The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter VIII

[ 1 ] During this time - around 1888 - I was, on the one hand, forced by my inner spiritual life into sharp mental concentration; on the other hand, life placed me in an extensive social intercourse. The detailed introduction that I had to write to the second volume of Goethe's scientific works, which I was to edit, forced me to put my view of the spiritual world into the form of an intellectually transparent presentation. This required an inner detachment from everything with which I was connected through external life. I owe much to the fact that this detachment was possible for me. At that time I could sit in a coffee house, surrounded by the liveliest hustle and bustle, and yet be completely quiet inside, my thoughts focused on writing down in concept what then became the introduction I mentioned. In this way, I led an inner life that had no connection at all with the outside world, in which my interests were intensely intertwined.

[ 2 ] It was the time in Austria at the time when these interests had to turn to the crisis-like phenomena that were manifesting themselves in public affairs. Personalities with whom I was in frequent contact devoted their work and energy to the conflicts that were taking place between Austria's nationalities. Others were concerned with the social question. Still others were involved in efforts to rejuvenate artistic life.

[ 3 ] When I lived with my soul in the spiritual world, I often had the feeling that all these objectives must end in fruitlessness because they avoided approaching the spiritual forces of existence. Reflection on these spiritual forces seemed to me to be the first thing necessary. But I could not find a clear awareness of this in the spiritual life that surrounded me

[ 4 ] Robert Hamerling's satyric epic "Homunculus" was published at the time. In it, a mirror was held up to the times, from which its materialism, its interests turned towards the external aspects of life, appeared in deliberately caricature-like images. The man, who can only live in mechanistic-materialistic ideas and activities, enters into a union with the woman, who has her being not in a real but in a fantastic world. Hamerling wanted to meet the two sides in which civilization had developed. On the one hand, there was the mindless striving that thought of the world as a mechanism and wanted to shape life like a machine; on the other, there was the soulless fantasy that has no interest whatsoever in bringing its spiritual illusory life into any kind of true relationship with reality

[ 5 ] The grotesque nature of the pictures in which Hamerling painted repelled many who had become his admirers through his earlier works. Even in the House of delle Grazies, where Hamerling had previously been admired to the full, people became apprehensive when this epic appeared.

[ 6 ] But the "Homunculus" made a very deep impression on me. It showed, it seemed to me, the forces that are at work in modern civilization to darken the mind. I found in it a serious warning to the times. But I also had difficulty finding a position on Hamerling. And the appearance of "Homunculus" initially increased the difficulties in my soul. I saw in Hamerling a personality who, in a special way, was himself a revelation of the times. I looked back to the time when Goethe and those who worked with him had brought idealism to a humane height. I recognized the necessity of penetrating through the gate of this idealism into the real spiritual world. This idealism appeared to me as the glorious shadow that is not cast by the world of the senses into the soul of man, but as that which falls from a spiritual world into the inner being of man, and which represents an invitation to reach from the shadow to the world that casts the shadow.

[ 7 ] I loved Hamerling, who had painted the idealistic shadow in such powerful images. But it was a deep deprivation to me that he stopped there. That his gaze was directed less forward, towards breaking through to a new form of the real spiritual world, than backwards, towards the shadow of a spirituality shattered by materialism. Nevertheless, the "Homunculus" attracted me. If it did not show how to penetrate the spiritual world, it did show where one ends up if one wants to move alone in a spiritless one.

[ 8 ] The study of "Homunculus" came at a time when I was contemplating the nature of artistic creation and beauty. What was going through my mind at the time found expression in the short essay "Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetic", which reproduces a lecture I gave at the Goethe Society in Vienna. I wanted to find the reasons why the idealism of a courageous philosophy, which had spoken so forcefully in Fichte and Hegel, had not been able to penetrate to the living spirit. One of the paths I took to find these causes was to reflect on the errors of merely idealistic philosophy in the aesthetic field. Hegel and those who thought like him found the content of art in the sensual appearance of the "idea". When the "idea" appears in the sensual substance, it reveals itself as the beautiful. This was their view. But the period that followed this idealism no longer wanted to recognize the essence of the "idea". Because the idea of the idealistic world view, as it lived in the consciousness of the idealists, did not point to a spiritual world, it could not assert itself among its successors as something that had real value. And so the "realistic" aesthetic arose, which did not look at the appearance of the idea in the sensual image in the work of art, but only at the sensual image, which takes on an unreal form in the work of art out of the needs of human nature. I wanted to regard that which appears to the senses as the essential in the work of art. But the path that the true artist takes in his work revealed itself to me as a path to the real spirit. He starts from what is perceptible to the senses; but he transforms it. In this transformation he is not guided by a merely subjective urge, but seeks to give the sensually apparent a form that shows it as if the spiritual itself were there. It is not the appearance of the idea in the form of the senses that is beautiful, I told myself, but the representation of the sensual in the form of the spirit. Thus I saw in the existence of art an introduction of the spiritual world into the sensual. The true artist more or less unconsciously acknowledges the spirit. And it only requires - as I told myself again and again at the time - the transformation of those soul forces that work in the artist on the sensual material into a sense-free, purely spiritual view in order to penetrate into the knowledge of the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] True knowledge, the manifestation of the spiritual in art and the moral will in man were then united into one whole. In the human personality I had to see a center in which it is directly connected with the most original essence of the world. Out of this center springs the will. And if the clear light of the spirit works in the center, the will becomes free. Man then acts in accordance with the spirituality of the world, which does not become creative out of necessity, but only in the realization of his own being. In this center of the human being, goals for action are not born out of dark impulses, but out of "moral intuitions", out of intuitions that are in themselves as transparent as the most transparent thoughts. Thus, by looking at the free will, I wanted to find the spirit through which man is in the world as an individuality. Through the perception of the truly beautiful, I wanted to see the spirit that works through man when he is so active in the sensual that he does not merely represent his own being spiritually as a free act, but in such a way that this spiritual being flows out into the world, which is indeed of the spirit, but does not reveal it directly. Through the contemplation of the true, I wanted to experience the spirit that reveals itself in its own essence, whose spiritual reflection is the moral act, and to which artistic creation strives through the creation of a sensual form.

[ 10 ] A "philosophy of freedom", a view of life from the spiritually thirsty world of the senses striving for beauty, a spiritual view of the living world of truth floated before my soul.

[ 11 ] It was also in 1888 when I was introduced to the house of the Viennese Protestant pastor Alfred Formey. Once a week, a circle of artists and writers gathered there. Alfred Formey himself was a poet. Fritz Lemmermayer characterized him from the heart of a friend as follows: "Warm-hearted, intimate in his perception of nature, rapturous, almost drunk with faith in God and bliss, Alfred Formey writes in soft, roaring chords. It is as if his step did not touch the hard earth, but as if he were dozing and dreaming high up in the clouds." And that's how Alfred Formey was as a person. You felt quite earthbound when you came into this vicarage and at first there was only the master of the house and the housewife. The priest had a childlike piety, but in his warm disposition this piety naturally turned into a lyrical mood. One was immediately surrounded by an atmosphere of cordiality as soon as Formey had spoken a few words. The housewife had exchanged her stage profession for the parsonage. No one could recognize the former actress in the amiable priestess who entertained her guests with ravishing grace. She cared for the vicar almost like a mother, and almost every word she spoke to him was motherly care. In both of them, grace of soul contrasted in a delightful way with an extremely stately appearance. The guests brought the "world" from all spiritual directions into the unworldly atmosphere of this vicarage. Friedrich Hebbel's widow appeared from time to time. Her appearance was always a celebration. In her old age, she developed an art of declamation that filled the heart with blissful delight and completely captivated the sense of art. And when Christine Hebbel spoke, the whole room was imbued with warmth of soul. I also got to know the actress Wilborn at these Formey evenings. An interesting personality, with a brilliant voice as a declamator. Lenau's "Three Gypsies" could be heard from her again and again with renewed pleasure. It soon came about that the circle that had come together at Formey's also gathered at Mrs. Wilborn's from time to time. But how different it was there. The same people who remained serious in the parsonage when the "Viennese folk poet" Friedrich Schlögl read out his amusing poems became worldly, fun-loving and in need of humor. He had, for example, written a "Feuilleton" when the cremation of corpses was introduced in a narrow circle in Vienna. There he told how a man who loved his wife in a somewhat "coarse" way shouted to her at every opportunity that didn't suit him: "Alte, los di verbrenna!" At Formey's they made remarks about such a thing, which were a sort of cultural-historical chapter on Vienna; at Wilborn's they laughed so hard that the chairs rattled. Formey looked like a man of the world with Wilborn; Wilborn looked like an abbess with Formey. You could make the most detailed studies of the transformation of people, right down to their facial expressions.

[ 12 ] Formey was also frequented by Emilie Mataja, who wrote her novels under the name Emil Marriot, which were characterized by a penetrating observation of life. A fascinating personality whose way of life vividly, ingeniously and often provocatively revealed the hardships of human existence. An artist who knows how to depict life where it throws its riddles into everyday life, where it throws its tragic fate over people in a crushing way.

[ 13 ] The four ladies of the Austrian ladies' quartet Tschempas could often be heard; Fritz Lemmermayer melodramatically recited Hebbel's "Heideknaben" repeatedly to Alfred Stroß' fiery piano playing.

[ 14 ] I loved this vicarage, where you could find so much warmth. The noblest humanity was at work there.

[ 15 ] At the same time, I found myself having to concern myself in depth with Austrian public affairs. In 1888, I was briefly given the editorship of the "Deutsche Wochenschrift". This journal had been founded by the historian Heinrich Friedjung. My brief editorship came at a time when the conflict between the peoples of Austria had taken on a particularly fierce character. It was not easy for me to write an article about the public events every week. Basically, I was as far removed as possible from all partisan views of life. I was interested in the development of culture in the progress of mankind. And I had to adopt the resulting point of view in such a way that, while fully respecting it, my articles did not appear to be those of an "unworldly idealist". In addition, I saw the "teaching reform" introduced in Austria at the time, particularly by Minister Gautsch, as damaging to cultural interests. In this area, my remarks once even caused concern to Schröer, who after all had a great deal of sympathy for partisan observation. I praised the appropriate arrangements that the Catholic-clerical minister Leo Thun had already made for Austrian grammar schools in the 1950s, as opposed to Gautsch's uneducational measures. When Schröer read my article, he said: Do you want a clerical teaching policy in Austria again?

[ 16 ] This brief editorial activity was of great importance to me. It drew my attention to the style with which public affairs were dealt with in Austria at the time. I deeply disliked this style. I also wanted to bring something into the discussions about these matters that had a trait that encompassed the great spiritual and human goals. I missed this in the daily writing of the time. How to bring this trait to fruition was my daily concern at the time. And it had to be a worry, because I didn't have the strength that a rich life experience in this field could have given me. I had basically come into this editorial work completely unprepared. I thought I saw where I was heading in the most diverse areas, but I didn't have the formulations in my limbs that would be plausible to the readers of the newspapers. So the creation of each weekly newsletter was a difficult struggle for me.

[ 17 ] And so I felt as if I had been relieved of a great burden when this activity came to an end because the then owner of the weekly was involved in a dispute with its founder over the purchase price.

[ 18 ] However, this activity brought me into a rather close relationship with personalities whose activities were directed towards the most diverse branches of public life. I got to know Viktor Adler, who was the undisputed leader of the socialists in Austria at the time. The slight, unassuming man had an energetic will. When he spoke at the coffee table, I always had the feeling that the content of what he said was insignificant, commonplace, but it was the expression of a will that could not be bent by anything. I got to know Pernerstorfer, who was in the process of transforming himself from a German nationalist to a socialist party supporter. A strong personality with extensive knowledge. A sharp critic of the harms of public life. At the time, he published a monthly magazine called "Deutsche Worte". It was a stimulating read for me. In the company of these personalities, I met others who wanted to promote socialism scientifically or according to the party. Through them I was prompted to study Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rodbertus and other socio-economic writers. I could not gain an inner relationship to all of this. It was personally painful for me to hear people say that the material-economic forces in the history of mankind were responsible for the actual development and that the spiritual was only an ideal superstructure of this "truly real" substructure. I knew the reality of the spiritual. For me, the assertions of the theorizing socialists were the closing of my eyes to the true reality.

[ 19 ] And yet I realized that the "social question" itself had an unlimited meaning. But it seemed to me the tragedy of the times that it was dealt with by personalities who were completely caught up in the materialism of contemporary civilization. I believed that this question could only be posed correctly by a spiritual view of the world

[ 20 ] So at the age of twenty-seven I was full of "questions" and "riddles" about the external life of humanity, while the nature of the soul and its relationship to the spiritual world had presented itself to me in a self-contained view in ever more specific forms. At first I could only work spiritually from this view. And this work increasingly took the direction that led me to write my "Philosophy of Freedom" a few years later.