listening to nature.
[ 15 ] But not so chaotically, but in the clearest forms, the life of a young painter stands before my soul, whose artistic way of revealing himself was intimately connected with my own development on the side of artistic imagination. The artist, who was in the full bloom of youth at the time, became closely associated with me for some time. Life took him away from me again, but I often lived in the memory of the hours we spent together.
[ 16 ] The soul life of this young man was all light and color. What others expressed in ideas, he expressed through "colors in light". Even his mind worked in such a way that through it he connected the things and processes of life as colors connect, not as the mere thoughts that the ordinary man forms of the world connect.
[ 16 ] This young artist was once at a wedding party to which I was also invited. The usual speeches were given. The pastor was looking for the content of his speech in the meaning of the names of the bride and groom; I tried to get rid of the speaker's duty, which was incumbent on me because I often frequented the friendly house from which the bride came, by talking about the delightful experiences that the guests of this house could have. I spoke because I was expected to speak. And I was expected to give a wedding table speech, as was "proper". And so I took little pleasure in "my role".
[ 17 ] - The young painter, who had long since become a friend of the house, stood up after me. Nothing was really expected of him. Because we knew that he didn't have the kind of ideas that are used in dinner speeches. He began like this: "The sun's radiance poured lovingly over the red glowing summit of the hill. Clouds over the hill and breathing in the sun's radiance; glowing red cheeks holding out to the sunlight, uniting to form a triumphal arch of spirit and color, escorting the light striving towards the earth. Flowery expanses far and wide, a yellow glowing mood above them, slipping into the flowers, awakening life from them..." He went on like this for a long time. He had suddenly forgotten all the wedding bustle around him and started to paint "in his mind". I don't remember why he stopped talking so painterly; I think someone plucked at his velvet skirt who loved him very much, but who was no less fond of the fact that the guests came to enjoy a quiet wedding roast.
[ 18 ] The young painter's name was Otto Fröhlich. He sat with me a lot in my living room, we went on walks and excursions together. Otto Fröhlich always painted "in spirit" next to me. Next to him, you could forget that the world had any other content than light and color.
[ 19 ] That's how I felt about my young friend. I know how, what I had to say to him, I wrapped myself in a dress of color before his soul to make myself understood to him.
[ 20 ] And the young painter really did manage to wield the brush and apply the paint in such a way that his pictures became to a high degree a reflection of his vivid and lush colorful imagination. When he painted a tree trunk, it was not the lines of the structure on the canvas, but rather what light and colors reveal of themselves when the tree trunk gives them the opportunity to come to life.
[ 21] I searched in my way for the spiritual content of the brightly colored. In him I had to see the secret of the color being. In Otto Fröhlich, I had a man at my side who instinctively carried within himself as his own experience what I was looking for in the human soul's grasp of the world of color.
[ 22 ] I found it gratifying to be able to give my young friend some inspiration through my own research. One such suggestion was the following. I myself experienced to a high degree the intensely colorful things that Nietzsche presents in the Zarathustra chapter on the "ugliest man". This "valley of death", painted in poetry, contained for me much of the life secret of colors.
[ 23 ] I gave Otto Fröhlich the advice that he should now paint Nietzsche's poetically painted picture of Zarathustra and the ugliest man. He did so. The result was actually something wonderful. The colors were concentrated luminously, meaningfully in the Zarathustra figure. It was only not fully realized as such because the color itself could not yet unfold in Fröhlich to the point of creating Zarathustra. But the iridescence of color rippled all the more vividly around the "green snakes" in the valley of the ugliest man. In this part of the picture the whole of Fröhlich lived. But now the "ugliest man". This would have required a line, a painterly characterization. That is where Fröhlich failed. He did not yet know how the secret lives in the color, to let the spiritual arise in the form through its own treatment. And so the "ugliest man" became a reproduction of the model that was known among Weimar painters as the "filling bag". I do not know whether this was really the bourgeois name of the man that the painters always used when they wanted to become "characteristically ugly"; but I do know that "Füllsack's" ugliness was no longer bourgeois-philistine, but had something of the "genial" about it. But to place him in the picture so easily as the "ugly Füllsack", as a model copy, where Zarathustra's soul revealed itself luminously in countenance and dress, where the light conjured up true color from his intercourse with the green snakes, that spoiled Fröhlich's painterly work. And so the picture could not become what I had hoped it would be through Otto Fröhlich.
[ 24 ] Although I must see sociability in the character of my nature, in Weimar I never felt the urge to spend my evenings where artists and all those who were socially connected with them did so to a greater extent.
[ 25 This was in a "Künstlervereinshaus", a romantic conversion of an old smithy opposite the theater. Teachers and students of the painters' academy sat there together in the dim, colorful light, as did actors and musicians. Anyone "looking" to socialize had to feel compelled to go there in the evening. And I didn't feel it because I wasn't looking for socializing, but gratefully accepted it when circumstances brought it to me.
[ 26 ] And so I got to know individual artists in other social contexts, but not "the artistic community".
[ 27 ] And getting to know individual artists in Weimar at that time was already the gain of a lifetime. For the traditions of the court and the extraordinarily likeable personality of Grand Duke Karl Alexander gave the city an artistic attitude that brought almost everything artistic that took place in that period into some kind of relationship with Weimar.
[ 28 ] There was above all the theater with its good old traditions. In its most important performers, it was quite reluctant to allow naturalistic taste to emerge. And where modernity wanted to reveal itself and eradicate some of the braids that are always associated with good traditions, modernity was far removed from what Brahm on stage and Paul Schlenther journalistically propagated as the "modern view". Among these "Weimar modernists" was above all the thoroughly artistic, noble firebrand Paul Wiecke. Seeing such people take the first steps of their "artistry" in Weimar makes an indelible impression and is a broad school of life. Paul Wiecke needed the underground of a theater that, out of its traditions, annoys the elementary artist. The hours I spent in Paul Wiecke's house were stimulating. He was a close friend of my friend Julius Wahle; and so it came about that I entered into a closer relationship with him. It was often delightful to hear Wiecke ranting about almost everything he had to experience when he was rehearsing for a new play. And in connection with this, to see him play the role that he had so rumbled for; but which always offered a rare pleasure through the noble pursuit of style and also through the beautiful fire of enthusiasm.
[ 29 ] Richard Strauss took his first steps in Weimar at that time. He acted as second Kapellmeister alongside Lassen. Richard Strauss' first compositions were performed in Weimar The musical quest of this personality revealed itself like a piece of Weimar's intellectual life itself. Such a joyful and devoted reception of something that became an exciting artistic problem in its reception was only possible in Weimar at that time. All around a calm, traditional, dignified atmosphere: Richard Strauss' "Zarathustra Symphony" or even his music for Eulenspiegel. Everything wakes up from tradition, dignity, dignity; but it wakes up in such a way that the approval is amiable, the rejection harmless - and the artist can thus find the relationship to his own creation in the most beautiful way.
[ 30 ] We sat for so many hours at the first performance of Richard Strauss' music drama "Guntram", where Heinrich Zeller, so lovable, so excellent as a human being, had the leading role and sang himself almost out of tune.
[ 32 ] Yes, this deeply likeable man, Heinrich Zeller, he too had to have Weimar in order to become what he became. He had the most beautiful, elemental talent as a singer. In order to develop, he needed an environment that patiently accepted the gradual development of his talent. And so Heinrich Zeller's development was one of the most humanly beautiful things one can experience. At the same time, Zeller was such an amiable personality that the hours spent with him were among the most delightful.
[ 33 ] And so it came about that, although I didn't often think about going to the artists' association in the evening, when Heinrich Zeller met me and said I should go along, I gladly followed his invitation every time.
[ 34 ] Now the Weimar conditions also had their downsides. The traditional, tranquillity-loving world all too often held the artist back as if in a kind of stupor. Heinrich Zeller became little known to the world outside Weimar. What was initially capable of unfolding his wings then paralyzed them again. And that is probably what happened to my dear friend Otto Fröhlich. Like Zeller, he needed Weimar's artistic soil; but the subdued intellectual atmosphere absorbed him too strongly into its artistic comfort.
[ 35 ] And this "artistic comfort" was felt in the penetration of the spirit of Ibsen and other modernists. The struggle that the actors fought to find the style for a "Nora", for example. Such a search, as could be seen here, only takes place where the reproduction of old stage traditions makes it difficult to portray what comes from poets who, like Schiller, did not come from the stage but, like Ibsen, from life.
[ 36 ] However, the reflection of this modernity from the "artistic comfort" of the theater audience also took place. One should now find one's way through the middle of what was imposed on one by the fact that one was a resident of "classical Weimar", and also by what made Weimar great, namely that it has always had an understanding for the new.
[ 37 ] I think back with pleasure to the performances of Wagner's music dramas that I attended in Weimar. The artistic director v. Bronsart developed the most understanding devotion especially for this side of the theater performances. Heinrich Zeller's voice was shown to its best advantage. An important "force as a singer was Mrs. Agnes Stavenhagen, the wife of the pianist Bernhard Stavenhagen, who was also "Kapellmeister at the theater for a time. Repeated music festivals brought artists representing the period and their works to Weimar. Mahler, for example, was seen as "Kapellmeister at a music festival in his early days. The impression of how he wielded the baton was indelible, not demanding music in the flow of forms, but as an experience of something supernatural and hidden, pointing meaningfully between the forms.
[ 38 ] What presents itself to my soul here from Weimar events, seemingly completely detached from me, is in reality deeply connected to my life. For these were events and conditions that I experienced as something that affected me in the most intense way. Often later, when I encountered a personality or their work that I had witnessed in its beginnings in Weimar, I thought back gratefully to this Weimar period, through which so much could become understandable, because so much had gone there to undergo the germinal state. I experienced the "pursuit of art in Weimar in such a way that I had my own judgment about most things, often very little in agreement with that of others. But besides that, everything that others felt interested me just as much as my own. Here, too, an inner double life of the soul developed in me.
[ 39 ] This was a real exercise of the soul, brought about by life itself according to destiny, in order to get beyond the abstract either/or of intellectual judgment. This judgment establishes boundaries for the soul before the supersensible world. In this world there are no beings and processes that give rise to such an either/or judgment. One must become versatile towards the supersensible. One must not only learn theoretically, but one must habitually incorporate it into the innermost impulses of the soul's life to look at everything from the most varied points of view. Such "points of view" as materialism, realism, idealism, spiritualism, as they are developed into extensive theories by abstractly oriented personalities in the physical world in order to mean something about the things themselves, lose all interest for the cognizer of the supersensible. He knows that materialism, for example, can be nothing other than the view of the world from the point of view from which it shows itself in material appearance.
[ 40 ] It is a practical training in this direction when one sees oneself placed in an existence that brings one as close inwardly to the life that beats its waves outside as one's own judgments and feelings. But that was the case for me with many things in Weimar. It seems to me that this stopped at the end of the century. Before that, the spirit of Goethe and Schiller still reigned over everything. And the old, dear Grand Duke, who walked so nobly through Weimar and its grounds, had still experienced Goethe as a "boy. He truly felt his "nobility" quite strongly; but he showed everywhere that he felt ennobled a second time by "Goethe's work for Weimar".
[ 41 ] It was probably Goethe's spirit that worked so strongly from all sides in Weimar that a certain aspect of the co-experience of what was happening there became a practical exercise for my soul in the correct representation of the supersensible worlds.