From Luther to Steiner
Preface
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an bill cannot be hid. —St. Matte. v. 14.
The voices raised both for and against Rudolf Steiner have rapidly gained in strength ever since his fiery eloquence and ceaseless activity have won a theatre in which they can no longer remain hid.
The practice commonly adopted in professional circles of treating Steiner’s great work as worthless by the very simple process of ignoring it has not, in the long run, been successful. And this being so, Steiner himself has now become the target for both slander and abuse. It would seem, indeed, as if his opponents were determined not to understand him; they go even further, for, since his work by no means suits their reactionary ideas, they put every difficulty in the way of others who may be interested in it. Slander is, of course, an old and well-tried weapon resorted to in all ages. Was it not said of One yet Greater: “He has blasphemed God— what need we of further testimony?” And how many a brave fighter of the Middle Ages has not paid the price of. his “heresy” with his life? If, then, to-day a Great One bears within him the Living Power of the Christ, and seeks to revivify our present civilization and our immediate future ... what easier than to dub him a traitor to the German Spirit, a Hungarian Jew, an Indian Juggler, a Rabbi dabbling in Occultism, a Romish Jesuit, a Russian Bolshevist, a Bourgeois Capitalist?
Around the personality of every great man has the same faction fight arisen: the struggle which those who would go forward and those who are content to remain as they are wage for supremacy. Was it not so at the commencement of our era, when the Christ and His Divine Mission constituted the cause of dissension? And was it not the reactionaries of His time who did Him to death?
Need we dwell on the horrible forms which this struggle assumed in the Middle Ages: the “heresies” laid at the door of Luther, whose essentially German spirit broke like a thunderstorm over the Romish Germany of the day? And how strenuous was the fight put up by our own great Classical Writers in their valiant attempt to rescue the German Spirit and German Culture from the more effeminate Gallic ésprit, so fashionable in their time throughout Germany. What “laughable dolts and idols” (to speak with Nietzsche) had not Lessing to contend with in order to retain the Spirit of German Christianity in its primeval purity! How grim and bitter, too, did de Legarde and Nietzsche become in the fight for German Idealism, since there were none who would listen to them.
Need we, then, be surprised if, when Western materialism, together with every other and earlier “ism,” has usurped supremacy in Germany, a man such as Steiner, whose activities are concerned with the Realities of the Spirit, and who seeks to apply the direct results of his own spiritual experience to both the economic as well as to the political conditions of our social life, should be identified in the minds of the majority with all that the imagination can conjure up in the way of “questionable reputations”?
Such a man, occupying a prominent position—one which he has, moreover, attained to.by sheer genius—is necessarily exposed as a target for general hatred and calumny, especially in his own home, Germany!—Verily and indeed, a prophet is without honour in his own country, and with his own people!
At no previous time did Germany so stand in need of a cleansing storm, and the first streaks of lightning of such a storm have already flashed upon us. The brunt of the storm is yet to come. Awaiting it, Steiner and those about him stand prepared. They have accepted the challenge, and they are ready to take up the fight for Germany’s civilization—for the German Soul: ready to fight this fight to a finish, This struggle will show on which side stand the Powers of Light and Truth, and on which are to be found those of Darkness and Falsehood.
Ernst Boldt
Munich, June 4, 1921
“At certain periods every nation produces men personifying all that is most characteristic of itself in an original, concentrated, and almost exaggerated form. The lives of such persons are seldom happy. They are misunderstood and persecuted by their contemporaries, Yet after death they rise glorified from the grave; the light of their radiance shines as a beacon to coming generations, so that the poor in spirit take heart, and the wanderers turn back; while the whole people—as though in a mirror—can now behold and recognize itself, Such a typical German is” —Rudolf Steiner.
The above words, written by August Horneffer (in the “Münchner Neuste Nachrichten,” ig21, No. 233), were, it is true, applied in the first place to Paul de Lagarde, and we are at one with Horneffer in his opinion—up to a certain point. But here, again, is an instance of the dead being extolled at the cost of the living; for these words can be applied still more fitly to the case of Rudolf Steiner, the deeply racial character of whose writings speaks to his own people with so intense an appeal.
“For, see,” to quote the words of the Christ, “here is one greater than Solomon”; ... Here is one who is more than a Luther, Goethe, or a de Lagarde; ... here is, indeed, the sum total of then all at their highest and best.