The Karma of Vocation
GA 172
4 November 1916, Dornach
Lecture I
Tomorrow I shall begin my discussion of the problems related to the connection of the spiritual scientific impulses with various unclarified tasks of the present time, and the influence that spiritual science must exert on individual, especially scientific, problems. Then I should like to refer to what I may call, in the sense of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the karma of human vocation.
Today I shall take as my point of departure something that seemingly has little to do with that theme, but it will afford an opportunity to connect various related matters. I shall endeavor to point out the element in Goethe's life that characterizes him especially as a personality of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and much to which I have recently referred will, of course, be echoed in my remarks. I should like to bring before your souls the very facts pertaining to this personality that will enable anyone to distinguish important phenomena of the advancing post-Atlantean cultural epoch. In relation to the spiritual interests of humanity, the life and personality of Goethe are comprehensive and decisive to an extent that can hardly be ascribed to any other individual. Still, it may also be said that, in spite of much that has occurred, his life and personality have had the least possible effect on our lives. This, however, must be attributed to the very nature of our modern culture. It may be asked how it can possibly be said that the life of Goethe has remained without effect. Are not his works known? Has not an edition of his works, consisting of hundreds of volumes, been published recently? Did not his published letters number six or seven thousand by the turn of the century, and today number almost ten thousand? Is there not a wealth of literature concerning Goethe, one might almost say in every civilized language? Do not his works continue to be produced on stage? Is not his major work, Faust, brought again and again before the minds of men?
Now, I have often referred recently to the strange error of an illustrious contemporary scholar, which is really far more symptomatic of the character of our time than one might assume. A dominant scientist, this scholar speaks of the significance of the scientific world conception in such a way that he presents it as being the most brilliant, not only of our age, but of all ages in human history. He concludes that although it is hard to prove that we live in the best of all worlds, it is certain to the scientist, at least, that today we humans live in the best of all epochs, and we might exclaim in the words of Goethe:
‘Tis delightful to transport
Oneself into the spirit of the past,
To see in times before us how a wise man thought,
And what a glorious height we have achieved at last.’1 These words are spoken by Faust's student Wagner in Faust, Part I, lines 570–573. The German text reads as follows:
Verzeiht: Es ist ein gross Ergotzen
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen
zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
und wie wir's dann so herrlich weit gebracht.
The German word "Ergötzen" connotes a passive and fleeting delight and is a contrast to the activating joy (“Erquickung“) Faust experienced in line 568. Wagner's conclusion in line 573 symbolizes the shallow optimism of the materialistic Enlightenment. Wagner himself is incapable of true spiritual perception.
Except when noted otherwise, quotations of Goethe's works are from translations by Ann Swanwick.
This noted scientist2 Svante Arrhenius (1859–1927), Swedish physicist, chemist, and astronomer, was the author of Die Vorstellungen vom Weltgebdude im Wandel der Zeiten [Conceptions of the Structure of the World in the Changing Course of the Ages] (Leipzig, 1908). The foreword of this book contains the quote from Faust. is gravely in error; he presents this as his own innermost sentiment and believes that he is thereby associating himself with Goethe, who is renowned for his knowledge of the world and of man. But he is really associating himself with Wagner, whom Goethe sets up as a foil to the Faust figure. Yet such a blunder contains at least a good bit of the honesty of our age because this person speaks more genuinely than the numerous people who, in quoting Goethe, have Faust on their tongues, but really have an undisguised Wagner attitude of mind. As a basis for subsequent reflections, let us, then, bring up before our mind's eye the life of Goethe as a spiritual phenomenon.
If we wish to study human life in connection with the important question of destiny, if we study the questions of karma, we should remember that Goethe was born in a city and under conditions clearly of much meaning for his life. The family of Goethe's father had come to Frankfurt in the seventeenth century, whereas his mother's family, the Textors, was old, established, and highly respected, so much so that from it the mayors of Frankfurt were chosen. This fact alone signifies the respect enjoyed by the family at that time. Goethe's father was a man with an extraordinarily strong sense of duty, but for a man of his time, he also possessed a broad range of interests. He had traveled in Italy and representations of important Roman creations, about which he liked to talk, hung on all the walls of his Patrician Frankfurt home. What was dominant in the French culture of his time completely permeated the life of Frankfurt and most intimately influenced Goethe's home. The important world events were part of the life in his home, and his father took a deep interest in them. Goethe's mother, moreover, was a woman of the most spontaneous human sentiment, sharing directly in everything that connects human nature with the legendary, the fabulous, everything that lifts man aloft above the commonplace as if on the wings of poetic fantasy.
In Goethe's boyhood days it was much more possible to grow up unconfused by those disturbing influences that affect children today because they are dragged into school at a relatively early age. This did not happen to young Goethe; he developed extraordinarily freely in his parents' home under the austere but never harsh influence of his father and his poetically endowed mother. In later years he could recall with inner happiness these years of his boyhood and childhood that led to a ripe humanness. Many things that we read today in Goethe's story of his life, Poetry and Truth, though decked out in a somewhat pedantic humor, have more meaning than may be supposed. In telling how he practiced the piano,3 See Goethe's Poetry and Truth, IV. there is a profoundly human significance; the fingers of his hands, as if playing mythological roles, become soul-endowed, independent figures. They become Thumbling, Pointerling—I say this without sentimentality—and acquire certain mystical relations to the tones. This indicates how Goethe was to be guided into life as a complete human being. Not only a piece of this man, the head, should be guided, as so often happens, one-sidedly into life to be followed by the support of the rest of the body, developed through all sorts of athletics and sports; but, on the contrary, the body permeated by spirit to its very fingertips should be related with the outer world.
We must take into account from the very first the marked individuality of the innate endowments and nature of Goethe. From his earliest youth, everything pointed to a definite orientation of his life. As he grows in childhood, he is just as strongly inclined to follow with complete absorption the charming and stirring fairy tales and other narratives of his mother, thus even as a boy bringing his fantasy into living activity, as he is also inclined to escape from her and especially from his austere father. Slipping away into the narrow alleys, he would observe all sorts of things and also become entangled in varied situations through which he experienced in vital sentiments and emotions much that is stored up in human karma. His stern father guides the boy in a certain matter-of-fact way to what people in those days thought could provide support and direction in life. The father is a jurist who has grown up among, and is permeated with, Roman points of view; the son's soul, too, absorbs these views. In this process, however, through viewing the works and treasures of Roman art that represented what is essentially Roman, there was kindled in the boyish soul a certain aspiration for what had been created in the culture of Rome.
Everything tended to situate Goethe in a quite definite way within the life of his time. In this way, he became, between the third and fourth centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean period, a personality bearing within him all the impulses of that period. Early on, he becomes a self-sustained personality, living out of his own nature, free of everything that binds a man in a fixed, pedantic way to those certain forms of one or another group of social ties. He learns to know social relationships in such a way that they affect him, but he is not united with them. He always keeps a certain isolated pedestal upon which he stands and from which he can establish connections with everything. From the very beginning, however, unlike so many others, he does not excessively identify himself with anything or with the environing circumstances. To be sure, all this results from a peculiarly favorable karma in which, when considered objectively, we shall find a solution for profound questions and problems regarding karma in general.
After Goethe had been introduced by his father to the field of jurisprudence, he was sent to the University of Leipzig, which he entered in 1765 at a relatively early age. We must not forget that when he joined this university life he was not tormented and exhausted by those strenuous exercises that must be suffered for an even longer period of time by young people in our day who are trying to pass the battery of final examinations at the conclusion of high school, the Abitur. After having passed their examinations, these young people are anxious to wipe the most recent learning experiences from their minds and enter a university in order to enjoy life. No, young Goethe had not entered the University of Leipzig simply to idle away his time but, nevertheless, he was not above skipping lectures and using the time saved for something else, as was done by many students. However, as he enlisted in the lofty and famous scientific life of the university, he came into circles that had never failed to awaken a longing in him whenever he had heard about them. Indeed, he knew above all that the famous Gottsched4 Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) was a writer and a Professor of Literature in Leipzig. He is best known for his efforts to reform the German theater and for having established rules for drama that conformed to French models. worked at the university, Gottsched whose head held all the learning of the time and who expressed it in writing and orally to those associated with the contemporary culture of Leipzig. To be sure, Lessing's5 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) was the foremost poet and critic of the German Enlightenment. great impulse was still to be felt in Leipzig, but it was natural for Goethe to think that the lofty Gottsched would introduce him to the entire scope of contemporary wisdom, enabling him to study conjointly jurisprudence and philosophy and whatever else a man of the world might derive from theology and learning regarding supernatural things.
Goethe, however, who possessed without doubt a certain sense for aesthetics, was slightly disillusioned when he first called on Gottsched. He appeared at Gottsched's door. I do not know whether or not the servant sensed something of Goethe's nature, but he admitted him directly into the presence of Gottsched without taking the time to announce him in the proper manner. So Goethe came upon the great man without his wig, standing there quite baldheaded. To a learned man in the year 1765 this was something quite dreadful. Goethe, who was sensitive to such things, had to witness how Gottsched seized his wig with a graceful turn and jammed it on his head, and how with his other hand he slapped his servant on the face. Goethe's enthusiasm was a little chilled. But he was still more chilled by the fact that Gottsched's entire demeanor corresponded little with that for which he longed.
Nor did Gellert's6 Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert (1715–1769) was a Prussian poet of the German Enlightenment. moralistic lectures speak to him of the comprehensive intellectual horizons he desired. Therefore, he soon turned his attention more to the medical and scientific lectures, which were in a way continued in the home of Professor Ludwig, where he took his lunch and where much of a similar nature was discussed. It cannot really be said that Goethe “studied thoroughly jurisprudence, medicine, philosophy and, unfortunately, also theology”7 Faust, Part I, lines 1-3. Faust reviews his past education and questions his knowledge. in Leipzig, but he got a view of them and, most important, it was in Leipzig that he absorbed many a scientific concept of his time. After having busied himself with the sciences, having experienced various aspects of life, and having been involved in various affairs, he then became so ill that he stood face to face with death. Such things must be taken fully into account by one who considers the human being in a spiritual scientific way. We must realize how much passed through his soul as he actually faced death because of extremely severe and recurring hemorrhaging. He was weakened, had to return home, and could not resume his university studies for some time.
When Goethe did continue his studies in Strassburg, he joined the circle of an important personality who became of exceptional significance to him. In order to judge with what feelings he met this personality, we must recall that, when he returned to Frankfurt under the influence of those inner experiences through which he had passed in Leipzig when he was face to face with death, he had already begun to enter more deeply, through association with various persons, into a mystical experience and a mystical conception of the world. He had immersed himself in mystic, occult writings and sought in a youthful way to elaborate a systematic world conception that took its point of departure in mystical—one might say, mystic-cabalistic—points of view. Even then he endeavored to learn “what secret force/ dwells in the world and rules its course”8 The translation is from Walter Kaufmann, Goethe's Faust (Anchor Books: 1963), p. 95. This pronouncement in the third scene of Part I, lines 382–383, reveals Faust's search for a cohesive spiritual force that holds the universe together. Later in the poem he admits that he has been seeking this knowledge through alchemy. and to open himself to the influence of “every working force and seed.”9 Lines 384–385 in Faust, Part I; cf. footnotes 8 and 35. The German word “Samen“ [seed] refers to a term used in alchemy, but it is not certain that the word “Wirkungskraft“ [working force] does. Some scholars think Goethe invented the word. He was unwilling merely “to trade in words,” as he had seen this done in Leipzig.
Then he came to Strassburg where he could again attend lectures on science, and this is what he did at first. Jurisprudence, which was so dear to his father but less so to him, would be taken care of somehow, no doubt, but his most urgent impulse was to investigate how various laws of nature conform to one another. As he was once ascending a flight of stairs, he met a personality who immediately made a tremendous impression on him, not only through his external appearance, but also through an inner light that radiated through a highly intelligent countenance. Externally, a man approached him who had, indeed, somewhat the appearance of a priest, but who wore his long overcoat in such a curious way that the train was stuffed into his hind pockets. The man who made such a grand impression on10 Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was a famous German theologian and cultural philosopher.
Goethe now entered vitally into all that then stirred tempestuously in Herder, and that was indeed a good deal. One might say that Herder bore within him an entirely new world conception. Basically, what had never before been undertaken, Herder bore it brilliantly within himself; that is, the endeavor to trace the phenomena of the world from the simplest entity, the simplest lifeless thing, through the plant world to the animal kingdom, on to man, to history, and even to the divine governance of the world in history. At that time, Herder's mind already harbored a vast, comprehensive view of the world, and he spoke with enthusiasm about his new ideas; but he also on occasion spoke with indignation against all pedantic, traditional ideas. Many of these conversations with Herder animated Goethe. That everything in the world is in process of evolution and that a spiritual plan of the universe sustains all evolution was a connection Herder perceived as no one ever had before. But this was still growing in him, and he had not yet expressed it on paper. Goethe received it in this state of being born and shared in Herder's aspiration, contemplation, and struggle. We may say that Herder wished to trace the evolution of the world from a grain of dust through all the kingdoms of nature up to God. He then did this in a splendid comprehensive fashion, as far as was necessary at that time, in his incomparable work, Ideas for a Philosophy of Human History. Here we can really see that Herder's mind grasped everything that was then known of the facts of nature and of the human realm, but all this knowledge was condensed into a world conception permeated with spirit.
Beside this, Goethe received through Herder an idea of Spinoza's contribution to the evolution of a new concept of the world, and this worked on him. The leaning that Goethe showed throughout his life toward Spinoza11 Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) was a Dutch philosopher, a rationalist, and a monist. His Ethics, published posthumously in 1677, exerted a profound influence on Goethe. was planted in him at that time in Strassburg by Herder.12 In the introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings I (1883), pp. LV-LVIII, Rudolf Steiner depicts Goethe's relationship to Spinoza. Fritz Jacobi helped to deepen Goethe's knowledge of Spinoza's philosophy in the summer of 1774. After Goethe and Herder had renewed their friendship in Weimar, the two men and Frau von Stein studied Spinoza together. Goethe the Scientist (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1950).
Herder was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare,13 William Shakespeare (1564–1616). which was something unheard of at that time. Just think how this peculiar polarity of souls must have worked between Herder and Goethe when Goethe, yearning to perceive these things that contemporary culture could not give him, found in Herder a revolutionary spirit of the first rank storming the culture of his day. Up to that time Goethe had learned to revere that art of form that is found in Corneille and Racine,14 Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) established a theory of French tragedy. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699) was a famous writer of French classical tragedy. and had taken all this in as one takes in things that are said to be the most important in the world. But he had absorbed all this with a certain inner indignation. When Herder introduced him to Shakespeare, it worked on his mind like a breath of fresh air. Here was a poet free from everything formal—who created characters directly from human individualities; who possessed nothing of all the unity of time, place, and action that Goethe had learned to value so highly, but who presented human beings in his plays. We may say that a revolutionary cultural mood came to life in Goethe, now baptized in the name of Shakespeare, which we may express thus: I want to comprehend what constitutes the human being himself, not how he is put into the interrelationships of the world by formal rules and laws, or by the network of unities of situation, time, place, and action.
In this regard, he was able to become acquainted with men then in Strassburg who sought to look into the deeper and more intimate aspects of the life of the soul. One of them was the remarkable Jung-Stilling,15 Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817) was a German physician and writer. for example, who was studying the occult aspects of the life of the soul and knew how to describe them thoroughly. His life history, his description of what he calls the “gray man” who rules in the subterranean sphere of the earth, belongs among the finest descriptions of occult relationships. It may be said that Goethe was introduced by Herder to all that belongs to the life of nature and history, the aesthetic in life, and by Jung-Stilling to the occult aspects of human life, with which he had already familiarized himself in Frankfurt through an exhaustive study of Swedenborg.16 Emanuel von Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish natural scientist and theosopher.
Such ideas fermented in Goethe's mind in connection with what had been passed on to him as the laws of nature while he was attending lectures on the sciences in Strassburg. Then he began to see the great problems and questions of human life. He looked deeply into what can be cognized and what can be willed by man, and into the relation between human nature and universal nature. Earlier in Frankfurt he had become acquainted with the work of Paracelsus17 Paracelsus, Theophrastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541) was a Swiss physician, natural scientist and alchemist. in connection with all this. And thus, a profound longing to perceive “every working force and seed” took a hold of him, especially in Strassburg along with all that he otherwise experienced there.
It must not be imagined that, in Strassburg, Goethe simply trifled away his time during his frequent visits to the pastor's home in Sesenheim,18 The reference is to Goethe's relationship with the pastor's daughter, Friederike Brion (1752–1813). although I certainly do not want to deprecate the importance of these visits. He was always capable of uniting life in the depths of man's will and cognition with life in association with the immediately human and ordinary, and with every human destiny.
After he had defended his dissertation, he became a sort of Doctor of Jurisprudence—Licentiate19 Goethe received the degree of “Licentiate of Law,“ a title which in Germany was regarded as being equal to the doctorate. From then on, Goethe used the title, “Doctor juris.“ and Doctor of Jurisprudence. He thereby satisfied his father and could return home. The practice of law began, but there was a notable disharmony in the soul of this man who had to study legal documents at the Supreme Court in Wetzlar that were often literally hundreds of years old. There “law and rights like an endless illness” dragged along their weary way. Even in later times much of this sort of thing could still be experienced elsewhere. In a place where I grew up—permit me to interject this—I was able to experience the following. In the 1870s when I was a boy, we once heard that a man was to be imprisoned—in the seventies! He was a much respected man who had a rather large business for such a place. He was imprisoned for a year and a half, I think, because in 1848 he had thrown stones at an inn during the revolution! The lawsuit had actually continued from 1848 when, as a young boy, this person had thrown stones at an inn, until his present age. In 1873 he was imprisoned for a year and a half. It was, perhaps, not so bad then as when Goethe studied the documents at the Supreme Court, but it was still bad enough.
Goethe's work gave his father immense pleasure, and he shared with counsel and help the problems Goethe had to solve with the dusty documents. This is not to say, however, that Goethe was lacking in skill as a lawyer. That was by no means the case. He made his contribution as an attorney and his work at that time belies the recurring belief that a great spirit, living in the world of ideals, must be deficient in practical life. He was not at all lacking as an attorney. When lawyers these days point to their busy schedules and call attention to the fact that they have no time to read Goethe's works, one should point out to them that Goethe was unquestionably just as good a lawyer as they. That can be documented, as can many things related to his work. But in addition to being just as practical as only a practical man can be, Goethe at this time also carried within him the idea for his book, Götz von Berlichingen.20 Götz von Berlichingen (1480–1562) came from an old Swabian family. He became the leader of the peasant uprising in 1525, fought against the Turks in 1542, and against France in 1544. His autobiography was published in 1731. Indeed, he bore within him the idea for his Faust, too, which had already emerged in Frankfurt from his scientific studies and later from his acquaintance with Herder and Jung-Stilling.
Götz von Berlichingen—Gottfried von Berlichingen—evidences at once, as Goethe forms it into a work of art, what his own nature really was. Goethe's way of being introduces a new element into the intellectual activity of humanity. As artist or poet, he cannot be compared with Dante, Homer, or Shakespeare. He stands in a different relationship to poetic creation, and this is bound up, in turn, with the way his mode of being relates to the age in which he lives. This age, as it was expressed in his immediate, and also in his more comprehensive, environment, did not permit such a spirit as his to blend wholly with the period. The life of the state that we today take for granted did not exist around him. After all, he lived in a region where certain territories had, to a high degree, taken on individual forms. How this came about is not important, but he did not live in a large state. No great all-encompassing conformity spread over the area where he lived and grew up. The life about him was not narrowly organized and thus he could experience it everywhere in its individual manifestations and simultaneously expose himself to its universal meaning. And this is what distinguishes Goethe from other poets.
One day a book came into his hands that is, indeed, badly written but that interested him immensely. It was Autobiography of the Iron-handed Gottfried of Berlichingen, which dealt with that strange individual who participated in so many events of the sixteenth century, but whose part in them was of such a peculiar nature. When we read this autobiography, we see how, under the Emperor Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, he came into contact with every possible kind of person and took part in every possible kind of quarrel and battle during the first half of the century.
His activities, however, always come about in such a way that he takes part in one event, is wholly involved in it and expresses himself completely therein. Then he becomes involved in another event in an entirely different role; he is drawn into that, fights for the most varied issues, and is later captured. After he has bound himself by an oath not to take any further part in quarrels and is thereby left at peace in his castle in middle South Germany, he becomes involved in the peasant uprising. All this, however, occurs in such a way that we see he is never forced by the events; but what holds these disparate episodes together is really his personality, the character of Gottfried himself. When one reads the autobiography of this man, I will not say that the events in which he is involved bore one to death, but we are not really interested in his quarrels and battles. Yet, in spite of all the boredom of the single events, we are always interested in his personality, so strong in character and so rich in content.
These traits, however, are just what attracted Goethe to Gottfried of Berlichingen. Thus, he could see the substance, the life, and the struggle of the sixteenth century concentrated in one personality as he could never otherwise have seen it. This was what he needed. To him, this meant taking up history and becoming acquainted with it. The way in which one or another historian, after having searched through attics and wastebaskets, telescopes together in a few “pragmatic maxims”21 The reference is to Faust, Part I, line 584: “mit trefflichen Maximen.“ Faust, in lines 575–585, replies to Wagner's remarks (cf. footnote 1):
My friend, the times that antecede
Our own are books safely protected
by seven seals. What spirit of the time you call
Is but the scholar's spirit, after all,
In which times past are now reflected.
In truth, it is often pathetic,
And when one sees it, one would run away:
A garbage pail, perhaps a storage attic
At best a pompous moralistic play
With wonderfully edifying quips,
Most suitable to come from puppets' lips.
The translation of these lines is by Walter Kaufman (cf. footnote 8); he renders “pragmatic maxims“ with “edifying quips.“ individual historical periods would certainly not have suited Goethe. But to see a man standing alive in the midst of it, to see reflected in a human soul what is otherwise not of special interest, this had some meaning for him. He took this tedious, badly written autobiography of Gottfried of Berlichingen, read it, and really changed its content remarkably little. For this reason, he called the first version of this drama, if we choose so to designate it, The History of Gottfried of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Dramatized. He did not use the term drama, but dramatized. He had really only dramatized the history of Gottfried of Berlichingen, but in such a way that the whole period became alive through this man. Bear in mind, it was the sixteenth century, the time of the dawn of the post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe perceived this time through the character of Gottfried of Berlichingen, the man who grew up in middle South Germany.
At that time a fragment of life had already passed through Goethe's mind that is historical but seen really within actual life, not in what is “historic.” It would not have been possible for him then, with all those problems of humanity in his mind to which I have alluded, to take just any individual and dramatize his life according to history. However, to dramatize the stammering autobiography of a being who worked upon him with complete humanness in such a way that it would reflect the dramatic art as revealed to him through the reading of Shakespeare, that was something he could do. So he became known in certain circles that were interested in this sort of thing since he had lifted a fragment of the past, which was a book sealed with seven seals, into his own present world. Of course, just as little was then known about what Goethe disclosed by means of the badly written history of Gottfried of the Sixteenth Century as is known today by many a pastor about the super-sensible life.
Goethe had taken hold of human life. He had to, since his life style was one that made him blend with life as it revealed itself directly to him. To be sure, he continued to stand on an isolated pedestal, but as life touched him, he became one with it.
Goethe was to be brought into union with life in still another way. There is little conception today of something that constituted a profound trait of the soul life in the so-called cultured world surrounding Goethe. People had become bound, as it were, to what had come about since the sixteenth century. In public life, the laws and statutes had been handed down like an inherited disease,22 Faust, Part I, lines 1972–1975, trans. by Walter Kaufmann. Mephisto says to the freshman student:
The laws and statutes of a nation
Are an inherited disease,
From generation unto generation
And place to place they drag on by degrees. but the souls of men were, nevertheless, touched in a certain way by what we recognize as the impulse of souls of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The result was that, for the most deeply endowed natures, a profound disharmony ensued between what they sensed within the soul and what took place in the external world. This, to be sure, led to a marked sentimentality in experience.
To sense as strongly as possible how wide the gulf was between the actual world and what a true and warm human soul could feel, to express this contrast with all possible emphasis, was felt by many to be a profound necessity. The eye was directed toward the life of the world in which various ranks of society and the people with their various interests lived. But they often had little soul contact with each other in this public life. Yet, when these human beings were alone, they sought for a special life of the soul existing apart from external life, and for them to be able to say to themselves that this external life was wholly unlike all that the soul would strive after and hope for was felt to be a great relief. To get into such a sentimental mood was a characteristic of the age. Life, as it was publicly manifest, was felt to be bad and defective. People strove to search for life where it had not been besmirched by indifferent public existence, and where they could really enter in a vital way into the silent working and weaving of the world of nature, the peaceful life of animals and plants.
From this a mood gradually arose that affected many cultured spirits. To be able to weep over the disharmonies of the world afforded a tremendous satisfaction. Those writers were especially honored whose works tended to induce a flood of tears to fall upon the pages that were being read. To be unhappy constituted for many the very happiness for which they longed. Someone takes a walk in the forest; he then returns and, sitting quite still in his room, reflects: “How many, many little flowers and tiny worms that I did not notice and trod under foot have sacrificed their lives to this walk of mine!” Then he weeps hot tears into his handkerchief over the discord between nature and human life. Letters written to beloved friends who were as sentimental as the writer begin with such expressions as “Dearly beloved Friend,” and this, too, is moistened by a tear that falls on the paper and hastens away with the letter as a precious testimony to the friend.
This life still permeated a large part of the cultured world in the second half of the eighteenth century. It also surrounded Goethe, and he had much understanding of it, for there was much truth in this feeling of the disharmony between the frequently unconscious or vague feelings of the soul and what was afforded by the outer world, and Goethe could feel the truth in it. In those days, the silent plan of life between souls was not at all similar to what took place in the world as a whole. He had to go through this because he could be, and needed to be, touched by everything. But, in his contact with these things, he had to draw health-giving forces from his inner self repeatedly.
And thus in his youthful novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, he wrote himself free of this whole temper of the age, which we call Siegwart,23 Siegwart, a sentimental novel by Johann Martin Miller, was published 1776, two years after Goethe's Werther, and immediately became a best seller. or Werther, fever, and which had taken possession of a large part of educated society. In the figure of Werther he concealed to such a degree as to come near to suicide what he had shared of this sentimental mood and the disharmonies of the world. It is for this reason that he has Werther end his life through suicide. It is well to consider that, on the one hand, it was possible for Goethe to be bound up with everything in the souls of those about him, even though he was so firmly rooted in his own individuality. On the other hand, what he was writing about cleansed his soul and at the same time became a work of art. After he had finished Werther, he was completely cured of him, whereas in many cases other persons were only then possessed because through the influence of the Werther, Werther fever raged in the most widespread circles. Goethe, however, was cured.
In estimating such things, we must not overlook the fact that Goethe possessed a broad inner horizon so that he could, in a sense, live within himself in polaric contrasts. He went through the Werther sickness and wrote himself free of it through The Sorrows of Young Werther. Yet, there is truth in what he wrote to a friend at that time. He sketched a picture of his loftily sentimental mood, but also said there was a Goethe other than the suicidal Goethe who harbored thoughts of hanging himself and who entertained thoughts for which he ought to be hanged. There was also a carnival Goethe,24 The reference is to Goethe's letter from Frankfurt to Countess Auguste von Stollberg-Stollberg, dated February 13, 1775. who could put on all sorts of masks and disguises, and this Goethe also really lived artistically. We need only allow the more or less fragmentary dramatic creations of that time, Satyros and Pater Brey, to work upon us, and we shall be able to sense the scope of his inner life: on the one hand, the sentimentality of Werther, on the other, the humor of the Satyros and Pater Brey.
Satyros, the deified forest devil who develops a veritable pantheism and does not enjoy the fruits of culture, wants to return to nature in genuine Rousseau fashion. Raw chestnuts—what a royal repast! Such is the ideal of Satyros. But he is really a philosopher of nature who is quite familiar with its secrets, and—if you will excuse me—he wins his followers especially among women, is deified, but finally behaves quite badly. Here all false yearning after authoritarian belief is ridiculed with immense humor. Then in Pater Brey we see the cult of false prophets play a part and, under the mask of holiness, do all kinds of things. This, indeed, is not ridiculed but objectively presented with much humor. Here Goethe is a humorist in the most vital sense—a blunt humorist, expressing it all from the same constitution of soul that created Werther. He was able to do this not because he was superficial but because he was profound enough to grasp the polarities of human life.
Especially the Werther book gained Goethe a far-reaching reputation. It became well-known rather early,25 Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was published in 1774. One year later, Goethe received Duke Kark August's invitation to Weimar and arrived there on November 7, 1775. and it was really this work that led the Archduke of Weimar to take an interest in him. The Gottfried of Berlichingen made a decided impression, but not among those who then considered themselves capable of understanding culture, art, and poetry. “An abominable imitation of bad English works; a disgusting platitude,” said an eminent man of the time about this book.26 Frederick the Great in De la litterature alemande (1780).
It was in 1775 that Goethe was able to transfer his activities to a different field of operation, to Weimar. The Duke of Weimar27 Karl August, Duke of Weimar (1757–1828), son of Duchess Anna Amalia. became acquainted with Goethe and called him there, where he became the minister of state.
Nowadays, after the event, people have the feeling that Goethe had already written the Gottfried of Berlichingen, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and even carried with him to Weimar a large part of his Faust; they see in all this his most important accomplishment. He himself did not consider them to be of first importance at that time, but they were only the scrapings of his life. The Duke, likewise, did not appoint him court poet, but minister of state, which caused the pedants in Weimar to be beside themselves with anger. The Duke had to address a sort of epistolary decree to his people in which he justified himself by saying that Goethe was in his eyes simply a greater man than the pedants. The fact that he was made minister of state without having been previously—what shall I say?—under-councillor and upper-councillor, required at least some justification from the Duke, and that is what he produced.
Goethe was by no means a bad statesman and performed his ministerial duties not as part time work, but as matters of first importance. He was a far better statesman than many a minister who was not a Goethe in our sense. Anyone who personally convinces himself—as I may say with all modesty that I have done—of the way in which he performed his ministerial obligations will know that he was an excellent minister for the Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar and was completely devoted to his duties. Being a minister was his chief occupation, and he achieved a good deal during his ten years in this capacity.
He had brought with him a part of his Faust, which is listed in the collected works under the delectable title, The Primordial Faust (Ur-Faust). All that we might call the upward vision of Faust was already alive in this version. How directly had Faust been taken from the life that touches every human soul!
In Weimar it was evident again that Goethe could not be completely captured by his environment. We often become acquainted with persons who are, in greater or lesser degree, merely the exponents of their files. Goethe, however, was not merely the exponent of the numerous documents he drew up as a Weimar functionary. In addition, he acclimated himself to the conditions in Weimar and, even though he remained on his isolated pedestal, he was nevertheless touched by everything human. The immediately human took form with him as art. Thus we see how the character of a woman, Frau von Stein,28 Charlotte Freifrau von Stein (1742–1827). with whom he formed a friendship, became a life problem for him. It was fundamentally his immediate view of her character that was the cause of his dramatizing the figure of Iphigenia. He wished to put into artistic form what worked on him in the character of Frau von Stein, and the legend of Iphigenia was only the means for solving this life problem. The relationships at the Weimar court, his life with Duke Karl August, whose character was so strangely endowed, his view of the fate of the Duchess, and other connected circumstances, all became problems to him. Life became a question. He again needed a subject in order to master these relationships in an artistic way, and to do so he took that of Tasso. It was, however, really the Weimar situation that he artistically mastered.
It is, of course, impossible to enter here into the many details of Goethe's mental life, yet I wish to place these facts before you in order that we may form a spiritual scientific contact with them as examples. Even in the most early period of his stay in Weimar, through the various circumstances into which he was brought, the possibility arose of deepening his studies in natural science by independent work. He continued his plant studies and began anatomical studies at the University of Jena. He endeavored in everything to confirm in detail the ideas of the universal interrelationships he had received from Herder. He wished to study the connections within the plant kingdom and what was spiritually alive in plants. He wished to hold the kinship among the animals before his mind and to find the path upward from them to man. He wished to study the idea of evolution in direct connection with actual natural objects. You see, Goethe had taken up Herder's great idea to study the evolutionary phrases of all entities, a unitary spiritual process of becoming. In this thought he and Herder then stood practically alone because those who dominated the intellectual life of the time thought quite otherwise; everything was pigeonholed.
All intellectual activity can be found to work in two polaric directions: toward separation and toward union. It was important for Goethe and Herder to bring unity into diversity and multiplicity; others were simply content with neat classifications and clever division. For these people, the problem was to show, for example, how man is distinguished from the animal. Man, it was said, has no intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw in which the incisors are rooted, but only a unitary jawbone; only the animals have an intermaxillary bone. Goethe was certainly not materialistically inclined, and he had no desire to establish materialism. The thought, however, that the inner harmony of nature could not be confirmed because of such a detail offended his intelligence. He therefore undertook to prove, in opposition to all scientific authorities, that man also has an intermaxillary bone, and he succeeded. He thus arrived at his first important scientific treatise entitled, An Intermaxillary Bone Is to Be Ascribed to Man as Well as to the Animal.29 This treatise was written in 1784 and was published in Jena in 1786. He had thereby introduced a single detail into the evolution of thought with which he opposed the entire scientific world, and which is now an obvious, undisputed truth.
Goethe appears, not as the poet of Werther, of Gottfried, and of Faust, or as the poet in whose head Iphigenia and Tasso came into being, but as one possessing a profound insight into the interrelationships of nature, so that he now studies and labors as a genuine research scientist. We have here, not a one-sided scientist, poet, or minister; he is a complete human being aspiring in all directions.
Goethe lived in Weimar for about ten years and then could no longer suppress his yearning to go to Italy. So in the late eighties he undertook a journey to Italy as if it were an escape. We must not forget that he then, for the first time, entered into situations that he had longed for and cherished from his earliest youth. This was his first introduction to the world at large; you must remember that he had never before seen any other large city except Frankfurt. We must also not forget that Rome was the first city through which he viewed the theater of world history. This must be included in his life and also that he felt the whole stream of life pulsating in Rome as it had risen in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe united what then worked upon him as world history with the comprehensive world conception germinating in his mind. He traced the idea throughout the multiplicity of forms of plants, stones, and animals he had compared, and now followed them over the Apennine peninsula. He endeavored to confirm the idea of the "archetypal plant" over the broadest area and was able to do so. Every stone and plant interested him. How the multifold comes into form as the unit, this he allowed to work upon him.
Goethe also exposed himself to the influence of the great works of art, which revealed to him ancient Hellenism in its last feeble outgrowth. As he directed his objective glance over the multiplicity of nature, so also could he feel in the depths of his soul all the intimacies of the great art of the Renaissance. One need only read the words he spoke upon viewing Raphael's Saint Cecilia in Bologna, how, as he looked at it, he experienced in a wonderfully profound and intense manner all those feelings that lead man out of the sensory world into the super-sensible. One need only read in his Journey to Italy how, as he gradually deepened his ideas of nature, he sensed in the presence of works of art that man really creates such works only when art works creatively from the depths of life. Greek art, he said, now became clear to him: “I have an intimation that they proceed according to the same laws by which nature proceeds and which I am tracing,”30 Goethe's letter from Rome, dated January 28, 1787. and “These lofty works of art, being also the highest works of nature, have been created by man according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary, all mere fancy, falls away; there31 Goethe's letter from Rome, dated September 6, 1787. So he wrote to his Weimar friends.
Goethe took into himself something stupendous, and what he had previously felt and surmised now took form. Scenes of great importance in his Faust were composed at this time in Rome. Iphigenia and Tasso had already been sketched and partly completed in Weimar. Now he rewrote them in verse. As he exposed himself constantly to classic works of art, he was now able to find the classic style that he wished to pour into these works. This was a regeneration, an actual rebirth of the soul, that he experienced in Italy. Thus, something peculiar now took form in his soul. He sensed a profound contrast between the aspirations of his age in what he had observed in his environment and what he had learned to feel as the loftiest expression of the purely human.
Goethe returned to Weimar to the world where works had been produced that entranced everybody. Schiller's The Robbers,32 The Robbers had been published in 1781. In his Glückliches Ereignis [Happy Event] (1817), Goethe writes: “After my return from Italy, where I had endeavored to educate myself to a more definite and pure understanding of all branches of the arts and where I did not care what in those days was going on in Germany, I discovered that some recent, as well as some older, poetic works were in high repute and had widespread appeal. Unfortunately, they included some works that I found extremely disgusting such as Heinse's Ardinghello and Schiller's The Robbers.“ Heinse's Ardinghello, and other such literary reproductions seemed to him barbaric stuff; they contradicted everything that was now rooted and living in his soul. He felt within like an utterly lonely person and had, indeed, been almost completely forgotten when a path was opened for the friendship with Schiller.33 Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a dramatist, poet and historian and is regarded as one of the greatest German literary figures. The approach was difficult because nothing was more repugnant to him when he first returned than Schiller's youthful works. But the two men discovered one another, and in such a way as to establish a bond of friendship almost without counterpart in history. They stimulated one another, and Hermann Grimm rightly remarks that in their relationship we have, not only Goethe plus Schiller, but Schiller plus Goethe as well.34 Hermann Grimm in the 21st “Goethe“ lecture: “When two superbly gifted men combine in common endeavors, their strength is not doubled but multiplied fourfold. Each one has the other invisibly next to himself. The formula would not read G + S, but (G + S) + (S + G). The strength of one accrues to the strength of the other.“ Each became something different through the other; each enriched the other.
Profound, all-embracing human problems arose in the soul of Goethe and Schiller. What had to be resolved by the world in a political way—the vast problem of human freedom—was present before their minds as a spiritually human problem. Others gave much thought to the question of how an external institution that would guarantee man freedom in his life could be established in the world, but to Schiller the problem was: how does man find freedom within his own soul? He devoted himself to this problem in developing his unique work, Letters Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity. For Schiller the question was how man guides his soul above himself, from the ordinary status of life to a higher status. Man stands, on the one hand, within sensory nature, said Schiller; on the other, he stands face to face with the realm of logic. In neither is he free. He becomes free when he enjoys and creates aesthetically, when his thoughts develop in such a way that they are under compulsion, not of logic, but of taste and inclination, and at the same time, free of the sensible. Schiller demanded a middle position.
These Letters Regarding the Aesthetic Education of Humanity of Schiller belong among mankind's most cultivated writings. But it was a question, a human riddle, that he and Goethe had faced in thought. Goethe could not penetrate this problem philosophically in abstract thoughts as Schiller had done. He had to attack it in a living way, and he resolved it comprehensively in his own way in the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. When Schiller undertook to show philosophically how man ascends from ordinary life to a higher life, Goethe undertook to show in his fairy tale, through the interplay of spiritual forces in the human soul, how man evolves spiritually from an everyday soul life to a higher one. What Schiller brought to light in a philosophic, abstract way, Goethe presented it in a magnificent visible form in this fairy tale. This he attached to a description of external life in his novel-like piece Conversations of German Emigrants. There really came to life in the inspired friendship between Goethe and Schiller all that man proposes to himself in riddling questions about life, and that is related to Faust's explanation of why he turned to a magic interpretation of the world:
[That I might]
Her vital powers, her embryo seeds, survey,
And fling the trade in empty words away.35 Faust, Part I, lines 384–385. The German text reads as follows:
Schau alle Wirkungskraft und Samen
Und to nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
The Kaufman translation (cf. footnote 9) of this passage, although preferable as a whole, leaves “Wirkungskraft und Samen“ [vital power and embryo seed] untranslated and renders the two lines as follows:
Envisage the creative blazes
Instead of rummaging in phrases.
To do justice to Steiner's remarks, I have here used Ann Swanwick's translation of these two lines. (P.M.)
Whoever penetrates the intellectual exchanges between Goethe and Schiller and sees what at that time came to life in the spirit of these two men receives through it as yet unrecognized and unrealized spiritual treasure—a treasure which manifests the aspirations of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in an extraordinary manner. The innermost concern of the two was manifested through the way in which Schiller undertook to solve the riddle of man philosophically in his Aesthetic Letters, the way Goethe addressed himself to the realm of color in order to oppose Newton, and the ways he depicts the evolution of the human soul in the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. All this comprises comprehensive questions that were destined, it would seem, to be of vital concern to but a few people.
Even though we have wished thus far to touch only upon such facts as bear upon the life of Goethe, it must also be remarked that, although many people nowadays believe they are capable of speaking about him, for many this Goethe period belongs to the past and is a book sealed with seven seals. In a certain sense, we may really feel pleased when someone is quite honest about this. It was, of course, narrow-minded of the famous scientist Dubois-Reymond36 Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818–96) was a physiologist in Berlin. to deliver his discourse Goethe and No End. The same man, a rector of a university, who had previously described the limitations of a knowledge of nature and had made so many remarkable physiological discoveries, delivered his discourse on Goethe and No End! His remarks were narrow-minded because they arose from the opinion: “Yes, so many people talk about one who, after all, was only a dilettante; Goethe, the universal dilettante, is forever the subject of discussion. But how much have we since acquired about which he was, of course, totally ignorant—the cell theory, for example, the theory of electricity and advances in physiology!” All that was present in Dubois-Reymond's mind. “What was Goethe in comparison? People talk about his Faust as if he had given us an ideal of humanity.”
Dubois-Reymond cannot see that Goethe really did set before us an ideal for humanity. He asks: “Would it not have been better to make Faust greater than Goethe made him and more useful for humanity? Goethe places before us a wretched fellow”—Dubois-Reymond did not use this expression but what he says is approximately the same—“a wretched fellow who cannot even master his own inner problems. Then, if Faust had been a virtuous fellow, he would have married Gretchen instead of seducing her; he would have invented the electric generator and the air pump and have become a famous professor.” He says quite literally that if Faust had been a decent man, he would have married Gretchen and not seduced her. He would have invented the generator and air pump and would have performed other services for humanity and not have become such a debauched genius who got involved in all sorts of spiritistic nonsense.
Such a rectoral address, heard at the close of the nineteenth century, was certainly narrow-minded. Yet at least it is honest. We could wish that such honesty might appear more often; it is delightful because it corresponds with the truth. Thrice mendacious, however, is much of the laudation for Goethe and Faust that is brought forth by people who are happy “only when they find earthworms.” The quotations from Goethe that we often hear are really only spiritual earthworms even though they are Goethe's own words.
Precisely through the relationship of our time with such a spirit as Goethe's is it possible to study the deep untruth of the present age. Many people do nothing more than “trade in words,”37 Cf. footnote 35. even trade in the very words of Goethe, whereas his world conception contains an element of everything that leads to and must come to birth in the future evolution of mankind. As we have already suggested, this element not only unites with spiritual science, but is by its very nature already tied to spiritual science.
Erster Vortrag
Ich werde nun morgen damit beginnen, über die Probleme zu sprechen, die ich schon andeutete: über den Zusammenhang der geisteswissenschaftlichen Impulse mit mancherlei ungeklärten Aufgaben der gegenwärtigen Zeit und über den Einfluß, den Geisteswissenschaft auf einzelne, namentlich auf wissenschaftliche Probleme nehmen muß, und ich möchte dann hinweisen, wie ich schon sagte, auf das, was ich im Sinne des fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraumes nennen möchte das Karma des Berufes der Menschen.
Heute werde ich den Ausgangspunkt nehmen von etwas scheinbar, aber eben nur scheinbar damit wenig Zusammenhängendem. Aber dieser Ausgangspunkt wird die Möglichkeit bieten zu mancherlei Anknüpfungspunkten. Ich werde nämlich heute versuchen, dasjenige im Leben Goethes zu zeigen, was Goethe als eine Persönlichkeit des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes besonders charakterisiert. Manches, was ich besonders in der letzten Zeit schon angedeutet habe, wird ja allerdings dabei wieder anklingen. Allein ich möchte gerade eine auf diese Persönlichkeit bezügliche Reihe von Tatsachen vor ihre Seele eben führen, von Tatsachen, welche für jeden die Möglichkeit bieten, am unmittelbar Tatsächlichen wichtige Erscheinungen des aufgehenden fünften nachatlantischen Kulturzeitraumes sich zu charakterisieren. Ist ja Goethes Leben und Persönlichkeit etwas so Umfassendes und Einschneidendes mit Bezug auf geistige Menschheitsangelegenheiten, wie das von kaum einer anderen Persönlichkeit so leicht gesagt werden kann; und ist auf der anderen Seite, kann man sagen, für das Leben bis in unsere Tage herein trotz vielem, was geschehen ist, dieses Leben und diese Persönlichkeit Goethes so unwirksam geblieben wie nur irgend möglich. Das hängt aber mit der ganzen Eigentümlichkeit unserer neueren Kultur zusammen. Man kann sagen: Wie sollte überhaupt behauptet werden können, Goethes Leben sei unwirksam geblieben? Kennt man nicht seine Werke? Ist nicht erst in jüngster Zeit eine Goethe-Ausgabe mit Hunderten von Bänden erschienen? War nicht schon die Zahl der veröffentlichten Briefe Goethes um die Wende des 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert sechs- bis siebentausend? — und sie wird wohl heute kaum weniger als zehntausend sein. Gibt es nicht eine reiche Literatur über Goethe, man kann fast sagen, in allen Kultursprachen? Werden nicht seine Werke immer wieder und wiederum aufgeführt? Wird nicht gerade das Zentralste seiner Werke, «Faust», immer wieder und wiederum den Menschen vor die Seele geführt?
Nun, ich habe mehrfach in der letzten Zeit einen merk würdigen Irrtum eines neueren großen Gelehrten angeführt, der doch viel mehr, als man meint, symptomatisch, bezeichnend ist für unsere Gegenwart. Ein großer Naturforscher der Gegenwart, ein tonangebender Naturforscher will über dieBedeutung der naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in der Gegenwart sprechen, so, daß er diese naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung als das Glanzvollste nicht nur unserer Zeit, sondern aller Menschheitszeiten anführen will, und er schwingt sich dann auf zu dem Satze: Wenn es auch schwer zu erweisen ist, daß wir in der besten der Welten leben, sicher ist mindestens für den Naturforscher, daß wir Menschen der Gegenwart in der besten der Zeiten leben, und man könnte mit Goethe, dem großen Welt- und Menschenkenner, in die Worte ausbrechen:
...es ist ein groß Ergetzen,
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir’s dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.
Und dieser große Naturforscher irrt sich in der Weise, daß er dies als seine innerste Gesinnung angibt und glaubt, anzuknüpfen an den großen Welt- und Menschenkenner Goethe; er knüpft aber nur an den Wagner an, der von Goethe der Faust-Gestalt gegenübergestellt wird. Es liegt doch in einem solchen Irrtum wenigstens ein gut Stück Ehrlichkeit unserer Zeit, denn wahrer spricht der Mann doch als all die zahlreichen Menschen, die heute Goethe zitieren, die den «Faust» im Munde führen, aber mit echter unverfälschter Wagner-Gesinnung dies tun. Lassen wir also einmal als Grundlage für die Betrachtung Goethes Leben als geistige Erscheinung vor unseren Blicken vorüberziehen.
Sie wissen, Goethe ist in einer Stadt geboren und unter Verhältnissen, die, wenn man den Zusammenhang des Menschenlebens mit den großen Schicksalsfragen, den Karmafragen, studieren will, sich für Goethes Leben als recht bedeutsam erweisen. Im 17. Jahrhundert ist die väterliche Familie Goethes in Frankfurt am Main eingewandert. Alteingesessen ist die mütterliche Familie, angesehen ist diese mütterliche Familie in Frankfurt am Main, so angesehen, daß, was ja wirklich für das. Ansehen einer Familie in der damaligen Zeit für eine solche Stadt viel besagt, aus der Familie der Textor, aus der mütterlicherseits Goethe hervorgegangen ist, die Bürgermeister von Frankfurt gewählt wurden. Goethes Vater war ein außerordentlich von Pflichtgefühl durchsetzter Mann, aber auch ein Mann, der für die damalige Zeit weitgehende Interessen hatte. Er hatte selbst Reisen in Italien gemacht, von bedeutenden Erscheinungen der römischen Welt Nachbildungen an allen Wänden seines Frankfurter Patrizierhauses hängen, und er sprach gerne von die„sen Dingen. Und was von der Kultur der damaligen Zeit, von der ja das damalige Frankfurter Leben noch ganz durchsetzenden französischen Kultur, sich geltend machte, das spielte sich alles so ab, daß Goethes Haus daran den innigsten Anteil nahm. Die großen Welterscheinungen spielten schon herein in dieses Goethe-Haus, und Goethes Vater war innig daran interessiert. Und Goethes Mutter war eine Frau von ursprünglichster menschlicher Gesinnung, von, man möchte sagen, allerunmittelbarstem Anteil für alles dasjenige, was die menschliche Natur anknüpft an das Legendarische, das Märchenhafte, dasjenige, was den Menschen wie auf Flügeln einer poetischen, phantasievollen Gesinnung hinausträgt über das Alltägliche.
Und mehr als den Menschen in unserer Zeit war es Goethe möglich, in seiner Zeit aufzuwachsen, unbeirrt von jenen Störungen, die sich in unserer Zeit ja viel mehr einstellen als eben in der damaligen Zeit, von jenen Störungen, die sich einstellen dadurch, daß der Mensch in verhältnismäßig frühen Lebensjahren in die Schule geschleppt wird. Goethe wurde nicht in dieSchule geschleppt, sondern konnte sich frei im Elternhause entwickeln und entwickelte sich auch unter dem Einflusse des strengen, nie derben Vaters, unter dem Einfluß der poetisch veranlagten Mutter in außerordentlich freier Weise. Und er entwickelte sich so, daß er in späteren Jahren wirklich mit inniger Befriedigung an diese seine Knabenjahre, Kinderjahre, zurückdenken konnte, denn er entwickelte sich in reinem Menschentum. Manche Dinge, die man heute, nur mit einem etwas pedantischen Humor ausgestattet, in Goethes Lebensbeschreibung «Dichtung und Wahrheit» liest, haben doch eine viel größere Bedeutung, als man vielleicht denkt. Wenn Goethe selbst erzählt, wie er den Klavierunterricht absolviert hat, so ist es durchaus auf tiefe menschliche Zusammenhänge hinweisend, daß da, ich möchte sagen, wie vor dem Auge mythologisch sich abspielend, die verschiedenen Finger der Hand zu beseelten selbständigen Gestalten werden, zu Däumerling, zu Deuterling die Finger werden, und dieser Däumerling und Deuterling, ich möchte sagen, ohne Sentimentalität gewisse mystische Beziehungen zu den Tönen gewinnen. Es bezeugt das, wie Goethe als ganzer Mensch hineingeführt werden sollte ins Leben. Nicht sollte einseitig bloß ein Stück dieses Menschen, wie es so häufig geschieht, nämlich der Kopf eingeführt werden in das Menschenleben, und dann, wenn man den Kopf unterstützen will, noch der übrige Leib durch allerlei Turnerisches oder Sportliches, sondern es sollte der durchgeistigte Menschenleib, der bis in die Fingerspitzen hinein durchgeistigte Menschenleib zu der Außenwelt in Beziehung treten.
Dazu müssen wir nun rechnen die durchaus vom Anfange an scharfe Individualität zeigende Anlage und Natur Goethes. Alles deutet auf eine bestimmte Wegrichtung des Lebens von frühester Jugend an hin. Er ist ebenso geneigt, wie er so heranwächst, hingebungsvoll zu folgen den anmutigen, anregenden Märchen und sonstigen Erzählungen der Mutter und dadurch schon als Knabe seine Phantasie in ein lebendiges Spiel zu bringen, wie er geneigt ist, sich, wenn es geht, auch den Blicken der Mutter und namentlich des strengen Vaters zu entziehen, sich in die engen Gassen zu schleichen und da nicht nur allerlei Verhältnisse früh zu beobachten, sondern sich sogar in allerlei Verhältnisse früh zu verstricken, wodurch er mancherlei, was sich ablagert auf das menschliche Karma, in lebendigem Empfinden und lebendigem Fühlen früh durchmacht. Der Vater ist ein strenger Mann, der, man möchte sagen, mit einer gewissen Selbstverständlichkeit den Knaben hinlenkt zu dem, was nach damaliger Anschauung allein dem Menschen Halt und Richtung geben kann im Leben. Der Vater ist Jurist, in romanischen Anschauungen aufgewachsen, von romanischen Anschauungen durchdrungen, durchdringt auch das Knabengemüt mit den juristisch-romanischen Anschauungen. Dabei aber entzündet sich schon in der Knabenseele früh aus dem Anblicke der Bilder, die Römisches darstellen, Roms Kunstwerke und Kunstschätze, ein gewisser Drang nach demjenigen, was innerhalb der römischen Kultur geschaffen worden ist.
Alles geht darauf hinaus, Goethe in einer ganz bestimmten Art in das Leben seiner Zeit hereinzustellen. Dadurch wird er, ich möchte sagen, im 3. bis 4. Jahrhundert der fünften nachatlantischen Periode eine Persönlichkeit, die alle Impulse der aufgehenden fünften nachatlantischen Periode in sich trägt. Er wird gewissermaßen früh eine auf sich selbst gestellte, aus sich heraus lebende Persönlichkeit: nichts von dem, was den Menschen verbindet in starrer, pedantischer Weise mit gewissen Formen, die sich ihm aufdrängen aus diesen oder jenen sozialen Verhältnissen heraus. Er lernt die sozialen Verhältnisse so kennen, daß sie ihn berühren, aber er wird nicht zusammengeschmiedet mit ihnen. Er bewahrt sich immer gewissermaßen einen Isolierschemel, auf dem er steht und von dem aus er zu allem ein Verhältnis gewinnen kann, aber mit nichts so zusammenwächst, wie viele Menschen von frühester Zeit an mit den umliegenden Verhältnissen zusammenwachsen. Gewiß, das alles ist Folge eines besonders günstigen Karmas. Aber wenn wir in einer objektiven Weise dieses Karma betrachten, werden sich uns wichtige karmische Fragen und Probleme überhaupt lösen können.
Dann wird Goethe, nachdem er von seinem Vater in die Juristerei eingeführt worden war, auf die Universität Leipzig versetzt. Er tritt .1765, also in verhältnismäßig früher Zeit, in das Leben an der Universität Leipzig ein. Man darf nicht vergessen, wie er in dieses Leben der Universität Leipzig eintritt: nicht zermartert und zerfasert von denjenigen Anstrengungen, welche junge Menschen in unserer Zeit bis in ein weit späteres Lebensjahr hinein durchmachen müssen, um das Abiturium zu absolvieren, und dann, zermartert und zerfasert nach absolviertem Abiturium, mit der Sehnsucht, hinwegzufegen dasjenige, was man da gelernt hat, wenigstens bis zu einem hohen Grade hinwegzufegen, an das Hochschulstudium heranzutreten, um nun einmal das Leben zu genießen. Er war nicht an die Universität Leipzig gekommen, um durchaus bloß zu schwänzen - für diejenigen, denen die deutsche Sprache nicht ganz geläufig ist, bemerke ich, daß «schwänzen» heißt: nicht in-die Vorlesungen gehen, sondern während der Zeit der Vorlesungen etwas anderes treiben -, aber er hat dann doch dieses Schwänzen in reichlichem Maße getrieben. Er trat ja, indem er in das Leben, in das hohe wissenschaftliche Leben, in das berühmte wissenschaftliche Leben der Universität Leipzig eintrat, ein in Kreise, welche ihm eine tiefe Sehnsucht erwecken mußten, solange er von ihnen hörte. Er hatte ja gehört: An der Universität Leipzig wirkt vor allen Dingen der große Gottsched, jener große Gottsched, welcher die Bildung der damaligen Zeit in seinem Haupte verschloß und in zahlreichen Kanälen schriftlicher und mündlicher Art in das damalige Dasein derjenigen einfließen ließ, die mit Leipzigs Kultur zusammenhingen. Lebte nun zwar noch neben Gottscheds Einfluß Lessings großer Impuls in Leipzig, so war es doch für Goethe zunächst so, daß er sich zu denken hatte, er werde durch Gottscheds erhabene Gestalt eingeführt werden in den ganzen Umkreis der damaligen Weisheit, werde da zusammengefaßt studieren können Juristerei und Philosophie und auch dasjenige, was dem Weltmenschen von der Theologie, von der Gelehrsamkeit über die überirdischen Dinge wird.
Es war allerdings eine kleine Enttäuschung, die sich für Goethe, der nun schon einmal einen gewissen Sinn für Ästhetik hatte, ergab, als er seinen ersten Besuch bei Gottsched machte. Er kam vor Gottscheds Türe an; der Diener - ich weiß nicht, ob er schon dazumal irgend etwas fühlte von dem, was in Goethe lebte -, er ließ, ohne in der nötigen Weise sich Zeit zu gönnen, Gottsched den Goethe-Besuch in der richtigen Weise zu melden, Goethe so ohne weiteres zu Gottsched hinein, so daß Goethe Gottsched traf, den großen Mann, als dieser — ja, seine Perücke nicht auf hatte, sondern in dem Glatzkopf da war. Das war für einen Gelehrten der damaligen Zeit — wir stehen im Jahre 1765! etwas ganz Furchtbares. Und nun mußte Goethe, der ja eindrucksvoll für solche Dinge war, anschauen, wie Gottsched dann mit einer graziösen Wendung schnell seine Perücke faßte und sich über den Glatzkopf stülpte, aber mit der anderen Hand seinem Diener eine gewaltige Ohrfeige versetzte. So war Goethe denn doch ein wenig abgekühlt. Er wurde dann noch mehr abgekühlt dadurch, daß Gottscheds Art wenig dem entsprach, wonach er sich sehnte. Auch Gellerts moralische Vorlesungen sprachen ihm nicht von so weiten Gesichtskreisen, als er verlangte. Und so kam es, daß er sich in Leipzig bald mehr den medizinischen, naturwissenschaftlichen Vorlesungen zuwandte, von denen er gewissermaßen eine Art von Fortsetzung erlebte im Hause des Professors Ludwig, in dem er seinen Mittagstisch hatte und in dem man viel dergleichen Dinge besprach. Man kann nicht sagen, daß Goethe in Wirklichkeit in Leipzig «Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin und leider auch Theologie durchaus studiert» habe, aber er hatte sich die Dinge angesehen und hatte vor allen Dingen viele naturwissenschaftliche Vorstellungen der damaligen Zeit schon in Leipzig aufgenommen.
Dann erlebte er - und solche Dinge müssen für denjenigen, der das Menschenleben geisteswissenschaftlich betrachtet, durchausberücksichtigt werden —, nachdem er sich in mancherlei Wissenschaften herumgetrieben hatte, nachdem er auch mancherlei vom Leben gesehen hatte, auch in mancherlei Lebensaffären hineinverwickelt worden war, eine Todkrankheit. Er schaute dem Tod ins Angesicht. Man muß sich vergegenwärtigen, daß dazumal vieles durch Goethes Seele zog, während er infolge eines außerordentlich heftigen Blutsturzes, der sich mehrmals wiederholte, wirklich dem Tod gegenüberstand. Er war nun schwach, mußte nach Hause und konnte erst nach einiger Zeit seine Universitätsstudien fortsetzen. Das tat er nun in Straßburg. Und in Straßburg trat er in die Kreise einer sehr bedeutenden Persönlichkeit, die ihm außerordentlich viel sein konnte. Nun muß man, um zu beurteilen, mit welchen Gefühlen Goethe gerade dieser Persönlichkeit entgegentrat, in Betracht ziehen, daß Goethe, als er unter dem Eindrucke jener innersten Seelenerlebnisse, die er dem Tode gegenüber in Leipzig durchgemacht hatte, nach Frankfurt zurückgekommen war, schon angefangen hatte, durch mancherlei menschliche Zusammenhänge, in die er da gekommen war, sich zu vertiefen in mystisches Erleben und mystisches Auffassen der Welt. Schon dazumal vertiefte er sich in mystisch-okkulte Schriften, versuchte sich in seiner Art, noch jugendlich, ein Weltensystem, ein Weltanschauungssystem zusammenzustellen, welches von mystischen, man könnte sagen, mystisch-kabbalistischen Gesichtspunkten ausging. Er versuchte wirklich dazumal schon so etwas wie: zu erkennen, «was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält», versuchte auf sich wirken zu lassen «alle Wirkenskraft und Samen», und wollte nicht, wie er das in Leipzig hat mitansehen müssen, «in Worten kramen».
Da kam er nun nach Straßburg, wo er ja insbesondere wiederum naturwissenschaftliche Vorlesungen hören konnte, denen er sich auch zunächst zuwandte. Die Juristerei, die besonders seinem Vater — weniger ihm selbst — stark am Herzen lag, nun, über die dachte er: Das wird sich auf irgendeine Weise schon finden. - Aber er hatte den Drang, die Gesetzmäßigkeit der Natur kennenzulernen. Da trat er einmal, als er über eine Treppe hinaufging in Straßburg, einer Persönlichkeit entgegen, die durch ihr Äußeres und ein durch das geistvolle Antlitz blikkendes Inneres auf ihn sogleich, augenblicklich einen ungeheuren Eindruck machte. Das Äußere: Nun, es kam ein Mann, der allerdings einen gewissen priesterlichen Eindruck machte, der aber den langen Mantel so trug, daß er die langen Schleifen hinten in die Taschen hineingesteckt hatte, merkwürdigerweise, aber der einen glanzvollen Eindruck auf Goethe machte. Es war Herder. Und nun lebte er sich ein auf der einen Seite in all dasjenige, was dazumal in Herder brauste. In Herder lebte dazumal außerordentlich viel. Man möchte sagen: Herder trug in sich eine ganz neue Weltanschauung. Was im Grunde genommen noch nie in der Art unternommen worden war, Herder trug es geistvoll in sich: zu verfolgen die Welterscheinungen von dem Einfachsten herauf, von dem einfachsten Unlebendigen, durch das Pflanzen-, das Tierreich bis herauf zum Menschen, bis zu der Geschichte und bis zu der göttlichen Weltenregierung in der Geschichte. Ein großes, umfassendes Weltanschauungsbild lebte dazumal schon in Herder. Und Herder sprach. mit Begeisterung, aber auch, wo es sich darum handelte, mit Empörung gegen all das hergebrachte Zopfliche, von seinen neuen Ideen. Und an vielen Gesprächen Herders konnte sich Goethe erwärmen. Daß alles in der Welt in Entwickelung ist und daß ein geistiger Weltenplan alle Entwickelung trägt: in solchem Zusammenhange, wie es Herder dazumal sah, hatte man es noch nie gesehen. Aber Herder hatte ja all das noch nicht geschrieben; es war ja alles im Werden. Und Goethe empfing es im Werden und nahm teil an dem Streben, Sinnen, Kämpfen Herders. Man möchte sagen: Vom Staubkorn angefangen, durch alle Reiche der Natur bis zum Gott hinauf wollte Herder die Entwickelung der Welt verfolgen, wie er es dann in so großem, umfassendem Stile getan hat, soweit es in der damaligen Zeit notwendig war, in dem unvergleichlich großen Werke «Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit». Da sehen wir wirklich, wie in diesem Geiste Herders zusammengefaßt wird alles, was bekannt war an Tatsachen des Natur- und Menschenreiches in der damaligen Zeit. Aber es wurde alles das zusammengefaßt zu einer vom Geiste durchdrungenen Weltanschauung.
Daneben wirkte nach aus Herders Geist in Goethe hinein dasjenige, was Spinoza in die neuere Weltanschauungsentwickelung hineingebracht hat. Und die Hinneigung, die Goethe sich sein Leben lang für Spinoza bewahrte, sie keimte dazumal in Straßburg durch Herder auf. Außerdem war Herder, was in der damaligen Zeit noch unerhört war, ein begeisterter Verehrer Shakespeares. Man muß sich nur denken, wie diese eigentümliche Seelenpolarität zwischen Goethe und Herder wirken mußte, da Goethe kam, erfüllt mit der Sehnsucht zu schauen alles dasjenige, was ihm die zeitgenössische Bildung nicht geben konnte, wie er in Herder gewissermaßen einen revolutionären, gegen diese Zeitbildung anstürmenden Geist allerersten Ranges fand. Goethe hatte bis dahin verehren gelernt jene Formkunst, welche in Corneille, in Racine lebt, hatte dies alles aufgenommen, wie ein Mensch Dinge aufnimmt, von denen er hört, daß sie das Bedeutendste in der Welt sind. Aber all das hatte er doch aufgenommen mit einer inneren Empörung. Und wie ein Labsal wirkte es auf seine Seele, als er durch Herder in Shakespeare eingeführt wurde, in den Dichter, der frei war von allem Formalen, der Gestalten schuf aus der unmittelbar menschlichen Individualität heraus, der nichts von dem hatte, was Goethe so hoch verehren gelernt hatte: Einheit der Zeit, Einheit des Ortes, der Handlung — sondern der Menschen hingestellt hatte. Und man möchte sagen: Auf den Namen Shakespeare getauft, lebte sich in Goethes Seele ein eine innere kulturrevolutionäre Gesinnung, die man etwa so aussprechen kann, daß man sagt: Ich will den Menschen kennenlernen, nicht wie der Mensch in formale Regeln und formale Gesetze in den Weltzusammenhang eingespannt wird, nicht das Netz von Einheiten der Situation, der Zeit, des Ortes, der Handlung, sondern den Menschen will ich fassen.
Dabei ergab sich für ihn die Möglichkeit, Menschen kennen zu lernen dazumal in Straßburg, welche versuchten, auch in die tieferen, intimeren Seiten des menschlichen Seelenerlebens hineinzublicken, wie den wunderbaren Jung-Stilling, der die okkulten Seiten des menschlichen Seelenlebens studierte und in so ausführlicher Weise zu beschreiben wußte, Ist doch Jung-Stillings Lebensgeschichte, ist doch JungStillings Beschreibung desjenigen, was er den «grauen Mann» nennt, der im Unterirdischen der Erde waltet, etwas, was zum Schönsten gehört in bezug auf Beschreibungen okkulter Verhältnisse. Man möchte sagen: In dasjenige, was das Natur- und Geschichtsleben, was das ästhetische Leben trägt, wurde Goethe durch Herder eingeführt, durch JungStilling in die okkulten Seiten des Menschenlebens, welche ihm schon nähergetreten waren in Frankfurt durch ein eingehenderes Studium Swedenborgs.
Das alles brauste in Goethes Seele mit demjenigen zusammen, was ihm an Naturgesetzen überliefert wurde, während er die naturwissenschaftlichen Vorlesungen in Straßburg hörte. Und da gingen ihm denn auf die großen Fragen und großen Probleme des menschlichen Lebens. Er hatte tief hineingeschaut in dasjenige, was man erkennen und wollen kann, hatte tief hineingeschaut in Zusammenhänge, die die menschliche Seelennatur mit der Allnatur hat. Paracelsus hatte er auch kennengelernt im Zusammenhang mit all dem, schon in Frankfurt. Und so lebte sich ihm neben dem, was er sonst in Straßburg erlebte, diese Sehnsucht, zu schauen «alle Wirkenskraft und Samen», gerade in Straßburg in besonders tiefer Weise ein. Man darf sich nicht vorstellen, daß Goethe in Straßburg seine Zeit nur vertändelt hat, indem er, was ich wahrhaftig nicht allzu gering anschlagen will, nach dem Pfarrhaus in Sesenheim oftmals gewandert ist. Goethe konnte eben durchaus vereinigen das Leben im Tiefsten des Menschenwollens und Menschenerkennens, und das Leben im Zusammenhange mit allem unmittelbar Menschlich-Alltäglichen, mit jedem menschlichen Schicksal.
Dann wurde er, nachdem er seine Thesen verteidigt hatte, eine Art Doktor der Jurisprudenz in Straßburg, Lizentiat und Doktor der Jurisprudenz. Damit hatte er seinen Vater auch befriedigt und konnte nun heimziehen. Die Advokatenpraxis beginnt. Es war allerdings eine merkwürdige Disharmonie in der Seele dieses Menschen, der nun beim Reichskammergericht in Wetzlar über Akten studieren sollte, die oftmals wörtlich, nicht symbolisch - jahrhundertealt waren. Denn da schleppten sich «Gesetz’ und Rechte wie eine ew’ge Krankheit fort». Aber man konnte ja in späterer Zeit an anderen Orten noch manches in dieser Richtung erleben. Sehen Sie, in einem Orte, in dem ich aufwuchs gestatten Sie, daß ich das einfüge —, konnte ich doch auch folgendes erleben: Es war in den siebziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts, da hörten wir einmal - ich war ein Bube —, daß ein Mann eingesperrt werden sollte. In den siebziger Jahren! Es war ein angesehener Mann des dortigen Ortes, der ein für den dortigen Ort ziemlich großes Geschäft hatte. Er wurde eingesperrt, anderthalb Jahre, glaube ich, weil er nämlich im Jahre 1848 bei der Revolution Steine geworfen hat auf ein Gasthaus! Der Prozeß hatte wirklich vom Jahre 1848, wo der Mann als junger Bub Steine geworfen hat auf ein Gasthaus, bis in sein spätes Alter gedauert, und er wurde, so um 1873, eingesperrt auf eineinhalb Jahre. Es war immerhin vielleicht dazumal schon nicht mehr so schlimm wie in der Zeit, in der Goethe die Akten beim Reichskammergericht studiert hat, aber es war noch immer schlimm genug. Dem Vater aber machte das Freude, und er beteiligte sich in mancherlei Weise ratend und hilfeleistend bei den Problemen, die da Goethe über den verstaubten Akten zu lösen hatte. Aber man darf nicht glauben, daß sich Goethe als Advokat ungeschickt benommen hätte. Das war ganz und gar nicht der Fall. Goethe stellte schon durchaus seinen Mann auch als Advokat, und Goethe gibt keine Veranlassung dazu, immer wieder und wieder zu betonen, daß ein großer, in den Idealen lebender Geist ungeschickt sein muß im Leben. Goethe war als Advokat durchaus nicht ungeschickt. Und wenn etwa heute so mancher Advokat auf seine Tätigkeit hin“weist und dann bemerklich macht, daß er ja eben neben seiner ausgebreiteten Tätigkeit keine Zeit hat, Goethe zu lesen, so darf schon darauf hingewiesen werden, daß Goethe selbst ganz gewiß ein ebenso guter Advokat war — das läßt sich heute noch dokumentarisch belegen, wie manches also auf seine Arbeit Hinweisende —, nur daß Goethe neben dem, daß er so praktisch war, wie die Praktiker nur sein können, dazumal noch in seiner Seele bereits trug den «Götz von Berlichingen», ja, in seiner Seele trug die Idee, die in ihm schon in Frankfurt aufgetaucht war aus seinen naturwissenschaftlichen Studien heraus, aus seiner Bekanntschaft mit Herder, mit Jung-Stilling: die Idee zu seinem «Faust».
Götz von Berlichingen — Gottfried von Berlichingen -, er bezeugt sogleich, indem ihn Goethe zum Kunstwerk gestaltet, wie die Art Goethes eigentlich ist. Es tritt mit der Art Goethes etwas Neues in das geistige Schaffen der Menschheit ein. Man kann Goethe als Künstler, als Dichter nicht vergleichen mit Dante, nicht vergleichen mit Homer, nicht vergleichen mit Shakespeare, Er steht dem dichterischen Schaffen in einer anderen Art gegenüber, und das hängt im wesentlichen zusammen mit der Art wiederum, wie Goethe in seiner ganzen Zeit als Erscheinung darinnensteht. Diese Zeit, wie sie sich in der unmittelbaren Umgebung Goethes, in der weiteren Umgebung Goethes auslebte, die ließ einen solchen Geist, wie Goethe es war, nicht ganz mit sich zusammenwachsen. Ein staatliches Leben um sich herum, wie man es heute für selbstverständlich hält, das gab es für Goethe nicht. Er lebte ja in einem Gebiete, wo sich in einem hohen Grade individuell einzelne Territorien gestaltet hatten. Wie das der Fall war, darauf kommt es weniger an, aber er lebte in keinem Großstaat, er lebte so, daß nicht irgendeine überspannende Konformität sich ausgoß über das Gebiet, aus dem er herauswuchs. Das Leben hatte keine festen Formen um ihn herum. Und so konnte er es überall im engsten Kreise anfassen und im engsten Kreise das Universelle auf sich wirken lassen. Und das ist das Eigentümliche.
So kam ihm ein Buch in die Hand, das ein schlecht geschriebenes Buch ist, ein recht schlecht geschriebenes Buch, das ihn aber in außerordentlichem Maße interessierte; das ist die «Selbstbiographie Gottfriedens von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand», jener eigentümlichen Gestalt aus dem 16. Jahrhundert, die an so vielen Ereignissen des 16. Jahrhunderts teilgenommen hat, die aber in einer merkwürdigen Weise an diesen Ereignissen des 16. Jahrhunderts teilgenommen hat. Wenn man diese Lebensgeschichte des Gottfried von Berlichingen liest, so sieht man, wie er unter Kaiser Maximilian, unter Kaiser Karl dem Fünften, mit allen möglichen anderen Leuten in Zusammenhang kam, an allen möglichen Händeln und Kämpfen der ersten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts teilgenommen hat, aber immer so, daß man eigentlich sieht: da nimmt er teil einmal an diesem Ereignisse, steht ganz drinnen, lebt sich da aus. Dann steht er in einem anderen Ereignisse in einemganz anderen Charakter drinnen, wird wiederum hineingezogen, kämpft für die verschiedensten Interessen, wird später gefangen genommen. Nachdem er einen Eid geleistet hat, sich an den Händeln nicht mehr weiter zu beteiligen und ruhig auf seinem Schloß gelassen wird im mittleren Süddeutschland, wird er in die Bauernbewegung hineinverwickelt, als sich die Bauern im Kampfe für die Freiheit erheben. Alles aber so, daß man bei Gottfried von Berlichingen nirgends sieht, daß er gezogen wird von den Ereignissen, sondern überall sieht man: Dasjenige, was zusammenhält die disparaten Dinge, das ist eigentlich die Persönlichkeit, der Charakter des Gottfried von Berlichingen selber. Man kann sagen: Wenn man eben die Lebensgeschichte des Gottfried von Berlichingen liest, so sind einem zuletzt alle die Ereignisse, die er da durchmacht, in die er verwickelt ist, ich will nicht sagen so, daß sie einem zum Halse herauswachsen vor Langeweile: sie interessieren einen aber wirklich nicht, die einzelnen Händel, die einzelnen Kämpfe, die er, Gottfried von Berlichingen, durchmacht. Aber trotz aller Langeweile gegenüber den Ereignissen, die er durchmacht, hat man immer Interesse an der charakterstarken und charakter-inhaltsvollen Persönlichkeit.
Das war es aber gerade, was Goethe anzog an der Figur des Gottfried von Berlichingen. Und so konnte er, was ihm niemals auf eine andere Art möglich gewesen wäre, den Gehalt, das Streben und Leben des 16. Jahrhunderts in einer Persönlichkeit konzentriert sehen. Das brauchte er. Das war für ihn: Geschichte in die Hand zu nehmen und kennenzulernen. Wie der oder jener Historiker «mit trefflichen pragmatischen Maximen», nachdem er Rumpelkammern durchsucht und Kehrichtfässer umgeworfen hatte, einzelne historische Perioden zusammengekoppelt hätte, das wäre sicherlich nicht nach Goethes Geschmack gewesen. Aber einen Menschen in seiner Zeit lebendig drinnenstehen zu sehen und in einer Menschenseele sich spiegeln zu sehen dasjenige, was einen sonst nicht interessiert, das war etwas für Goethe. Da nahm er denn diese, ja, man möchte sagen, langweilige, schlecht geschriebene Selbstbiographie des Gottfried von Berlichingen her, las sie und gestaltete sie eigentlich merkwürdig wenig um. Daher hat er auch die erste Fassung dieses, wenn man will, Dramas, genannt: «Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand, dramatisiert». Er hat nicht «Drama» daraufgeschrieben, sondern nur «dramatisiert». Er hat eigentlich nur die Geschichte Götz von Berlichingens dramatisiert, aber so dramatisiert, daß die ganze Zeit drinnen lebt, aber die Zeit in einem Menschen lebt. Und nun denken Sie, es ist die Zeit des 16. Jahrhunderts, es ist die Zeit der Morgenröte des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraumes. Goethe sah sie an durch die Seele des Gottfried von Berlichingen, dieses dem mittleren südlichen Deutschland entwachsenen Mannes. Dazumal schon ging durch seine Seele ein Stück Leben, das historisch ist, aber angeschaut eben am wirklichen Leben, nicht an dem, was «geschichtlich» ist. Goethe wäre es ganz unmöglich gewesen in der damaligen Zeit, mit all den Menschheitsproblemen in der Seele, die ich Ihnen angedeutet habe, irgendeine Gestalt zu nehmen aus der Geschichte und nach der Geschichte sie zu dramatisieren, aber die stammelnde Selbstbiographie eines Wesens, das mit aller Menschlichkeit auf ihn wirkte, so zu dramatisieren, wie sich ihm erschlossen hatte die drama“tische Kunst dadurch, daß er sich in Shakespeare eingelebt hatte: das war es, was er konnte. Damit wurde er schon in einigen Kreisen, die sich dazumal für so etwas interessierten, bekannt, denn er hatte ein Stück Vergangenheit in eine Gegenwart, in seine Gegenwart, für seine Mitwelt heraufgehoben, für diese Mitwelt, der diese Vergangenheit «ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln» war. Denn selbstverständlich wußte man in den weitesten Kreisen dazumal von dem, was sich Goethe erschloß durch die schlecht geschriebene Geschichte des Gottfried von Berlichingen aus dem 16. Jahrhundert, so wenig, wie heute mancher Pastor von dem übersinnlichen Leben weiß.
Goethe hatte ins Menschenleben hineingegriffen. Er hatte hineingreifen müssen, weil er selber nur so leben konnte, daß er mit diesem Menschenleben, wie es sich ihm unmittelbar bot, zusammenwuchs, trotzdem er immer noch auf einem Isolierschemel blieb, zusammenwuchs doch nur, indem er gewissermaßen davon berührt wurde.
Noch in einer anderen Weise sollte Goethe in derselben Zeit mit dem Leben zusammengeführt werden. Man hat heute wenig Vorstellungen mehr von dem, was dazumal im weitesten Umkreise um Goethe herum innerhalb der sogenannten gebildeten Welt ein tiefer Grundzug der Seelenentwickelung war. Man war so hineingewachsen in dasjenige, was sich seit dem 16. Jahrhundert ergeben hatte. Da hatten sich im äußeren Leben wirklich Gesetz und Rechte wie eine ewige Krankheit fortgeerbt, aber die Seelen waren doch in einer gewissen Weise berührt von dem Drang, den wir ja kennen als den Drang der Seelen des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums. Die Folge davon war, daß eine gründliche Disharmonie bei den tiefer veranlagten Naturen entstand zwischen dem, was die Seelen fühlten und dem, was in der Umgebung sich abspielte. Das führte allerdings zu einer starken Sentimentalität im Erleben. Und fühlen zu können, möglichst stark fühlen zu können, wie weit die Wirklichkeit absticht von dem, was eine echte, warme Menschenseele erfühlen kann, das so recht betonen zu können, fühlte damals manche Seele als ein tiefes Bedürfnis. Man richtete den Blick hinaus auf das große Leben. Da lebten die Stände, da lebten die Leute mit diesen oder jenen Interessen, aber sie berührten sich mit ihren Seelen oftmals so wenig innerhalb dieses öffentlichen Lebens. Aber wenn diese Seelen mit sich allein waren, da suchten sie sich ein besonderes Seelenleben auf, das jenseits stand des äußeren Lebens. Und sich sagen zu können: Dieses äußere Leben, ach, wie sticht es ab von all dem, was die Seele erstreben und erhoffen möchte! — das sich sagen zu können, war wie ein Labsal. Und sich so recht in eine sentimentale Stimmung hineinzuleben, das wurde ein Zug der Zeit. Man fand das Leben, wie es sich im Öffentlichen abspielte, schlecht, mangelhaft. Man wollte daher das Leben aufsuchen da, wo es nicht angefault war von der gleichgültigen Öffentlichkeit, wo man so recht sich einleben konnte in das stille, friedensvolle Treiben der Welt, in die Natur, in das friedevolle Tierleben, Pflanzenleben. Daraus bildete sich allmählich eine Stimmung, die einen großen Teil der gebildeten Seelen beherrschte. Weinen zu können über die Disharmonien der Welt, gewährte eine ungeheure Befriedigung. Und diejenigen Schriftsteller wurden besonders geehrt, deren Werke auf jeder Seite Veranlassung gaben, daß sich die Tränen ergießen konnten aus den Augen heraus auf die Blätter, die man las. Unglücklich zu sein, wurde für viele eine Sehnsucht ihres Glückes. Man geht spazieren im Walde, man geht zurück, setzt sich still in seine Kammer und denkt nach: Wie vielen, vielen Würmchen, die man nicht beachtet hat und auf die man getreten ist mit den Füßen, hat dieser Spaziergang das Leben gekostet! - Man weint heiße Tränen in sein Taschentuch über die Disharmonien zwischen Natur und Menschenleben. Man schreibt Briefe an geliebte, ebenso sentimentale Freunde wie man selbst ist, beginnt damit: Herzinnig geliebter Freund, oder Freundin, — aber schon diese Zeile wird durchströmt von einer Träne, welche auf das Papier fällt und die als ein teures Zeugnis mit dem Briefe zu dem geliebten Freunde oder der geliebten Freundin hineilt.
Dieses Leben durchsetzt noch große Teile der gebildeten Welt in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Das hatte nun auch Goethe um sich und er besaß viel Verständnis dafür, denn es lag doch viel Wahrheit in diesem Erfühlen der Disharmonie desjenigen, was unbewußt und unbestimmt oftmals die Seele füllte, und dem, was ihr die äußere Welt gab. Es lag oft viel Wahres darinnen. Goethe konnte das erfühlen. Das stille Leben, das sich abspielte zwischen den Seelen, glich so gar nicht in der damaligen Zeit demjenigen, was sich in der großen Welt abspielte. Goethe mußte das mitmachen, denn er konnte und sollte berührt sein von allem. Aber er mußte sich auch aus seinem Inneren immer wieder und wiederum die Kräfte holen, aus den Berührungen mit diesen Dingen heraus zu gesunden. Und so schrieb er sich denn diese ganze Zeitstimmung los, die man als Siegwart-Fieber, als Werther-Fieber bezeichnet, die einen großen Teil der Gebildeten ergriffen hatte, in seinem Jugendromane «Die Leiden des jungen Werthers». In die Werther-Gestalt hineingeheimnißt hat er all das, was er mitgemacht hat von dieser sentimentalen Weltenstimmung, so mitgemacht hat, daß er aus den gefühlten Disharmonien des Lebens heraus bis nahe am Selbstmord war. Deshalb läßt er Werther selber im Selbstmord enden. Es ist gut, sich das zu vergegenwärtigen, wie bei Goethe auf der einen Seite die Möglichkeit vorliegt, trotzdem er fest in seiner Individualität wurzelt, seine seelischen Fäden zu ziehen zu all dem, was in seiner Umgebung in den Seelen sich abspielte, wie das aber wiederum Kunst bei ihm wurde und er es sich von der Seele losschrieb. Als er den Werther geschrieben hatte, war er von dem ganzen Werther geheilt, von dem jetzt vielfach die anderen Menschen erst ergriffen wurden, denn das Werther-Fieber grassierte gerade durch den «Werther» in den weitesten Kreisen. Aber Goethe war geheilt.
Man darf, indem man solche Dinge würdigen will, nicht vergessen, daß Goethe wirklich einen weiten Umfang seines Seelenlebens hatte, daß er gewissermaßen seelisch in Polaritäten zu leben vermochte. Da machte er die Werther-Krankheit durch und schrieb sich die WertherKrankheit von der Seele in seinen «Leiden des jungen Werthers». Aber wahr ist es, was er in einem Freundesbrief schrieb in der damaligen Zeit, wo er von seiner erhaben-sentimentalen Stimmung ein Bild entwarf, aber gleichzeitig sagte, es lebe noch ein anderer Goethe als jener, der hängerische und hängenswerte Gedanken hatte, der SelbstmordGoethe: ein Fastnachts-Goethe, der allerlei Verkleidungen und Masken annehmen kann. Und dieser Fastnachts-Goethe lebte ja wirklich auch künstlerisch. Man braucht nur die mehr oder weniger fragmentarisch gebliebenen dramatischen Schöpfungen, den «Satyros» und den «Pater Brey», die derselben Zeit angehören, auf sich wirken zu lassen, so wird man schon die ganze Weite des Goetheschen Seelenlebens ahnen können: auf der einen Seite die Sentimentalität des Werther, auf der anderen Seite der Humor des «Satyros» und des «Pater Brey». Satyros, der vergötterte Waldteufel, der auf der einen Seite in Tiraden einen wahren großen Pantheismus entfaltet, zurück will in echt Rousseauscher Weise zur Natur, nicht genießen will dasjenige, was dieKultur hervorgebracht hat. Rohe Kastanien, welch herrlicher Fraß: es ist dies ein Ideal des Satyros! Aber Satyros ist eben ein Naturphilosoph, der die Geheimnisse der Natur wohl kennt, daher - verzeihen Sie -— namentlich in der Frauenwelt seine Anhänger gewinnt, vergöttert wird, aber sich zuletzt recht schlecht benimmt. Mit Riesenhumor wird da verspottet all die falsche Sehnsucht nach Autoritätshascherei, nach Autoritätsglaube. Und im Pater Brey sehen wir das falsche Prophetentum, das heilig tut, aber unter der Maske der Heiligkeit allerlei Dinge treibt — mit großem Humor nicht verspottet, aber objektiv schon hingestellt. Da ist Goethe im lebendigsten Sinne Humorist, derber Humorist. Und das alles aus derselben Seelenverfassung heraus, aus der auch der «Werther» fließt. Das ist nicht deshalb, weil Goethe oberflächlich war, sondern weil er eben tief genug war, um die Polaritäten des menschlichen Lebens zu erfassen.
Mancherlei Einfluß hatte Goethe gerade mit dem «Werther» bereits errungen. «Werther» ist ja verhältnismäßig früh sehr bekannt geworden, und eigentlich war es auch «Werther», welcher bewirkt hat, daß sich der Herzog von Weimar für Goethe interessierte. Der «Götz von Berlichingen» hat viel Eindruck gemacht, aber nicht bei denjenigen, die dazumal glaubten, Kultur und Kunst und Dichtung verstehen zu können «Imitation détestable des mauvaises pièces anglaises, dégoûtante platitude», so sagte ein großer Mann der damaligen Zeit über den «Götz von Berlichingen».
1775 war es, da konnte Goethe sein Leben auf einen ganz anderen Schauplatz verlegen, nach Weimar. Der Herzog von Weimar wurde mit ihm bekannt und rief Goethe nach Weimar, und Goethe wurde mit einem Sprung, könnte man sagen, Weimarischer Staatsminister.
Sehen Sie, heute, hinterher, hat man so das Gefühl: Goethe hat den «Götz von Berlichingen» geschrieben, die «Leiden des jungen Werthers» geschrieben, er hat ein großes Stück «Faust» schon nach Weimar mitgebracht; in dem allem sieht man die Hauptsache bei Goethe. Er selber in seiner damaligen Lage sah darin nicht die Hauptsache; das waren die Abfälle seines Lebens. Und der Herzog von Weimar stellte ihn auch nicht als Hofdichter an, sondern als Staatsminister, worüber freilich die Zöpfe in Weimar außer sich waren, so daß der Herzog von Weimar eine Art Brief-Erlaß an sein Volk richten mußte, worin er sich rechtfertigte: Ja, Goethe wäre ein größerer Mensch nach seiner Meinung als die Zöpfe. - Und daß er, bevor er - nun ja, was weiß ich, Unterrat und Oberrat und so weiter geworden war, gleich in das Staatsministerium berufen wurde, das bedurfte wenigstens einer Rechtfertigung seitens des Herzogs. Aber die gab er. Und Goethe war keineswegs ein schlechter Minister, keineswegs ein solcher, der das Ministergeschäft so nebenbei betrieb, sondern er war ein viel besserer Minister als manche Minister, die keine Goethe gewesen sind in diesem Sinne. Und derjenige, der einmal sich selber persönlich überzeugt hat, wie ich - ich darf das in aller Bescheidenheit sagen, daß es bei mir der Fall war -, wie Goethe seinen Minister-Obliegenheiten gedient hat, der weiß, daß Goethe ein ausgezeichneter Minister für das Herzogtum Sachsen-Weimar war, der sich allen Einzelheiten seiner Geschäfte mit voller Hingabe gewidmet hat. Minister zu sein, war für Goethe die Hauptsache dazumal, und durch zehn Jahre hindurch wirkte Goethe außerordentlich viel gerade als Minister in Weimar. |
Nun hatte er nach Weimar schon den «Faust» zum Teil mitgebracht. Dasjenige, was jetzt unter dem «geschmackvollen» Titel «Urfaust» in den Werken figuriert, das hatte er dazumal nach Weimar mitgebracht. In diesem «Faust» lebte aber schon alles dasjenige, was, man möchte sagen, der aufwärtsgerichtete Blick des Faust war. Und wie war Faust aus dem unmittelbaren Leben geschöpft, aber jetzt auch aus dem Leben, das jede Menschenseele berührt! Und wiederum zeigte es sich in Weimar, wie Goethe nicht ganz ergriffen werden konnte von seiner Umgebung. Man lernt ja sehr häufig Menschen kennen, die mehr oder weniger nur die Exponenten sind ihrer Akten. Goethe war nicht der bloße Exponent der Akten, der wahrhaftig zahlreichen Akten, die er verfaßt hat als Weimarischer Beamter. Aber daneben lebte er sich in alle Weimarischen Verhältnisse ein, und wenn er auch auf seinem Isolierschemel blieb, so wurde er doch von allem Menschlichen berührt, und das unmittelbare Menschliche gestaltete sich bei ihm zur Kunst. Und so sehen wir denn, wie der Charakter einer Frau, der Frau von Stein, der er freundschaftlich nahetrat, für ihn ein Lebensproblem wurde. Und im Grunde genommen war es die unmittelbare Anschauung dieses Charakters, die ihn dazu brachte, die Gestalt der «Iphigenie» zu dramatisieren. Was auf der einen Seite im Charakter der Frau von Stein auf ihn wirkte, das wollte er künstlerisch gestalten. Es war ihm die Fabel der Iphigenie nur ein Mittel, ein Lebensproblem zu lösen. Und die ganzen Verhältnisse am Hofe von Weimar, sein Zusammenleben mit dem in seinem Charakter merkwürdig veranlagten Herzog Karl August, der Anblick der Schicksale der Herzogin, andere Verhältnisse, die da hineinspielten, sie wurden ihm zu Problemen. Das Leben wurde ihm zur Frage. Er brauchte wiederum einen Stoff, um diese Verhältnisse künstlerisch zu bezwingen. Er nahm den Stoff des «Tasso», aber eigentlich waren es Weimarerische Verhältnisse, die er künstlerisch bezwungen hat. Ich kann natürlich nicht auf die vielen Einzelheiten in Goethes Geistesleben eingehen, aber ich möchte doch diese Tatsache vor Ihre Seele hinstellen, damit wir eben an sie geisteswissenschaftlich anknüpfen können wie an ein Exempel.
Schon dazumal, in der allerersten Zeit, da er in Weimar lebte, tat sich ihm durch die verschiedenen Verhältnisse, in die er gebracht wurde, die Möglichkeit auf, seine Naturstudien zu vertiefen, in selbständiger Weise zu vertiefen. Er betrieb Pflanzenstudien; er fing schon dazumal an, an der Universität Jena anatomische Studien zu machen. Überall ging er darauf aus, dasjenige, was er von Herder aufgenommen hatte: die Zusammenhangs-Ideen der Welt, im einzelnen zu bewahrheiten. Den Zusammenhang der ganzen Pflanzenwelt wollte er studieren, was geistig in den Pflanzen lebte, wollte er studieren. Die Verwandtschaft aller Tiere wollte er vor seine Seele hintreten lassen, um den Weg hinauf zum Menschen zu finden. Die Entwickelungsidee wollte er unmittelbar an den Objekten der Natur selber studieren. Denken Sie, er hatte Herders große Idee aufgenommen: ein einheitliches geistiges Werden durch alle Entwickelungsmomente der Wesen hin zu studieren. In dem standen er und Herder dazumal ziemlich allein, denn diejenigen, die tonangebend waren im geistigen Leben, die dachten ganz anders, die führten vor allen Dingen überall Scheidewände ein.
Alle geistige Tätigkeit kann man ja nach zwei Polen hin wirkend finden: nach dem Trennen und nach dem Zusammenfassen. Goethe und Herder kam es darauf an, zusammenzufassen die Mannigfaltigkeit, die Vielheit; den anderen kam es darauf an, hübsch Einteilungen zu haben, recht nett einzuteilen. Und so war es dazumal vor allen Dingen für viele eine Frage, wie sich der Mensch von den Tieren unterscheide. Der Mensch, sagte man, habe keinen Zwischenkieferknochen, in dem die Schneidezähne sitzen, in der oberen Kinnlade, sondern eine einheitliche Kinnlade; die Tiere nur haben den Zwischenkiefer. Goethe war gewiß nicht materialistisch gesinnt, wollte gewiß nicht einen Materialismus begründen in materialistischer Absicht; aber daß sich in einer solchen Einzelheit die innere Harmonie der Natur nicht bewahrheiten sollte, das war seinem Sinne zuwider. Deshalb ging er darauf aus, gegen alle Naturwissenschafterautorität nachzuweisen, daß auch der Mensch den Zwischenknochen habe. Und es gelang ihm. Und so kam er denn zu seiner ersten bedeutenden naturwissenschaftlichen Abhandlung, die da heißt: «Dem Menschen wie den Tieren ist ein Zwischenknochen der obern Kinnlade zuzuschreiben». Damit hatte er etwas hineingestellt in die geistige Entwickelung, eine Einzelheit, mit der er sich entgegengestellt hat der ganzen damaligen naturwissenschaftlichen Welt, und die heute eine Selbstverständlichkeit ist, die natürlich niemand bezweifelt.
So steht Goethe nicht da als der Dichter des «Werther», als der Dichter des «Götz von Berlichingen», des «Faust», als derjenige, in dessen Kopf allein «Iphigenie» und «Tasso» entspringen, sondern er steht da mit einem tiefen Hineinblicken in den Zusammenhang der Natur, so daß er nun wirklich als echter Naturforscher studiert und arbeitet. Das ist nicht in einseitiger Weise ein Forscher oder ein Dichter oder ein Minister, das ist ein ganzer Mensch, ein nach allen Seiten hin strebender ganzer Mensch.
Zehn Jahre ungefähr lebte so Goethe in Weimar, da konnte er die Sehnsucht nach Italien nicht mehr bezwingen. Und er unternahm wie eine Flucht seine Reise nach Italien in der zweiten Hälfte der achtziger Jahre des 18. Jahrhunderts. Man muß nicht vergessen, daß Goethe doch erst dazumal in Verhältnisse eintrat, die nun einer Sehnsucht entsprachen, die er seit frühester Jugend gehegt hat, und daß er zum ersten Mal eigentlich in große Verhältnisse eintritt. Denn denken Sie, daß Goethe außer Frankfurt keine große Stadt gesehen hat bis dahin! Und man muß sich immer vergegenwärtigen, daß die erste Großstadt, durch die Goethe auf den Schauplatz der Weltgeschichte gestellt worden ist, Rom war. Das muß man schon richtig in das Leben Goethes hineinstellen. Und daß Goethe in Rom pulsieren fühlte den ganzen Strom des Lebens, wie er heraufgezogen war in der fünften nachatlantischen Zeit bis zu seiner Zeit, und daß Goethe das, was da als Weltgeschichte in ihm wirkte, verband mit einer in seiner Seele werdenden umfassenden Weltanschauung. Da trug er die Idee, die sich ihm über Tiergestalten, über Pflanzengestalten ergeben hatte, durch die Mannigfaltigkeit der Formen der Pflanzen, der Steine, der Tiere, die er verglich, die er nun auf der Apenninischen Halbinsel verfolgte. Im weiten Umkreis suchte er zu bewahrheiten seine Idee einer Urpflanze, und konnte es. Jeder Stein, jede Pflanze interessierte ihn; wie sich das Mannigfaltige zur Einheit gestaltet, das ließ er auf sich wirken. Dabei ließ er auf sich wirken die großen Kunstwerke, die ihm das alte Griechentum in einem matten Nachtrieb zeigten. Und wie er auf der einen Seite den Blick objektiv über alle die Mannigfaltigkeiten der Natur richtete, so konnte er auf der anderen Seite aus tiefster Seele heraus alle Intimitäten der großen Kunst der Renaissance empfinden. Man lese nur nach die Worte, die er gesprochen hat bei dem Anblicke der «Heiligen Cäcilie» Raffaels in Bologna, wie er beim Anblicke dieses Kunstwerkes in seiner Seele aufleben ließ alle Gefühle, die den Menschen aus der sinnlichen Welt in die übersinnliche hinaufleiten in einer wunderbar tief intensiven Weise. Man lese in seiner «Italienischen Reise» nach, wie er, während er auf der einen Seite seine Naturideen immer mehr und mehr vertiefte, den Kunstwerken gegenüber empfand, wie der Mensch wahrhaft nur dann Kunst schafft, wenn die Kunst zu gleicher Zeit aus den Tiefen des Lebens heraus schafft. Die großen Kunstwerke der Griechen, sagte er, werden mir jetzt klar, denn: «Ich habe eine Vermutung, daß sie nach eben den Gesetzen verfuhren, nach welchen die Natur verfährt und denen ich auf der Spur bin.» — «Diese hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt zusammen; da ist die Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott.» So schrieb er an seine Weimarer Freunde.
Und ein Ungeheures nahm er in sich auf, und es gestaltete sich für ihn dasjenige um, was er früher erfühlt und erahnt hatte. Szenen, die bedeutsam sind in seinem «Faust», er dichtete sie nun in Rom. «Iphigenie», «Tasso», sie hatte er schon mehr oder weniger in Prosa in Weimar entworfen, zum Teil vollendet; jetzt schrieb er sie um in Verse. Denn er konnte den Stil finden, den er jetzt als einen klassischen Stil ausgießen wollte über diese Werke, indem er nun selber klassische Kunst fortwährend auf sich wirken ließ. Das war eine Regeneration, eine wirkliche Wiedergeburt von Goethes Seele, die er in Italien erlebte. Und etwas Eigentümliches bildete sich jetzt in seiner Seele heraus: er empfand einen tiefen Gegensatz zwischen dem, was seine Zeit erstrebte, was er überall in seiner Umgebung gesehen hatte, und dem, was er als die höchste Ausgestaltung des rein Menschlichen empfinden gelernt hatte.
So kam er zurück nach Weimar, so kam er wiederum zurück in die Welt hinein, in welcher Werke entstanden waren, die dazumal alle hinrissen: Schillers «Räuber», Heinses «Ardinghello» und dergleichen. Das kam ihm vor wie barbarisches Zeug, das widerstrebte allen Wurzeln, die jetzt in seiner Seele lebten. Und als ein gründlich Einsamstehender fühlte er sich in seinem Seelenleben. Er war ja auch beinahe vergessen. Und jetzt bahnte sich an nach und nach das Freundschaftsverhältnis zu Schiller. Schwer war ihm der Zugang geworden, denn nichts war ihm so sehr verhaßt, als er wieder zurückkam, als Schillers Jugendwerke. Aber sie fanden sich, und sie fanden sich zu einem Freundschaftsbunde, der wenige seinesgleichen in der Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit hat. Und sie regten sich an, so daß Herman Grimm mit Recht sagt: In dem Verhältnis von Goethe und Schiller hat man nicht nur Goethe plus Schiller, sondern Goethe plus Schiller und Schiller plus Goethe. Jeder wurde durch den anderen etwas anderes; und was ein jeder durch den anderen anders wurde, damit befruchtete ein jeder den anderen. Und jetzt erstanden in der Seele der beiden große, umfassende Menschheitsprobleme. Was die Welt dazumal politisch lösen wollte - das große Freiheitsproblem der Menschheit -, für Goethe und Schiller stellte es sich in einer geistig-menschlichen Weise vor die Seele. Andere dachten viel darüber nach, wie man eine äußere Einrichtung in der Welt herbeiführen könnte, die dem Menschen Freiheit gestattet im Leben. Für Schiller handelte es sich darum: Wie findet der Mensch in seiner eigenen Seele die Freiheit? — Und diesem Probleme hat er sich gewidmet bei der Ausarbeitung seiner einzigartigen Schrift, den «Briefen über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen». Wie der Mensch seine Seele über sich selber hinausführt, von dem gewöhnlichen Stand des Lebens zu einem höheren Stand des Lebens, das war für Schiller die große Frage. Der Mensch steht auf der einen Seite in der sinnlichen Natur, sagte sich Schiller, auf der anderen Seite steht er der logischen Welt gegenüber. In beiden ist er nicht frei. Frei wird er als ästhetisch Genießender und ästhetisch Schaffender, wo die Gedanken so werden, daß sie keinem logischen Zwang unterliegen, sondern dem Geschmacke und der Neigung, wo sie aber frei sind zugleich von der Sinnlichkeit. Einen mittleren Zustand forderte Schiller. Zu dem Gebildetsten, das in der Menschheitsentwickelung geschrieben worden ist, gehören diese Briefe «Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen». Es war aber . eine Frage, es war ein Menschenrätsel, das er sich zusammen mit Goethe vor die Seele geführt hat.
Goethe konnte nicht philosophisch in abstrakten Ideen eingehen auf dieses Problem, wie Schiller das konnte; Goethe mußte sich dieses Problem lebendig vornehmen. Und er löste dieses Problem in einer umfassenden Weise in seiner Art so, wie er es hinstellte in dem Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie. Wie Schiller philosophisch zeigen wollte, wie der Mensch vom gewöhnlichen Leben aufsteigt zu einem höheren Leben, so wollte Goethe durch das Zusammenwirken der Geisteskräfte in der menschlichen Seele in dem Märchen von _ der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie zeigen, wie der Mensch sich seelisch entwickelt aus dem alltäglichen Seelenleben zu einem höheren Seelenleben. Was bei Schiller philosophisch abstrakt zutage trat, das gestaltete Goethe in großartiger Weise anschaulich in diesem Märchen, das er anfügte einer Beschreibung des äußeren Lebens in seinem novellistischen, romanartigen Werke: «Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderter». Wirklich, da lebte in dem lebendigen Verkehre zwischen Goethe und Schiller alles auf, was der Mensch sich an Rätselfragen des Lebens stellen konnte mit Bezug auf dasjenige, was in der Frage, in der Sehnsucht liegt:
Schau’ alle Wirkenskraft und Samen,
Und tu’ nicht mehr in Worten kramen.
Wer sich wirklich einläßt auf dasjenige, was zwischen Goethe und Schiller sich abspielte, einläßt auf dasjenige, was in Schillers Geist lebte, in Goethes Geist lebte in der damaligen Zeit, der hat in dem noch nicht anerkanntes, noch nicht genug wirksam gewordenes Geistesgut, in dem konzentriert ist das Streben des fünften nachatlantischen Zeitraums in ganz außerordentlicher Weise. All das, was die beiden dazumal bewegte, in der Art und Weise, wie Schiller das Menschenrätsel philosophisch in seinen «Ästhetischen Briefen» zu lösen versuchte, in der Art und Weise, wie Goethe sich an die Farbenwelt heranmachte in der damaligen Zeit, um Newton entgegenzutreten, in der Art und Weise, wie Goethe die Entwickelung der menschlichen Seele in dem Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie darbietet: das alles sind umfassende Fragen, die, wie es scheint, dazu verurteilt waren, zunächst nur bei wenigen zu leben. Denn indem wir bis hierher zunächst die Tatsachen anführen wollten, welche sich auf Goethes Leben beziehen, muß doch darauf aufmerksam gemacht werden, wie heute viele von Goethe reden, glauben, von Goethe reden zu können, wie aber auch diese Goethe-Zeit als eine Zeit der Vergangenheit vielen doch auch «ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln» ist. Und man möchte sagen, daß es in einem gewissen Sinne sogar entzückend ist, wenn einmal jemand ehrlich ist in dieser Beziehung. Es ist ja gewiß philiströs gewesen, als Du Bois-Reymond seine Rede gehalten hat, der berühmte Naturforscher Du Bois-Reymond: «Goethe und kein Ende». Derselbe Mann, der die «Grenzen des Naturerkennens» vorgezeichnet hat, der so viele bedeutsame physiologische Entdeckungen gemacht hat, er hat, als er Rektor an einer Universität war, seine Rede gehalten: «Goethe und kein Ende». Sie ist philiströs, denn sie entspringt aus der Gesinnung: Ja, da reden so viele Leute von dem, der doch nur ein Dilettant war, von Goethe, der überall herumdilettiert hat: von dem reden die Leute. Was haben wir doch eigentlich seither alles gewonnen, was Goethe selbstverständlich nicht kannte: Zellenlehre, Elektrizitätslehre, Fortschritte der Physiologie! — All das stand vor Du Bois-Reymonds Seele. Was war dagegen Goethe! Und da reden die Leute von dem Faust, den Goethe hingestellt hat, reden so, wie wenn Goethe — meint Du Bois-Reymond — wirklich ein Ideal von Menschheit hingestellt hätte. Und Du Bois-Reymond kann das nicht finden, daß Goethe gerade ein Ideal von Menschheit hingestellt hat, denn er sagt: Wäre es denn eigentlich nicht besser gewesen, Faust größer zu machen, als Goethe ihn gemacht hat, nützlicher für die Menschheit? Da stellt Goethe einen Jammerkerl hin — den Ausdruck gebraucht Du Bois-Reymond nicht, aber ungefähr so ist doch all das, was er sagt -, einen Jammerkerl, der nicht mit seinem eigenen Inneren fertig werden kann. Und dann, sagt er, wäre Faust ein ganzer Kerl gewesen, dann hätte er Gretchen ehrlich geheiratet, nicht verführt, hätte die Elektrisiermaschine und die Luftpumpe erfunden und wäre ein ordentlicher Professor von Berühmtheit geworden. Das sagt er schon wörtlich, daß der Faust, wenn er ein ordentlicher Mensch gewesen wäre, Gretchen ehrlich geheiratet, nicht verführt hätte bloß, die Elektrisiermaschine und die Luftpumpe. erfunden, der Menschheit Dienste geleistet hätte und nicht ein so verlottertes Genie geworden wäre, das in allerlei spiritistischen Unfug sich eingelassen hat.
Es ist gewiß philiströs, solch eine Rektoratsrede, wie man sie hören konnte am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, aber sie ist wenigstens ehrlich. Und man möchte, daß viel öfter solche Ehrlichkeit auftritt, denn sie ist doch entzückend, weil sie der Wahrheit entspricht, während verlogen, dreimal verlogen vieles von dem ist, was die Leute an Begeisterung für Faust und Goethe aufbringen, Leute, die doch nur «froh sind, wenn sie Regenwürmer finden». Denn solche Zitate aus Goethe, wie man sie heute vielfach hört, sind ja auch nur geistige Regenwürmer, wenn es auch Goethe-Worte sind.
Gerade an dem Verhältnis unserer Zeit zu einem solchen Geist wie Goethe, kann man vielfach das tief Unwahre dieser Zeit studieren. Und gar mancher, der nichts weiter tut, als «in Worten kramen», kramt eben auch in Goethe-Worten, während in Goethes Weltanschauung etwas liegt, was hineinführt in all das, was aufgehen muß in der zukünftigen Entwickelung der Menschheit und was sich, wie wir schon andeuteten, wohl mit Geisteswissenschaft nicht nur verbindet, sondern was schon immer durch seine eigene Natur mit Geisteswissenschaft verbunden ist.
First Lecture
Tomorrow I will begin to speak about the problems I have already mentioned: the connection between spiritual science impulses and various unresolved tasks of the present time, and the influence that spiritual science must have on individual, especially scientific, problems. I would then like to point out, as I have already said, what I would like to call, in the sense of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the karma of the human profession.
Today I will take as my starting point something that appears, but only appears, to have little connection with this. However, this starting point will offer opportunities for various connections. For today I will attempt to show what it is in Goethe's life that particularly characterizes him as a personality of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Some of what I have already hinted at, especially in recent times, will certainly resurface. However, I would like to present to you a series of facts relating to this personality, facts which offer everyone the opportunity to characterize important phenomena of the dawning fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch in terms of immediate reality. Goethe's life and personality are so comprehensive and decisive in relation to spiritual human affairs that this can hardly be said of any other personality; and on the other hand, one can say that, despite much that has happened, Goethe's life and personality have remained as ineffective as possible for life up to the present day. But this has to do with the whole peculiarity of our modern culture. One might ask: How can anyone claim that Goethe's life has remained ineffective? Are his works not known? Has not a Goethe edition comprising hundreds of volumes been published only recently? Wasn't the number of Goethe's published letters already six to seven thousand at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century? — and today it is probably no less than ten thousand. Isn't there a rich literature on Goethe, one might almost say in all cultural languages? Aren't his works performed again and again? Isn't the most central of his works, Faust, brought to people's attention again and again?
Well, I have recently cited on several occasions a remarkable error made by a recent great scholar, which is much more symptomatic and significant for our present age than one might think. A great natural scientist of the present day, a leading natural scientist, wants to talk about the significance of the scientific worldview in the present day in such a way that he wants to present this scientific worldview as the most brilliant thing not only of our time, but of all human history, and he then rises to the following statement: Even if it is difficult to prove that we live in the best of all worlds, it is at least certain for the natural scientist that we humans of the present live in the best of all times, and one could burst out with Goethe, the great connoisseur of the world and of human nature, in the words:
...it is a great delight
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
and how we have finally come so far.
And this great natural scientist is mistaken in that he states this as his innermost conviction and believes he is following in the footsteps of Goethe, the great expert on the world and human nature; but he is only following Wagner, whom Goethe contrasts with the character of Faust. There is at least a good deal of honesty in our time in such a mistake, for this man speaks more truthfully than all the numerous people who quote Goethe today, who talk about Faust, but do so with genuine, unadulterated Wagnerian sentiments. Let us therefore take Goethe's life as a spiritual phenomenon as the basis for our consideration.
You know that Goethe was born in a city and under circumstances which, if one wishes to study the connection between human life and the great questions of destiny, the questions of karma, prove to be quite significant for Goethe's life. In the 17th century, Goethe's paternal family immigrated to Frankfurt am Main. His mother's family was long established and highly respected in Frankfurt am Main, so much so that, which really says a lot about the reputation of a family in such a city at that time, the mayors of Frankfurt were chosen from the Textor family, from which Goethe's mother came. Goethe's father was a man with an extraordinary sense of duty, but also a man who had wide-ranging interests for his time. He had traveled to Italy himself, had reproductions of important works of the Roman world hanging on all the walls of his patrician house in Frankfurt, and he liked to talk about these things. And whatever was influential in the culture of the time, which was still very much dominated by French culture in Frankfurt, played out in such a way that Goethe's house was deeply involved. The great events of the world were already making their way into the Goethe household, and Goethe's father was deeply interested in them. And Goethe's mother was a woman of the most genuine human disposition, with, one might say, the most immediate interest in everything that connects human nature to the legendary, the fairy-tale, that which carries people out of the everyday on the wings of a poetic, imaginative disposition.
And more than people in our time, Goethe was able to grow up in his time, unperturbed by those disturbances that are much more prevalent in our time than they were then, those disturbances that arise from the fact that people are dragged off to school at a relatively early age. Goethe was not dragged to school, but was able to develop freely in his parents' home and, under the influence of his strict but never harsh father and his poetically inclined mother, developed in an extraordinarily free manner. And he developed in such a way that in later years he could look back on his boyhood and childhood with deep satisfaction, for he developed in pure humanity. Many things that one reads today in Goethe's autobiography “Poetry and Truth” with only a somewhat pedantic sense of humor have a much greater significance than one might think. When Goethe himself recounts how he took piano lessons, it is quite indicative of deep human connections that there, I would say, as if playing out mythologically before one's eyes, the various fingers of the hand become animated, independent figures, the fingers becoming Däumling and Deuterling, and this Däumling and Deuterling, I would say, without sentimentality, acquire certain mystical relationships to the notes. This testifies to how Goethe, as a whole person, was to be led into life. It was not the intention to introduce just one aspect of this human being, as so often happens, namely the head, into human life, and then, in order to support the head, the rest of the body through all kinds of gymnastics or sports, but rather the spiritualized human body, the human body spiritualized down to its fingertips, should enter into a relationship with the outside world.
To this we must now add Goethe's disposition and nature, which showed a sharp individuality from the very beginning. Everything points to a certain direction in his life from his earliest youth. As he grows up, he is just as inclined to follow devotedly the graceful, inspiring fairy tales and other stories told by his mother, thereby bringing his imagination to life in play even as a boy, as he is inclined, whenever possible, to withdraw from the gaze of his mother and especially his strict father, to sneak into the narrow alleys, where he not only observes all kinds of relationships at an early age, but even becomes entangled in them, thereby undergoing at an early age many things that are deposited on the human karma in living sensations and feelings. The father is a strict man who, one might say, with a certain self-evidence, guides the boy toward what, according to the views of the time, alone can give a person stability and direction in life. The father is a lawyer, raised in Roman views, imbued with Roman views, and he also imbues the boy's mind with legal-Roman views. However, early on, the sight of images depicting Roman art and treasures ignites in the boy's soul a certain longing for what was created within Roman culture.
Everything boils down to placing Goethe in the life of his time in a very specific way. This makes him, I would say, in the 3rd to 4th century of the fifth post-Atlantean period, a personality who carries within himself all the impulses of the dawning fifth post-Atlantean period. He becomes, in a sense, an early independent personality who lives from within himself: nothing that connects people in a rigid, pedantic way with certain forms imposed on them by this or that social circumstance. He gets to know social circumstances in such a way that they touch him, but he does not become forged together with them. He always preserves, as it were, an insulating stool on which he stands and from which he can gain a relationship to everything, but without growing together with anything in the way that many people from the earliest times grow together with their surrounding circumstances. Certainly, all this is the result of particularly favorable karma. But if we look at this karma objectively, important karmic questions and problems will be resolved.
Then, after being introduced to law by his father, Goethe was transferred to the University of Leipzig. He entered university life in Leipzig in 1765, at a relatively early age. It should not be forgotten how he entered this life at the University of Leipzig: not tormented and frayed by the efforts which young people in our time have to endure until a much later age in order to graduate from high school, and then, exhausted and frayed after graduating from high school, with the longing to sweep away what they have learned, at least to a large extent, to approach university studies in order to finally enjoy life. He did not come to the University of Leipzig just to skip classes—for those who are not entirely familiar with the German language, I should note that “schwänzen” means not to attend lectures but to do something else during lecture time—but he did engage in this skipping to a considerable extent. By entering into life, into the high scientific life, into the famous scientific life of the University of Leipzig, he entered circles which must have awakened a deep longing in him as long as he heard about them. He had heard that the great Gottsched, the very Gottsched who had the education of his time locked up in his head and poured it into the lives of those connected with Leipzig's culture through numerous channels, both written and oral, was working at the University of Leipzig. Although Lessing's great influence still lived alongside Gottsched's in Leipzig, but Goethe initially thought that he would be introduced by Gottsched's sublime figure to the entire circle of contemporary wisdom, where he would be able to study law and philosophy and also that which theology and scholarship about supernatural things offer the man of the world.
It was certainly a small disappointment for Goethe, who already had a certain sense of aesthetics, when he made his first visit to Gottsched. He arrived at Gottsched's door; the servant – I don't know whether he already sensed something of what was going on in Goethe – without taking the necessary time to announce Goethe's visit to Gottsched in the proper manner, let Goethe enter Gottsched's house without further ado, so that Goethe met Gottsched, the great man, when he was not wearing his wig, but was standing there with his bald head. For a scholar of that time – we are in the year 1765! – this was something quite terrible. And now Goethe, who was very impressionable in such matters, had to watch as Gottsched quickly grabbed his wig with a graceful movement and pulled it over his bald head, but with his other hand gave his servant a tremendous slap in the face. This cooled Goethe down a little. He was cooled even further by the fact that Gottsched's manner did not correspond to what he longed for. Gellert's moral lectures did not speak to him with the breadth of vision he desired. And so it came about that he soon turned his attention in Leipzig to medical and scientific lectures, which he experienced as a kind of continuation in the home of Professor Ludwig, where he had his lunch and where many such things were discussed. It cannot be said that Goethe actually “studied philosophy, law, medicine, and, unfortunately, theology” in Leipzig, but he had looked into these subjects and, above all, had already absorbed many of the scientific ideas of the time in Leipzig.
Then, after dabbling in various sciences, seeing many things in life, and becoming involved in various affairs, he experienced a terminal illness. He looked death in the face. One must remember that at that time many things were going through Goethe's mind while he was actually facing death as a result of an extremely severe hemorrhage that recurred several times. He was now weak, had to go home, and could only resume his university studies after some time. He did so in Strasbourg. And in Strasbourg he entered the circle of a very important personality who was extremely important to him. Now, in order to judge with what feelings Goethe approached this personality, one must take into account that Goethe, when he returned to Frankfurt under the impression of those innermost soul experiences he had undergone in Leipzig in the face of death, had already begun, through various human connections in which he had become involved, to immerse himself in mystical experiences and a mystical understanding of the world. Even then, he immersed himself in mystical and occult writings and, still young, attempted in his own way to construct a world system, a worldview based on mystical, one might say mystical-kabbalistic, points of view. He really tried at that time to recognize “what holds the world together at its core,” tried to let “all forces and seeds” work on him, and did not want, as he had seen in Leipzig, to “rummage around in words.”
Then he came to Strasbourg, where he was able to attend lectures in natural science, which he initially devoted himself to. He thought that law, which was particularly close to his father's heart—less so to his own—would somehow work out. But he had an urge to learn about the laws of nature. Then one day, as he was climbing a staircase in Strasbourg, he encountered a personality who immediately, instantly, made an enormous impression on him with his appearance and the inner life shining through his intelligent face. His appearance: well, here was a man who certainly gave a somewhat priestly impression, but who wore his long coat in such a way that he had tucked the long tails into his pockets at the back, which was strange, but made a brilliant impression on Goethe. It was Herder. And now he immersed himself, on the one hand, in everything that was stirring in Herder at that time. There was an extraordinary amount going on in Herder at that time. One might say that Herder carried within him a whole new worldview. What had never been attempted in this way before, Herder carried within himself in a spirit of genius: to trace the phenomena of the world from the simplest, from the simplest inanimate, through the plant and animal kingdoms, up to man, up to history, and up to the divine government of the world in history. A great, comprehensive worldview already lived in Herder at that time. And Herder spoke with enthusiasm, but also, when necessary, with indignation against all the traditional conventions, about his new ideas. Goethe was inspired by many of Herder's conversations. That everything in the world is in development and that a spiritual world plan carries all development: in such a context, as Herder saw it at that time, it had never been seen before. But Herder had not yet written all this; it was all still in the making. And Goethe received it in the making and took part in Herder's striving, thinking, and struggling. One might say: starting with a speck of dust, through all the realms of nature up to God, Herder wanted to trace the development of the world, as he then did in such a grand, comprehensive style, as far as was necessary at that time, in his incomparably great work “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind.” Here we see how Herder's spirit summarized everything that was known at the time about the natural and human realms. But all of this was summarized into a worldview imbued with spirit.
In addition, what Spinoza brought into the newer development of worldview also influenced Goethe through Herder's spirit. And the inclination that Goethe retained throughout his life for Spinoza germinated at that time in Strasbourg through Herder. In addition, Herder was, which was unheard of at that time, an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare. One need only imagine how this peculiar polarity of souls between Goethe and Herder must have worked, since Goethe came, filled with a longing to see everything that contemporary education could not give him, and found in Herder, as it were, a revolutionary spirit of the highest order, storming against the education of his time. Goethe had learned to revere the formal art that lives in Corneille and Racine, and he had absorbed all this as a person absorbs things that he hears are the most important in the world. But he had absorbed all this with an inner indignation. And it was like a balm to his soul when Herder introduced him to Shakespeare, the poet who was free from all formalities, who created characters out of immediate human individuality, who had none of what Goethe had learned to revere so highly: unity of time, unity of place, unity of action — but who had instead placed human beings at the center. And one is tempted to say: Baptized in the name of Shakespeare, an inner cultural revolutionary attitude took root in Goethe's soul, which can be expressed something like this: I want to get to know people, not how people are bound into the world by formal rules and formal laws, not the web of units of situation, time, place, and action, but I want to grasp people themselves.
This gave him the opportunity to get to know people in Strasbourg at that time who were trying to look into the deeper, more intimate sides of human experience, such as the wonderful Jung-Stilling, who studied the occult sides of human life and knew how to describe them in such detail. Jung-Stilling's life story, his description of what he calls the “gray man” who rules in the underground world, is one of the most beautiful descriptions of occult phenomena. One might say that Goethe was introduced to the natural and historical life, to the aesthetic life, by Herder, and to the occult aspects of human life, which he had already encountered in Frankfurt through a more thorough study of Swedenborg, by Jung-Stilling.
All this combined in Goethe's soul with what had been handed down to him about the laws of nature while he was attending lectures on natural science in Strasbourg. And so he began to ponder the great questions and problems of human life. He had looked deeply into what can be known and desired, had looked deeply into the connections between the nature of the human soul and the nature of the universe. He had also become acquainted with Paracelsus in connection with all this, already in Frankfurt. And so, alongside what he experienced elsewhere in Strasbourg, this longing to see “all the forces and seeds at work” took root in him in a particularly profound way, especially in Strasbourg. One must not imagine that Goethe wasted his time in Strasbourg by wandering to the rectory in Sesenheim, which I do not mean to belittle. Goethe was able to combine life in the depths of human desire and human knowledge with life in connection with everything immediately human and everyday, with every human destiny.
Then, after defending his theses, he became a kind of doctor of jurisprudence in Strasbourg, a licentiate and doctor of jurisprudence. This satisfied his father, and he was able to return home. His legal practice began. However, there was a strange disharmony in the soul of this man, who was now supposed to study files at the Imperial Chamber Court in Wetzlar that were often literally, not symbolically, centuries old. For there, “laws and rights dragged on like an eternal disease.” But later on, in other places, one could still experience many things of this kind. You see, in a place where I grew up—allow me to insert this—I also experienced the following: It was in the 1870s, and we heard—I was a boy—that a man was to be imprisoned. In the 1870s! He was a respected man in the village, who had a fairly large business there. He was imprisoned for a year and a half, I believe, because in 1848, during the revolution, he threw stones at an inn! The trial had actually lasted from 1848, when the man had thrown stones at an inn as a young boy, until he was well into his old age, and he was imprisoned for a year and a half around 1873. Perhaps it wasn't as bad then as it was when Goethe studied the files at the Imperial Chamber Court, but it was still bad enough. But his father was happy about it and helped Goethe in many ways with the problems he had to solve from the dusty files. But one should not think that Goethe behaved clumsily as a lawyer. That was not the case at all. Goethe certainly held his own as a lawyer, and Goethe gives no reason to emphasize again and again that a great mind living by ideals must be clumsy in life. Goethe was by no means clumsy as a lawyer. And when, for example, many a lawyer today points to his work and then remarks that, apart from his extensive activities, he has no time to read Goethe, it should be pointed out that Goethe himself was certainly just as good a lawyer—this can still be documented today, as can many references to his work— except that Goethe, in addition to being as practical as practitioners can be, already carried within him the “Götz von Berlichingen,” yes, he carried within him the idea that had already emerged in Frankfurt from his scientific studies and his acquaintance with Herder and Jung-Stilling: the idea for his “Faust.”
Götz von Berlichingen — Gottfried von Berlichingen — immediately testifies, in the way Goethe shapes him into a work of art, to what Goethe's nature actually is. With Goethe's nature, something new enters into the intellectual creativity of mankind. Goethe cannot be compared as an artist or poet with Dante, Homer, or Shakespeare. He approaches poetic creativity in a different way, and this is essentially connected with the way Goethe appears throughout his entire life. The era in which Goethe lived, both in his immediate surroundings and in the wider world, did not allow a spirit such as Goethe's to develop fully. Goethe did not have the kind of state-centered life that we take for granted today. He lived in a region where individual territories had developed to a high degree. How this came about is less important, but he did not live in a large state; he lived in such a way that no overarching conformity spread over the area from which he grew up. Life had no fixed forms around him. And so he was able to grasp it everywhere in his closest circle and let the universal work on him in his closest circle. And that is what is so peculiar about him.
Then he came across a book that was poorly written, a very poorly written book, but one that interested him greatly; it was the “Autobiography of Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,” about that peculiar figure from the 16th century who took part in so many events of the 16th century, but in a strange way. When you read the life story of Gottfried von Berlichingen, you see how he came into contact with all kinds of people under Emperor Maximilian and Emperor Charles V, how he took part in all kinds of disputes and battles in the first half of the 16th century, but always in such a way that you can actually see: here he is taking part in this event, he is completely immersed in it, living it to the full. Then he appears in another event in a completely different character, is drawn into it again, fights for various interests, and is later taken prisoner. After he has sworn an oath not to participate in the conflicts any longer and is left in peace in his castle in central southern Germany, he becomes involved in the peasant movement when the peasants rise up in the struggle for freedom. But everything is done in such a way that nowhere in Gottfried von Berlichingen does one see that he is being drawn into the events, but everywhere one sees that what holds the disparate things together is actually the personality, the character of Gottfried von Berlichingen himself. One could say that when reading the life story of Gottfried von Berlichingen, all the events he goes through and becomes involved in do not, I would not say, bore one to death, but one is not really interested in the individual disputes and battles that Gottfried von Berlichingen experiences. But despite all the boredom with the events he goes through, one is always interested in his strong and characterful personality.
But that was precisely what attracted Goethe to the figure of Gottfried von Berlichingen. And so he was able to see the substance, the aspirations, and the life of the 16th century concentrated in one personality, something he would never have been able to do in any other way. That was what he needed. For him, it was a way of taking history into his own hands and getting to know it. How this or that historian, “with excellent pragmatic maxims,” after rummaging through junk rooms and overturning trash cans, would have linked individual historical periods together would certainly not have been to Goethe's taste. But to see a person living in his time and to see reflected in a human soul that which would otherwise not interest one was something for Goethe. So he took this, one might say boring, poorly written autobiography of Gottfried von Berlichingen, read it, and actually changed very little. That is why he called the first version of this, if you will, drama: “The Story of Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Dramatized.” He did not write “drama” on it, but only “dramatized.” He actually only dramatized the story of Götz von Berlichingen, but he dramatized it in such a way that the whole time lives within it, but the time lives within a person. And now think, it is the time of the 16th century, it is the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Goethe saw it through the soul of Gottfried von Berlichingen, this man who had outgrown central southern Germany. Even then, a piece of life was passing through his soul, a life that is historical, but viewed from the perspective of real life, not from the perspective of what is “historical.” It would have been completely impossible for Goethe at that time, with all the problems of humanity in his soul that I have hinted at, to take any figure from history and dramatize it according to history, but to dramatize the stammering autobiography of a being who affected him with all his humanity, as the dramatic art had revealed itself to him through his immersion in Shakespeare: that was what he could do. This made him well known in certain circles that were interested in such things at the time, for he had brought a piece of the past into the present, into his present, for his contemporaries, for this contemporary world, to whom this past was “a book with seven seals.” For it goes without saying that in the widest circles at that time, people knew as little about what Goethe had discovered in the poorly written 16th-century story of Gottfried von Berlichingen as some pastors today know about the supernatural life.
Goethe had intervened in human life. He had to intervene because he himself could only live by growing together with this human life as it presented itself to him, even though he remained on an insulating stool, growing together only by being touched by it, so to speak.
Goethe was to be brought into contact with life in yet another way during the same period. Today we have little idea of what was then a profound feature of soul development in the wider circle around Goethe within the so-called educated world. People had grown so accustomed to what had developed since the 16th century. In outward life, laws and rights had indeed been passed down like an eternal disease, but souls were nevertheless touched in a certain way by the urge we know as the urge of the souls of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The result was that a profound disharmony arose in the more deeply disposed natures between what the souls felt and what was happening in their surroundings. This led, however, to a strong sentimentality in experience. And to be able to feel, to feel as strongly as possible, how far reality deviates from what a genuine, warm human soul can feel, to be able to emphasize this so clearly, was felt by many souls at that time as a deep need. They turned their gaze outward toward the great life. There were different social classes, there were people with different interests, but their souls often had little contact with each other within this public life. But when these souls were alone, they sought a special spiritual life that lay beyond their external lives. And to be able to say to oneself: This outer life, oh, how it contrasts with all that the soul strives for and hopes for! — to be able to say that was like a balm. And to really immerse oneself in a sentimental mood became a trait of the times. People found life as it was lived in public to be bad, deficient. People therefore wanted to seek life where it was not corrupted by the indifferent public, where they could really settle into the quiet, peaceful goings-on of the world, into nature, into the peaceful animal and plant life. This gradually gave rise to a mood that dominated a large part of the educated soul. Being able to weep over the disharmony of the world gave immense satisfaction. And those writers were particularly honored whose works gave cause on every page for tears to flow from the eyes onto the pages being read. For many, being unhappy became a longing for happiness. One goes for a walk in the woods, returns, sits quietly in one's room and thinks: How many, many little worms, which one has not noticed and stepped on with one's feet, have lost their lives during this walk! One weeps hot tears into one's handkerchief over the disharmony between nature and human life. One writes letters to beloved friends who are just as sentimental as oneself, beginning with: “My dearest friend,” but even this line is permeated by a tear that falls onto the paper and rushes along with the letter to the beloved friend as a precious testimony.
This way of life still pervaded large parts of the educated world in the second half of the 18th century. Goethe was surrounded by it and he understood it well, for there was much truth in this feeling of disharmony between what often filled the soul unconsciously and indeterminately and what the outside world gave it. There was often much truth in it. Goethe could sense this. The quiet life that took place between souls was so unlike what was happening in the wider world at that time. Goethe had to experience this, because he could and should be moved by everything. But he also had to draw strength from within himself again and again to recover from his encounters with these things. And so he wrote about this whole mood of the times, which was known as Siegwart fever or Werther fever and had gripped a large part of the educated classes, in his youth novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. He imbued the character of Werther with everything he had experienced of this sentimental mood that prevailed in the world, to such an extent that he was driven by the perceived disharmony of life to the brink of suicide. That is why he lets Werther end up committing suicide. It is good to remember that, on the one hand, Goethe, despite being firmly rooted in his individuality, had the ability to connect his soul to everything that was going on in the souls of those around him, but that this, in turn, became art for him and he wrote it out of his soul. When he had written Werther, he was healed by the whole of Werther, which now moved many other people, for Werther fever was rampant in the widest circles thanks to the novel. But Goethe was healed.
In appreciating such things, one must not forget that Goethe really had a wide range of emotional life, that he was able, in a sense, to live in emotional polarities. He went through the Werther disease and wrote the Werther disease out of his soul in his “The Sorrows of Young Werther.” But it is true what he wrote in a letter to a friend at that time, when he sketched a picture of his sublime, sentimental mood, but at the same time said that there was still another Goethe alive besides the one who had melancholic and suicidal thoughts, the Goethe who committed suicide: a carnival Goethe who could take on all kinds of disguises and masks. And this carnival Goethe really did live artistically. One need only let the more or less fragmentary dramatic creations, “Satyros” and “Pater Brey,” which belong to the same period, sink in, and one can already sense the whole breadth of Goethe's inner life: on the one hand, the sentimentality of Werther, on the other, the humor of “Satyros” and “Pater Brey.” Satyros, the idolized forest devil, who on the one hand unleashes a veritable tirade of pantheism, wants to return to nature in true Rousseauian fashion, and does not want to enjoy the fruits of civilization. Raw chestnuts, what a delicious meal: this is Satyros' ideal! But Satyros is a natural philosopher who knows the secrets of nature well, which is why—forgive me—he gains followers, especially among women, and is idolized, but ultimately behaves quite badly. With enormous humor, all the false longing for authority and belief in authority is mocked. And in Father Brey we see false prophecy, which pretends to be holy but does all sorts of things under the mask of holiness—not mocked with great humor, but presented objectively. Here Goethe is a humorist in the liveliest sense, a crude humorist. And all this comes from the same state of mind that gave rise to “Werther.” This is not because Goethe was superficial, but because he was deep enough to grasp the polarities of human life.
Goethe had already achieved a great deal of influence with Werther. Werther became very well known relatively early on, and it was actually Werther that caused the Duke of Weimar to take an interest in Goethe. Götz von Berlichingen made a great impression, but not on those who at that time believed they understood culture, art, and poetry. “Imitation détestable des mauvaises pièces anglaises, dégoûtante platitude,” said a great man of the time about Götz von Berlichingen.
In 1775, Goethe was able to move his life to a completely different setting, to Weimar. The Duke of Weimar became acquainted with him and summoned Goethe to Weimar, and Goethe became, one might say, Minister of State in Weimar in one fell swoop.You see, today, in retrospect, one has the feeling that Goethe wrote Götz von Berlichingen, wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, and brought a large part of Faust with him to Weimar; in all this one sees the main thing in Goethe. He himself, in his situation at the time, did not see this as the main thing; these were the rejects of his life. And the Duke of Weimar did not appoint him as court poet, but as Minister of State, which of course caused an uproar among the old guard in Weimar, so that the Duke of Weimar had to issue a kind of letter to his people in which he justified himself: Yes, in his opinion, Goethe was a greater man than the old guard. And that he, before he became—well, what do I know, a junior councilor and senior councilor and so on—was immediately appointed to the State Ministry, that at least required some justification on the part of the Duke. But he gave it. And Goethe was by no means a bad minister, by no means one who carried out his ministerial duties as a mere sideline, but he was a much better minister than many ministers who were not Goethe in this sense. And anyone who has once convinced themselves, as I have—I may say so in all modesty, that this was the case with me—how Goethe served his ministerial duties, knows that Goethe was an excellent minister for the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, who devoted himself to all the details of his business with complete dedication. Being a minister was the main thing for Goethe at that time, and for ten years Goethe did an extraordinary amount of work precisely as a minister in Weimar.
Now he had already brought part of “Faust” with him to Weimar. What now appears in his works under the “tasteful” title “Urfaust” he had brought with him to Weimar at that time. But this Faust already contained everything that one might call Faust's upward gaze. And how Faust was drawn from immediate life, but now also from the life that touches every human soul! And again, it became apparent in Weimar that Goethe could not be completely captivated by his surroundings. One often meets people who are more or less merely the exponents of their files. Goethe was not the mere exponent of the files, the truly numerous files he compiled as a Weimar civil servant. But he also immersed himself in all aspects of Weimar life, and even though he remained on his insulating stool, he was touched by everything human, and the immediate human experience was transformed into art in his work. And so we see how the character of a woman, Frau von Stein, whom he befriended, became a problem for him in his life. And basically, it was his direct observation of this character that led him to dramatize the figure of “Iphigenia.” He wanted to artistically shape what had affected him in the character of Frau von Stein. The fable of Iphigenia was merely a means for him to solve a problem in life. And the whole situation at the court of Weimar, his coexistence with the strangely disposed Duke Karl August, the sight of the Duchess's fate, other circumstances that played a role, all became problems for him. Life became a question for him. He needed material to artistically overcome these circumstances. He took the material from “Tasso,” but it was actually the circumstances in Weimar that he conquered artistically. Of course, I cannot go into the many details of Goethe's intellectual life, but I would like to present this fact to you so that we can use it as an example in our study of the humanities.
Even back then, in the very early days when he was living in Weimar, the various circumstances in which he found himself gave him the opportunity to deepen his studies of nature in an independent way. He studied plants and began anatomical studies at the University of Jena. Everywhere he went, he sought to verify in detail what he had learned from Herder: the ideas of interconnection in the world. He wanted to study the interconnection of the entire plant world; he wanted to study what lived spiritually in plants. He wanted to bring the kinship of all animals before his soul in order to find the path up to man. He wanted to study the idea of development directly in the objects of nature themselves. Think of it: he had taken up Herder's great idea of studying a unified spiritual becoming through all the stages of development of beings. At that time, he and Herder stood quite alone in this view, for those who were influential in intellectual life thought quite differently and introduced dividing walls everywhere.
All spiritual activity can be found to have two poles: separation and synthesis. Goethe and Herder were concerned with synthesizing diversity and multiplicity; the others were concerned with having neat divisions, with classifying things nicely. And so, at that time, the main question for many was how humans differed from animals. Humans, it was said, did not have an intermediate jawbone in which the incisors are located, in the upper jaw, but a single jaw; only animals had the intermediate jaw. Goethe was certainly not materialistic, certainly did not want to establish materialism with materialistic intent; but it was contrary to his sense that the inner harmony of nature should not be true in such a detail. Therefore, he set out to prove, against all scientific authority, that humans also have the intermaxillary bone. And he succeeded. And so he came to his first significant scientific treatise, entitled: “Humans, like animals, have an intermaxillary bone in the upper jaw.” With this, he had contributed something to intellectual development, a detail with which he opposed the entire scientific world of his time and which today is taken for granted, which of course no one doubts.
Goethe is not seen as the poet of “Werther,” “Götz von Berlichingen,” or “Faust,” as the man whose mind alone gave rise to “Iphigenia” and “Tasso,” but rather as someone with a deep insight into the connections within nature, so that he truly studied and worked as a genuine natural scientist. He is not one-sidedly a researcher or a poet or a minister, he is a complete human being, a complete human being striving in all directions.
Goethe lived in Weimar for about ten years, after which he could no longer resist his longing for Italy. And so, in the second half of the 1780s, he undertook his journey to Italy as if fleeing. One must not forget that Goethe was only then entering into circumstances that corresponded to a longing he had cherished since his earliest youth, and that he was actually entering into great circumstances for the first time. Just think, Goethe had never seen a big city other than Frankfurt until then! And one must always remember that the first big city through which Goethe was placed on the stage of world history was Rome. This must be properly understood in the context of Goethe's life. And that Goethe felt the whole stream of life pulsating in Rome, as it had risen up in the fifth post-Atlantean era until his time, and that Goethe connected what was working in him as world history with a comprehensive worldview that was developing in his soul. He carried the idea that had come to him through animal forms and plant forms through the diversity of the forms of plants, stones, and animals that he compared and now pursued on the Apennine Peninsula. He sought to verify his idea of a primordial plant in a wide circle, and he succeeded. Every stone, every plant interested him; he let the way in which diversity forms unity work on him. In doing so, he allowed himself to be influenced by the great works of art that ancient Greece had left him in a faint afterglow. And just as he objectively observed all the diversity of nature, he was able to feel all the intimacies of the great art of the Renaissance from the depths of his soul. One need only read the words he spoke when he saw Raphael's “Saint Cecilia” in Bologna to see how, when he looked at this work of art, he revived in his soul all the feelings that lead man from the sensual world to the supersensible in a wonderfully deep and intense way. Read in his “Italian Journey” how, while he was deepening his ideas about nature more and more, he felt that artworks show that man can only truly create art when art is created at the same time from the depths of life. The great works of art of the Greeks, he said, are now clear to me, because: “I have a suspicion that they proceeded according to the very laws that nature proceeds by and which I am trying to trace.” — “These great works of art are at the same time the highest works of nature produced by human beings according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and conceited falls away; there is necessity, there is God.” So he wrote to his friends in Weimar.
And he took something enormous into himself, and it transformed itself for him into what he had previously felt and sensed. He now wrote scenes that are significant in his ‘Faust’ in Rome. He had already drafted “Iphigenia” and “Tasso” more or less in prose in Weimar, and had partly completed them; now he rewrote them in verse. For he was able to find the style he now wanted to pour into these works as a classical style, by allowing classical art to continually influence him. What Goethe experienced in Italy was a regeneration, a true rebirth of his soul. And something peculiar now developed in his soul: he felt a deep contrast between what his age was striving for, what he had seen everywhere around him, and what he had learned to perceive as the highest expression of the purely human.
So he returned to Weimar, he returned to the world in which works had been created that had captivated everyone at the time: Schiller's “The Robbers,” Heine's “Ardinghello,” and the like. This seemed to him like barbaric stuff, repugnant to all the roots that now lived in his soul. And he felt thoroughly alone in his inner life. He was, after all, almost forgotten. And now, little by little, a friendship developed with Schiller. It was difficult for him to gain access to him, for nothing was so hateful to him when he returned as Schiller's early works. But they found each other, and they formed a bond of friendship that has few equals in the history of mankind. And they inspired each other so much that Herman Grimm rightly said: “In the relationship between Goethe and Schiller, you don't just have Goethe plus Schiller, but Goethe plus Schiller and Schiller plus Goethe. Each became something different through the other; and what each became different through the other, each used to enrich the other. And now, great, comprehensive problems of humanity arose in the souls of the two. What the world at that time wanted to solve politically—the great problem of human freedom—presented itself to Goethe and Schiller in a spiritual-human way. Others thought a great deal about how to bring about an external institution in the world that would allow people freedom in life. For Schiller, the question was: How does man find freedom in his own soul? He devoted himself to this problem in his unique work, “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.” How man leads his soul beyond himself, from the ordinary state of life to a higher state of life, was the great question for Schiller. Man stands on one side in sensual nature, Schiller said, and on the other side he faces the logical world. In neither is he free. He becomes free as an aesthetic enjoyer and aesthetic creator, where thoughts become such that they are not subject to logical compulsion, but to taste and inclination, where they are at the same time free from sensuality. Schiller called for a middle ground. These letters, “On the Aesthetic Education of Man,” are among the most enlightened works ever written in the history of humanity. But it was a question, a human enigma, that he and Goethe brought before their souls.
Goethe could not approach this problem philosophically in abstract ideas as Schiller could; Goethe had to tackle this problem in a living way. And he solved this problem in a comprehensive manner in his own way, as he presented it in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. Just as Schiller wanted to show philosophically how human beings rise from ordinary life to a higher life, Goethe wanted to show, through the interaction of the spiritual forces in the human soul in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, how human beings develop spiritually from everyday soul life to a higher soul life. What Schiller revealed in philosophical abstraction, Goethe vividly portrayed in this fairy tale, which he added to a description of external life in his novella-like work, “Conversations of German Emigrants.” Indeed, in the lively exchange between Goethe and Schiller, everything that humans could ask themselves in terms of the riddles of life came to life, with reference to what lies in the question, in the longing:
Look at all the power and seeds,
And don't rummage around in words anymore.
Anyone who truly engages with what took place between Goethe and Schiller, who engages with what lived in Schiller's mind and in Goethe's mind at that time, will find in the as yet unrecognized and not yet fully effective intellectual heritage a concentration of the aspirations of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in an extraordinary way. Everything that moved the two of them at that time, in the way that Schiller attempted to philosophically solve the riddle of man in his “Aesthetic Letters,” , in the way Goethe approached the world of colors at that time in order to counter Newton, in the way Goethe presents the development of the human soul in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily: all these are comprehensive questions which, it seems, were doomed to live only among a few at first. For in presenting the facts relating to Goethe's life thus far, we must point out how many people today talk about Goethe, believe they can talk about Goethe, but how this Goethe era is also a closed book to many. And one might say that in a certain sense it is even delightful when someone is honest in this regard. It was certainly philistine when Du Bois-Reymond, the famous natural scientist, gave his speech: “Goethe and no end.” The same man who outlined the “limits of natural knowledge,” who made so many significant physiological discoveries, gave a speech when he was rector of a university entitled “Goethe and no end.” It is philistine because it springs from the attitude: Yes, so many people talk about him who was only a dilettante, about Goethe, who dabbled in everything: that's what people talk about. What have we actually gained since then that Goethe obviously did not know: cell theory, electricity, advances in physiology! — All this was before Du Bois-Reymond's soul. What was Goethe in comparison! And people talk about the Faust that Goethe created, talking as if Goethe — according to Du Bois-Reymond — had really created an ideal of humanity. And Du Bois-Reymond cannot see that Goethe created an ideal of humanity, because he says: Wouldn't it have been better to make Faust greater than Goethe made him, more useful to humanity? Goethe presents a wretch—Du Bois-Reymond does not use that expression, but that is roughly what he means—a wretch who cannot come to terms with his own inner self. And then, he says, Faust would have been a real man, he would have married Gretchen honestly, not seduced her, invented the electrifying machine and the air pump, and become a respectable professor of renown. He says this literally, that if Faust had been a decent person, he would have married Gretchen honestly, not merely seduced her, invented the electrifying machine and the air pump, served humanity, and not become such a degenerate genius who got involved in all kinds of spiritualistic nonsense.
It is certainly philistine to hear such a rector's speech as one might have heard at the end of the 19th century, but at least it is honest. And one would like to see such honesty more often, because it is delightful in its truthfulness, whereas much of the enthusiasm for Faust and Goethe displayed by people who are “only happy when they find earthworms” is false, three times false. For such quotations from Goethe, as one hears them so often today, are nothing but intellectual earthworms, even if they are Goethe's words.
It is precisely in our age's relationship to a spirit such as Goethe's that one can study the profound untruth of our time in many ways. And many who do nothing more than “rummage around in words” also rummage around in Goethe's words, while Goethe's worldview contains something that leads to everything that must unfold in the future development of humanity and which, as we have already indicated, is not only connected with spiritual science but has always been connected with spiritual science by its very nature.