The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Chapter XXIV

[ 1 ] And the question became an experience: must one fall silent?

[ 2 ] With this shaping of my soul life, I was then faced with the necessity of introducing a completely new note into my external effectiveness. The forces that determined my outer destiny could no longer be as unified as before with the inner guidelines that resulted from my experience of the spirit world.

[ 3 ] I had been thinking for some time of bringing the spiritual impulses to the contemporary community in a magazine, which I felt should be brought to the attention of the public at the time. I didn't want to "fall silent", but to say as much as was possible to say.

[ 4 ] Founding a magazine myself was something I couldn't think of at the time. I completely lacked the funds and the connections necessary for such a foundation.

[ 5 ] So I seized the opportunity that came my way to acquire the editorship of the "Magazin für Literatur.

[ 6 ] This was an old weekly magazine. It was founded in the year of Goethe's death (1832). Initially as a "magazine for literature from abroad". It brought translations of what the editors considered to be valuable foreign intellectual creations in all fields in order to be incorporated into German intellectual life. - Later, the weekly was transformed into a "magazine for literature at home and abroad". Now it brought poetry, characterization and criticism from the entire field of intellectual life. Within certain limits, it was able to hold its own with this task. Her activity of this kind came at a time when there was a sufficiently large number of personalities in the German-speaking world who wanted to have what was "going on" in the intellectual field brought to their attention in a concise manner every week. - When, in the eighties and nineties, the new literary aims of the younger generation entered into this calm and dignified way of participating in the spiritual, the "Magazin" was soon swept up in this movement. It changed its editors quite quickly and received its respective coloring from those who were involved in the new movements in one way or another. - When I was able to acquire it in 1897, it was close to the aspirations of the young literature, without being more strongly opposed to what lay outside these aspirations. - But in any case, it was no longer able to sustain itself financially through its content alone. Among other things, it had become the organ of the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft". This added a lot to the otherwise insufficient number of subscribers. But despite all this, when I took over the "Magazin", the situation was such that I had to gather together all the subscribers, including the uncertain ones, in order to just barely manage to maintain a level at which I could hold on. I could only take over the magazine if I also took on an activity that seemed suitable to increase the number of subscribers. - That was the activity in the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft". I had to organize the content of the journal in such a way that this society would come into its own. The "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" was looking for people who had an interest in the creations of the younger generation. The headquarters of this society was in Berlin, where younger writers had founded it. However, it had branches in many German cities. However, it soon turned out that some of these "branches" led a rather modest existence It was now up to me to give lectures in this society in order to personally express the connection with intellectual life that was to be provided by the "magazine".

[ 7 ] I thus had a circle of readers for the "Magazin" whose intellectual needs I had to find my way into. In the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" I had a membership that expected very specific things because it had been offered very specific things up to that point. In any case, they did not expect what I could have given them from the very core of my being. The character of the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" was also determined by the fact that it was to form a kind of antithesis to the "Literarische Gesellschaft", in which personalities such as Spielhagen set the tone.

[ 1 ] It was now up to my inner state in the spiritual world to really participate in the circumstances I was entering. I tried to put myself completely in my circle of readers and members of the "Society" in order to find the forms from the spiritual nature of these people into which I had to pour what I wanted to give spiritually.

[ 8 ] I cannot say that when I began this work I indulged in illusions that were gradually destroyed. But it was precisely the work among readers and listeners, which was appropriate for me, that met with ever greater resistance. The circle of people that the "Magazin" had gathered around itself before I took it over could not be expected to show any serious, penetrating spirit. The interests of this circle were only profound among a few. And even those few were not driven by strong spiritual forces, but rather by a general desire that wanted to express itself in all kinds of artistic and other spiritual forms.

[ 9 ] And so I was soon faced with the question of whether I could justify to my inner self and to the spiritual world that I was working in this circle. For even if many of the personalities who came into consideration were very dear to me, even if I felt a friendly bond with them, they were also among those who led to the question: "Must one remain silent?"

[ 10 ] Then there was another. From a large number of people who had previously been close to me as friends, I could have the feeling, judging by their behavior towards me, that they did not go very far with me in their own mental life; but they presupposed something in me that made my actions in the field of knowledge and in some life circumstances appear valuable to them. They often took an unexamined view of my existence after their experiences with me.

[ 11 ] The previous editors of "Magazin" did not feel this way. They said to themselves that, despite some traits of practical life in him, Steiner was an "idealist". And since the sale of the "Magazin" was effected in such a way that over the years installments had to be paid to the previous owner, that he also had the strongest material interests in the continued existence of the weekly, he could not, from his point of view, do anything other than create another guarantee for himself and the cause than that which lay in my person, of which he could not say how it would work within the circle of people who had come together around "Magazin" and "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" so far. It was therefore made a condition of the purchase that Otto Erich Hartleben should sign and work as co-editor.

[ 12 ] Now, looking back on these facts today, I would not like anything to have turned out differently in the establishment of my editorship. For, as I have described in the foregoing, those who stand in the spiritual world must become fully acquainted with the facts of the physical world through experience. And for me this had become a self-evident necessity, especially through my change of soul. Not to accept what I clearly recognized as the forces of destiny would have been a sin against my spiritual experience. I did not see only "facts" that put me together with Otto Erich Hartleben for some time at that time, but "facts woven by fate (karma)".

[ 13 ] But there were difficulties arising from this relationship that could not be overcome.

[ 14 ] Otto Erich Hartleben was a man dominated by aesthetics through and through. I found everything that emerged from his completely aesthetic view of the world, right down to his gestures, to be graceful, despite the often quite questionable "milieu" in which he met me. This attitude of his soul made him want to spend months at a time in Italy. And when he came back from there, there was a piece of Italy in the way he appeared. - I also had a strong personal love for him.

[ 15 ] Working together in the field we now shared was actually impossible. He was not at all interested in "putting himself in the shoes" of the ideas and interests of the magazine readers' circle or the circle of the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft", but wanted to "impose" what his aesthetic sensibilities told him in both places. That struck me as a foreign element. He often asserted his right to collaborate, but he often didn't for a very long time. He was often absent from Italy for long periods. This meant that the content of the "Magazin" was very inconsistent - and for all his "mature aesthetic world view", Otto Erich Hartleben was unable to overcome the "student" within him. I mean the questionable aspects of "studenthood", of course, not what can be carried over from student days into later life as a beautiful force of existence.

[ 16 ] When I had to join forces with him, another circle of admirers had fallen to him because of his drama: "The Education for Marriage". The work had by no means emerged from the graceful aesthetic that was so appealing in his dealings with him; it had emerged precisely from the "exuberance" and "unattachedness" that made everything that came from him as intellectual production and also as decisions vis-à-vis the "magazine" come not from the depths of his being, but from a certain superficiality. Only a few knew the Hartleben of personal interaction.

[ 17 ] It was a matter of course that after I moved to Berlin, from where I had to edit the "Magazin", I moved in the circle associated with Otto Erich Hartleben. For it was he who gave me the opportunity to oversee what belonged to the weekly magazine and the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" in the way that was necessary.

[ 18 ] On the one hand, this caused me great pain. Because it prevented me from visiting the people with whom I had enjoyed good relations in Weimar and getting closer to them. How I would have loved to visit Eduard v. Hartmann more often.

[ 19 ] None of that was possible. The other side took up all my time. And so, in one fell swoop, some of the things I would have liked to keep were taken away from me by someone I valued. But I recognized this as a destiny (karmic) coincidence. It would have been entirely possible for me, based on the soul background that I have characterized here, to devote my soul with full interest to two such fundamentally different circles of people as the one connected with Weimar and the one around the "Magazin". However, neither circle would have had any pleasure in the long run in a personality who alternated with people who belonged to polar opposites in terms of soul and spirit. It would also have become unavoidable to continually justify in such intercourse why I place my work exclusively in the service into which I had to place it because of what the "magazine" was.

[ 20 ] I realized more and more: the kind of people I was allowed to describe here for Vienna and Weimar had now become impossible. Literary people came together, and literary people got to know each other. Even with the best, even with the most distinctive characters, this literary (or painterly, sculptural) aspect dug itself so deeply into the essence of the soul that the purely human faded completely into the background.

[ 21 ] This was the impression I got when I sat between these personalities, whom I nevertheless appreciated. The human soul backgrounds made an even deeper impression on me. In the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" in Leipzig, after a lecture by me and a lecture by O. J. Bierbaum, I once sat together with a group that included Frank Wedekind. My gaze was captivated by this truly rare human figure. I mean "figure" here in the physical sense. These hands! As if from a previous life on earth, in which they did things that can only be done by people who let their spirit flow into the finest branches of their fingers. This may have given the impression of brutality because energy had been processed; the highest interest was attracted by what these hands radiated. And this expressive head - quite like a gift of what came from the special will notes of the hands. There was something in his gaze and facial expression that could give itself to the world as arbitrarily as the gestures of the arms could withdraw from it through the sensation of the hands. A spirit alien to the present spoke from this head. A spirit that actually places itself outside the human activity of this present. A spirit that could not come to an inner awareness of the world of the past to which it belonged. As a man of letters - I mean now only what I saw in him, not a literary judgment - Frank Wedekind was like a chemist who completely threw away the present views of chemistry, and of alchemy, but also pursued these not with inner sympathy, but with cynicism. One could get to know much of the effect of the spirit in the form if one were to bring Frank Wedekind's outward appearance into one's view of the soul. However, one must not proceed with the gaze of that "psychologist" who wants to "observe people", but with that which shows the purely human on the background of the spiritual world through inner spiritual destiny, which one does not seek, but which approaches.

[ 22 ] A person who notices that he is being observed by a "psychologist" may become angry; but the transition from the purely human relationship to "looking at the spiritual background" is also purely human, like that from a fleeting to a more intimate friendship.

[ 23 ] One of the most peculiar personalities of Hartleben's Berlin circle was Paul Scheerbarth. He wrote "poems" that initially appear to the reader to be arbitrary combinations of words and sentences. They are so grotesque that one feels drawn to go beyond the first impression. Then one finds that a fantastic sense searches for all kinds of otherwise unnoticed meanings in the words in order to express a spiritual content that originates no less from an unthinking soul-fantasy that does not seek a ground at all. In Paul &heerbarth lived an inner cult of the fantastic; but it moved in the forms of the sought-after grotesque. In my opinion, he had the feeling that the spiritual man may only depict what he depicts in grotesque forms, because others drag everything into the philistine. But this feeling does not want to develop the grotesque in a rounded artistic form, but in a sovereign, sought-after, reckless state of mind. And what is revealed in these grotesque forms must spring from the realm of inner fantasy. Paul Scheerbarth's work was based on a soul trait for the spiritual that did not seek clarity. What comes from prudence does not go to spiritual regions, this "fantasist" said to himself. Therefore, in order to express spirit, one must not be prudent. But Scheerbarth did not take a step from fantasy to imagination either. And so he wrote from a mind stuck in interesting but wild fantasy, in which entire cosmic worlds flicker and shimmer as frame narratives, caricaturing the realm of the mind and enclosing equally held human experiences. Thus in "Tarub, Baghdad's famous cook".

[ 24 ] You didn't see the man that way when you got to know him personally. A bureaucrat, somewhat elevated into the spiritual. The "outward appearance" that was so interesting in Wedekind was commonplace, philistine in his case. And this impression was heightened when we first got to know him. He had in him the most ardent hatred of the Philistines, but he had the gestures of the Philistines, their way of speaking, and he showed himself as if the hatred came from the fact that he had absorbed too much from Philistine circles into his own appearance and felt it; but at the same time he had the feeling that he could not fight it. You could read a kind of confession at the bottom of his soul: I want to destroy the Philistines because they have made me a Philistine.

[ 25 ] But if one went from this outer appearance to Paul Scheerbarth's inner being, which was independent of it, a very fine, spiritually unfinished man of the mind was revealed, who was only just stuck in the grotesque and fantastic. Then, with his "bright" head, with his "golden" heart, one experienced the way he stood in the spiritual world. One had to say to oneself what a strong personality, penetrating into the spirit world, could have entered the world if the unfinished had been completed at least to a certain degree. At the same time, one could see that the "commitment to the fantastic" was already so strong that even a completion in the future of this earthly life was no longer within the realm of possibility.

[ 26 ] In Frank Wedekind and Paul Scheerbarth, personalities stood before me who, in their whole being, gave highly significant experiences to those who knew the fact of man's repeated lives on earth. They were enigmas in the present life on earth. One looked at what they had brought with them into this earthly life. And an unlimited enrichment of their whole personality occurred. But their imperfections were also understood to be the results of earlier earthly lives which could not fully unfold in the present spiritual environment. And they saw how what could become of these imperfections needed future earth lives.

[ 27 ] So many a personality of this circle stood before me. I realized that meeting them was destiny (karma) for me.

[ 28 ] I was also unable to establish a purely human, cordial relationship with the thoroughly amiable Paul Scheerbarth. It was the case that in my dealings with Paul Scheerbarth, as with others, the literary man always shone through. Thus my affectionate feelings for him were ultimately determined by the attention and interest I had to take in his highly remarkable personality.

[ 29 ] There was, however, one personality in the circle who did not present himself as a man of letters, but in the fullest sense as a human being, W. Harlan. But he spoke little, and actually always sat there like a silent observer. But when he did speak, it was always either witty in the best sense of the word or genuinely funny. He actually wrote a lot, but not as a man of letters, but as a person who had to express what was on his mind. At that time he had just published "Dichterbörse", a biography full of delicious humor. I always liked it when I arrived at the circle's meeting room a little early and Harlan was sitting there all alone. Then we became close. So I exclude him when I say that I only found literary figures in this circle and no "people". And I think he understood that I had to look at the circle that way. Our very different paths in life soon led us far apart.

[ 30 ] The people around "Magazin" and "Freie literarische Gesellschaft" were clearly interwoven into my fate. But I was not in any way interwoven into their fate. They saw me appear in Berlin, in their circle, learned that I wanted to edit the "Magazin" and work for the "Freie literarische Gesellschaft"; but did not understand why I should do this. Because the way I walked around among them to their souls' eyes, there was nothing tempting for them to go deeper into me. Although there was no trace of theory in me, to their theoretical dogmatizing my spiritual work seemed like something theoretical. That was something that they, as "artistic natures", believed they should have no interest in.

[ 31 ] But I got to know an artistic movement in its representatives through direct observation. It was no longer as radical as those that appeared in Berlin at the end of the eighties and in the early nineties. Nor was it as radical as Otto Brahms' theatrical transformation, which presented full naturalism as the salvation of art. It was without such a summarizing conviction of art. It was based more on what flowed together from the will and talents of the individual personalities, but which also completely lacked a unified stylistic striving.

[ 32 ] My position within this circle became emotionally uncomfortable because of the feeling that I knew why I was there and the others did not.