Youth in an Age of Light
GA 217a
9 June 1924, Breslau
Translator Unknown
You can be sure of this: anyone who is free from prejudice takes the youth movement of today very seriously indeed. If you look around, not among your contemporaries, but among the older people of today, it may seem to you that the youth movement is not taken seriously, but it is quite certainly taken seriously by those who attempt real spiritual development.
Several years have passed since a small group of young people entered the Anthroposophical Society: they did not want simply to participate as hearers of what the Society gives, but brought to it those thoughts and feelings which young people today regard as characteristic of their age. This small group, which met in Stuttgart a few years ago, put before the anthroposophical movement the question: “How can you give us a place in this movement?” I believe that from my side this question was really understood at that time. It is not always easy to understand the question which a genuinely seeking human being puts to his time; and young people now have a number of questions, entirely justified, which cannot be expressed quite clearly.
At the time when the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement first came into contact, it really seemed to me as if they were being led together by a kind of destiny, a kind of Karma. I must still look on it in this way; the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement have by an inner destiny to take each other into account. When I call up all that I have experienced through many decades in the endeavour to bring about a community among human beings who wish to seek for the spirit, and relate this to what has developed as a youth movement since about the turn of the century, I have to say that what was felt by a very small number forty years ago, and was then hardly noticed, because so few were concerned, is felt today within a youth movement which is becoming more and more widespread. In your words of greeting it was well expressed—how difficult it really is becoming for a young human being to live.
Although at other times there has always been a kind of youth movement, it was different from what it is today. If one talks to older people about the youth movement, they often say, “Oh well, young people always felt different from the elderly, always wanted something different. That wears off, balances itself out. The youth movement of today need not be regarded differently from the opposition brought by the younger generation against older generations at all times in the past.”
From many sides I have heard this answer to the burning question of the youth movement of today. Nevertheless this answer is entirely wrong; and herein lies an immense difficulty. Always in the past there was something among younger people, however radical they appeared, which could be called a certain recognition for the institutions and methods of life founded by older people. The young could regard it as an ideal to grow into the things passed down from older times, step by step. It is no longer so today. It is not just a question of involvement in academic life, but of the fact that the young human being, if he intends to go on living, has to grow into the institutions brought about by the older people, and here the young feel themselves strangers; they are met by what they have to regard as a kind of death. They see the whole way in which older people behave within these institutions as something masked. The young feel their own inner human character as alive, and around they see nothing but masked faces. This is something that can bring the young to despair—that they do not find human beings among older people, but for the most part only masks. It is really so that men come to meet one like imprints, forms stamped in wax, representing classes, callings, or even ideals—but they do not meet one as full, living human beings.
Though it may sound rather abstract, it is a very real fact in human feeling that we are standing at a turning-point of time, as mankind has not stood through all history or indeed through most of pre-history. I do not like speaking about times of transition; there is always a transition from what went before to what is coming; all that matters is the specific change that is going on. But it is a fact that mankind stands today at a turning-point as never before, in historic or in prehistoric times. Significant things are going on in the depths of the human soul, not so much in consciousness as in the depths—and these are really processes of the spiritual world, not limited to the physical world.
We hear it said that at the turning-point from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the so-called Dark Age came to an end, and a new Age of Light has begun. Anyone who can look into the spiritual world knows quite certainly that this is so. The fact that not much light has yet appeared does not disprove it; men are accustomed to the old darkness, and—just as a ball which has been thrown goes on rolling—this too rolls on, through inertia. Our civilisation today goes rolling on through inertia, and when we look at the effects of this in the world around us, we feel it all has something in common. To describe these dead things in a living way is not easy, but for everything nowadays—one might say—documentary proof is required. Nothing is held to be justified in the eyes of our modern civilisation unless documentary evidence for it can be produced. For every scientific fact, for every assertion, and even for every human being, there must be documentary evidence. Before he can enter any profession or calling, he must have a certificate. In scientific life everything has to be proved. Anything not proved does not count, cannot even be understood.
I could say a lot about this certification, this having to be proved. It appears sometimes in grotesque forms. I will tell you of a little event connected with this. When I was young, though not very young, I edited a periodical, and was involved in a lawsuit over a small matter. There was not much in it: I went myself, and won my case in the first court. The plaintiff was not satisfied, so he appealed. I went again, and the opposing counsel said to me: “We do not need you at all, only your solicitor, where is he?” I said I had not brought one, I thought it was my own affair. That was no good. I had to use my ingenuity to get the case adjourned; and I was told that next time my presence would be useless; I had to send a solicitor. For in an appeal case it was not the custom for someone to represent himself.
I went away very much amused. And I forgot the whole thing until the day before the case was to continue. I went into the town and thought: I cannot let myself be told again tomorrow that I am unnecessary. As I went along the street I saw a solicitor's brass plate and went in. I did not know him, or anything about him. He said: “Who recommended me to you?” I said: “Nobody.” I had thought somebody else would not do it any better, and took the first I saw. He said: “Write out on a piece of paper what I should say tomorrow.” I wrote it for him and stayed away, according to custom. A few days later he wrote that I had won the case.
I could tell you a hundred things like this out of my own life. It is everywhere regarded as irrelevant to have an actual human being present; the important thing is that accepted procedures should be followed. Young people feel this. They do not want documentary proof for everything, but something different. Instead of proofs, they would put experience. Older people do not understand this word, “experience.” It is not in their dictionaries and can appear quite horrible to them; to speak of spiritual experience is horrible for many people. This is what we find at the transition from a dark age to an age of light; it signifies a radical turning-point.
It is quite natural that this transition should present itself in two streams, so to speak. The anthroposophical movement and the youth movement have by destiny a certain connection. The anthroposophical movement unites people of every class, occupation and age, who felt at the turning-point from the 19th to the 20th century that man has to place himself into the whole cosmos in a quite different way. For him it is no longer simply a question of something being confirmed by evidence or proved—he must be able to experience it. Hence it appeared to me quite in accordance with Karma that the two movements were led together. And so a kind of youth movement developed within the anthroposophical movement. And finally, when the anthroposophical movement was refounded at Christmas at the Goetheanum, this soon led to the institution of a youth section, which was to take care of the concerns that arise in the feelings of young people in a most sincere and genuine way.
An immensely encouraging beginning was made by our anthroposophical youth movement in the first months of this year. There are reasons for a certain stagnation at present; they lie in the difficulties of the youth movement. These difficulties arise because it is so hard to give something form out of the existing chaos, in particular the present spiritual chaos. To give something form is much more difficult than ever before. The strangest things happen to one today. Those who know me will know that I am not at all inclined to boast. But when I heard Rector Bartsch speak yesterday in such a warm and friendly way, saying that when I come to the anthroposophical society here I am welcomed like a father, I had to say, yes, there is something in it. So I am addressed as a father—and fathers are old; they can no longer be quite young. In Dornach, when we began the youth section, I suggested that the young people should speak out clearly and frankly. A number of young people spoke well and honestly. Then I spoke. Afterwards, when it was all over, somebody who knows me well said, after he had listened to everything: “All the same, you are the youngest among the young people.” This can happen today; in one place one is addressed as an old father, in another as the youngest among the young. Ideas no longer have to be quite fixed. But if you climb up and down the steps of the ladder, sometimes as the little old father, sometimes as the youngest of all, you have a good opportunity to catch a glimpse of what is living in people's feelings.
I said that the youth section was stagnating. This will pass. It has happened, because it is, to begin with, extremely difficult for a young mind to think its way into something which it feels quite clearly. Our civilisation, in losing the spirit, has lost the human being! If I now speak more from the background of existence, I see that young people who have come down recently from the spiritual world into physical existence have come with demands on life quite different from the demands brought by those who came down earlier. Why is this so? You do not need to believe me. But for me this is knowledge, not merely belief. Before one comes down to physical earthly existence one passes through much in the spiritual world which is fuller of meaning and mightier as an experience than anything passed through on earth. Earthly life should not be undervalued. Without earthly life, freedom could never be developed. But the life between death and rebirth is on a grander scale. The souls who came down are the souls which are in you, my dear friends. These souls were able to behold an immensely significant spiritual movement taking its course behind physical existence in regions above the earth—the movement which I call within our anthroposophical society the Michael movement.
This is so. Whether the materialistic man of today' is prepared to believe it or not, it is so! The leading power for our present time, who could be named in a different way, but whom I call the Michael power, is trying to achieve, within the spiritual leadership of the earth and of mankind, a transformation of all soul-life upon the earth. Men who became so very clever during the 19th century have no inkling of the fact that the attitude of soul which developed during the 19th century as the most enlightened attitude has been given up by the spiritual world. An end to it has been ordained, and a Michael community of beings, who never walk upon earth, but lead humanity, seeks to bring about among men a new attitude of soul. The death of the old civilisation has come.
When the Threefold Commonwealth movement, which failed through the death of the old civilisation, was going on, I often said: “We have today no threefold membering in public life according to the spirit, according to law and so on, and according to economic life—but we have a threefold membering in terms of phrases, conventions and routines. Instead of spiritual life, there are phrases; and routine dominates economic life, instead of goodwill towards men, love for men, which should be ruling there.”
This condition of soul, in which people are stuck fast, should be replaced by another, which arises from man himself and is experienced in man himself. That is the endeavour of spiritual beings who have taken over the leadership of our age and can be recognised in the signs of the times. The souls which have descended to the earth in your bodies saw this Michael movement and came down under this impression. And here they grew up in the midst of a humanity which really excludes man, which makes man into a mask. The youth movement is thus a wonderful memory of experience before birth, of most significant impressions gathered during this pre-earthly life. And if someone has these indefinite unconscious memories of pre-earthly life, of the endeavour to achieve a transformation of man's mood of soul—he will find nothing of it here on earth. That is what is going on today in the feelings of young people.
The anthroposophical movement springs from the revelation of the Michael movement; and has the purpose of bringing the intentions of the Michael movement into the midst of human life. The anthroposophical movement seeks to look up from the earth to the Michael movement. Young people bring with them a memory of pre-earthly existence. So the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement are brought together by destiny. And everything that has happened through the interplay between these two movements appeared to me to come about in a quite inward way, not through earthly circumstances, but through spiritual circumstances, inasmuch as these are connected with man. Thus I regard this youth movement as something which can awaken unlimited hopes for the future of all that can be felt rightly as anthroposophical.
Of course we encounter things which are bound to arise from the fact that the anthroposophical movement and the youth movement are both at their beginnings. We have seen the Free Anthroposophical Society founded side by side with the Anthroposophical Society in Germany. This Free Anthroposophical Society had—again inevitably—a governing committee that was chosen or elected. I think this committee had seven members—somebody says there were nine—very well, nine; there were nine, but one after the other was politely discharged from office, until three were left. All very comprehensible. The Free Anthroposophical Society had the essential intention of understanding the experience of youth. Now a discussion on this subject developed. One after another the committee members had their capacity to experience youth in the right way disputed. Three remained, and of course they discussed with one another whether all of them had the experience of youth. Something quite remarkable arose, pointing to a link of destiny between the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement. It seems ridiculous, but is very serious. For when one investigates the great questions of destiny, one finds very significant things, and the greatness of destiny is often indicated in symptoms. When we had founded the Anthroposophical Society, we also had committee members who quarrelled terribly, and it was evident to me that eventually very few would remain, after they had politely dismissed the others. But to prevent it from ending there, the left side of a person would start quarrelling with the right side over which side really had the experience of youth. That sounds like irony, but is not. For it indicates that what can be called the experience of youth today lies deep within the soul, and the significant thing is that this experience cannot necessarily be expressed in clear words. In the age of cleverness so many clear words have been spoken! What matters is that we should reach experiences. And then this inability to find clear forms of expression should be recognised as unavoidable. The right to continue in a state of vagueness is in fact claimed. But something else is needed: a refusal to separate from one another because an impression of unclarity is given, and a willingness to come together and talk.
Above all I would like to express to you, my young friends who are sitting here today, the wish that all of you, whatever you may feel and think, may hold together with an iron will, truly hold together. This is what we need most of all, if we want to achieve something in approaching the great questions of today. We cannot always be asking whether someone else has a rather different opinion from one's own. It is really a question of finding one another, even in the greatest differences of feeling. This will perhaps be the finest achievement, that those who are young understand how to keep together in spite of differences in feeling. It is a fact that what young people miss most of all today is the finding of other human beings. Wherever they go, they find, not human beings, for the human beings have died, but masks, everywhere masks! This has had a natural consequence: a search by human beings for one another. And that is very moving; for all the various “scout” movements, the Wandervogel movements and so on, are all a search for the human being. Young people want to join with others; they are looking in others for the human being. This is quite comprehensible. Because the human being was no longer there spiritually, each one said to himself: “But I feel, all the same, that the human being must be there.” And they looked for the human being, looked for him in community. But we should not forget that this has something immensely tragic about it.
Many young people have experienced this tragedy. They joined together and believed they were finding the human being. But nothing of what they were seeking came to fill their community; and they became even lonelier than before. These two phases of the youth movement are evident: the phase of community, the phase of great loneliness. How many young people there are today who go in loneliness through the world, conscious that nowhere have they been understood.
[ 17 ] Now the truth is that one cannot find the human being in another person unless one knows how to look for him in a spiritual way—for man is in fact a spiritual being, and if one approached a man only externally, he cannot be found, even if he is there. It is indeed lamentable today, how people pass each other by. Certainly, earlier times can be rightly criticised. Much was barbaric then. But there was something: a man could find the human being in another man. He cannot do this now. Grown men all pass each other by. No one knows the other. He cannot even live with the other, because no one listens to the other. Everyone shouts in the other's ear his own opinion, and says: “That is my opinion, that is my point of view ”. You have merely points of view, nothing more. For what is asserted from one point of view or another makes no difference. These things murmur among young people, perceived by the heart, not by the mind.
You can be sure it must be right to feel a connection of destiny between the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement. Young people did not come to Anthroposophy just because they wanted to try out this as well, after they had tried out many other things—they came to it from destiny. And this gives me the certainty that we shall be able to work together. We shall find our way to one another, and, however things turn out, they must above all develop in such a way that those human qualities in the widest sense which live among young people are taken into account. Otherwise, if real spirit does not spring forth from youth, something utterly different will come about. For youthful life is certainly there, and one will be able to feel it; but this condition of youth, if it is not filled with spirit, ceases early in the twenties. We cannot preserve youth physiologically. We have to grow old, but we must be able to carry something from youth into old age. We must understand the condition of youth in such a way that we can rightly grow old with it. Unless spirit touches the soul, the deepest soul, the years between twenty and thirty cannot be lived through without coming into grey misery of soul. And this is my greatest anxiety. How can we work together in such a way that our young people will be able to cross the abyss between the twenties and the thirties without losing their vital spirit, without falling into grey misery of soul? I have known human beings who in their mid-twenties fell into this grey misery of soul. For, to speak fundamentally, that which lives in the depths of young souls after the end of the Kali Yuga is a cry for the spirit.
The following questions and answers were missing from this translation:
[ 18 ] With these words, I wanted to give you a little introduction. I hope you will have a lot to say. Speak openly, choose a chairman, or do as you wish. I have also asked the Dornach youth to speak openly so that we can work together. The Dornach Executive Council will certainly listen attentively, and we will take everything you have to say as good lessons for the Youth Section at the Goetheanum. We do not want to act paternalistically, but rather in a spirit of brotherhood toward what you have to say.
[ 19 ] Question: One of the young friends said that they would like to work on something together. However, this joint work had become difficult for them; the Christmas plays had been the most successful. They always got tired after a short time and felt worn out by their work. Then they talked about the Michael idea.
[ 20 ] Rudolf Steiner: How can one enter into a profession and be a true human being in that profession with inner joy? Yes, you see, these things are not so easy to answer, my dear friends, but perhaps one can contribute something to the answer if one knows these things from experience. You see, I had many friends when I was your age. They also asked how one could enter a profession without losing one's joy, without killing one's soul, so to speak. After they had all spent a long time freelancing — back then, they called it “Brauseköpfe” when someone wanted to develop freely — they pushed themselves into some profession, but they withered away spiritually. I don't like to talk about myself, but in this case I must. I did not settle into any profession, because if I had done so, there would have been no anthroposophical movement. In order to shape Goethe's legacy, one could not remain stuck in any profession. One must shape one's life. That is why I can say a few things from my own life in answer to the question. The problem cannot be solved by entering into today's professions and retaining inner joy in life. But that is why one must enter into today's professions, because it is resignation not to enter into any profession. To do this, you must bring yourself to realize that it is not possible to enter into today's professions with joy in life or satisfaction. This will only be possible when professional life is structured in such a way that it is appropriate for human beings. We must give up the idea of entering a modern profession and being full of joie de vivre. You must solve the problem outside of your profession. In the little time that your profession leaves you, however, you must make all the more intensive efforts. It is extremely pleasant, and I agree with what you said from the other point of view, about performing Christmas plays and enjoying them; but I have met people who also came to the Christmas plays, who were there and took part, and who had gray hair not only on their heads but also in their souls. You don't need to be young for that.
[ 21 ] Anthroposophy has a peculiarity. If you are an ambitious person today and want to educate yourself a little, you take in what is written in books. What demands does literature make? It demands that it be unambiguous. When you pick up a scientific book, it doesn't matter whether you are eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-seven, or eighty years old. The truth should have an effect on you everywhere. It should be absolutely true. This is not the case with anthroposophy. You will perceive anthroposophy differently as an eighteen-year-old than as a twenty-six-year-old, because it grows with you. It nestles up to people in their youth and also in their old age. Just as people themselves grow old, so does anthroposophy. When you immerse yourself in this completely new, call it worldview, soul state, whatever you want, when you indulge in something completely new, form communities in order to let precisely that live in the community, you will come to realize: Here you can be young and find your place in the right way, so that things also have a youthful effect. Old people accuse us of not understanding anthroposophy. That is a good sign for anthroposophy! You are not supposed to understand it, you are supposed to experience it. And this last bit of conservatism must also disappear, the belief that one can find joy in today's professions. One must find a path alongside one's profession and find enough people for this path that a force arises that can reshape professions. For only in reshaped professions can one find joy.
[ 22 ] Much can be done to bring about this power, as I have characterized it in the Michael power. But it must be lived out in grandiose Michael celebrations. We really must bring it to the point where the budding life of the future, which we can still feel in its embryonic form, can emerge in celebrations of hope, in celebrations of expectation. In celebrations where people are held together only by hope and expectation, not by sharply defined ideals, we should have before us the image of Michael with his leader's eyes, his pointing hand, and his spiritual armor. Such a celebration must come into being. Why has it not come about? As firmly as I will point out that this festival must emerge from the bosom of the anthroposophical movement, I will also hold back as long as the strength to hold it worthy is not there. For the time is too serious to make it playful. When it is celebrated in a dignified manner, it will send great impulses into humanity. Therefore, we must wait until the strength is there. There should not be just a vague, blue, hazy edification of the Michael idea, but the awareness that a new soul world must be established among human beings. It is indeed the Michael principle that is leading. This includes communal experiences in order to work toward a Michaelmas festival where “the spirit of hope for the future, the spirit of expectation, can live. This is something that can already be at work and, after work, can give great satisfaction, so that one can go to work with resignation. This should not dishearten you, but inspire you.”
[ 23 ] Question: You are forced to be a different person during your work. In the evening, you do exercises, climb the ladder, and during the day you are pulled back down again.
[ 24 ] Rudolf Steiner: You cannot bring this into your profession either, because there are far too few people today for a real force to emerge. This would happen if all those who feel, however dimly, that something else is to be expected, would strive for unity. If you are in any profession today, you know very well that there are a whole number of others who do not feel the same way you do. These people do not feel the need to spend their evenings in youth movement meetings; they are so entrenched in their profession that they are actually satisfied with it because they do not have what it takes to be dissatisfied; they do not want their profession to give them pleasure. Something characteristic emerged in the second half of the 19th century. I was driven to despair at scientific meetings. As long as there were a few hours of official proceedings, scientific discussions took place. Then everyone would sit down together, and anyone who dared to say a word about their profession was regarded as a philistine. Those among them who did not want to be philistines were even more so. They always had the words “Don't talk shop!” on their lips. This shows that they were not at all interested in what they did for a living. This is true in all fields. People are largely victims of their times; they could be won over to something better. This includes allowing more power to emerge in the intellectual movements of the time, so that those who find their profession oppressive are not left standing there, crushed by others who have no such needs. So the more we refrain from trying to achieve something tomorrow, the more we strive to work diligently in what should initially be a spiritual community working toward something, the better it will be. That is what we must keep in mind.
[ 25 ] Question: Contrast between young and old. The old anthroposophists only want to drag the spirit into themselves. The young want to bring it out. The others want to slow things down; they express themselves mockingly about what the young are creating.
[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner: The contrast between young and older people did not need to be so pronounced. It seems to me that what I said is right, that one should try, because it is already impossible to treat everyone the same, to be tolerant of others. It is quite certain that, on the one hand, those who have the necessary temperament will strive to look outwards into the world with what they have. It would be sad if this were not the case. But on the other hand, there is also a considerable difference in strength. There will be stronger elements that will be able to accomplish some things earlier than others dare to. But something decisive will only be achieved when the different shades come together. It is possible to come together. The anthroposophical movement could do a lot in this regard; unfortunately, it does not.
[ 27 ] I believe that when the youth movement finds its way into anthroposophy, the various nuances will come to the fore. As far as I am concerned, nothing will ever be said against the youth movement that proceeds from the temperament you have described. I would be the last person to object to that. But in my youth I saw how strongly one encounters resistance and how one fights with bloody brows. It is good for those who want to do it, but you know, it is not everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, to expose oneself to an uncertain fate from the outset. But if you are in a position to work in this direction again, then you should do so not by criticizing others who do not do the same, but by pointing out what has really been achieved. It is certainly important to point out the positive things that have already been achieved in this direction. I believe that this is far too little known among young people; it remains confined to small circles. And that is the danger, even if it does not appear in such a blatant form among young people as it does in sects, precisely because it emerges among young people. There must be no sectarianism. What must prevail is what is universally human.
[ 28 ] Question about the different age groups gathered, between eighteen and twenty-five, and the different levels of education of those concerned.
[ 29 ] Rudolf Steiner: The reason for this is basically that egoism plays such an enormously strong role in our civilization. It is impossible for people to empathize with others. Everyone speaks and acts only from their own perspective. Just think how different it is when you can empathize with others. Let's say there is a man in his sixties talking to a five-year-old boy. I actually think that the five-year-old child empathizes much more with the sixty-year-old than the sixty-year-old does with the child. Crawling into the other person is what you have to learn. You can do that through anthroposophy because it's flexible. When we're held together by spiritual interests, the age difference between fifteen and twenty-five easily disappears, especially when you've been together for a while. But when you're only held together by selfish interests, fifteen-year-olds and twenty-five-year-olds don't understand each other. It is a matter of overcoming egoism. One must find one's way into something objective. Egoism is the signature of the age. When we begin to take a genuine interest in human beings, this cannot last. Egoism is thoroughly overcome when one first overcomes it in something that enters the soul as deeply as anthroposophy. You have to relate to your inner self. Then you shed your egoism and can find your way into others. That is the fruit that appears.
[ 30 ] The reason you cannot understand each other is because you do not have the human being. If someone is not a human being, but a template of what a twenty-five-year-old is supposed to be today, how can they understand other human beings? If you are an academic, at twenty-five you are not a human being, but a clothes rack on which hang your high school diploma and your fear of the final exam. At fifteen, you are a clothes rack with your school report cards hanging on it, waiting to be signed by your parents. The various objects do not understand each other, but as soon as we come to human beings, we understand each other. It is the same with professions, with different professions. We are no longer righteous human beings; we are in fact a copy of the various circumstances. And therein lies the significance of the youth movement, that it has shed this, that it wants people. That is what you encounter in these people. When they are out of work, they want to be people. They will become that when they are clearly imbued with such things.
[ 31 ] Hermann Bahr describes what happened to him when he came to a big city. He was invited everywhere, on Sunday, on Monday, and now—yes, he couldn't tell the ladies sitting on the left side of the table from the ladies sitting on the right; he couldn't tell the ladies from Sunday from the ladies from Monday. It all got mixed up. Yes, you see, when you come into such societies, people look so much alike because they are all copies of these circumstances.
[ 32 ] Question: Should one give up one's profession and devote oneself entirely to anthroposophy, or can one warm up to the profession?
[ 33 ] Rudolf Steiner: That is an individual matter. One should never shy away from doing what one has recognized as the right thing. Sometimes one can do it, sometimes one cannot. If one can, one should have a feeling for it and do it. Of course, you can also become a martyr. But that should not become a general rule. Because then you will not get ahead, or at least it would have to become a general rule. But if only one percent out of a hundred are prepared to become martyrs, then you will not get anywhere, because the others will destroy it. That can only be answered individually. I have answered it individually in my life by never entering a profession. Of course, you can say that this means I don't know how to promote a profession. I was already standing alongside those who were there. But it has become the case that professional life has become somewhat rigid, that it is extremely difficult to achieve much in any profession given the complexity of life today. If you have a knack for it, you can do it.
[ 34 ] Question: It has been said that 'individual groups were formed because it was not possible to unite young and old. Again, a question about the profession.
[ 35 ] Rudolf Steiner: There is not much point in pursuing a profession if you want to be human. You have to resign yourself and develop an independent life alongside your profession. What the gentleman is saying here stems from a misunderstanding of anthroposophy.
[ 36 ] One must be able to understand what is good about the youth movement. Rudolf Steiner: It is only that the youth movement in particular can experience through anthroposophy how one can work positively in harmony with the whole cosmos, excluding everything negative. For anthroposophy, by its very nature, since it is not accepted by anyone who cannot experience it, excludes any unfree activity. I never set out to agitate for anthroposophy. I said what I knew. I knew that if I spoke to a thousand people, only five would really take it on board at first. I never made a big deal of it, because it's the same with herring in the sea. Even if a thousand eggs are scattered, only two or three will become real herring. Those who look for success can never achieve it. One must work from within the matter itself. What I mean is that we should let everyone do what they can and not be too dismissive, not say too strongly: That is not what young people should be, that is not what the youth movement should be. As many people as possible should come together, each doing what they can from their own individuality.
[ 37 ] The difference between fifteen and twenty-five will be overcome when everyone is young, and everyone is young. It's not so bad what differs. The basic form is already there. Others who stay outside go to the movies; they don't join youth associations.p>
[ 38 ] Now, the problem is that perhaps too much thought is given to the idea that a form must be given. It is much more important to achieve a sincere relationship between people than to create a form. If you love each other, you go where you are loved and do not look for a form. Perhaps it is wrong to look for a form. The point is that you come together even when you are completely at odds with each other; that you enjoy being together, enjoy each other's company. And when this purely human, emotional element gives form, it is the healthiest form. Any programmatic search for form will even disrupt the youth movement. We have also thought of many things in relation to the youth section at the Goetheanum, and many things will emerge that will provide a basis for dealing with things once we have passed a certain point of stagnation.
[ 38 ] If the striving for light that occurs after the Kali Yuga — it does not have to be an abstract spiritual light — is really so strong in human beings that they cannot help but follow it, then we do not need any further forms. It is only disruptive to have special forms. The living must come together in human beings. I think that even if there are only two or three people in a large gathering who are wholeheartedly enthusiastic about their cause, they will come together because those two or three are there, because they can be found there. It must be the human element. This will certainly be found if we do not come together with limp arms, limp legs, and limp brains, but with zeal and a sincere desire within ourselves. And if we do not expect others to entertain us, but go there and want to achieve something ourselves, if we want to achieve something and expect as little as possible from others, if we want to do as much as possible ourselves, then we have the form. It is so difficult to talk about general programmatic things. What matters is life in the things that exist in life. If you are in your profession and then have to do something extra, you become tired in your profession. But enthusiasm is necessary, and it is so easy for young people to have today because it is so terribly lacking in old age. Nothing moves, there is no enthusiasm; old age weighs heavily on the body. This can inspire enthusiasm in young people if you decide today to really discuss what you all think in the near future together with those who are here today. Then you will already have enough form, and we will send out all kinds of messages and questions from the Goetheanum. You will have something to do again, and so simply look for opportunities to meet and skip the meetings as little as possible. Then it will work out; that is the best form. It is perhaps even the first principle in relation to form-building: we have so many friends who want to consider it a first principle not to skip our meetings. Then a form is already there. Question about the Wandervogel youth movement.
[ 39 ] Rudolf Steiner: In reality, there need not be any contradiction. With the Wandervogel, you go out into nature, you want to experience nature, you want to experience the human aspect of nature, and so on. If, after striving for all this and believing that you have gone through it for a while, you fall into another extreme, no longer wanting nature and reading books, then you did not have the first thing in the right way. Today, people can travel all over the world and see nothing. You can show you the most beautiful examples of travelers to Italy, of English wanderers who saw nothing at all. They looked at the galleries, but in reality they saw nothing. I have seen a number of wanderers who had the urge to see something, but who saw nothing.
[ 40 ] To see something, you have to have a heart. But if you are prevented from being a whole human being in elementary school, you cannot see what is in nature. If you can once again respond to all that is in nature, then you will find something different from others in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” This book is by no means written to the exclusion of nature, but rather with nature in mind. It has been said that you can tell from my style that I write with a typewriter because I don't have time to write during the day. This criticism is certainly not correct. I have never put a typewriter in my bed, where I write most of my work. That would look ridiculous. It depends on how things are conceived. They are conceived entirely in contemplation of nature. “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” is definitely a Wandervogel book. I see no contradiction in the fact that one is neither one thing nor the other. If you experience nature as a Wandervogel, then you will also experience the book, which is not meant to be a book at all. It only looks like one. But certain things can only be brought into the world through printing ink. If the youth movement succeeds, we will also get beyond printing ink. We must come to the human, only, you see, the Anthroposophical Society cannot achieve everything at once; it is already doing a lot; unfortunately, it has not succeeded. It was my intention never to have certain things that are said from person to person printed. I am so glad that no one is taking notes today. There have always been people who have taken notes. What was a terrible transcript came out, and so I had to find a way to get things printed after all.
Ansprache und Fragenbeantwortung während der Breslau-Koberwitzer Tagung
[ 1 ] Aus der Begrüßungsansprache des Versammlungsleiters: Dank an Herrn Dr. Steiner, Frau Dr. Steiner und die übrigen Vorstandsmitglieder. Wir möchten versuchen, im Bewußtsein zu haben, welch ungeheure Bedeutung es hat, daß Herr Dr. Steiner, der Weltaufgaben zu erfüllen hat, in unserem Kreise erscheint. Dieses wird uns die nötige Ehrfurcht geben, das anzuhören, was er zu uns zu sprechen hat. Wir wollen ihn begrüßen als einen, der jugendlich zu sein versteht, jugendlicher, als wir selbst sein können. Was wir Herrn Dr. Steiner entgegenbringen, ist lediglich ein Suchen, und mehr kann man von uns nicht erwarten. Wir sind nicht nur Akademiker, sondern auch Kaufleute, Beamte, und zumeist nicht Mitglieder der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft.
[ 2 ] Eine Teilnehmerin: Wenn wir Blumen, wenn wir Steine, wenn wir Sterne anschauen, wenn wir die Welt anschauen, werden wir in dem Welt-Anschauen vorzeitig alt. Wir finden nicht die Art der Weltanschauung, die uns jugendlich sein läßt. Daher lassen viele das Welt-Anschauen und versuchen nur, in sich die Jugendlichkeit zu erleben. Um richtig in der Welt zu stehen, suchen wir nach einer Weltanschauung, die uns jugendlich sein läßt, und in diesem Suchen wollen wir vor Herrn Dr. Steiner hintreten.
[ 3 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ich danke Ihnen herzlich für die liebevollen Begrüßungsworte, die ausgesprochen worden sind, und darf wohl sagen, daß ich Sie in ebenso herzlicher Weise begrüße, weil seit vielen Jahren vor meiner Seele gerade das als etwas außerordentlich Wichtiges und Bedeutungsvolles für die Gegenwart steht, was in Ihren Herzen, Ihren Seelen, Ihren Gemütern vorgeht. Daß man die Jugendbewegung von heute, wenn man unbefangen in der Welt drinnensteht, in höchstem Maße ernst nimmt, davon können Sie durchaus überzeugt sein. Wenn es auch so aussieht für Sie, wenn Sie herumschauen, nicht unter Ihren Altersgenossen, sondern unter den älteren Menschen der Gegenwart, wenn es auch so aussieht, als ob man die Jugendbewegung nicht ernst nimmt, sie wird ganz gewiß von derjenigen Seite ernst genommen, die heute geistigen Bestrebungen nachgeht.
[ 4 ] Es sind jetzt schon mehrere Jahre verflossen, seit ein kleiner Kreis jugendlicher Menschen hereingekommen ist in die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft und nicht bloß als Zuhörer teilnehmen wollte an dem, was die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft gibt, sondern auftrat mit denjenigen Gedanken, Empfindungen und Gefühlen, die der heutige junge Mensch eben in seinem Jungsein zusammenfaßt. Und gewissermaßen das tat eigentlich jener kleine Kreis, der sich vor Jahren in Stuttgart einfand und an die anthroposophische Bewegung die Frage stellte: Wie könnt Ihr uns einen Platz innerhalb dieser anthroposophischen Bewegung geben? Ich glaube, daß von meiner Seite aus diese damalige Frage wirklich verstanden worden ist. Es ist ja nicht immer leicht — und darüber werden wir uns vielleicht heute oder in diesen Tagen überhaupt unterhalten können -, es ist nicht immer leicht, die Frage zu verstehen, die der wirklich suchende Mensch heute an die Zeit richtet, und der junge Mensch hat schon eine Anzahl von Fragen mit vollem Rechte, die nicht mit voller Klarheit gestellt werden können.
[ 5 ] Sehen Sie, damals, als zum erstenmal Jugendbewegung und anthroposophische Bewegung sich berührten, da kam es mir wirklich vor, wie wenn die beiden durch eine Art von Schicksal, Karma, geradezu zusammengeführt würden, und ich muß eigentlich bis heute daran festhalten, daß es so ist, daß Jugendbewegung und anthroposophische Bewegung wirklich durch ein inneres Schicksal aufeinander hingewiesen werden. Wenn ich das zu Hilfe nehme, was ich selber durch viele Jahrzehnte erlebt habe im Streben nach einer Gemeinschaft von Menschen, die nach dem Geiste suchen wollen, und wenn ich das zusammenhalte mit demjenigen, was etwa seit der Wende des Jahrhunderts als Jugendbewegung aufgetreten ist, so muß ich sagen, dasjenige, was ganz wenige fühlten vor vierzig Jahren schon, und was damals, weil es eben ganz wenige fühlten, kaum bemerkt worden ist, das ist heute gefühlt innerhalb der immer allgemeiner werdenden Jugendbewegung. Es ist in den eben gesprochenen Begrüßungsworten ganz schön zum Ausdruck gekommen, wie schwer es dem jungen Menschen heute eigentlich wird, zu leben.
[ 6 ] Es war immerhin, wenn es auch zu allen Zeiten eine Art Jugendbewegung gegeben hat, es war immerhin zu anderen Zeiten anders, als es in unserer Zeit ist. Ältere Menschen, wenn man mit ihnen über die Jugendbewegung spricht, antworten einem heute sogar sehr häufig damit, daß sie sagen: Ach Gott, die Jugend hat eben immer anders gefühlt als das Alter, hat immer etwas anderes gewollt. Das hat sich dann abgeschliffen, hat sich ausgeglichen. In der Jugendbewegung von heute braucht man auch nichts anderes zu sehen als das, was die jüngere Generation gegenüber den älteren Generationen in jeder Zeit gewollt hat. — Ich wenigstens habe diese Antwort auf die brennende Frage der heutigen Jugendbewegung von sehr vielen Seiten gehört. Und dennoch, diese Antwort ist schon ganz falsch, diese Antwort ist schon ganz unrichtig. Und gerade darin liegt eine ungeheure Schwierigkeit. Es war zu allen Zeiten bei jüngeren Leuten, selbst wenn sie ganz radikal in einer Jugendbewegung aufgetreten sind, immer doch etwas von dem, was man so nennen kann: Es wurde das, was das Alter ringsherum gegründet hat an Institutionen, an allerlei Einrichtungen, es wurde das bis zu einem gewissen Grade doch von den jungen Leuten anerkannt und konnte anerkannt werden. Die jungen Leute konnten ein Ideal darin erblicken, in das Alte nach und nach hineinzuwachsen. Heute ist es nicht mehr so. Ob er Akademiker ist oder nicht, darauf kommt es nicht mehr an, sondern darauf, daß der junge Mensch, wenn er überhaupt leben will, in die Einrichtungen ja hineinwachsen muß, die die Alten zustande gebracht haben, und daß die jungen Menschen sich darin durchaus fremd fühlen; daß der junge Mensch das, was ihm da entgegenkommt, wie eine Art von Tod des Menschen empfindet, ja, daß er innerhalb dieser Einrichtungen die ganze Art, wie sich die älteren Menschen innerhalb dieser Einrichtungen benehmen und verhalten, als etwas Maskenhaftes fühlt. Der junge Mensch fühlt seine eigenen inneren Menschenformen, die findet er lebendig, und das, was um ihn herum ist, findet er wie lauter Maskenantlitze. Das ist das, was den Menschen heute, wenn er jung ist, zur Verzweiflung bringen kann, daß er unter den Älteren nicht Menschen, sondern zumeist Masken findet. Es ist wirklich so, daß einem die Menschen entgegentreten wie Abdrücke, Siegelabdrücke irgend welcher Menschenklassen, irgendwelcher Berufe oder selbst irgendwelcher Ideale, daß sie einem aber nicht entgegentreten als innerlich lebendige, volle Menschen.
[ 7 ] Nun sehen Sie, da möchte ich sagen, wenn es vielleicht auch etwas abstrakt aussieht, allein es lebt im Gefühl gar sehr, wir stehen heute eben sehr stark an einem Wendepunkt der Zeiten, wie die Menschheit wenigstens in historischen Zeiten und auch zu einem großen Teil in vorhistorischen Zeiten nie gestanden hat. Ich liebe es gar nicht, immer von Übergangszeiten zu sprechen; Übergangszeiten sind ja alle von vorher zu nachher; es handelt sich nur darum, was übergeht. Aber in unserer Zeit ist es schon so, daß die Menschheit an einem Wendepunkt steht, wie sie vor einem gleichen in historischer und vorhistorischer Zeit nie gestanden hat. Das hängt damit zusammen, daß in den Untergründen der menschlichen Seele, weniger sogar im Bewußtsein als in den Untergründen der menschlichen Seele, schon bedeutsame Dinge vorgehen, welche eigentlich Vorgänge der geistigen Welt sind, die nicht bloß auf die physische Welt sich beschränken. Man spricht davon, daß mit der Wende des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts das sogenannte finstere Zeitalter abgelaufen ist, und daß ein neues lichtvolles Zeitalter im Beginn ist. Ganz gewiß, wer in die geistige Welt hineinschauen kann, der weiß, daß es so ist. Daß jetzt nicht viel Licht zum Vorschein kommt, spricht nicht dagegen; die Menschen sind an die alte Finsternis gewöhnt, und gerade so wie eine Kugel, der man einen Stoß gegeben hat, fortrollt, so rollt das eine Zeitlang fort, rollt durch Trägheit fort. Unsere Zivilisation ist heute durchaus eine solche, die in Trägheit fortrollt, und wenn wir hinschauen auf das, was um uns herum in Trägheit rollt, dann müssen wir sagen: Eines ist schon da, was das, was um uns ist, gemeinschaftlich hat. Man will heute alles, was überhaupt vorhanden ist - es ist schwer, ein lebendiges Wort zu finden, weil die Dinge tot sind —, man will alles bestätigt haben; es ist eigentlich alles nur berechtigt für das, was schließlich als Zivilisation sich ergeben hat, was bestätigt ist. Bestätigt muß jede wissenschaftliche Wahrheit sein, bestätigt muß alles das sein, was irgendein Mensch behauptete, bestätigt muß aber der Mensch selber sein; wenn er in irgendeinen Beruf eintritt, muß er irgendwie bestätigt werden, von außen her muß der Mensch bestätigt werden. Wenn man im wissenschaftlichen Leben drinnenlebt, so nennt man das: es muß bewiesen werden. Was nicht bewiesen ist, gilt nicht, das kann man nicht verstehen.
[ 8 ] Nun sehen Sie, ich könnte noch viel reden über dieses Bestätigtwerden, über dieses Bewiesenwerden. Es tritt einem ja manchmal in grotesker Weise entgegen. Sehen Sie, ich war auch einmal jung, nicht mehr ganz jung, da habe ich - ich will das kleine Erlebnis erzählen, weil es ' nicht ganz ohne Zusammenhang steht mit dem, was ich sagen will — eine Zeitschrift redigiert und hatte einen Prozess, bei dem es sich um eine Kleinigkeit handelte. Es handelte sich nicht um vieles; ich bin selber hingegangen und habe in der ersten Instanz gewonnen. Der Prozessor war nicht zufrieden, er hat an die zweite Instanz appelliert. Ich ging wieder hin, da kam der gegnerische Advokat und sagte: Ja, Sie brauchen wir gar nicht, wir brauchen nur Ihren Rechtsanwalt, wo ist denn der? — Da sagte ich, ich habe gar keinen mitgebracht, ich habe gedacht, das geht mich an. Da half nichts. Ich mußte mit aller Schlauheit, die man aufwenden konnte, es dahin bringen, daß der Prozeß vertagt wurde und mir bedeutet wurde, daß ich das nächstemal da nichts zu suchen hätte, daß ich einen Rechtsanwalt zu schicken hätte, denn in der zweiten Instanz sei das nicht üblich, daß ein Mensch seine Sachen selbst vertritt. Ich ging erheitert weg. Die Sache kam mir aus dem Gedächtnis, und sie fiel mir gerade an dem Tag ein, wo am nächsten Tag der Prozeß sein sollte. Ich ging in die Stadt und dachte, ich kann mir das doch morgen nicht mehr sagen lassen, daß ich unnötig bin. Da ging ich dann die Straße entlang, traf eine Tafel von einem Rechtsanwalt und ging hinauf. Ich kannte ihn gar nicht, wußte nichts von ihm. Der sagte: Wer hat mich denn Ihnen empfohlen? - Ich sagte: Gar niemand. —- Ich dachte, ein anderer wird es auch nicht besser machen, und nahm den nächsten, der mir entgegentrat. — Da sagte er: Schreiben Sie mir auf einen Zettel auf, was ich morgen sagen soll. Ich schrieb es ihm auf und blieb, weil es so Usus ist, eben weg. Nach einigen Tagen schrieb er mir, daß der Prozeß gewonnen ist. - Nun sehen Sie, so könnte ich aus meinem eigenen Leben tatsächlich Hunderte von Sachen erzählen. Es handelt sich überall gar nicht darum, daß man irgendwo als Mensch dabei ist, sondern daß die Dinge laufen, wie sie von Menschen eingerichtet sind. Das fühlt der junge Mensch. Er will nicht, daß alles bestätigt wird, er will etwas anderes. Er will an die Stelle der Bestätigung, des Beweises das Erleben setzen. Dieses Wort «Erleben» verstehen die alten Menschen ganz und gar nicht. Es steht nicht in ihrem Konversationslexikon darinnen. Sehen Sie, welch ein Greuel ist das Wort «Erleben»! Weil Sie sprechen von geistigem Erleben, ist es ein Greuel für sehr viele Leute. Und das ist, was einem beim Übergang vom finsteren Zeitalter ins lichte Zeitalter entgegentritt. Es ist eine radikale Wende einer Zeit da.
[ 9 ] Nun ist es auch wiederum natürlich, daß ja dieser Übergang in zwei Strömungen sozusagen aufgetreten ist. Deshalb sind in einer gewissen Weise anthroposophische Bewegung und Jugendbewegung schicksalsmäßig schon miteinander verbunden. Denn die anthroposophische Bewegung vereinigt die Leute jeglichen Standes, Berufes und Alters, die an der Wende des 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert gefühlt haben, daß der Mensch sich in einer ganz anderen Weise in das gesamte Weltall hineinstellen muß. Er muß nicht nur etwas bestätigt bekommen, bewiesen bekommen, er muß etwas erleben können. Und so erschien es mir wirklich ganz karmisch, ganz schicksalsgemäß, daß die beiden Bewegungen zusammengeführt wurden. Und das hat ja dann dazu geführt, daß wirklich eine Art Jugendbewegung, eine Art anthroposophische Jugendbewegung innerhalb der anthroposophischen Bewegung entstanden ist, und daß dieses zuletzt dazu geführt hat, daß, als die anthroposophische Bewegung auf unserer Weihnachtstagung am Goetheanum neu begründet wurde, wir bald darauf die Einrichtung einer Jugendsektion folgen ließen, wo nun tatsächlich die Interessen, die heute in der ehrlichsten, aufrichtigsten Weise durch die Gemüter der jungen Menschen gehen, gepflegt werden sollen.
[ 10 ] Es war, ich möchte sagen, ein ungeheuer erfreulicher Vorstoß, der da in den ersten Monaten des Jahres in bezug auf unsere anthroposophische Jugendbewegung gemacht worden ist. Daß es jetzt etwas stagniert, hat seine Gründe; das liegt in der Schwierigkeit der Jugendbewegung. Sehen Sie, die Schwierigkeiten liegen darinnen, daß aus dem Chaos, namentlich aus dem geistigen Chaos, das in der Gegenwart besteht, es schwer ist, irgend etwas herauszugestalten. Heute etwas zu gestalten, ist eben viel schwieriger, als es jemals gewesen ist. Deshalb ist es schon so — sehen Sie, es liegt mir wirklich ganz ferne zu renommieren; diejenigen, die mich kennen, werden das wissen —, aber es ist so, daß einem heute die merkwürdigsten Dinge begegnen. Ich mußte, als der außerordentlich freundliche, liebenswürdige, verzeihen Sie, daß ich noch einmal darauf zurückkomme, Ausspruch des Herrn Rektor Bartsch gestern an meine Ohren drang, der da sagte, daß ich, wenn ich hier zur Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft komme, wie der Vater empfunden werde - ich mußte ja sagen, es ist schon etwas daran. Aber da werde ich als der Vater angesprochen - Väter sind alt, die können nicht mehr ganz jung sein. In Dornach hatte ich gerade, als wir mit der Jugendsektion anfingen, die Anregung gegeben, es sollten sich die jungen Leute von sich aus klipp und klar aussprechen. Da traten eine Anzahl junger Leute auf und sprachen sich sehr schön und ehrlich aus. Da sprach ich mich auch. aus. Nachher, als die ganze Sache zu Ende war, sagte mir jemand, der mich sonst ganz gut kennt, nachdem er sich das auch angehört hatte: «Sie sind dennoch der jüngste unter den Jungen gewesen.» So etwas kann einem heute passieren: da wird man als der alte Vater angeredet, da als der jüngste unter den Jungen. Da können doch die Begriffe nicht mehr ganz fest stehen. Also wissen Sie, wenn man so die Sprossen hinauf- und hinunterklettert, bald als das Väterchen, bald als der jüngste unter den Jungen, hat man gerade Gelegenheit, in das hineinzuschauen, was alles die Gemüter bewegt.
[ 11 ] Nun, ich sagte, die Jugendsektion sei in eine Stagnation hineingekommen. Sie wird schon wieder herauskommen. Sie ist aus dem Grunde hineingekommen, weil es zunächst wirklich dem jugendlichen Gemüte außerordentlich schwer wird, sich in das auch hineinzudenken, was es ganz klar fühlt. Sehen Sie, unsere Zivilisation hat mit dem Geist den Menschen verloren! Und wenn ich jetzt mehr von den Hintergründen des Daseins spreche, so sehe ich doch, daß junge Menschen, die erst vor kurzem aus der geistigen Welt zum physischen Dasein heruntergestiegen sind, eben mit ganz anderen Forderungen an das Leben heruntersteigen als die, die früher heruntergestiegen sind. Warum ist das so? Sie brauchen mir das ja nicht zu glauben. Aber mir ist es eine Erkenntnis, nicht bloß ein Glaube. Sehen Sie, man macht, bevor man zum physischen Erdendasein heruntersteigt, in der geistigen Welt allerlei durch, was inhaltsvoller, gewaltiger ist als das, was man auf der Erde durchzumachen hat. Damit soll das. Erdenleben nicht unterschätzt werden. Die Freiheit könnte sich nie entwickeln ohne das Erdenleben. Aber großartiger ist das Leben zwischen Tod und Geburt. Die Seelen, die heruntergestiegen sind, das sind die Seelen, die in Ihnen sind, meine lieben Freunde. Die waren wirklich ansichtig einer hinter dem physischen Dasein verlaufenden ungeheuer bedeutungsvollen geistigen Bewegung in überirdischen Regionen, derjenigen Bewegung, die ich innerhalb unserer Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft die Michael-Bewegung nenne. Es ist so. Ob es der heutige materialistische Mensch glauben will oder nicht, es ist so! Und die führende Macht für heute, für unsere gegenwärtige Zeit - man könnte sie ja auch anders nennen, ich nenne sie die Michael-Macht -, strebt eigentlich innerhalb der geistigen Führung der Erde und der Menschheit nach einem Neugestalten alles Seelenhaften auf der Erde. Die Menschen, die im 19. Jahrhundert so gescheit geworden sind, ahnen ja gar nicht, daß von der geistigen Welt aus die Seelenverfassung aufgegeben ist, die gerade als die aufgeklärteste im 19. Jahrhundert sich herausgebildet hat, daß der ein Ende gesetzt ist, daß eine Michael-Gemeinschaft von Wesen, die niemals auf die Erde kommen, aber die Menschheit leiten, danach strebt, eine neue Seelenverfassung in die Menschheit hineinzubringen. Der Tod der alten Zivilisation ist eben einmal gekommen.
[ 12 ] Ich habe es in der Zeit, in der die Dreigliederungsbewegung war, die eben an dem Tode der alten Zivilisation gescheitert ist, öfters gesagt: Wir haben heute keine Dreigliederung im öffentlichen Leben nach Geist, nach Jurisprudenz und so weiter und nach Wirtschaft, sondern wir haben eine Dreigliederung nach Phrase, Konvention und Routine. Phrase ist das, was als das geistige Leben auftritt, und Routine — nicht Menschenwohlwollen, Menschenliebe, wie sie herrschen soll im Wirtschaftsleben — ist das, was das Wirtschaftsleben beherrscht.
[ 13 ] Diese Seelenverfassung, in der die Menschen darinnenstecken, diese Seelenverfassung soll durch eine andere abgelöst werden, die wieder aus dem Menschen selber heraufkommt, die im Menschenwesen erlebt ist. Das ist das Streben von geistigen Wesenheiten, die, ich möchte sagen, durch die Zeichen der Zeit erkennbar sind und die Führung unseres Zeitalters übernommen haben. Die Seelen, die in Ihren Leibern auf die Erde heruntergezogen sind, die haben diese Michael-Bewegung gesehen und sind unter dem Eindruck der Michael-Bewegung heruntergekommen. Und hier lebten sie sich ein in eine Menschheit, die eigentlich den Menschen ausschließt, den Menschen zur Maske macht. Und so ist eigentlich die Jugendbewegung eine wunderbare Erinnerung an das vorirdische Erleben, an wichtigste Eindrücke dieses vorirdischen Lebens. Und hat man diese unbestimmten, unterbewußten Erinnerungen an das vorirdische Leben, diesen Anblick des Strebens nach einer Erneuerung der menschlichen Seelenverfassung, man findet nichts davon auf der Erde. Das ist, was eigentlich heute in jugendlichen Gemütern vorgeht.
[ 14 ] Die anthroposophische Bewegung ist dasjenige, was sich aus der Michael-Bewegung offenbart; sie hat das, was da gewollt wird, unter die Menschen zu bringen. Die anthroposophische Bewegung möchte hier auf der Erde von der Erde aus hinaufschauen zu der Michael-Bewegung. Die Jugend bringt sich die Erinnerung aus dem vorirdischen Dasein mit. Das führt schicksalsmäßig zusammen. So erschien mir alles das, was sich im Zusammenhang der Jugendbewegung mit der anthroposophischen Bewegung abgespielt hat, wirklich wie ganz innerlich, nicht bloß durch irdische Verhältnisse, sondern durch geistige Verhältnisse, insofern diese geistigen Verhältnisse zum Menschen gehören, gegeben zu sein. Aus diesen Untergründen heraus empfinde ich gerade diese Jugendbewegung als die, welche unendlich viele Hoffnungen erwecken kann für die Zukunft dessen, was man im richtigen Sinne als Anthroposophisches empfinden kann.
[ 15 ] Es tritt einem natürlich immer wieder das entgegen, was dadurch, daß sowohl anthroposophische Bewegung wie Jugendbewegung Anfänge sind, eigentlich auftreten muß. Wir haben ja die Freie Anthroposophische Gesellschaft neben der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft in Deutschland begründen sehen, und diese Freie Anthroposophische Gesellschaft hatte, da das auch sein muß, eine Vorstand sich erkoren oder gewählt. Ich glaube, es waren sieben Mitglieder im Vorstand — es sagt jemand, es seien neun — ach, gar neun; nun, sehen Sie, es waren neun, aber es ist einer nach dem andern bis auf drei, die zuletzt übrig geblieben sind, so hinauskomplimentiert worden; alles ganz verständlich, ganz richtig verständlich. Die Freie Anthroposophische Gesellschaft wollte im wesentlichen das Jugenderlebnis erfassen. Nun kam es zur Diskussion über das Jugenderlebnis. Da bestritt man eben einem nach dem andern, die da im Vorstand waren, daß er das rechte Jugenderlebnis haben könnte. Es blieben drei zurück, die diskutierten selbstverständlich untereinander, ob alle das Jugenderlebnis hätten. Auch da tritt etwas ganz Merkwürdiges auf, schicksalsmäßig Hindeutendes tritt zwischen der Jugendbewegung und der anthroposophischen Bewegung zutage. Es tritt spaßhaft auf, ist aber sehr ernsthaft. Denn wenn man über die großen Schicksalsfragen nachforscht, kommt man auf sehr bedeutende Dinge, und da zeigt sich oft symptomatisch die Größe des Schicksals. Als wir die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft begründet hatten, hatten wir auch Vorstandsmitglieder, die zankten sich furchtbar, und mir war es klar, daß dann einige allein dastehen werden, wenn sie die andern hinauskomplimentieren würden; aber daß es damit nicht zu Ende kommen würde, sondern daß dann die linke Seite mit der rechten in Streit kommen würde, die linke Seite eines Menschen mit der rechten Seite eines Menschen, ob die rechte oder die linke das Jugenderlebnis wirklich habe. Das schaut wie Ironie aus, ist es aber nicht. Aber es weist nur darauf hin, daß das, was heute Jugenderlebnis genannt werden muß, tief unten in der Seele liegt, und es ist das Bedeutsame in dem Jugenderlebnis, daß es nicht unbedingt in klare Worte gefaßt werden kann. Klare Worte sind in der Zeit der Gescheitheit so viele gesprochen worden! Es kommt darauf an, daß wir eben zu Erlebnissen kommen. Aber da sollte es dann auch schon so sein, daß, ich möchte sagen, das auch auftritt, was notwendig zu diesem Nicht-zu-klaren-Formen-und-so-weiter-Kommen dazugehört. Der Anspruch auf das Recht, im Unbestimmten zu beharren, ist eben vorhanden. Ein anderes muß hinzukommen: sich wirklich nicht unter dem Eindruck der Unklarheit auseinanderzutrennen, sondern zusammenzugehen und sich zu äußern.
[ 16 ] Insoweit Sie, meine jungen Freunde, hier zusammensitzen, möchte ich eigentlich vor allem den Wunsch aussprechen, daß Sie alle, was Sie auch fühlen, denken und empfinden mögen, mit eisernem Willen zusammenhalten, richtig zusammenhalten. Das brauchen wir vor allen Dingen, wenn wir in den großen Lebensfragen heute etwas erreichen wollen. Da können wir gar nicht immer darauf hinschauen, ob der eine ein bißchen eine andere Meinung hat als man selber. Es handelt sich wirklich darum, daß man sich zusammenfindet auch in der größten Differenz der Gefühle und Empfindungen. Das wird vielleicht später die schönste Errungenschaft sein, daß man in der Jugend trotz der Differenz in den Empfindungen zusammenzuhalten wußte. Es ist ja heute für den jungen Menschen wirklich so, daß er vor allen Dingen vermißt, den Menschen zu finden. Er fand unter dem, wo er hineingesteckt wurde, eben nicht den Menschen, weil der Mensch erstorben ist. Masken sind da, nicht Menschen! Überall Masken! Nun trat natürlich das hervor, was hervortreten mußte. Man suchte den Menschen! Und das ist etwas ungeheuer Ergreifendes. Denn all die verschiedenen Pfadfinderbewegungen, Wandervogelbewegungen und so weiter sind alle ein Suchen nach dem Menschen. Man sucht sich zusammenzuschließen. Jeder sucht beim andern den Menschen. Es ist ganz begreiflich. Weil geistig der Mensch eigentlich nicht mehr da war, so sagte man sich: Aber ich fühle doch, der Mensch muß doch da sein. Nun suchte man den Menschen, suchte ihn vor allen Dingen im Zusammenschluß. Aber das hat das dürfen wir nicht aus den Augen verlieren — etwas ungeheuer Tragisches gehabt. Viele junge Leute haben diese Tragik durchgemacht. Sie sind in den Zusammenschluß eingetreten und haben gemeint, den Menschen zu finden. Der Zusammenschluß erfüllte sie nicht mit irgend etwas, was sie suchten; sie wurden um so einsamer wiederum. Und diese zwei Phasen der Jugendbewegung sind deutlich hervorgetreten: die Phase der Geselligkeit, die Phase der großen Einsamkeit. Wieviele junge Leute sind heute da, die wirklich mit dem Bewußtsein, nirgends verstanden zu werden, einsam durch die Welt ziehen.
[ 17 ] Nun ist es so, man kann im anderen Menschen den Menschen nicht finden, wenn man ihn nicht auf geistige Weise zu suchen versteht, denn der Mensch ist einmal ein geistiges Wesen, und wenn man dem Menschen nur äußerlich gegenübertritt, so kann man ihn nicht finden, auch wenn er da ist. Es ist ja heute jammervoll, wie die Menschen eigentlich im Leben aneinander vorbeigehen. Gewiß, man schimpft heute mit Recht auf frühere Zeiten. Es ist vieles, was barbarisch war. Aber etwas war da: der Mensch fand den Menschen im anderen Menschen. Das kann er heute nicht. Die Menschen, die heute Erwachsenen, gehen alle aneinander vorbei. Keiner kennt den anderen. Es kann nicht einmal einer mit dem anderen leben, weil keiner dem anderen zuhört. Jeder schreit dem anderen etwas in die Ohren: seine eigene Meinung, und sagt dann, das ist meine eigene Meinung, das ist mein Standpunkt. Man hat heute wirklich lauter Standpunkte. Mehr Inhalt ist nicht da, denn das, was von den Standpunkten aus geltend gemacht wird, ist gleichgültig. Diese Dinge mit dem Herzen, nicht mit dem Verstande angesehen, die vibrieren durch die Jugend. Und deshalb können Sie sicher sein, die Empfindung muß richtig sein, daß etwas von Schicksalszusammenhang zwischen Jugendbewegung und anthroposophischer Bewegung besteht, daß nicht, weil man das auch probieren wollte, nachdem man vieles probiert hatte, die jungen Leute an die Anthroposophie herankamen, sondern aus einem Schicksal kamen sie heran. Und das gibt mir die Gewißheit, daß wir werden zusammenarbeiten können. Wir werden uns zusammenfinden, und wie auch die Dinge sich entwickeln, sie müssen sich so entwickeln, daß vor allen Dingen das Menschliche im weitesten Sinne, das in der Jugend lebt, zur Geltung kommt. Denn sonst kommt etwas ganz anderes, wenn nicht wirklich Geist aus dem jugendlichen Leben hervorquillt. Dann ist allerdings das jugendliche Leben da, man wird das Jungsein empfinden können, aber dieses Jungsein, ohne von Geist erfüllt zu sein, das hört im Anfang der Zwanzigerjahre auf. Denn physiologisch können wir die Jugend ja doch nicht erhalten. Wir müssen schon alt werden, aber wir müssen aus der Jugend ins Alter etwas hineintragen können. Wir müssen das Jungsein auch so verstehen, daß wir mit ihm in der richtigen Weise älter werden können, und ohne vom Geist in der Seele, in der tiefsten Seele berührt zu werden, kann man die Jahre zwischen zwanzig und dreißig doch nicht überstehen, ohne in das graue Seelenelend zu verfallen. Und das ist das, was zugleich meine große Sorge ausmacht. Diese besteht darin: Wie können wir zusammenarbeiten so, daß der Abgrund zwischen dem zwanzigsten und dem dreißigsten Jahr von unserer Jugend wirklich lebendig überschritten wird, ohne daß sie ins graue Seelenelend hineinkommt. Ich habe die Menschen schon kennengelernt, welche in der Mitte der Zwanzigerjahre ins graue Seelenelend hineingekommen sind. Denn im Grunde genommen ist das, was nach dem Ablauf des Kali ‚Yuga in den Untergründen der jugendlichen Seele lebt, der Schrei nach dem Geistigen. Es ist schon richtig, das macht nichts aus, daß unter Ihnen viele sind, die nicht in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft sind. Ich war bis zu Weihnachten auch nicht darinnen. Da ich Vorsitzender werden mußte, mußte ich in sie eintreten. Darauf kommt es nicht an. Es kommt darauf an, daß man nach dem wirklich konkreten Geistigen sieht.
[ 18 ] Mit diesen Worten wollte ich Ihnen eine kleine Einleitung geben. Ich hoffe, daß Sie vieles werden zu sagen haben. Sprechen Sie sich unverhohlen aus, wählen Sie sich einen Vorsitzenden oder tun Sie das, wie Sie wollen. So habe ich auch die Dornacher Jugend gebeten, sich offen auszusprechen, damit wir zusammenarbeiten können. Der Dornacher Vorstand wird sicher aufmerksam zuhören, und wir werden das alles als gute Lehren für die Jugendsektion am Goetheanum entgegennehmen, was Sie selber zu sagen haben. Wir wollen uns nicht väterlich, sondern recht «söhnlich» verhalten zu dem, was Sie zu sagen haben.
[ 19 ] Frage: Einer der jungen Freunde erzählte davon, daß sie gerne etwas Gemeinsames arbeiten wollten. Dieses gemeinsame Arbeiten sei ihnen aber schwer geworden; am besten seien ihnen die Weihnachtsspiele gelungen. Sie würden immer nach kurzer Zeit müde werden, sie fühlten sich von ihrem Beruf zerrieben. - Dann wurde noch über die Michaels-Idee gesprochen.
[ 20 ] Rudolf Steiner: Wie kann man sich in den Beruf hineinstellen, wiederum mit innerlicher Freude in dem Beruf darinnen richtiger Mensch sein? Ja, sehen Sie, diese Dinge sind ja nicht so ganz leicht zu beantworten, meine lieben Freunde, aber man darf vielleicht etwas zu der Antwort beitragen, wenn man diese Dinge als Erlebnis kennt. Sehen Sie, ich habe so manche Freunde gehabt, als ich so alt war wie Sie. Die warfen dazumal auch die Frage auf, wie kann man sich in den Beruf hineinstellen, ohne in der Freudlosigkeit zu vergehen, ohne gewissermaßen das Seelische zu ertöten. Sie haben sich dann, nachdem sie alle — dazumal nannte man es Brauseköpfe, wenn einer sich frei entwickeln wollte - lange frei gebummelt hatten, in irgendeinen Beruf hineingeschoben, aber sie verkümmerten seelisch furchtbar. Ich möchte nicht gern von mir selber reden, aber in diesem Falle muß ich es. Ich habe mich in keinen Beruf hineingestellt, denn hätte ich es getan, es wäre zu keiner anthroposophischen Bewegung gekommen. Um das Vermächtnis Goethes zu gestalten, durfte man in keinem Beruf darinnenstehen. Man muß das Leben gestalten. Deshalb darf ich aus meinem Leben heraus einiges sagen zur Beantwortung der Frage. Das Problem kann nicht gelöst werden, sich in den heutigen Beruf hineinzustellen und innere Lebensfreudigkeit zu behalten. Deshalb muß man sich aber doch in die heutigen Berufe hineinstellen, denn es gehört Resignation dazu, sich in keinen Beruf hineinzustellen. Dazu müssen Sie sich schon aufschwingen einzusehen, daß es nicht möglich ist, sich in die heutigen Berufe hineinzustellen mit Lebensfreudigkeit oder Befriedigung. Das wird erst möglich sein, wenn das Berufsleben so beschaffen ist, daß es dem Menschen angemessen ist. Darauf muß verzichtet werden, sich in einen heutigen Beruf hineinzustellen und lebensfreudig zu sein. Sie müssen das Problem jenseits des Berufes lösen. In der wenigen Zeit, die Ihnen der Beruf übrig läßt, müssen Sie sich aber um so intensiver anstrengen. Es ist außerordentlich wohlig, und ich gebe Ihnen ganz recht in dem, was Sie gesagt haben von der anderen Seite her, Weihnachtsspiele zu spielen und daran Freude zu haben; aber ich habe Leute kennengelernt, die auch zu den Weihnachtsspielen kamen, auch dabei waren und mittaten, die hatten nicht nur auf dem Körper, sondern auch auf der Seele graue Haare. Dazu braucht man nicht jung zu sein.
[ 21 ] Die Anthroposophie hat eine Eigentümlichkeit. Wenn Sie heute ein strebsamer Mensch sind, und sich ein bißchen bilden wollen, nehmen Sie das auf, was in den Büchern steht. Was für Ansprüche macht die Literatur? Sie macht den Anspruch, daß sie eindeutig ist. Wenn Sie ein wissenschaftliches Buch nehmen, ist es egal, ob Sie achtzehn, fünfundzwanzig, siebenunddreißig oder achtzig Jahre alt sind. Die Wahrheit soll überall auf Sie wirken. Das soll absolut wahr sein. Das ist bei der Anthroposophie nicht so. Die Anthroposophie werden Sie als achtzehnjähriger Mensch anders aufnehmen wie als sechsundzwanzigjähriger, weil sie mit Ihnen wächst. Sie schmiegt sich an den Menschen an in seiner Jugendlichkeit und auch in seinem Alter. So wie der Mensch selber alt wird, wird auch die Anthroposophie alt. Wenn man sich in dieser ganz neuen, nennen Sie es Weltauffassung, Seelenverfassung, wie Sie wollen, wenn man sich in dem ganz Neuen ergeht, Gemeinschaften gestaltet, um gerade das leben zu lassen in der Gemeinschaft, wird man schon darauf kommen: Da kann man jung sein und kann sich in richtiger Weise hineinfinden, so daß die Dinge sich auch jugendlich auswirken. Die alten Leute machen uns ja ohnehin den Vorwurf, daß Sie die Anthroposophie nicht verstehen. Ein gutes Zeichen für die Anthroposophie! Man soll sie nicht verstehen, man soll sie erleben. Und dieser letzte Konservatismus muß auch noch verschwinden, daß man glaubt, man kann sich in die heutigen Berufe mit Freude hineinfinden. Man muß neben dem Beruf einen Weg finden und für diesen Weg so viele Menschen finden, daß eine solche Kraft entsteht, daß die Berufe neu gestaltet werden können. Denn nur in neugestalteten Berufen kann man sich freuen.
[ 22 ] Daß diese Kraft entsteht, dazu kann viel geschehen, wie ich es Ihnen in der Michaels-Kraft charakterisiert habe. Die muß sich aber in grandiosen Michaels-Festlichkeiten ausleben. Wir müßten es wirklich dahin bringen, daß das aufkeimende Leben der Zukunft, das von uns noch ganz embryonal gefühlt werden kann, in Festen der Hoffnung, in Festen der Erwartung entstehen kann. In Festen, wo man nur durch Hoffnung und Erwartung zusammengehalten wird, nicht durch scharf konturierte Ideale, müßte man gerade in diesen Festen dieses Bild vor sich haben des Michaels mit den Führeraugen, der weisenden Hand, mit dem geistigen Rüstzeug. Solch ein Fest muß entstehen. Warum ist es nicht entstanden? So fest ich hinweisen werde, daß dieses Fest aus dem Schoße der anthroposophischen Bewegung hervorgehen muß, so fest werde ich es auch zurückhalten, so lange nicht die Kraft da ist, es würdig zu halten. Denn spielerisch es zu machen, dazu ist die Zeit zu ernst. Wenn es in würdiger Weise gefeiert wird, wird es große Impulse in die Menschheit hineinsenden. Daher müssen wir so lange warten, bis die Kraft dazu da ist. Nicht bloß ein vages, blaues, dunstiges Erbauen an der Michaels-Idee soll da sein, sondern das Bewußtsein, daß eine neue Seelenwelt unter den Menschen begründet werden muß. Es ist tatsächlich das Michaels-Prinzip das Führende. Dazu gehört gemeinschaftliches Erleben, um gerade auf eine Michaels-Festeszeit hinzuarbeiten, wo “dann der Geist der Hoffnung in die Zukunft, der Geist der Erwartung leben kann. Das ist schon etwas, was walten kann und nach dem Beruf eine große Befriedigung gewähren kann, daß man schon mit Resignation in den Beruf hineingehen kann. Es soll Sie das nicht verstimmen, sondern anregen.
[ 23 ] Frage: Man wird gezwungen, während des Berufes ein anderer Mensch zu sein. Am Abend macht man Übungen, klettert die Leiter hinauf und wird am Tage wieder hinuntergezogen.
[ 24 ] Rudolf Steiner: Man kann das auch nicht hineintragen in den Beruf, weil heute viel zu wenig Menschen sind, als daß eine wirkliche Kraft entstehen kann. Das würde bewirkt werden, wenn alle die, die das, wenn auch noch so dunkel, fühlen, daß etwas anderes zu-erwarten ist, nach einer Vereintheit streben würden. Wenn Sie sich heute in irgendeinem Beruf drinnen befinden, nicht wahr, das wissen Sie ja doch ganz klar, sind noch eine ganze Anzahl anderer darinnen, die das nicht so fühlen wie Sie. Diese Menschen haben auch gar nicht das Bedürfnis, den Abend irgendwie in Jugendbewegungsversammlungen zuzubringen; sie stehen in dem Beruf so darinnen, daß sie eigentlich darinnen zufrieden sind, weil sie gar nicht das Zeug haben, unzufrieden zu sein; sie wollen gar nicht, daß der Beruf ihnen Freude macht. Etwas Charakteristisches ist da in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts aufgetreten. Bei wissenschaftlichen Versammlungen bin ich zur Verzweiflung getrieben worden. Solange man die paar Stunden von offiziellen Verhandlungen hatte, wurde wissenschaftlich verhandelt. Dann setzte man sich zusammen, und wer nun aus dem Beruf heraus ein Sterbenswörtchen sagte, der wurde für einen Philister angesehen. Diejenigen unter ihnen, die keine Philister sein wollten, sie waren es erst recht. Die hatten immer das Wort auf den Lippen: Nur nicht fachsimpeln! Das zeugt dafür, daß man sich überhaupt gar nicht interessierte für das, was man berufsmäßig trieb. Das ist auf allen Gebieten so. Die Menschen sind zum großen Teil Opfer der Zeit; sie wären auch für etwas Besseres zu gewinnen. Dazu gehört eben, daß noch mehr Macht in den geistigen Bewegungen der Zeit zutage treten kann, damit nicht diejenigen, die den Beruf als niederdrückend empfinden, dastehen und erdrückt werden durch die anderen, die gar nicht solche Bedürfnisse haben. Also je mehr wir darauf verzichten, schon morgen etwas zu erreichen, um so mehr wir uns bemühen, emsig zu arbeiten in dem, was sein soll zunächst eine geistige Gemeinschaft, die auf etwas hinarbeitet, desto besser wird das sein. Das ist das, was wir ins Auge fassen müssen.
[ 25 ] Frage: Gegensatz von jung und alt. Die alten Anthroposophen wollen nur den Geist in sich hineinzerren. Die jungen wollen herausgestalten. Die andern wollen bremsen; sie äußern sich spöttisch über das, was die Jugend schafft.
[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner: Es brauchte der Gegensatz zwischen jungen und älteren Leuten nicht so stark hervorzutreten. Da scheint mir doch das Richtige das zu sein, was ich gesagt habe, daß man versuchen soll, weil es ja schon gegenwärtig unmöglich ist, alle über einen Leisten zu schlagen, auch gegen den andern, sagen wir, tolerant zu sein. Es ist ganz gewiß, daß man ja auf der einen Seite anstreben wird, wenn man dazu das nötige Temperament hat, mit dem, was da ist, auch nach außen in die Welt hineinzuschauen, hineinzureichen. Es wäre traurig, wenn es nicht so wäre. Aber auf der andern Seite liegt da auch ein beträchtlicher Unterschied in der Stärke vor. Es wird stärkere Elemente geben, die werden in der Lage sein, manches früher durchzuführen, als die andern sich getrauen. Aber zu etwas Durchgreifendem wird man doch nur kommen, wenn sich die verschiedenen Schattierungen zusammenfinden. Man kann sich zusammenfinden. Da könnte die anthroposophische Bewegung viel tun; sie tut es nur leider nicht.
[ 27 ] Ich glaube schon, wenn die Jugendbewegung in die Anthroposophie hineinfinden wird, werden die verschiedenen Nuancen schon zur Geltung kommen. Was von mir abhängt, so wird niemals etwas gegen die Jugendbewegung eingewendet werden, die von der Temperamentslage ausgeht, die Sie vertreten haben. Ich möchte am allerwenigsten einwenden dagegen. Nur habe ich in meiner Jugend gesehen, wie stark man da gegen Widerstand anstößt und sich die Stirne blutig schlägt. Es ist gut von denen, die es wollen, aber wissen Sie, es ist schon einmal nicht jedermanns Sache, so, ich möchte sagen, von vorneherein auch wirklich sich dem unbestimmten Schicksal auszusetzen. Aber ist man in der Lage, in dieser Richtung wieder zu wirken, dann weniger dadurch, daß man die anderen, die es nicht so machen, kritisiert, sondern, daß man auf das hinweist, was wirklich geschaffen worden ist. Es handelt sich durchaus darum, auf das Positive hinzuweisen, was in dieser Richtung schon geschaffen wurde. Das ist, wie ich glaube, auch unter der Jugend viel zu wenig bekannt; es bleibt in kleinen Kreisen. Und das ist das Gefährliche, wenn es auch in der Jugend dadurch, daß es in der Jugend hervortritt, nicht in so krasser Form wie in den Sekten auftritt. Es darf nichts Sektiererisches vorkommen. Es muß das allgemein Menschliche darin walten.
[ 28 ] Frage über die verschiedenen Altersstufen, die versammelt sind, zwischen achtzehn und fünfundzwanzig Jahren, und die verschiedenen Bildungsgrade der Berreffenden.
[ 29 ] Rudolf Steiner: Daß das so ist, daran ist im Grunde genommen nur das schuld, daß in unserer Zivilisation der Egoismus eine so ungeheuer starke Rolle spielt. Es ist den Menschen nicht möglich, sich in den andern hineinzufühlen. Ein jeder redet und tut nur aus sich heraus. Denken Sie nur, wie das sofort anders ist, wenn man sich in den andern hineinfühlen kann. Nehmen wir an, es ist einer in den sechziger Jahren und er redet mit einem fünfjährigen Knaben. Eigentlich finde ich, daß das fünfjährige Kind sich viel mehr in den Sechzigjährigen hineinfindet als der Sechzigjährige sich in das Kind. Das Hineinkriechen in den andern, das ist das, was man lernen muß. Das kann man durch Anthroposophie, weil sie biegsam ist. Wenn wir durch geistige Interessen zusammengehalten werden, dann verschwindet der Altersunterschied zwischen fünfzehn und fünfundzwanzig leicht, namentlich, wenn man eine Weile zusammen ist. Wenn man aber nur durch die egoistischen Interessen zusammengehalten ist, dann verstehen die Fünfzehn- und die Fünfundzwanzigjährigen sich nicht. Es handelt sich um die Überwindung des Egoismus. Man muß sich in etwas Objektives hineinfinden. Egoismus ist die Signatur des Zeitalters. Wenn wir anfangen uns rechtschaffen für den Menschen zu interessieren, so kann das nicht fortdauern. Den Egoismus überwindet man gründlich, wenn man ihn zuerst überwindet bei etwas, was so schwer in die Seele eingeht wie die Anthroposophie. Da muß man sich auf sein Inneres beziehen. Da streift man den Egoismus ab und kann dann schon in den anderen hineinfinden. Das tritt als eine Frucht auf.
[ 30 ] Daß Sie sich nicht verstehen können, hat den Grund, weil Sie nicht den Menschen haben. Wenn einer kein Mensch ist, sondern eine Schablone, wie man heute mit fünfundzwanzig Jahren ungefähr ist, wie soll er den anderen Menschen verstehen? Wenn man Akademiker ist, ist man mit fünfundzwanzig Jahren nicht ein Mensch, sondern ein Kleiderstock, an dem das Abiturientenexamen hängt und die Angst vor dem letzten Abschlußexamen. Man ist mit fünfzehn Jahren ein Kleiderstock, an dem noch die Klassenzeugnisse hängen, die von den Eltern unterschrieben werden müssen. Die verschiedenen Gegenstände verstehen sich nicht, aber sobald wir an den Menschen kommen, verstehen wir uns. So ist es mit den Berufen, mit den verschiedenen Berufen. Wir sind nicht mehr rechtschaffene Menschen, wir sind tatsächlich das, was ein Abklatsch der verschiedenen Verhältnisse ist. Und darin liegt das Bedeutsame der Jugendbewegung, daß sie das abgestreift hat, daß sie Menschen will. Das tritt einem doch bei diesen Menschen entgegen. Wenn sie aus dem Beruf draußen sind, wollen sie Menschen sein. Das werden sie werden, wenn sie von solchen Dingen klar durchdrungen sind.
[ 31 ] Hermann Bahr schildert, wie es ihm ergangen ist, wenn er in eine Großstadt kam. Er wurde überall eingeladen, am Sonntag, am Montag, und nun — nicht wahr, ja, er konnte die Damen, die am Tische links saßen, und die Damen, die rechts saßen, nicht voneinander unterscheiden; er konnte die Damen vom Sonntag nicht von den Damen vom Montag unterscheiden. Es kam ihm alles durcheinander. Ja, sehen Sie, wenn man eben in solche Gesellschaften kommt, da schauen sich die Leute so ähnlich, weil sie alle ein Abklatsch dieser Verhältnisse sind.
[ 32 ] Frage: Soll man den Beruf fallenlassen und sich nur der Anthroposophie widmen, oder kann man den Beruf durchwärmen?
[ 33 ] Rudolf Steiner: Das ist eine individuelle Sache. Man soll nie davor zurückschrecken, das, was man als das Richtige erkannt hat, auszuführen. Einmal kann man es, einmal kann man es nicht. Wenn man es kann, soll man einen Riecher dafür haben und es auch tun. Natürlich, man kann auch Märtyrer werden. Nur soll das keine allgemeine Regel werden. Denn dann kommt man nicht vorwärts, oder wenigstens müßte das dann eine allgemeine Regel werden. Aber wenn bloß unter hundert ein Prozent zum Märtyrer bereit sind, dann kommt man nicht weiter, weil das die anderen zunichte werden lassen. Das läßt sich nur individuell beantworten. Ich habe es in meinem Leben individuell beantwortet, indem ich nie in einen Beruf hineingegangen bin. Gewiß, Sie können sagen, dadurch weiß ich nicht, wie man einen Beruf fördern kann. So neben denen, die da waren, stand ich ja schon auch. Aber es ist schon so geworden, daß das Berufsleben etwas Erstarrtes hat, daß es außerordentlich schwierig ist, bei der Kompliziertheit der Lebenszusammenhänge heute in irgendeinem Beruf viel auszurichten. Hat man einen Riecher, kann man es tun.
[ 34 ] Frage: Es wurde erzählt, daß man Einzelgruppen gebildet hatte, weil man nicht jung und alt vereinen konnte. Wiederum Frage nach dem Beruf.
[ 35 ] Rudolf Steiner: Es ist nicht viel anzufangen mit dem Beruf, wenn man Mensch sein will. Man muß resignieren und neben dem Beruf ein selbständiges Leben entfalten. Was der Herr hier sagt, kommt aus einem Mißverständnis der Anthroposophie heraus.
[ 36 ] Der Fragesteller: Die Anthroposophie greife ich nicht an. Man muß verstehen können, was die Jugendbewegung Gutes hat. Rudolf Steiner: Es handelt sich nur darum, daß gerade die Jugendbewegung an der Anthroposophie erfahren kann, erleben kann, wie man mit Ausschluß alles Negativen im Einklang mit dem ganzen Kosmos positiv wirken kann. Denn Anthroposophie schließt ihrem Wesen nach, da sie von keinem angenommen wird, der sie nicht erleben kann, ein unfreies Wirken aus. Ich bin nie darauf ausgegangen, für Anthroposophie zu agitieren. Ich sagte, was ich wußte. Ich wußte, wenn ich zu tausend spreche, so werden es zunächst nur fünf sein, bei denen die Sache wirklich anfaßt. Ich machte mir nie etwas daraus, denn bei den Heringen im Meer geht es auch so. Da werden auch aus tausend Eiern, die ausgestreut werden, nur zwei oder drei wirkliche Heringe. Wer auf den Erfolg sieht, kann den Erfolg nie haben. Man muß aus der Sache heraus wirken. Das meine ich, sollte Platz greifen, daß man einen jeden tun läßt, was er tun kann, und eben nicht zu ablehnend ist, nicht zu stark sagt: Das sollte die Jugend nicht sein, das sollte die Jugendbewegung nicht sein. Es sollten möglichst viele zusammensein, jeder aus seiner Individualität heraus das zu tun, was er kann.
[ 37 ] Der Unterschied zwischen fünfzehn und fünfundzwanzig wird schon überwunden werden, wenn alle jung sind, und jung sind schon alle. Das ist nicht so schlimm, was differiert. Die Grundform ist schon da. Andere, die bleiben draußen, die gehen ins Kino, die gehen doch nicht in die Vereinigungen der Jugend.
[ 38 ] Nun handelt es sich darum, daß vielleicht zu stark daran gedacht wird, daß man eine Form geben soll. Es handelt sich vielmehr darum, daß ein aufrichtiges Verhältnis von Mensch zu Mensch gewonnen wird als eine Form. Hat man sich lieb, so geht man da hin, wo man sich lieb hat, und sucht nicht nach einer Form. Vielleicht ist das gerade falsch, nach einer Form zu suchen. Es handelt sich darum, daß Sie sogar dann zusammenkommen, wenn Sie ganz uneinig sind; daß Sie gerne zueinander kommen, gerne beisammen sind. Und wenn dieses Rein-Menschliche, im Gefühl Liegende die Form gibt, ist das die gesündeste Form. Jedes programmäßige Formsuchen wird sogar die Jugendbewegung stören. Wir haben auch in bezug auf die Jugendsektion am Goetheanum an Mannigfaltiges gedacht, und es wird auch Mannigfaltiges hervorkommen, was Grundlage geben wird, sich mit den Dingen zu beschäftigen, wenn man über einen gewissen Punkt der Stagnation hinübergekommen sein wird.
[ 38 ] Wenn wirklich das nach dem Kali Yuga auftretende Streben nach dem Licht — es muß ja nicht ein abstraktes Geisteslicht sein — so stark in den Menschen ist, daß sie gar nicht anders können als dem zu folgen, dann brauchen wir nicht weitere Formen. Es ist nur störend, besondere Formen zu haben. Es muß in den Menschen das Lebendige zusammenkommen. Ich denke mir, wenn auch nur unter einer großen, großen Versammlung zwei oder drei sind, die ganz herzhaft begeistert sind für ihre Sache, wird man zusammenkommen, weil die zwei oder drei dort sind, weil die dort zu treffen sind. Es muß das Menschliche sein. Das wird ganz sicher gefunden werden, wenn wir nicht mit schlaffen Armen, schlaffen Beinen und schlaffen Gehirnen zusammenkommen, sondern mit Eifer und ernsthaft in unserem Innern etwas wollen. Und wenn wir von dem andern nicht erwarten, daß er uns amüsiert, sondern hingehen und selber etwas leisten wollen, daß wir etwas leisten wollen und vom anderen möglichst wenig erwarten, selber möglichst viel tun wollen, dann haben wir die Form. Es ist so schwer, über allgemeine programmatische Sachen zu sprechen. Es kommt auf das Leben an bei den Dingen, die im Leben stehen. Wenn man im Beruf darinnensteht und dann extra das machen soll, wird man müde im Beruf. Aber die Begeisterung ist notwendig, die heute für die Jugend deshalb so leicht drinnen sein kann, weil sie beim Alter so schrecklich fehlt. Es bewegt sich nicht, es fehlt die Begeisterung; das Alter hat Blei im Körper. Das kann in der Jugend schon Begeisterung hervorrufen, wenn Sie sich heute vornehmen, wirklich das, was Sie jeder denken, in der nächsten Zeit gemeinsam mit denen, die heute zusammen sind, zu besprechen. Da haben Sie schon Form genug, und wir werden allerlei Botschaften, allerlei Fragen vom Goetheanum ausgehen lassen. Da werden Sie wieder etwas zu tun haben, und so suchen Sie einfach Gelegenheit, um sich zu treffen, und schwänzen möglichst wenig die Versammlungen. Dann wird es schon werden; das gibt die beste Form. Es ist tatsächlich vielleicht sogar der erste Grundsatz in bezug auf die Formbildung: Wir haben so und so viele Freunde, die wollen als ersten Grundsatz betrachten, unsere Zusammenkünfte nicht zu schwänzen. Dann ist schon eine Form da. Frage nach der Wandervogeljugend.
[ 39 ] Rudolf Steiner: In Wirklichkeit braucht kein Gegensatz zu sein. Man geht in die Natur hinaus bei den Wandervögeln, man will die Eindrücke der Natur haben, man will an der Natur das Menschliche erleben und so weiter. Wenn man nachher, nachdem man das alles angestrebt hat und glaubt, es eine Zeitlang durchgemacht zu haben, in ein anderes Extrem verfällt, die Natur nicht mehr haben will und Bücher liest, dann hat man das erste auch nicht in der richtigen Weise gehabt. Heute kann der Mensch die ganze Welt durchwandern und sieht nichts. Man kann Ihnen die schönsten Exemplare von Italienreisenden, von englischen Wandervögeln zeigen, die gar nichts gesehen haben. Sie haben die Galerien angesehen, sie haben in Wirklichkeit nichts gesehen. Ich habe eine Anzahl von Wandervögeln gesehen, die den Drang gehabt haben, etwas zu sehen, die aber nichts gesehen haben.
[ 40 ] Um etwas zu sehen, muß man ein Herz haben. Wenn man aber schon in der Volksschule verhindert wird, ein ganzer Mensch zu sein, sieht man nicht, was in der Natur ist. Wenn man wieder darauf eingehen kann, was alles in der Natur ist, dann findet man auch in «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» etwas anderes als andere. Dieses Buch ist durchaus nicht mit Ausschluß der Natur geschrieben, sondern durchaus im Anblick der Natur. Man hat gesagt, man könne meinem Stil ansehen, daß ich mit der Schreibmaschine schreibe, weil mir bei Tag die Zeit dazu fehle. Diese Kritik kann ganz gewiß nicht recht haben. Ich habe mir noch nie ins Bett, wo ich meine meisten ‚Sachen schreibe, eine Schreibmaschine gestellt. Das würde auch grotesk aussehen. Es kommt darauf an, wie die Sachen konzipiert sind. Sie sind durchaus im Anschauen der Natur konzipiert. «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» ist durchaus ein Wandervogelbuch. Ich sehe keinen Gegensatz, der beruht darauf, daß man weder das eine noch das andere ganz ist. Als Wandervogel die Natur erleben, dann wird man auch das Buch erleben, das gar kein Buch sein soll. Es schaut nur so aus. Aber man kann eben gewisse Dinge nur durch Druckerschwärze in die Welt setzen. Wenn die Jugendbewegung gelingt, werden wir auch über die Druckerschwärze hinwegkommen. Wir müssen zum Menschlichen kommen, nur, nicht wahr, die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft kann nicht alles auf einmal erreichen; sie tut schon viel dazu; es ist leider nicht gelungen. Es war meine Absicht, gewisse Dinge, die man von Mensch zu Mensch sagt, niemals drucken zu lassen. Ich bin so froh, daß heute keiner mitschreibt. Es haben sich immer wieder Leute gefunden, die nachgeschrieben haben. Das, was eine schlimme Nachschrift war, ist hinausgekommen, und so hatte ich doch wieder das Mittel zu finden, die Dinge drucken zu lassen.
Speech and Questions during the Breslau-Koberwitz Conference
[ 1 ] From the welcoming address by the chair of the meeting: Thanks to Dr. Steiner, Dr. Steiner, and the other members of the board. We would like to try to be aware of the tremendous significance of Dr. Steiner, who has a global mission to fulfill, appearing in our midst. This will give us the necessary reverence to listen to what he has to say to us. We want to welcome him as someone who knows how to be youthful, more youthful than we ourselves can be. What we offer Dr. Steiner is merely a search, and no more can be expected of us. We are not only academics, but also businesspeople, civil servants, and for the most part not members of the Anthroposophical Society.
[ 2 ] A participant: When we look at flowers, when we look at stones, when we look at stars, when we look at the world, we grow old prematurely in our view of the world. We do not find the kind of worldview that allows us to be youthful. Therefore, many give up looking at the world and try only to experience youthfulness within themselves. In order to stand correctly in the world, we search for a worldview that allows us to be youthful, and in this search we want to stand before Dr. Steiner.
[ 3 ] Rudolf Steiner: I thank you very much for your kind words of welcome, and I can say that I welcome you just as warmly, because for many years now, what is going on in your hearts, your souls, and your minds has been something extraordinarily important and meaningful for the present. You can be absolutely certain that anyone who stands in the world with an open mind takes today's youth movement extremely seriously. Even if it seems to you, when you look around, not among your peers but among the older people of today, that the youth movement is not taken seriously, it is certainly taken seriously by those who are pursuing spiritual endeavors today.
[ 4 ] Several years have now passed since a small circle of young people came into the Anthroposophical Society and did not merely want to participate as listeners in what the Anthroposophical Society has to offer, but came forward with the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that young people today summarize in their youth. And in a sense, that is what this small circle did when it gathered in Stuttgart years ago and asked the anthroposophical movement: How can you give us a place within this anthroposophical movement? I believe that, for my part, this question was truly understood at the time. It is not always easy — and perhaps we will be able to discuss this today or in the coming days — it is not always easy to understand the question that people who are truly searching today are asking of the times, and young people already have a number of questions, quite rightly, that cannot be asked with complete clarity.
[ 5 ] You see, back when the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement first came into contact, it really seemed to me as if the two were being brought together by some kind of destiny, karma, and I still believe today that the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement are truly linked by an inner destiny. When I draw on my own experiences over many decades in the quest for a community of people who want to search for the spirit, and when I compare this with what has emerged as a youth movement since the turn of the century, I have to say that what very few people felt forty years ago and what was hardly noticed at the time because so few felt it, is now felt within the increasingly widespread youth movement. The welcoming remarks just spoken expressed very well how difficult it is for young people today to live.
[ 6 ] After all, even though there has always been a kind of youth movement, things were different in other times than they are in our time. When you talk to older people about the youth movement today, they very often respond by saying, “Oh, God, young people have always felt differently than older people, they've always wanted something different.” That has worn off, it has evened out. In today's youth movement, there is no need to see anything other than what the younger generation has always wanted from the older generations. — At least, I have heard this answer to the burning question of today's youth movement from many sides. And yet, this answer is completely wrong, this answer is completely incorrect. And therein lies an enormous difficulty. At all times, even when young people have been very radical in a youth movement, there has always been something that can be described as follows: what the older generation had established around them in terms of institutions and all kinds of organizations was recognized to a certain extent by young people and could be recognized. Young people could see an ideal in gradually growing into the old ways. Today, this is no longer the case. Whether one is an academic or not is no longer important, but rather that young people, if they want to live at all, must grow into the institutions that the older generation has created, and that young people feel completely alienated within them; that young people perceive what they encounter there as a kind of death of the human being, that within these institutions they feel that the whole way older people behave and conduct themselves is like a mask. Young people feel their own inner human forms, which they find alive, and they find everything around them to be like masks. This is what can drive young people to despair today, that they find not human beings among their elders, but mostly masks. It is really the case that people come toward you like imprints, like seals of some class of people, some profession, or even some ideal, but they do not come toward you as inner, living, full human beings.
[ 7 ] Now you see, I would like to say, even if it may seem a little abstract, that it is very much alive in our feelings: we are now at a turning point in time, as humanity has never been before, at least in historical times and also to a large extent in prehistoric times. I do not like to speak of transitional periods; transitional periods are always from before to after; it is only a question of what is transitioning. But in our time, it is already the case that humanity stands at a turning point such as it has never stood before in historical and prehistoric times. This has to do with the fact that in the depths of the human soul, less even in consciousness than in the depths of the human soul, significant things are already taking place which are actually processes of the spiritual world that are not limited to the physical world. It is said that with the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the so-called dark age has come to an end and that a new age of light is beginning. Certainly, anyone who can look into the spiritual world knows that this is so. The fact that not much light is coming to the fore at present does not contradict this; people are accustomed to the old darkness, and just as a ball that has been given a push rolls on, so it rolls on for a while, rolling on through inertia. Our civilization today is definitely one that rolls on in inertia, and when we look at what is rolling around us in inertia, we must say: There is already something that unites what is around us. Today, people want everything that exists — it is difficult to find a living word because things are dead — they want everything to be confirmed; everything is actually only justified for what has ultimately emerged as civilization, what has been confirmed. Every scientific truth must be confirmed, everything that any human being has claimed must be confirmed, but human beings themselves must also be confirmed; when they enter any profession, they must be confirmed in some way, human beings must be confirmed from outside. When you live in scientific life, you call it: it must be proven. What is not proven does not count, you cannot understand it.
[ 8 ] Now you see, I could talk a lot more about this being confirmed, about this being proven. Sometimes it confronts you in a grotesque way. You see, I was also young once, not quite so young, and I—I want to tell you about this little experience because it is not entirely unrelated to what I want to say—I edited a magazine and had a lawsuit over a minor matter. It wasn't much; I went there myself and won in the first instance. The plaintiff wasn't satisfied and appealed to the court of second instance. I went back, and the opposing lawyer came up to me and said, “We don't need you, we only need your lawyer. Where is he?” I said I hadn't brought one with me, I thought it was my business. That didn't help. I had to use all the cunning I could muster to get the trial postponed and to be told that I had no business being there next time, that I had to send a lawyer, because in the second instance it was not customary for a person to represent themselves. I left feeling amused. The matter slipped my mind, and I remembered it on the very day before the trial was to take place. I went into town and thought to myself that I couldn't let them tell me again tomorrow that I was useless. So I walked down the street, saw a lawyer's sign, and went up. I didn't know him at all, knew nothing about him. He said, “Who recommended me to you?” I said, “No one.” I thought that someone else wouldn't do any better, so I took the next one who came along. He said, “Write down on a piece of paper what I should say tomorrow.” I wrote it down and stayed, because that's what you do. After a few days, he wrote to me that the trial had been won. Now you see, I could tell you hundreds of stories like that from my own life. It's not about being there as a person, but about things happening the way people have arranged them. Young people feel that. They don't want everything to be confirmed; they want something else. They want to replace confirmation and proof with experience. Old people do not understand this word “experience” at all. It is not in their encyclopedia. See what an abomination the word “experience” is! Because you speak of spiritual experience, it is an abomination to many people. And that is what confronts us in the transition from the dark age to the light age. It is a radical turning point in time.
[ 9 ] Now it is also natural that this transition has occurred in two currents, so to speak. That is why, in a certain sense, the anthroposophical movement and the youth movement are already connected by destiny. For the anthroposophical movement unites people of all walks of life, professions, and ages who, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, felt that human beings must place themselves in the entire universe in a completely different way. They must not only have something confirmed or proven to them, they must be able to experience something. And so it seemed to me truly karmic, truly fateful, that the two movements were brought together. This led to the emergence of a kind of youth movement, a kind of anthroposophical youth movement within the anthroposophical movement, which ultimately resulted in the re-establishment of the anthroposophical movement at our Christmas conference at the Goetheanum. we soon followed up with the establishment of a youth section, where the interests that are now most honestly and sincerely on the minds of young people are to be cultivated.
[ 10 ] It was, I would say, an enormously gratifying advance that was made in the first months of the year with regard to our anthroposophical youth movement. There are reasons why it is now somewhat stagnating; these lie in the difficulty of the youth movement. You see, the difficulties lie in the fact that it is difficult to shape anything out of the chaos, especially the spiritual chaos, that exists at present. Shaping something today is much more difficult than it has ever been. That is why it is so — you see, I am really not one to boast; those who know me will know that — but it is true that one encounters the most remarkable things today. When I heard the extremely friendly, kind — forgive me for returning to this — remark made yesterday by Mr. Bartsch, the rector, who said that when I come here to the Anthroposophical Society, I will be felt like a father — I had to say that there is something to it. But then I am addressed as the father—fathers are old, they can no longer be young. In Dornach, just when we were starting the Youth Section, I had suggested that the young people should speak clearly and honestly for themselves. A number of young people came forward and spoke very beautifully and honestly. I also spoke. Afterwards, when the whole thing was over, someone who knows me quite well, after listening to it too, said to me: “You were still the youngest among the young people.” That kind of thing can happen to you today: one minute you're being addressed as the old father, the next as the youngest among the young. The concepts are no longer fixed. So you see, when you climb up and down the ladder, sometimes as the old father, sometimes as the youngest among the young, you have the opportunity to see what is on everyone's mind.
[ 11 ] Well, I said that the youth section had entered a period of stagnation. It will come out of it again. It entered this period because it is initially extremely difficult for the youthful mind to comprehend what it feels so clearly. You see, our civilization has lost the spirit of man! And when I now speak more about the background of existence, I see that young people who have only recently descended from the spiritual world into physical existence come down with completely different demands on life than those who descended earlier. Why is that so? You don't have to believe me. But for me it is a realization, not just a belief. You see, before descending into physical earthly existence, one goes through all kinds of things in the spiritual world that are more meaningful and powerful than what one has to go through on earth. That is not to say that earthly life should be underestimated. Freedom could never develop without earthly life. But life between death and birth is even more magnificent. The souls that have descended are the souls that are within you, my dear friends. They truly witnessed an immensely significant spiritual movement in supernatural regions beyond physical existence, the movement that I call the Michael movement within our Anthroposophical Society. That is how it is. Whether today's materialistic human beings want to believe it or not, that is how it is! And the leading power for today, for our present time — one could call it something else, but I call it the Michael power — is actually striving, within the spiritual guidance of the earth and humanity, for a new formation of everything soul-related on earth. The people who became so clever in the 19th century have no idea that the spiritual world has abandoned the soul constitution that emerged as the most enlightened in the 19th century, that it has come to an end, that a Michael community of beings who never come to Earth but who guide humanity, is striving to bring a new soul constitution into humanity. The death of the old civilization has simply come.
[ 12 ] I often said during the time of the threefold movement, which failed precisely because of the death of the old civilization: Today we do not have a threefold division of public life according to spirit, jurisprudence, and so on, and according to economics, but rather we have a threefold division according to phrase, convention, and routine. Phrase is what appears as spiritual life, and routine — not human goodwill, human love, as it should prevail in economic life — is what dominates economic life.
[ 13 ] This state of mind in which people find themselves must be replaced by another that arises again from within human beings themselves, that is experienced in human nature. This is the striving of spiritual beings who, I would say, are recognizable through the signs of the times and have taken over the leadership of our age. The souls that have been drawn down to earth in their bodies have seen this Michael movement and have come down under its influence. And here they have settled into a humanity that actually excludes human beings, that turns human beings into masks. And so the youth movement is actually a wonderful reminder of the pre-earthly experience, of the most important impressions of this pre-earthly life. And if one has these vague, subconscious memories of pre-earthly life, this vision of the striving for a renewal of the human soul, one finds nothing of this on earth. This is what is actually going on in the minds of young people today.
[ 14 ] The anthroposophical movement is what is revealed in the Michael movement; it has what is wanted to be brought to humanity. The anthroposophical movement wants to look up from here on Earth to the Michael movement. Young people bring with them memories from their pre-earthly existence. This brings them together as if by destiny. Thus, everything that has taken place in connection with the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement has seemed to me to be truly inner, not merely the result of earthly circumstances, but of spiritual circumstances, insofar as these spiritual circumstances belong to human beings. From this background, I feel that this youth movement in particular can awaken infinite hopes for the future of what can be understood in the true sense as anthroposophy.
[ 15 ] Of course, one is always confronted with what must inevitably arise from the fact that both the anthroposophical movement and the youth movement are in their infancy. We have seen the Free Anthroposophical Society established alongside the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, and this Free Anthroposophical Society, as is only right, elected a board of directors. I believe there were seven members on the board—some say there were nine—oh, nine; well, you see, there were nine, but one after the other, except for three who remained in the end, they were all complimented out of the board; all quite understandable, quite correctly understandable. The Free Anthroposophical Society essentially wanted to capture the youth experience. Now a discussion arose about the youth experience. One after another, the members of the executive committee denied that they could have had the right experience of youth. Three remained, and they naturally discussed among themselves whether they all had had the experience of youth. Here, too, something very strange occurs, something fateful emerges between the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement. It appears humorous, but it is very serious. For when one investigates the great questions of destiny, one comes upon very significant things, and there the greatness of destiny often shows itself symptomatically. When we founded the Anthroposophical Society, we also had board members who quarreled terribly, and it was clear to me that some would be left standing alone if they complimented the others out of the organization; but that it would not end there, but that the left side would then come into conflict with the right side, the left side of a person with the right side of a person, whether the right or the left had really had the experience of youth. This looks like irony, but it is not. It merely points out that what must be called the experience of youth today lies deep within the soul, and what is significant about the experience of youth is that it cannot necessarily be put into clear words. So many clear words have been spoken in this age of cleverness! What matters is that we have experiences. But then it should also be the case that, I would say, what is necessary for this not-being-able-to-form-clear-ideas-and-so-on also occurs. The claim to the right to persist in the indefinite is there. Something else must be added: not to really drift apart under the impression of uncertainty, but to come together and express oneself.
[ 16 ] As far as you, my young friends, are sitting here together, I would like to express above all the wish that you all, whatever you may feel, think, and sense, stick together with iron will, really stick together. We need this above all if we want to achieve anything in the great questions of life today. We cannot always pay attention to whether someone has a slightly different opinion than we do. It is really a matter of coming together even in the greatest differences of feelings and emotions. Perhaps the greatest achievement later in life will be that we knew how to stick together in our youth despite our differences in feelings. Today, young people really do feel that what they lack most of all is finding other people. They did not find people in the environment they were placed in, because people have died. There are masks, not people! Masks everywhere! Now, of course, what had to come to the fore has come to the fore. People sought human beings! And that is something tremendously moving. For all the various scout movements, Wandervogel movements, and so on are all a search for human beings. People seek to unite. Everyone seeks human beings in others. It is quite understandable. Because human beings were no longer there spiritually, people said to themselves: But I feel that human beings must be there. So people sought the human being, sought him above all in association with others. But we must not lose sight of the fact that this had something tremendously tragic about it. Many young people went through this tragedy. They joined associations and thought they would find the human being there. The group did not fulfill them with anything they were looking for; they became all the more lonely. And these two phases of the youth movement have emerged clearly: the phase of sociability, the phase of great loneliness. How many young people are there today who, with the awareness that they are not understood anywhere, wander lonely through the world?
[ 17 ] Now, the fact is that you cannot find the human being in another person unless you know how to search for them spiritually, because human beings are spiritual beings, and if you only encounter them externally, you cannot find them, even if they are there. It is indeed lamentable how people actually pass each other by in life today. Certainly, we are right to criticize earlier times. There was much that was barbaric. But there was something: people found people in other people. They cannot do that today. The people who are adults today all pass each other by. No one knows anyone else. No one can even live with anyone else because no one listens to anyone else. Everyone shouts something in everyone else's ears: their own opinion, and then says, that is my own opinion, that is my point of view. Today, everyone really has their own point of view. There is no more substance, because what is asserted from these points of view is irrelevant. These things, seen with the heart, not with the intellect, vibrate through the youth. And that is why you can be sure that the feeling must be right that there is some kind of fateful connection between the youth movement and the anthroposophical movement, that it is not because people wanted to try it after having tried many other things that young people came to anthroposophy, but that they came to it out of a sense of destiny. And that gives me the certainty that we will be able to work together. We will come together, and however things develop, they must develop in such a way that above all the human element in the broadest sense, which lives in youth, comes to the fore. For otherwise something completely different will emerge if the spirit does not truly spring forth from youthful life. Then, of course, youthful life will be there, and we will be able to feel young, but this youthfulness, without being filled with spirit, ends at the beginning of our twenties. For physiologically, we cannot preserve youth. We must grow old, but we must be able to carry something from youth into old age. We must also understand youth in such a way that we can grow old with it in the right way, and without being touched by the spirit in our souls, in the deepest part of our souls, we cannot survive the years between twenty and thirty without falling into a gray spiritual misery. And that is what constitutes my great concern. It consists in this: How can we work together so that the abyss between the ages of twenty and thirty is truly crossed in a living way, without falling into gray spiritual misery? I have already met people who fell into the gray misery of the soul in their mid-twenties. For basically, what lives in the depths of the youthful soul after the end of the Kali Yuga is the cry for the spiritual. It is quite right, it does not matter that there are many among you who are not in the Anthroposophical Society. I wasn't in it until Christmas either. Since I had to become chairman, I had to join. That doesn't matter. What matters is that one looks for the truly concrete spiritual.
[ 18 ] With these words, I wanted to give you a little introduction. I hope you will have a lot to say. Speak openly, choose a chairman, or do as you wish. I have also asked the Dornach youth to speak openly so that we can work together. The Dornach Executive Council will certainly listen attentively, and we will take everything you have to say as good lessons for the Youth Section at the Goetheanum. We do not want to act paternalistically, but rather in a spirit of brotherhood toward what you have to say.
[ 19 ] Question: One of the young friends said that they would like to work on something together. However, this joint work had become difficult for them; the Christmas plays had been the most successful. They always got tired after a short time and felt worn out by their work. Then they talked about the Michael idea.
[ 20 ] Rudolf Steiner: How can one enter into a profession and be a true human being in that profession with inner joy? Yes, you see, these things are not so easy to answer, my dear friends, but perhaps one can contribute something to the answer if one knows these things from experience. You see, I had many friends when I was your age. They also asked how one could enter a profession without losing one's joy, without killing one's soul, so to speak. After they had all spent a long time freelancing — back then, they called it “Brauseköpfe” when someone wanted to develop freely — they pushed themselves into some profession, but they withered away spiritually. I don't like to talk about myself, but in this case I must. I did not settle into any profession, because if I had done so, there would have been no anthroposophical movement. In order to shape Goethe's legacy, one could not remain stuck in any profession. One must shape one's life. That is why I can say a few things from my own life in answer to the question. The problem cannot be solved by entering into today's professions and retaining inner joy in life. But that is why one must enter into today's professions, because it is resignation not to enter into any profession. To do this, you must bring yourself to realize that it is not possible to enter into today's professions with joy in life or satisfaction. This will only be possible when professional life is structured in such a way that it is appropriate for human beings. We must give up the idea of entering a modern profession and being full of joie de vivre. You must solve the problem outside of your profession. In the little time that your profession leaves you, however, you must make all the more intensive efforts. It is extremely pleasant, and I agree with what you said from the other point of view, about performing Christmas plays and enjoying them; but I have met people who also came to the Christmas plays, who were there and took part, and who had gray hair not only on their heads but also in their souls. You don't need to be young for that.
[ 21 ] Anthroposophy has a peculiarity. If you are an ambitious person today and want to educate yourself a little, you take in what is written in books. What demands does literature make? It demands that it be unambiguous. When you pick up a scientific book, it doesn't matter whether you are eighteen, twenty-five, thirty-seven, or eighty years old. The truth should have an effect on you everywhere. It should be absolutely true. This is not the case with anthroposophy. You will perceive anthroposophy differently as an eighteen-year-old than as a twenty-six-year-old, because it grows with you. It nestles up to people in their youth and also in their old age. Just as people themselves grow old, so does anthroposophy. When you immerse yourself in this completely new, call it worldview, soul state, whatever you want, when you indulge in something completely new, form communities in order to let precisely that live in the community, you will come to realize: Here you can be young and find your place in the right way, so that things also have a youthful effect. Old people accuse us of not understanding anthroposophy. That is a good sign for anthroposophy! You are not supposed to understand it, you are supposed to experience it. And this last bit of conservatism must also disappear, the belief that one can find joy in today's professions. One must find a path alongside one's profession and find enough people for this path that a force arises that can reshape professions. For only in reshaped professions can one find joy.
[ 22 ] Much can be done to bring about this power, as I have characterized it in the Michael power. But it must be lived out in grandiose Michael celebrations. We really must bring it to the point where the budding life of the future, which we can still feel in its embryonic form, can emerge in celebrations of hope, in celebrations of expectation. In celebrations where people are held together only by hope and expectation, not by sharply defined ideals, we should have before us the image of Michael with his leader's eyes, his pointing hand, and his spiritual armor. Such a celebration must come into being. Why has it not come about? As firmly as I will point out that this festival must emerge from the bosom of the anthroposophical movement, I will also hold back as long as the strength to hold it worthy is not there. For the time is too serious to make it playful. When it is celebrated in a dignified manner, it will send great impulses into humanity. Therefore, we must wait until the strength is there. There should not be just a vague, blue, hazy edification of the Michael idea, but the awareness that a new soul world must be established among human beings. It is indeed the Michael principle that is leading. This includes communal experiences in order to work toward a Michaelmas festival where “the spirit of hope for the future, the spirit of expectation, can live. This is something that can already be at work and, after work, can give great satisfaction, so that one can go to work with resignation. This should not dishearten you, but inspire you.”
[ 23 ] Question: You are forced to be a different person during your work. In the evening, you do exercises, climb the ladder, and during the day you are pulled back down again.
[ 24 ] Rudolf Steiner: You cannot bring this into your profession either, because there are far too few people today for a real force to emerge. This would happen if all those who feel, however dimly, that something else is to be expected, would strive for unity. If you are in any profession today, you know very well that there are a whole number of others who do not feel the same way you do. These people do not feel the need to spend their evenings in youth movement meetings; they are so entrenched in their profession that they are actually satisfied with it because they do not have what it takes to be dissatisfied; they do not want their profession to give them pleasure. Something characteristic emerged in the second half of the 19th century. I was driven to despair at scientific meetings. As long as there were a few hours of official proceedings, scientific discussions took place. Then everyone would sit down together, and anyone who dared to say a word about their profession was regarded as a philistine. Those among them who did not want to be philistines were even more so. They always had the words “Don't talk shop!” on their lips. This shows that they were not at all interested in what they did for a living. This is true in all fields. People are largely victims of their times; they could be won over to something better. This includes allowing more power to emerge in the intellectual movements of the time, so that those who find their profession oppressive are not left standing there, crushed by others who have no such needs. So the more we refrain from trying to achieve something tomorrow, the more we strive to work diligently in what should initially be a spiritual community working toward something, the better it will be. That is what we must keep in mind.
[ 25 ] Question: Contrast between young and old. The old anthroposophists only want to drag the spirit into themselves. The young want to bring it out. The others want to slow things down; they express themselves mockingly about what the young are creating.
[ 26 ] Rudolf Steiner: The contrast between young and older people did not need to be so pronounced. It seems to me that what I said is right, that one should try, because it is already impossible to treat everyone the same, to be tolerant of others. It is quite certain that, on the one hand, those who have the necessary temperament will strive to look outwards into the world with what they have. It would be sad if this were not the case. But on the other hand, there is also a considerable difference in strength. There will be stronger elements that will be able to accomplish some things earlier than others dare to. But something decisive will only be achieved when the different shades come together. It is possible to come together. The anthroposophical movement could do a lot in this regard; unfortunately, it does not.
[ 27 ] I believe that when the youth movement finds its way into anthroposophy, the various nuances will come to the fore. As far as I am concerned, nothing will ever be said against the youth movement that proceeds from the temperament you have described. I would be the last person to object to that. But in my youth I saw how strongly one encounters resistance and how one fights with bloody brows. It is good for those who want to do it, but you know, it is not everyone's cup of tea, so to speak, to expose oneself to an uncertain fate from the outset. But if you are in a position to work in this direction again, then you should do so not by criticizing others who do not do the same, but by pointing out what has really been achieved. It is certainly important to point out the positive things that have already been achieved in this direction. I believe that this is far too little known among young people; it remains confined to small circles. And that is the danger, even if it does not appear in such a blatant form among young people as it does in sects, precisely because it emerges among young people. There must be no sectarianism. What must prevail is what is universally human.
[ 28 ] Question about the different age groups gathered, between eighteen and twenty-five, and the different levels of education of those concerned.
[ 29 ] Rudolf Steiner: The reason for this is basically that egoism plays such an enormously strong role in our civilization. It is impossible for people to empathize with others. Everyone speaks and acts only from their own perspective. Just think how different it is when you can empathize with others. Let's say there is a man in his sixties talking to a five-year-old boy. I actually think that the five-year-old child empathizes much more with the sixty-year-old than the sixty-year-old does with the child. Crawling into the other person is what you have to learn. You can do that through anthroposophy because it's flexible. When we're held together by spiritual interests, the age difference between fifteen and twenty-five easily disappears, especially when you've been together for a while. But when you're only held together by selfish interests, fifteen-year-olds and twenty-five-year-olds don't understand each other. It is a matter of overcoming egoism. One must find one's way into something objective. Egoism is the signature of the age. When we begin to take a genuine interest in human beings, this cannot last. Egoism is thoroughly overcome when one first overcomes it in something that enters the soul as deeply as anthroposophy. You have to relate to your inner self. Then you shed your egoism and can find your way into others. That is the fruit that appears.
[ 30 ] The reason you cannot understand each other is because you do not have the human being. If someone is not a human being, but a template of what a twenty-five-year-old is supposed to be today, how can they understand other human beings? If you are an academic, at twenty-five you are not a human being, but a clothes rack on which hang your high school diploma and your fear of the final exam. At fifteen, you are a clothes rack with your school report cards hanging on it, waiting to be signed by your parents. The various objects do not understand each other, but as soon as we come to human beings, we understand each other. It is the same with professions, with different professions. We are no longer righteous human beings; we are in fact a copy of the various circumstances. And therein lies the significance of the youth movement, that it has shed this, that it wants people. That is what you encounter in these people. When they are out of work, they want to be people. They will become that when they are clearly imbued with such things.
[ 31 ] Hermann Bahr describes what happened to him when he came to a big city. He was invited everywhere, on Sunday, on Monday, and now—yes, he couldn't tell the ladies sitting on the left side of the table from the ladies sitting on the right; he couldn't tell the ladies from Sunday from the ladies from Monday. It all got mixed up. Yes, you see, when you come into such societies, people look so much alike because they are all copies of these circumstances.
[ 32 ] Question: Should one give up one's profession and devote oneself entirely to anthroposophy, or can one warm up to the profession?
[ 33 ] Rudolf Steiner: That is an individual matter. One should never shy away from doing what one has recognized as the right thing. Sometimes one can do it, sometimes one cannot. If one can, one should have a feeling for it and do it. Of course, you can also become a martyr. But that should not become a general rule. Because then you will not get ahead, or at least it would have to become a general rule. But if only one percent out of a hundred are prepared to become martyrs, then you will not get anywhere, because the others will destroy it. That can only be answered individually. I have answered it individually in my life by never entering a profession. Of course, you can say that this means I don't know how to promote a profession. I was already standing alongside those who were there. But it has become the case that professional life has become somewhat rigid, that it is extremely difficult to achieve much in any profession given the complexity of life today. If you have a knack for it, you can do it.
[ 34 ] Question: It has been said that 'individual groups were formed because it was not possible to unite young and old. Again, a question about the profession.
[ 35 ] Rudolf Steiner: There is not much point in pursuing a profession if you want to be human. You have to resign yourself and develop an independent life alongside your profession. What the gentleman is saying here stems from a misunderstanding of anthroposophy.
[ 36 ] One must be able to understand what is good about the youth movement. Rudolf Steiner: It is only that the youth movement in particular can experience through anthroposophy how one can work positively in harmony with the whole cosmos, excluding everything negative. For anthroposophy, by its very nature, since it is not accepted by anyone who cannot experience it, excludes any unfree activity. I never set out to agitate for anthroposophy. I said what I knew. I knew that if I spoke to a thousand people, only five would really take it on board at first. I never made a big deal of it, because it's the same with herring in the sea. Even if a thousand eggs are scattered, only two or three will become real herring. Those who look for success can never achieve it. One must work from within the matter itself. What I mean is that we should let everyone do what they can and not be too dismissive, not say too strongly: That is not what young people should be, that is not what the youth movement should be. As many people as possible should come together, each doing what they can from their own individuality.
[ 37 ] The difference between fifteen and twenty-five will be overcome when everyone is young, and everyone is young. It's not so bad what differs. The basic form is already there. Others who stay outside go to the movies; they don't join youth associations.p>
[ 38 ] Now, the problem is that perhaps too much thought is given to the idea that a form must be given. It is much more important to achieve a sincere relationship between people than to create a form. If you love each other, you go where you are loved and do not look for a form. Perhaps it is wrong to look for a form. The point is that you come together even when you are completely at odds with each other; that you enjoy being together, enjoy each other's company. And when this purely human, emotional element gives form, it is the healthiest form. Any programmatic search for form will even disrupt the youth movement. We have also thought of many things in relation to the youth section at the Goetheanum, and many things will emerge that will provide a basis for dealing with things once we have passed a certain point of stagnation.
[ 38 ] If the striving for light that occurs after the Kali Yuga — it does not have to be an abstract spiritual light — is really so strong in human beings that they cannot help but follow it, then we do not need any further forms. It is only disruptive to have special forms. The living must come together in human beings. I think that even if there are only two or three people in a large gathering who are wholeheartedly enthusiastic about their cause, they will come together because those two or three are there, because they can be found there. It must be the human element. This will certainly be found if we do not come together with limp arms, limp legs, and limp brains, but with zeal and a sincere desire within ourselves. And if we do not expect others to entertain us, but go there and want to achieve something ourselves, if we want to achieve something and expect as little as possible from others, if we want to do as much as possible ourselves, then we have the form. It is so difficult to talk about general programmatic things. What matters is life in the things that exist in life. If you are in your profession and then have to do something extra, you become tired in your profession. But enthusiasm is necessary, and it is so easy for young people to have today because it is so terribly lacking in old age. Nothing moves, there is no enthusiasm; old age weighs heavily on the body. This can inspire enthusiasm in young people if you decide today to really discuss what you all think in the near future together with those who are here today. Then you will already have enough form, and we will send out all kinds of messages and questions from the Goetheanum. You will have something to do again, and so simply look for opportunities to meet and skip the meetings as little as possible. Then it will work out; that is the best form. It is perhaps even the first principle in relation to form-building: we have so many friends who want to consider it a first principle not to skip our meetings. Then a form is already there. Question about the Wandervogel youth movement.
[ 39 ] Rudolf Steiner: In reality, there need not be any contradiction. With the Wandervogel, you go out into nature, you want to experience nature, you want to experience the human aspect of nature, and so on. If, after striving for all this and believing that you have gone through it for a while, you fall into another extreme, no longer wanting nature and reading books, then you did not have the first thing in the right way. Today, people can travel all over the world and see nothing. You can show you the most beautiful examples of travelers to Italy, of English wanderers who saw nothing at all. They looked at the galleries, but in reality they saw nothing. I have seen a number of wanderers who had the urge to see something, but who saw nothing.
[ 40 ] To see something, you have to have a heart. But if you are prevented from being a whole human being in elementary school, you cannot see what is in nature. If you can once again respond to all that is in nature, then you will find something different from others in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” This book is by no means written to the exclusion of nature, but rather with nature in mind. It has been said that you can tell from my style that I write with a typewriter because I don't have time to write during the day. This criticism is certainly not correct. I have never put a typewriter in my bed, where I write most of my work. That would look ridiculous. It depends on how things are conceived. They are conceived entirely in contemplation of nature. “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” is definitely a Wandervogel book. I see no contradiction in the fact that one is neither one thing nor the other. If you experience nature as a Wandervogel, then you will also experience the book, which is not meant to be a book at all. It only looks like one. But certain things can only be brought into the world through printing ink. If the youth movement succeeds, we will also get beyond printing ink. We must come to the human, only, you see, the Anthroposophical Society cannot achieve everything at once; it is already doing a lot; unfortunately, it has not succeeded. It was my intention never to have certain things that are said from person to person printed. I am so glad that no one is taking notes today. There have always been people who have taken notes. What was a terrible transcript came out, and so I had to find a way to get things printed after all.