The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter IV

[ 1 ] For the form of spiritual experience that I wanted to put on a secure foundation within myself at that time, the musical became of crisis-like significance. At that time, the "Wagner controversy" was being played out in the most violent manner in the spiritual environment in which I found myself. During my boyhood and youth I had used every opportunity to further my understanding of music. The position I had towards thinking brought this with it. For me, thinking had content through itself. It didn't just get it from the perception it expresses. But this led naturally to the experience of the pure musical sound image as such. The world of tones in itself was the revelation of an essential side of reality. That the musical should "express" something beyond the formation of tones, as Wagner's followers claimed in all kinds of ways at the time, seemed to me to be completely "unmusical".

[ 2 ] I have always been a sociable person. As a result, I had already made many friends during my school days in Wiener Neustadt and then again in Vienna. I rarely agreed with these friends on opinions. However, this never prevented intimacy and strong mutual stimulation from living in the friendships. One of these was with a wonderfully idealistic young man. With his blond curls and loyal blue eyes, he was the very type of German youth. He was now completely carried away by Wagnerism. Music that lived in itself, that only wanted to weave in sounds, was to him a world of abominable philistines. What was revealed in the notes, as in a kind of language, was what made the sound structure valuable to him. We went to many a concert and opera together. We always had different opinions. There was something like lead in my limbs when the "expressive music" inflamed him to the point of ecstasy; he was terribly bored when music was played that wanted to be nothing but music.

[ 3 ] The debates with this friend stretched into infinity. On long walks, in continuous sessions over a cup of coffee, he would give his "proofs", expressed in enthusiastic words, that true music had only been born with Wagner, and that everything before was only a preparation for this "discoverer of the musical". This led me to express my feelings in a rather drastic manner. I spoke of Wagnerian barbarism, which was the grave of all real understanding of music.

[ 4 ] The debates became particularly heated on special occasions. One day, my friend had a strange tendency to take our almost daily walks in the direction of a narrow alley and to walk up and down it with me many times, discussing Wagner. I was so engrossed in our debates that only gradually did I realize how he had come to this inclination. At the window of a house in this little lane, at the time of our walks, sat a charming young girl. At first he had no other relationship to the girl than that he saw her sitting at the window almost every day and sometimes had the feeling that a glance she cast at the street was meant for him.

[ 5 ] At first I only felt how his advocacy of Wagner, which was already fiery enough in other respects, flared up into a bright flame in this little alley. And when I realized what side current was always flowing into his enthusiastic heart, he also became sympathetic in this direction, and I became the sympathizer of one of the tenderest, most beautiful, most rapturous youthful loves. The relationship did not progress much beyond the stage described. My friend, who came from a family not blessed with good fortune, soon had to take up a small job as a journalist in a provincial town. He could not think of any closer connection with the girl. Nor was he strong enough to cope with the circumstances. I kept in touch with him by letter for a long time. There was a sad echo of resignation in his letters. What he had had to part with lived on in his heart.

[ 6 ] Long after life had put an end to my correspondence with my childhood friend, I met a person from the city where he had found his journalistic position. I had always held him dear and asked about him. The person told me: "Yes, he was in a very bad way; he could hardly earn a living, he was a writer for me at last, then he died of a lung disease." This information cut me to the heart, for I knew that the idealistic blond man had once parted from his childhood sweetheart under the pressure of circumstances with the feeling that he didn't care what life would bring him in the future. He attached no importance to establishing a life for himself that could not be the ideal he had in mind during our walks in the narrow lane.

[ 7 ] In my dealings with this friend, my anti-Wagnerianism at the time only came to the fore in a strong form. But it also played a major role in my mental life at that time. I tried in all directions to find my way into music that had nothing to do with Wagner. My love of "pure music" grew over several years; my abhorrence of the "barbarism" of "music as expression" grew ever greater. And at the same time I had the fate of being surrounded by people who were almost exclusively Wagner admirers. All this contributed a great deal to the fact that - much - later it became quite difficult for me to wrestle my way through to an understanding of Wagner, which is the humanly natural thing to do with such an important cultural phenomenon. But this struggle belongs to a later period of my life. In the period described here, for example, I found a performance of Tristan, to which I had to accompany a pupil of mine, "mind-numbingly boring". Another childhood friendship that was significant for me occurred during this time. It was with a young man who was the opposite of the fair-haired youth. He considered himself a poet. I also spent a lot of time with him in stimulating conversations. He had great enthusiasm for everything poetic. He set himself big tasks early on. When we became acquainted, he had already written a tragedy "Hannibal" and much poetry.

[ 8 ] I also took part in the "Exercises in oral and written presentation" with both friends, which Schröer held at the university. This provided the three of us and many others with the most wonderful inspiration. We young people were able to present what we were able to achieve intellectually and Schröer discussed everything with us and uplifted our souls with his wonderful idealism and noble enthusiasm.

[ 9 ] My friend often accompanied me when I was allowed to visit Schröer in his home. He always livened up there, whereas otherwise there was often a heavy tone to his life. He was unable to cope with life because of an inner conflict. No profession appealed to him in such a way that he would have wanted to take it up with joy. He was completely absorbed in his interest in poetry and found no real connection with existence apart from this. In the end it became necessary for him to accept a position that was indifferent to him. I also kept in touch with him by letter. The fact that he could not experience any real satisfaction in his poetry itself had a draining effect on his soul. Life was not filled with anything worthwhile for him. To my sorrow, I had to experience how his letters and conversations gradually reinforced the view that he was suffering from an incurable illness. Nothing was enough to dispel this unfounded suspicion. So one day I had to receive the news that the young man, who was very close to me, had ended his own life.

[ 10 ] I became very close friends with a young man who had come to the Vienna Technical University from Transylvania in Germany. I had also first met him in Schröer's training sessions. There he gave a lecture on pessimism. Everything that Schopenhauer had put forward in favor of this view of life came to life in this lecture. Added to this was the young man's own pessimistic outlook on life. I offered to give a counter-lecture. I "refuted" pessimism with truly thunderous words, called Schopenhauer a "narrow-minded genius" even then and culminated my remarks with the sentence, "If the lecturer were right in his description of pessimism, then I would rather be the wooden post on which my feet stand than a human being". This word was mockingly repeated about me for a long time among my acquaintances. But it turned the young pessimist and I into close friends. We now spent a lot of time together. He also felt like a poet. And I often sat with him in his room for many hours and enjoyed listening to him read his poems. He also took a warm interest in my intellectual endeavors at that time, although he was inspired to do so less by the things I was concerned with than by his personal love for me. He made many a beautiful youthful acquaintance and also youthful love. He needed that for his life, which was a very difficult one. He had gone through school in Sibiu as a poor boy and had to make a living from private lessons. He then had the ingenious idea of continuing to teach the private pupils he had acquired in Sibiu by correspondence from Vienna. He had little interest in university science. Once he wanted to take an exam in chemistry. He did not attend any lectures and had not even touched a relevant book. On the last night before the exam, he had a friend read him an excerpt from the entire material. He finally fell asleep. Nevertheless, he went to the exam with this friend at the same time. Both really did fail "brilliantly".

[ 11 ] This young man had boundless trust in me. He treated me almost like a confessor for a while. He spread out an interesting, often saddening life before my soul, full of enthusiasm for everything beautiful. He showed me so much friendship and love that it was really difficult not to disappoint him bitterly at one time or another. This happened especially because he often thought that I didn't pay enough attention to him. But it couldn't be otherwise, as I had many a sphere of interest for which I did not meet with his objective understanding. In the end, however, all this only contributed to the friendship becoming ever closer. He spent the vacations in Sibiu every summer. There he collected pupils again, in order to teach them by correspondence from Vienna throughout the year. I always received long letters from him. He suffered from the fact that I rarely or never answered them. But when he came back to Vienna in the fall, he jumped out at me like a boy, and our life together began again. It was thanks to him that I was able to socialize with so many people. He loved to take me to all the people he had contact with. And I craved socializing. The friend brought a lot into my life that gave me joy and warmth.

[ 12 ] This friendship remained one for life until the friend's death a few years ago. It has endured through many a storm of life, and I will still have much to say about it.

[ 13 ] In retrospect, many human and life relationships emerge that still have a full existence in the soul today in feelings of love and gratitude. I cannot describe everything in detail here and must leave some things untouched that were and remain close to me in my personal experience.

[ 14 ] My childhood friendships at the time I am talking about here had a peculiar relationship to the progress of my life. They forced me to lead a kind of double life in my soul. The struggle with the riddles of knowledge that filled my soul, especially at that time, was always of great interest to my friends, but they took little part in it. I remained rather lonely in the experience of these riddles. In contrast, I lived everything that emerged in my friends' lives to the full. Thus two currents of life ran side by side within me: one that I pursued like a lonely wanderer; and the other that I experienced in lively conviviality with people I had grown fond of. But in many cases, the experiences of the second kind were also of profound, lasting significance for my development.

[ 15 ] I must especially remember a friend who was already my classmate in Wiener Neustadt. During this time, however, he was distant from me. It was only in Vienna, where he first visited me often and where he later lived as a civil servant, that he became close to me. However, he had already had an impact on my life in Wiener Neustadt without any external relationship. I once went to a gym class with him. While he was doing gymnastics and I had nothing to do, he left a book next to me. It was Heine's book on "The Romantic School" and "The History of Philosophy in Germany". I glanced at it. This prompted me to read the book myself. I found it very stimulating, but it was in stark contrast to the way in which Heine treated the subject of my life. In the view of a way of thinking and a direction of feeling that was completely opposite to the one that was developing in me, there was a strong stimulus for self-reflection on the inner orientation of life, which was necessary for me according to my soul dispositions.

[ 16 ] Following the book, I then spoke with the classmate. This revealed the inner life of his soul, which later led to the establishment of a lasting friendship. He was a secretive person who only communicated with a few people. Most people thought he was an eccentric. To the few to whom he wanted to communicate, he became very talkative, especially in letters. He saw himself as a man called to be a poet by his inner disposition. He was of the opinion that he carried a great wealth in his soul. He also had a tendency to dream himself into relationships with other, especially female, personalities more than to actually establish these relationships outwardly. At times he was close to such a connection, but could not bring it to a real experience. In conversations with me, he lived out his dreams with an intimacy and enthusiasm as if they were realities. It was inevitable that he would have bitter feelings when the dreams kept slipping away.

[ 17 ] This resulted in a spiritual life for him that had nothing whatsoever to do with his external existence. And this life was again the subject of agonizing introspection, the reflection of which was contained in many letters to me and in conversations. He once wrote me a long discussion about how the smallest and the greatest experiences became symbols for him and how he lived with such symbols.

[ 18 ] I loved this friend, and I responded to his dreams with love, even though I always had the feeling when I was with him that we were moving in the clouds and had no ground. This was a strange experience for me, who was constantly striving to find the solid pillars of life in knowledge. Again and again I had to slip out of my own being and jump into a different skin when I faced this friend. He enjoyed living with me; he also sometimes made far-reaching theoretical observations about the "difference of our natures". Little did he realize how little our thoughts resonated, because the spirit of friendship transcended all thoughts.

[ 19 ] I had a similar experience with another classmate from Vienna-Neustadt. He was in the next year down from me at secondary school, and we only became close when he went to the technical college in Vienna a year later than me. But then we were together a lot. He, too, was little interested in what moved me inwardly in the field of knowledge. He studied chemistry. The scientific views that he held prevented him from communicating with me at that time and from presenting himself as anything other than a doubter of the spiritual view that I held. Later in life, I learned from this friend how close he was in his innermost being to my state of mind even then; but he did not allow this innermost being to emerge at all at that time. And so our lively, long-lasting debates became a "battle against materialism" for me. He always contrasted my belief in the spiritual content of the world with all the refutations that supposedly arose from natural science. Even back then, I had to use everything I had in terms of insight in order to refute the objections against a spiritual understanding of the world that came from the materialistic orientation of thought.

[ 20 ] Once the debate was very lively. Every day after attending the lectures, my friend drove from Vienna to his home, which had remained in Wiener-Neustadt. I often accompanied him through Vienna's Alleegasse to the Südbahnhof. One day we had reached a kind of culmination in the materialism debate, when we had already entered the station and the train was due to leave soon. Then I summarized what I still had to say in the following words: "So you claim that when you say: I think, this is only the necessary effect of the processes in your cerebral nervous system. These processes alone are reality. And so it is when you say: I see this or that, I walk etc. But look: you don't say: my brain thinks, my brain sees this or that, my brain walks. If you had really come to the realization that what you theoretically claim is true, you would have to correct your expression. If you still speak of "I", you are actually lying. But you cannot help but follow your healthy instinct against the whispers of your theory. You are experiencing a different state of affairs than the one your theory advocates. Your consciousness gives the lie to your theory." The friend shook his head. He no longer had time to object. I went back alone, and could only reflect that the objection to materialism in this crude form did not correspond to a particularly exact philosophy. But at that time it was really less important to me to provide a philosophically flawless proof five minutes before the train left than to express my inner certain experience of the nature of the human "I". For me, this "I" was an inwardly comprehensible experience of a reality existing within it. This reality seemed to me no less certain than any reality recognized by materialism. But there is nothing material in it. In the years that followed, this insight into the reality and spirituality of the "I" helped me to overcome all the temptations of materialism. I knew:

[ 21 ] the "I" cannot be shaken. And it was clear to me that the "I" is not known to those who see it as a manifestation, a result of other processes. I wanted to express to my friend that I had this as an inner, spiritual view. We still fought a lot in this field. But we had so many very similar feelings in our general view of life that the intensity of our theoretical battles never turned into even the slightest misunderstanding in our personal relationship. During this time I became more deeply involved in student life in Vienna. I became a member of the "German Reading Hall at the Technical University". In meetings and smaller gatherings, the political and cultural phenomena of the time were discussed in detail. The discussions brought to light all the possible - and impossible - points of view that young people could have. Particularly when officials were to be elected, opinions clashed violently. Much of what was going on among young people in connection with events in Austrian public life was stimulating and exciting. It was the time when national parties were forming in ever sharper form. Everything that later led more and more to the crumbling of the empire in Austria, the consequences of which emerged after the World War, could be experienced in its germs at that time.

[ 22 ] I was initially elected librarian of the "Lesehalle". As such, I sought out all kinds of authors who had written books that I thought might be of value to the student library. I wrote "pump letters" to these authors. I often wrote a hundred such letters in a week. This "work" of mine rapidly increased the size of the library. But it had a side effect for me. It gave me the opportunity to get to know a wide range of the scientific, artistic, cultural-historical and political literature of the time. I was an avid reader of the donated books. Later, I was elected chairman of the "Lesehalle". But that was a difficult office for me. I was faced with a large number of different party viewpoints and saw the relative merits in all of them. Nevertheless, members of the various parties came to me. Everyone wanted to convince me that only their party was right. When I was elected, all the parties voted for me. Because until then they had only heard how I had stood up for what was right in the meetings. When I had been chairman for six months, they all voted against me. Because by then they had found that I could not agree with any party as strongly as they wanted.

[ 23 ] My sociability instinct found ample satisfaction in the "Lesehalle". And it also aroused the interest of wider circles of public life through the reflections of its events in student club life. At the time, I attended many an interesting parliamentary debate in the gallery of the Austrian House of Representatives and House of Lords.

[ 24 ] In addition to the parliamentary measures, which often had a profound impact on life, I was particularly interested in the personalities of the members of parliament. Every year, the subtle philosopher Bartholomew Carneri stood at the corner of his bench as one of the main budget speakers. His words hailed cutting accusations against the Taaffe ministry, they formed a defense of Germanism in Austria. There stood Ernst von Plener, the dry speaker, the undisputed authority on financial matters. One shivered when he criticized Finance Minister Dunajewski's spending with calculating coldness. The Ruthenian Tomasczuck thundered against the nationality policy. One had the feeling that he was trying to invent a word that was particularly well coined for the moment in order to nurture antipathy for the ministers. Lienbacher, the cleric, spoke in a shrewd, peasant way, always clever. His slightly bent head made what he said appear to be the outflow of serene views. Gregr, the young Czech, spoke in his own cutting way, giving the impression that he was half demagogue. There stood Rieger of the Old Czechs, in the deeply characteristic sense of embodied Czechity, as it had been developing for a long time and had become conscious of itself in the second half of the nineteenth century. A man who was rarely self-contained, emotionally full of strength and carried by a sure will. Otto Hausner spoke on the right, in the middle of the Polish benches. He often presented the fruits of his reading in an ingenious manner, often sending factually justified arrows to all sides of the house with a certain comfort. One self-satisfied but clever eye blinked behind a monocle, the other always seemed to say a satisfied "yes" to the blink. A speaker who also occasionally found prophetic words for Austria's future back then. You should read today what he said back then; you would be amazed at his perspicacity. Back then, people even laughed at many things that have become bitterly serious decades later.