| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Cremation of Hermann Linde
29 Jun 1923, Basel |
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| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Cremation of Hermann Linde
29 Jun 1923, Basel |
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Dear Mourners! Now that our dear friend has been escorted by the clergy into the realms of light, words of farewell are spoken from the hearts of those who were most closely connected to our dear friend: to his dear wife, daughter and to you, dear friends, who were so closely connected to Hermann Linde. These words, which may resonate in the soul of our dear friend, are spoken:
Dear mourners! Our dear friend was one of the first of our spiritual community to join us in heartfelt intimacy. And we got to know his kind, good heart, whether it was in such a effectively accomplished, sacred work duty for all of us, or whether it was in walking side by side in the confession of our spiritual knowledge, we got to know this good, dear heart, we learned to appreciate it, and we should know to remain connected to it, even after our physical eye can no longer look into his physical eye. And so let our soul's eye look into his in the future, remembering him with all our heart and love, into his dear spiritual eye. Dear friends! On his earnest path to spiritual research, Hermann Linde has found many doubts and many other soul obstacles on the way. But he has possessed a spiritually inclined, soul-warm inner heart power. With strong inner power, it led him to what he then found as his spiritual word, his spiritual insight, in which we were united with him in intimate friendship. One could say that Hermann Linde walked in loyalty with the three epochs of anthroposophical life. First he found this spiritual life. Then came the times when he worked in Munich as one of the most effective, devoted and sacrificial collaborators on our festival mystery plays, which, together with others, were also his work. My dear friends, there are many things we have to say: at the time when we had to work on them, they would not have come about without Hermann Linde. And then, when the call came to build the Goetheanum, which was so dear to all of us and also died on the Dornach hill, he was again one of the first to offer advice and help, giving everything he had: his art, his being, to the work. We have seen how Hermann Linde, outgrowing his artistic life, ultimately sacrificed everything he was able to give in art to the work with which he had completely identified. And anyone who is able to appreciate and love human loyalty and human devotion could not help but appreciate and admire the quiet, gentle, and yet so energetic soul of Hermann Linde, and feel him as the dearest friend soul who walked with us on our spiritual path. Many are the hours that come to mind's eye, when I met Hermann Linde working, working at the side of his dear wife, our friend, up in the dome of the Goetheanum, and when he sacrificed his best for the work, whose downfall he and we had to experience with such deep pain. And when you saw Hermann Linde quietly working in his studio, completely absorbed in the Goethean idea, everything he could feel as an artist, mysteriously enmeshed in this Goethean idea, then you knew: he was one of the best who work among us. Dear mourning friends, Hermann Linde stands before us. But we also had to accompany him in such a way that we always saw in him how a strong soul, a soul with many desires, nevertheless lived in a weak body. And this weak body took Hermann Linde from us early, much too early, for all of us: this weak body, which those who were more intimately connected with Hermann Linde knew, that everything that stood in Hermann Linde's life, that even doubts arose in him, that sometimes did not allow the intentions of the work to come into full effect, came from him. Those who were very close to Hermann Linde knew that his soul was great and that he himself often felt an inner tragedy due to his weak body, But that is precisely why he belonged to a spiritual community that is able to look beyond everything that physical-earthly sensuality alone gives, that is able to look up to that which, as a supermundane ability, the spiritually willing soul longs for and hopes for as its great goal. And in my intimate friendship with Hermann Linde, I often had the thought: You may tell yourself that not everything you want in your earthly existence will be granted to you, but you may take comfort in the fact that in spiritual regions your will to transcend the earthly will be strengthened and that you are able to give to the earth all that you would like to give to it. But we had to remind ourselves that we cannot make the same demands on ourselves that Hermann Linde made on himself. And we were truly always in complete agreement with this gentle and quiet soul. We appreciated what he did for us as one of the best. And, my dear mourners, Hermann Linde can be a role model for many. He wrestled in his quiet mind, wrestled with earnest strength, wrestled with solemn dignity beyond all doubt, beyond all inhibitions, to that knowledge that brings man the certainty: That which you live on earth comes from divine heights of existence. But Hermann Linde appreciated the sacredness of the divine heights of existence, Hermann Linde knew how to see through what secrets these divine heights of existence hold, and he therefore knew how little of that which we carry into this existence from heavenly heights through earthly birth enters into human consciousness of earthly existence. It is true that we are all born of God into earthly life. But during this earthly life, the human consciousness is too thin to be permeated with divine power. And only in this death, experienced with earthly consciousness, can the divine power rediscover the strong soul power that feels connected to the impulse of Christ, give birth again, resurrect the God in the human breast, the connection with Christ. And so did Hermann Linde feel. Just as he knew that he had been led from divine existence into earthly existence, so he knew that in earthly death the awakening Christ lives, with whom the human soul, the human heart, can connect. And so today, in this solemn hour, we look up with you, beloved soul, into spiritual regions, knowing that he who retains in earthly existence the awareness of divine origin, who conquers for earthly existence the permeation with the power of Christ, will be reawakened, will resurrect in bright, luminous spiritual heights. Dear friend soul, our friendly glances from the depths of our hearts longingly accompany you. We want to let our best thoughts, which were connected to you, follow you there. We know you in the heights of spirit in the future. It will be for us to seek again and again from the depths of our hearts the thoughts that go to you, that may unite with your thoughts of purpose in the light of spirit, that want to remain with you for all time, that you will have to go through for all the worlds, that you will have to permeate. Yes, our thoughts may be with Your thoughts, out of the earthly labor, which we could feel, with which You were spiritually connected to us through Your own choice in this earthly life. May Your thoughts, my dear mourners, always follow the spiritually connected one in his future earthly joyful existence, preparing himself for a new earthly existence full of light. So may it be. And so may our thoughts follow you, may they stay with you, our dear Hermann Linde, and may we understand to stay with you, even when our soul must seek you in the bright heights of the spirit.
This morning we had to see off our dear friend Hermann Linde at the gate through which he will now enter the spiritual world. At such moments, my dear friends, it is up to us to make real, in a deeper, moral-religious sense and in a deeper sense of feeling and perception, what anthroposophy can trigger in our souls, what anthroposophy can inspire in our souls. It is, after all, our whole endeavour to get to know the spiritual world, to learn to live in the soul with the spiritual world. In the moment when a dear soul departs from physical existence and enters into that life, in order to gain knowledge of which we strive, we must also feel the strength and the power to sustain in the full sense of the word all that which should have become ingrained in us during that time while we were here on earth in a spiritual bond with a soul that has now passed away from us. And we should learn to understand in the right sense that we should maintain the community in which we have found each other, beyond the bonds that are woven through earthly life. We should be able to hold that love warmly, which connects us with such souls, even when that warmth of feeling cannot be kindled by external impulses as it can when the soul in question is still walking among us in a physical body. Only then do the powers of perception that can be triggered in us through anthroposophy have the right strength, if we are able to do so. We should also be able to keep the memories of a dear dead person alive in a different way than someone who has not taken in spiritual knowledge into the depths of his soul as we have set ourselves the goal. And Hermann Linde is indeed bound to our souls by many beautiful memories. A large number of those sitting here know this without a doubt, some perhaps in a looser way. But Hermann Linde was a personality of whom it may be said that even those who knew him only briefly grew to love him. Those who have been part of our society for longer know Hermann Linde as one of the first to join the society in order to follow a shared spiritual path with the other friends united in it. And those who knew Hermann Linde more intimately know that he was not one of those who joined this spiritual path in a mere effervescence of feeling, in an inner-soul sensation, but that he strove, out of innermost self-knowledge, to find the possibility of uniting his path with the path of this spiritual current. Hermann Linde was a mild nature, but a nature that also had a strong, justified critical spirit within the mildness of his soul, a nature that examined what came its way, and a nature that had to examine because other impressions that were already there had stuck in the soul in a strong way. And so Hermann Linde had to fight his soul's battles with what lived in his soul, what warmed his soul, what often filled his soul with bitter doubts on the one hand, and with what, because it differs so much from everything else that one encounters in the present, on the other hand, with anthroposophy, he had to fight his soul's battles with these two currents. And today, when his life on earth is complete, we can look back on it and say to ourselves: When a soul so noble, mild and inwardly earnest has found its way into this spiritual movement, not from overflowing sentiment but from inwardly true self-knowledge, then this spiritual movement can regard it as a kind of testimony that confirms its inner strength. A movement that is in a position to point out that good people have found the opportunity to unite with it can consider itself fortunate in the most beautiful sense. And it was indeed the case that our anthroposophical movement in its first period could, by the nature of things, be nothing other than a place where souls found themselves and their connection with the spiritual world. In view of the tasks that the anthroposophical movement has had to take on in later times, many older members may well say to themselves: Oh, if only it had always remained so, if the Anthroposophical Movement had remained in that first epoch, when it was basically a gathering of people who interacted as people, who formed an inwardly cohesive association that initially looked to the spiritual current flowing through it. Hermann Linde knew how to unite with his own soul that which flows through the Anthroposophical Society as a spiritual current; but he was also one of those who, with an open heart and an unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, devoted themselves to every new task that arose from this spiritual movement. And for many who enter this spiritual movement, it should be so that they look to the example of such a personality. Hermann Linde entered the anthroposophical movement as an artist. He first placed his entire artistic being at the service of this movement and then, in the third phase of this movement, sacrificed it at the altar of the same. We look back because what happened through the personalities working within our movement must be of value to us. We look back to the time when the Anthroposophical movement in Munich, steeped in true inwardness, had to be led into artistic channels. At first we needed people who could infuse it with artistic life. And now I would like to call upon those of you who remember the Mystery performances in Munich to recall in your inmost soul how marvelously unified were the stage sets that Hermann Linde contributed to the individual scenes of these Mystery Dramas out of his, I might say, natural willingness to make sacrifices. For some of those who were present at those performances, these images will be unforgettable, for they arose out of a real experience of what was to arise at that time before the soul-vision of our anthroposophists. And the words I spoke this morning from a deeply moved heart, I would like to repeat them here: We know very well that much of what was to be done back then could not have been done without a subsidy like the one that came from Hermann Linde. And when the idea arose in some people's minds to erect a building for the anthroposophical movement, it was again a matter of course to call upon Hermann Linde in the circle of those who wanted to devote themselves above all to the construction and management of this building, because they knew that they would find a willingness to make sacrifices, a willingness to work, above all, what is most needed: a reconciling, loving spirit that balances differences. And so Hermann Linde joined the small community of those who, as a kind of committee, led everything that was initially connected with the intention in Munich and then with the reality here in Dornach: to build up the anthroposophical cause. And he was also one of the foremost in the ranks of those who took on the work of this construction. He was imbued with such inner love for the cause that he now linked his entire existence in these last years with this construction. And again I would like to repeat a word that I said this morning: When I think back to the hours when I met Hermann Linde, working up in our now-defunct dome room, working in harmony with our dear friend, his wife, when I discussed the most diverse matters with him up there that were related to the management of the building and to the role he held within this leadership, then in all of this lay, firstly, the revelation of his unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, the unlimited application of his artistic skill to what was to be built there, and on the other side there was also that reconciling spirit that balanced out the contradictions, which was always there with advice, rather than criticism. Many a person has thought that either they themselves or others – as is always the case in life – could have done better what Hermann Linde has done. But these things are vain illusions. What matters when something real is brought into the world lies much more in what Hermann Linde had in such an outstanding degree than in what some believed he did not have. It would not have been possible to work with the things that were often criticized. Hermann Linde's approach to our work, which was so self-sacrificing and lovingly conciliatory, allowed us to work on every detail and as a whole. And if we are to talk about the workers in our cause, then Hermann Linde must be mentioned in the first row. But then it must not be concealed how great our sorrow must be that he left us so early, for a difficult time that undoubtedly lies ahead of us. But he was so intimately connected with everything that concerns us here in our earthly existence that we may hope for the help that the souls from the spiritual realm can provide for those who have remained here from him to the greatest extent possible, if only we prove worthy of this help. Many people are unaware of the extent of the individual concerns that weighed on the leading personalities during the last few years of the Dornach building work. Today it is self-evident to point out that Hermann Linde was one of those who bore these worries in the most beautiful way, but that Hermann Linde was also one of those who followed everything that happened here with a broad-minded interest and who would have liked to see many things develop into greater fruitfulness, precisely by reconciling the differences, than has been possible so far. Many of us will remember how Hermann Linde was always among those who had the sincere desire to bring about a union of artists here among us. He was certainly not a person who would have excluded or restricted any individual activity. Out of the infinite kindness of his heart, he wanted to create a collaboration. And much of what has been achieved in this direction can be traced back to his initiative. And the fact that many of the seeds he has planted in this regard have not come to full fruition is truly not due to a lack of his own zeal. Let us remember with what heartfelt love and devotion he reported on the progress of the artistic work at our Goetheanum during the meetings of the Goetheanum Association here in this hall. Let us remember such things as what is most intimately connected with the history of our movement. We must not forget, especially at this moment, that it was Hermann Linde, for example, who gave the impetus for the small further training school established here at the Goetheanum, and that he devoted his special care and attention to this further training school. But this is just one of the many gaps that arise in our ranks as a result of Hermann Linde's passing away from the physical plane. And those who will have the task of filling these gaps in some way will feel what Hermann Linde meant to us. Because what we take for granted in certain areas of life – that wherever a gap is created by a person, another will step in – is not the case at all. And finally, Hermann Linde had to go through with us the pain that affected our and his work. He had to be among those who, in a short time, saw what had been built out of love and devotion dwindle to ruin. And it is truly true in the deepest sense, as I had to speak this morning, that for his earthly existence this broke his heart. This impression, which he experienced on New Year's Eve and which was a death for much of what our cause is, was deeply burning in Hermann Linde's soul. And the short span of time that he was still granted to spend on earth after the Goetheanum fire was entirely under this impression. The last time he spent here on earth was a time of suffering. He also felt deeply in his innermost heart all that is being done against the anthroposophical movement by various opponents. That is why the last time he was allowed to dwell on earth was a time of suffering. And if pain is what deepens life in the spiritual world that follows on from the time on earth, Hermann Linde has taken much of noble pain into the form of existence that he has now entered. All this, my dear friends, should fill our soul today. And it should be the starting point for thoughts of devotion for this soul to remain in our souls. Then we will worthily find again the dear soul that has been taken from our physical sight, but that should remain with us in the most intense way in our spiritual sight. If we can do this, if we can love Hermann Linde with the same intensity with which we loved him here, and with an ever-increasing strength, then in this case we fulfill the anthroposophical view of life that we should be able to fulfill. The starting point for a spiritual community with this soul should be the days when he is snatched from our physical sight. He left behind his dear wife, our dear friend, and his dear daughter. We must understand the pain they feel over his death, in true inner warmth. We must understand that we make our thoughts about him, which are devoted to him, quite precious by remaining connected in the most intimate love, as long as we are granted this on earth, with these, his friends who have survived him. We must make it our will and his spiritual joy to be for those who remain behind what can serve him, when he looks down on what is happening on the site where he worked for so long, to give him inner spiritual and soul satisfaction. This is truly practical anthroposophy for the soul. If we know in the right sense that death is not the destroyer of life but the beginning of another form of life, then we must understand in the right sense that the love that has been assigned to one who is now dead to earthly life also enters into another form of existence with this death. And if we do not understand this metamorphosis of love, then we do not understand in the right sense the metamorphosis of life, which we think we understand when we join a spiritual movement like anthroposophy. And so let us reflect today on how beautifully Hermann Linde has realized in his own heart the conviction that what a person is and does here on earth comes from the divine: Ex deo nascimur. It should be borne in mind that he found in his heart the strength to recognize, for earthly consciousness, that in this consciousness the power of Christ must come to life, so that what begins to die in man at birth may, through the experience of the power of Christ, gain the right to a new life: In Christo morimur. And in thinking of Hermann Linde today, we share the conviction that when the consciousness of our divine spiritual descent unites with the consciousness of union with the Christ impulse, we may live in the conviction that human existence is God-conscious and imbued with Christ: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. These thoughts affirm that in us which enables us, for all time, to look up in loyal thoughts to the soul of Hermann Linde, which will continue to work in the spiritual existence as a continuation of its earthly existence. As a sign of this, my dear friends, we rise from our seats. My dear friends, perhaps it is appropriate on this day, in the short span of time that remains to us, to reflect on an event like this. We must be clear in the innermost part of our soul about how what we live through in our physical existence on earth, and also live through in our soul, is bound to the outer senses and to what the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses. But the outer senses, with everything that the mind makes of them, do not follow us into the after-earthly existence. We hand over the external senses to the earthly existence with physical death. What the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses, we hand over to the etheric world a few days after physical death. It melts away from us, and in all that follows, we are dependent on continuing to live out that which is immersed in the darkness of the unconscious while we live our earthly life. To some extent, a person lives their life in the state between waking and sleeping. They are filled with what is experienced through the senses and through the mind, and what they find extinguished with death in the form in which they experience it here on earth. Every day, people experience the other side of existence between falling asleep and waking up. But even if the experiences within are immersed in the darkness of the unconscious for earthly consciousness, what appears to some to be of little importance for earthly existence: for what comes to life in the human soul when it has passed through the gate of death, it is precisely these experiences, which then transform into full consciousness, that are the most essential part of earthly life. What we go through here on earth in unconsciousness, we carry through the long time between death and a new life on earth. The greatest difference between what we perceive, see and think here on earth and what we see on the other side after we have passed through the gate of death is in relation to the outer nature. Anyone who believes that they can exhaust what is hidden and revealed in nature with their physical senses and earthly mind while they are awake is mistaken. They only know the smallest part of nature. Nature has another essential side, the side that we live through between falling asleep and waking up, which is deeply hidden from the conscious mind, which in the truest sense of the word represents another side of our existence. The one side of existence that nature assigns to our earthly senses and our earthly mind is extremely different from the other side, which is assigned to our soul, our spiritual nature, which belongs to eternity. He who can form a correct idea of this radical difference, he who realizes to what a high degree it is the case that, while nature reveals to our senses a completely unspiritual, un-animated entity, seen from the other side it is through and through an infinite abundance of spiritual entities in themselves, he can also comprehend what an enormous difference there is between the human being when it is clothed here in the physical body, and the human being when it has discarded the physical and etheric bodies and lives on in its soul-spiritual part beyond the gate of death. Not only in itself, but in the whole relationship to ourselves, there is a radical difference. We face a human being in earthly life, we experience together with him what happens in earthly life. What he experiences is imprinted on our earthly thoughts. Through our earthly thoughts it becomes our memory. During our time on earth, we carry this other person within us in our memory. But every time we see him again, it is not just the earthly memory that works in us, but what flows out of his soul as a living being and is poured into this earthly memory. Consider how the memory of a person that we carry within us is enlivened when we are face to face with him in earthly life, how infinitely more alive for earthly thinking is that which streams from him into our memory than is this memory itself. And now he leaves us, out of the physical existence on earth. We are left with the memory, to which he himself adds nothing metamorphosing, nothing transforming, nothing enlivening after his death. We are left with the memory, just as we are left with thoughts of the outer nature when we see it with our physical senses, grasp them with our physical minds, where the things of nature add nothing to our knowledge, to our thoughts, where we must keep our thoughts all the more objective, the more we want to faithfully depict that which is, and where we must not be led astray by that which could modify these thoughts from life. But just as the other side of nature is different from what it assigns to us for the senses and for the earthly mind, so is that which a human being is when it has become merely an earthly memory for us, different from what it was when it lived these earthly memories day after day, from time to time. For from this point on, this human being now appears to us, to our experience, entirely on the other side of existence. Just as we live in our sleep, so we live with the natural beings, who are inwardly spiritually alive, in contrast to what is dead and assigns its dead countenance to us for the earthly senses. So that part of the human being that which for our earthly life has now become only a memory, lives on this other side of existence, in that realm which we experience when we are pushed into unconsciousness, into the darkness of unconsciousness, in that realm which we pass through in our sleep. Yes, my dear friends, just as our thoughts are invigorating and our impressions are vivid when the physical human being steps before us and we consciously experience him in his earthly consciousness, so we experience — unconsciously, but no less real for that — the approach, the coexistence with us in sleep of the one who has passed from earthly existence. To the same extent that the deceased disappears from our waking consciousness, he enters our sphere of life for our sleeping consciousness. And if we human souls, based on anthroposophical knowledge, know how we have to learn to adopt a completely different attitude to life for sleep than we do for waking, then we will feel what has been said. If we could only live in such a way that the later always follows the earlier in physical time, we would never be able to experience the true spiritual. We only learn to experience the true spiritual when we can change the direction of life in the opposite direction. As paradoxical as it may seem to the physical thinker, all life in the spiritual takes place in the opposite direction. The wheel of life comes full circle. The end comes together with the beginning at last. This seems so incredible to people on earth only because they have distanced themselves so far from any spiritual view. But every time we fall asleep, even if it is only for a moment, we experience time running backwards. For the path leading back to the spirit from which the world originates is a path leading forward. And even what older cultural movements recognized as correct, namely that those born later return to the forefathers in death, is more correct than the idea we have in our seemingly so enlightened time. But then, when we set out on our journey to the spiritual realm every night, in the opposite direction to the physical, those who have gone before us in physical death are the ones who precede us. And as we enter a spiritual world every night, we find, so to speak, figuratively speaking, the entities of the higher hierarchies at the front, who never incarnate on earth, and then, below them, the procession of those souls with whom we were fatefully connected and who passed through the gate of death earlier than we did. And that part of the journey, which, if not consciously, then at least in our unconscious thoughts we are allowed to follow in every state of sleep, that is the part in reality we follow them. And if we can keep the memory of our dear dead alive and vivid, if we also have these thoughts in a vivid imagery again and again in our waking state, then what we lovingly carry within us as memories during waking hours makes it possible for the dead to have an effect in this world, to pour their will into it, and that the will of the living continues to live in the will of the dead. But also what we fully awaken again and again in our memories during waking hours for the dead, goes with us into the state of sleep as forces with a lasting effect. It is different for the dead when we fall asleep from a life in which we have forgotten our dead, or from a life in which we have lovingly called the images of our dead to our soul again and again. For what we carry into the world of the spirit every time we fall asleep becomes a sensation for the dead. There their soul perceives the images that we carry through the portal of sleep into the spiritual world every day. And so we can bring it about that the perceptive faculty of the dead unites with the images that we faithfully preserve for them during sleep. In this way we can bring it about that the will of the dead unites with our will through our thoughts, if we cherish and care for them in loyal remembrance when we are awake. And so we can learn in a real way to live with the dead. Then the dead will find us worthy of living with them. And only then will the true human community arise, which is instinctive only within the physical world, but which also becomes spiritual for this physical world when the extinguishing of physical life on earth does not loosen or even break any spiritually formed bonds, when everything that is bound in the soul can remain, even though the outer earthly bonds are loosened or broken. This means that through the human soul the reality of the spirit is preserved when we admit the truth to the spirit in life by not depriving it of its reality, by not surrendering to the physical and sensual alone, but by finding the possibility to live freely in the spiritual and soul, as if compelled to do so in the physical and sensual. This is what every death, and in particular the death of a dear friend, can remind us of, what it can call us to, not just as a dead memory, but as a lasting, living sensation, memory. |
| 261. Our Dead: Address at the Cremation of Georga Wiese
11 Jan 1924, Basel |
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| 261. Our Dead: Address at the Cremation of Georga Wiese
11 Jan 1924, Basel |
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My dear mourners! First of all, I would like to address my dear sister and dear brother of the dearly departed and then all of you, my dear mourners, who were united in loyal love with the one who has left us in the physical world. At the mortal remains of our friend Georga Wiese, we stand in the soul's eye, the eternal spirit going to light heights from us. Dear Georga Wiese!
And memory presents you to us:
And as a reminder, the spiritual vision stands before us:
My dear mourners! When I put myself in Georga Wiese's dear soul, then these words resound in this dear soul:
My dear mourners! Deeply moved and filled with sorrow, we stand at the mortal remains of our dear friend Georga Wiese, looking up to her soul as it rushes off to the spiritual realms that she sought with such earnest striving during her earthly existence. And we know that she will be united in the future with those spiritual forces with which she united during her earthly existence out of such warm and active striving. We see what her spiritual existence will be like: a continuation of what has already been spiritually alive in her heart, in her soul, in her spirit here on earth. And we remember, my dear mourning assembly, every dear hour that united us with Georga Wiese, because these dear hours were always filled with active participation and with earnestly placing ourselves in the spiritual world. It was always filled, so it may well be said, by each individual who stood opposite Georga Wiese; it was always filled, this hour of being together with Georga Wiese, by the heartfelt conviction: You are standing opposite a dear, a loyal, a heart-warming person. And this love, this loyalty, this wonderful warmth of heart, it radiated from Georga Wiese to such an infinitely beautiful extent that everyone who met her felt how beneficial and at the same time how deeply understanding this togetherness could be. We were privileged to get to know Georga Wiese in her native environment, to which she wanted to convey the spiritual life with such zeal and such an understanding gaze from her beautiful soul. We got to know her in her loyal attachment and love for the country, for which all of us who were privileged to be up north felt the most heartfelt love, and we saw it, and we were allowed – at least a large part of us – to work in this Nordic, rocky, sea-washed, divinely interwoven land, which presents itself so beautifully and majestically to one, and upon entering which one can believe that the hard rocks speak a hard but inwardly spiritualized language. And one comes to love this country. And one comes to love it especially when one is favored by fate to find such dear people in it, like Georga Wiese and those around her. We took the most heartfelt interest in how the dear mother had preceded us into spiritual lands, and we wanted to witness how expectantly and understandingly this dear mother would now receive her precious daughter. We saw Georga Wiese lovingly in the midst of the Nordic circle that had become dear to us. We saw her surrounded by a number of like-minded people. And my eye could not detect anyone who was not devoted with sincere love to the devoted soul of Georga Wiese. And much, much of what we were able to achieve in that country, where we are so happy to work, has been made possible by the sacrifice of Georga Wiese. Do we still need much to recall in our hearts today, in these days of mourning, all the love that we had to feel for the dear departed over a long period of time, because earthly love could only be a reflection of the intimate, active, sacrificial love that came from her. The union with Georga Wiese was beautiful, and the beauty of this earthly union will be the seed for the spiritual union, which we must enter because Georga Wiese entered the spiritual realm before us. For it is a beautiful image that arises in the soul when we imagine ourselves in the Nordic country. We found warmth, the warming rays of sunshine in our hearts through Georga Wiese. And it was always a beautiful thought, it was always a warm feeling to be able to say to ourselves, within the work in the Nordic country, Georga Wiese will stand by our side with all that she can be. That, my dear mourners, will no longer be here on earth; but we know, we hope, we long for it in our hearts, that we will remain united all the more deeply and intimately for all time with the soul of the one who united with us in a friendship of the spirit out of such a free and devoted will. And today we remember with sorrow, with deep sorrow, with deep pain, that we will never again be able to look into those loving eyes, that we will never again be able to feel the blissful closeness. But we look up to the light of the heights, to the worlds of spiritual life, with which Georga Wiese has united, and to which we want to send our warm thoughts again and again and again, so that she may find the thoughts that are sent down to us from these bright spiritual heights, thoughts that protect, warm and help us. And we digress from the image that has led us up to the Nordic homeland, and we look to the building that we tried to build the spiritual life here in the vicinity, which a bad, sad fate has snatched from us; we know how much has been snatched from it as well as from our dear friend. But we saw her over the years, when she repeatedly came to the Goetheanum in Dornach, as if seeking a home, and we see her in everything that had to be done, working faithfully and in close understanding. We see the hundreds of hands and the hundreds of hearts that worked and beat for what was happening at the Goetheanum, and we saw, among them, the beautiful enthusiasm that Georga Wiese brought back from the Goetheanum in Dornach, working there with a mild soul, a whole, mild personality in the light of love. It was beautiful, glorious, and almost beyond words to describe. And wherever something was missing, wherever help was needed, on a large or small scale, Georga Wiese was there. And she was there because she believed that she should do, out of her loving heart, whatever needed to be done, in complete freedom. And we, we can only stand there today with heavy, grieving, sorrowful hearts and send heartfelt thanks to the soul that is fleeing, seeking the spiritual realm. Thanks that remain warm in our souls, as everything 'that was soul-warming, what Georga Wiese brought into our ranks, into our work. And she knew how to do it so unpretentiously, so intimately modestly. You could tell that she only gave when she had detached it from the personality. Georga Wiese's personality always took a back seat to what she meant to so many. And when, my dear mourners, the word has been used for centuries to describe souls that were of this nature, then today we no longer use the once much-used expression that encompasses so much: a beautiful soul. Goethe called the dearest person in the spiritual realm that he had come to know a beautiful soul, and today, in all the sense that ancient times once associated with these words, we look up to the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese. And our soul's eye comes to the third image. We called the friends who wanted to join us in shaping the Anthroposophical Society in a new way at this Christmas season, to the Goetheanum in Dornach. And among those who came with an enthusiastic heart was Georga Wiese. And as soon as she arrived, anticipating the festive event she wanted to take part in, she had an accident in which she broke her arm at an unfavorable point on the upper arm. And she had to spend the days we had gathered to establish the new form of the Anthroposophical Society, to lay the foundation stone for it, in hospital. She had to spend the days she wanted to spend in festive company with those she loved in hospital. She had arrived at the place where she had often wanted to come, and she had come gladly again, and fate had kept her away from what she wanted to take part in. Once again, the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese was at work. Outwardly, she had the most faithful care in the hospital and from the understanding doctor, and in this respect I was deeply satisfied when I was able to speak to her doctor myself during a visit shortly before her death. But it was still very moving to see Georga Wiese lying in serious illness and to have to bear in mind how much she would have liked to have been in a different place during these days. But once again, the radiance of what I have just mentioned outshone my dear mourners, the beautiful soul. She carried everything she hoped to find within our festive Christmas community in her soul, in her heart. And from her bed, in an almost heavenly transfiguration, she radiated to me from her faithful, loving heart all that she had experienced at the end of the days before Georga Wiese's death, when we celebrated the festival that she had also come to. She truly carried this celebration in her heart, she truly carried this celebration in her soul. For within her, everything in her soul was filled with powers that spoke to her from spiritual heights: “Ex deo nascimur, from the divine all human beings are born.” These words came to her without end, deeply affirming her own being. And Georga Wiese knew that she was called by the divine. She knew that she was carried into earthly existence by the wide powers of divine existence. She knew this divine power at work in her own soul. She felt these divine powers in her own heart. She wanted to let this divine warmth, which flowed through her, stream into her own will without end. Her soul itself lived in the light of the words: Ex deo nascimur. — And she knew how that which reached divine heights disappears into earthly existence, and how the human being, whose outer physical body, is accepted by earthly existence. But she also knew that even if man dies into matter at every moment, the great power imparted by grace, which is in the living Christ, is at work in the earth. She felt it, it lived in her heart, it lived in her soul, it lived in her mind: In Christ morimur. Dear mourners! If I could have read in the heart that I saw just a few hours before the difficult day that preceded her death, if I could have seen the light that radiated from this “In Christo morimur”, it was so sincere, so deeply spiritual and honest in the soul of this faithful soul, so genuinely devoted to everything beautiful, great and loving in the world. Oh, there was a great contrast in these last hours between this soul, which looked out of tired eyes, but with infinite luminosity, into the indefinite, which complained how little her body could still tolerate of earthly substances, and which was so visibly filled by what the spirit communicated to the soul. I had to leave Georga Wiese in a state of deep concern. My dear mourners, if one understands the spiritual underpinnings of the human being while he is still on earth, one may only strive with strong, powerful thoughts to say that he will, he will be healthy. For it is often such thoughts that, with the mysterious forces that exist between human soul and human soul and between world spirit and human spirit, still carry many a soul beyond the act of death. But the patient was still alive because of the serious damage that had been done, which only allowed for ominous forebodings. It originated from the damaged area and spread like dark rays over the entire body. But hope lived on. The next day, hope was no longer allowed to live. We received the news that our dear friend had been taken from us in the morning for earthly life. Dear mourners, this soul is now deeply connected to that which we have all striven for here, to that which moved us so deeply during the Christmas days, as we are all deeply connected to it, since she left us, to die in our midst during these our festive days, still sharing in spirit here on earth what we went through, then seeking the way up to spiritual heights. Dear mourners, I can assure you that I speak for everyone here when I call this soul, so deeply devoted to the power of Christ, the one who, through this tragedy of death, has joined us in the very depths of all eternity, in such a solemn time for us. Always remember this soul devoted to Christ with all the strength that will ultimately transform the pain in your own souls when you allow the deep tragedy associated with this death, which fills us with such sorrow, to take effect. Oh, from this death a spiritual life shall spring that unites us intimately with Georga Wiese for all eternity. And this spiritual life, she always lived it. From the “Ex deo nascimur - In Christo morimur” arose for her the self-evident conviction that the human soul, if it harbors the power of the Father's Word, if it cherishes the will of the Son of God and His love within itself, will resurrect in the Spirit, in order to grasp in the Spirit the life that belongs to the endless Spirit of the Kingdom of Light: “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus”. This is surely the magic breath that has been wrested as the living breath when the earthly breath ceased with Georga Wiese. And with this spirit, which constantly awakens all that is dead, we want to unite to gain the strength to remain united in the eternal spiritual existence of the future with Georga Wiese. The three pictures may remain unforgettable to those who have come to know her: the lover in the midst of her beloved homeland, which we ourselves have grown so fond of; the loyal, active woman who inspires enthusiasm with her heart, herself loyal, active, enthusiastically sharing, working, creating, living in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach; the dying woman, uniting with us in death to eternal life at our very meaningful Christmas gathering in the transition from 1923 to 1924. The power of these three images must live in your hearts! And they will live in your hearts if you allow the power of these images, together with everything that this beautiful soul had in common with you, to take effect on you, will be united in the beautiful, light-filled life of the one who has now left us in death.
And the memory of earthly things presents itself before us:
Alongside the memory of earthly things stands the vision of the spirit – up to the light-filled heights:
Oh, it seems to me as if Georga Wiese is speaking from bright heights:
And when we see you, received by the spirits of the bright heights, by the souls of our dear relatives who have preceded you in death, to whom we lovingly think, because they were yours, then, then the words shine into our warm hearts:
With this attitude and the promise to unite our thoughts unceasingly again and again with your spiritual being, dear, dear friend, that you are with us even when we can no longer look into your faithful eyes, that is what we want to promise you, knowing that when we now, in this moment of suffering, commit your mortal remains to the fire, in the heavenly spiritual fire, which does not consume, but works charitably warming through souls and spirits, we will be united with you, united in the light, in love, in loyalty to humanity, in the will of the spirit. Thus we part. Thus we do not part. Thus we feel united, united, united for eternal times of existence with the soul that lovingly departs from us.
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| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Cremation of Edith Maryon
06 May 1924, Basel |
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| 261. Our Dead: Eulogy at the Cremation of Edith Maryon
06 May 1924, Basel |
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Dear Mourners! This as a final farewell to Edith Maryon, our loyal colleague:
Dear mourners! I would like to turn my thoughts first to the absent relatives who were unable to attend on the day when we had to commit the earthly remains of our dear Edith Maryon to the elements. The eldest brother of the deceased, Herbert Maryon, has instructed me to convey all the love that could still be shown here on the part of the family of the deceased. The others, a sister in London, another in the north of England, and a brother in Australia, are unable to be here and can only join us in spirit. But we, my dear mourners, on this day of mourning look back at the earthly life of Edith Maryon. She came to us in our Anthroposophical Society more than ten years ago from another esoteric community, full of a noble, sacred striving for esoteric deepening of the soul. All this was present in her, alongside what she presented in her outer life. She was an artist and, in her way, a truly accomplished artist, an artist who had full access to the means of art and was fully familiar with the workings of art. She had practised sculpture in England and Italy. She had achieved great success in this art long before she joined the Anthroposophical Society. Edith Maryon has painted a whole series of portraits of respected and well-known personalities in the world. In Italy she immersed herself in everything that is great, beautiful, sublime and haunting in art. So she came among us as an artist and esoteric. At first she sought nothing from us but to deepen her soul through esoteric development. But karma brought it about that she found herself compelled to place what was hers in art in the sacrificial service of our Goetheanum, and from the very beginning she was active at the Goetheanum with all that she, out of her art and out of her human nature, was able to contribute to the completion of this Goetheanum and to everything connected with it. Looking back on her working life, we see that it was interrupted only once, in 1914, when she suffered a very serious illness while on a trip to England. It was an illness of which it could well be said that if it were to recur in a serious way, Edith Maryon would no longer be able to remain on earth. But at that time she recovered through the efforts of her friend Dr. Felkin, a physician, and was restored to us in 1914 for further work at the Goetheanum. From the time she was able to lay down her work on the altar of sacrifice at the Goetheanum, this was the one thing that stood at the center of all her duties and all her spiritual life. And she has just found the opportunity to do real work that truly leads to a goal within the anthroposophical movement. It is quite natural that within the anthroposophical movement, the new impulses that I am to introduce into the most diverse fields of art, science and life come into conflict in the most diverse ways with what can be brought in, with what can be acquired with external art, with external science and so on. But there is a way of working if, above all opposition, there is a noble devotion to the work itself, if never may an obstacle be seen in a different view of how to work together. If the work is to come about, it will come about, even if one of the traditions of the older art comes from the other, and the other is obliged to bring art to a further development out of new impulses. If there is true human cooperation, then the commonality of the work can transcend all opposition. This attitude was present in the highest degree in Edith Maryon's quiet work. That, however, many factors came into play in her working with me, may today, when we have to part with the earthly remains of Edith Maryon and look into the future, to the soul that strives upwards into the spiritual kingdom of light, there continuing to work, may well be said today to a wider circle. It was almost at the beginning of my work as a sculptor at the Goetheanum in Dornach that I had to work on the scaffolding at the top of the statue of Christ in the outer studio, the large front studio, where the model was located. At that time, I almost fell through an opening in the scaffolding and would certainly have fallen onto a pillar with a sharp point if Edith Maryon had not stopped my fall. And so I can already say, my dear mourners, that the Anthroposophical Society, in a certain way, if it believes that my work since that time has also had value within its society, has the rescue back then to be grateful for. These things were seldom spoken of, for it was not Edith Maryon's way to talk much about her work, especially her human work. But in a very special way she displayed what may be called energy in calmness, energy in quiet work. And the two qualities which stood out as humanly beautiful and valuable were, on the one hand, Edith Maryon's reliability, whenever it was needed, and, on the other, her practical sense. In the spiritual striving that is necessary to work out into the world, it is essential, my dear mourners, that there are also people in it who have a truly practical mind, so that what is to be realized out of the intentions of the spirit can also come before the world, can be embodied before the world. And of Edith Maryon it can be said that her reliability was something absolutely true and faithful. If she undertook something that required her practical sense, it would be there in due course, even when the work to be done was quite remote from her actual professional activity. In addition to her collaboration on the sculptural work at the Goetheanum, which really took up even more of her time than what has since become visible, even in the Central Point Statue, in the Central Point Group, she was the most eminently suitable force for the sculptural work at the Goetheanum in the most eminent sense. She mastered the art of sculpture and was inclined to take in everything that was to permeate this art. But something else was needed for this. A continuous interaction between the old and the new in art was necessary, and much of what has been created at the Goetheanum, without having been made by ourselves, does indeed contain the spirit that was working with Edith Maryon in the development of the plastic arts at the Goetheanum. But she went out; her energy in the quiet worked in a broader sense for the flourishing of the development of the anthroposophical cause. If it has become possible in recent years to give lectures and work for anthroposophy and eurythmy in Stratford, Oxford, London, Penmaenmawr and Ilkley, the credit is due to Edith Maryon's quiet work in mediating between the Goetheanum and the English-speaking population. It was she who first suggested the Christmas Course held years ago around Christmas time, attended by English-speaking teachers. It was she who suggested the artistic representation of the eurythmic movements and figures. And I would still have much to say if I wanted to point out everything that Edith Maryon has achieved through quiet, energetic calm. | But that is not so important. What matters is to bring this trait of her life, which reveals itself so beautifully in her work, before our minds today. And she was torn from this life by the fact that her old ailment was again revealed to her through the upheavals of the night of the fire in which the Goetheanum was taken from us, and that despite all careful nursing, this life could not be preserved for its earthly existence after all. Last summer, when Edith Maryon was able to make at least a few very short trips, we believed that this life could be sustained. But already in the fall it became clear how much destructive forces had intervened in this life. It is truly out of consciousness of that karmic connection, which I expressed by pointing to that accident in the studio, when I say: Edith Maryon was predestined to enter the anthroposophical movement, and with her death much is snatched from the Anthroposophical Society, from the whole anthroposophical movement. Much of what was her own was revealed in the most beautiful way, especially in the last few weeks, when her suffering became so extraordinarily oppressive and painful, partly through the way she bore this suffering, partly through her full attitude towards the spiritual world, which was entirely borne out of the spirit of anthroposophy, for which Edith Maryon had been preparing herself for weeks. Due to other commitments, I was unable to be present at the hour of her death. Edith Maryon then guided her soul out of her body, with the help of her dear friend Dr. Ita Wegman, in order to lead it up into the spiritual world. She was cared for until her last hours, not only by the doctor, but also by the nurses who had become dear to her and cared for her, and it was under the care of these nurses that she often spent agonizing hours in the last days, but these could always be brightened in an extraordinarily beautiful and spiritual way. Medicines were no longer effective in the end, but what was still effective were the lectures that could be offered to her, either from what had been given as sayings at the Christmas Conference, or from the New Testament. At that time, at the Christmas Conference, when there was still hope that we would be able to hold Edith Maryon here in the physical world, she was given the leadership of the Section for the Arts. With tremendous intensity, she endeavored, even on her deathbed, to direct her thoughts continually to the way in which this section should now come into being, and how it should work. From this life, my dear mourners, the soul of Edith Maryon now ascends into the spiritual worlds, imbued with all that can be gained from the knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual hope and anthroposophical spiritual life. She carried, as did few, the living consciousness in her soul that she had emerged from the eternal source of the Father-Spirit of the world with her best being: Ex deo nascimur. She lived in intimate love, looking up to the Being who gave meaning to the evolution of the earth. In her last days, she had Christ's saying “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden” nailed to the side of her bed. In death she knew herself united with the spirit of Christ: In Christo morimur. And so she is certain of resurrection in the most beautiful way in the spiritual world: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus, in which we want to be united with her, to which we want to send our thoughts so that they may unite with hers. Then we can be sure, my dear 'mourners', that her thoughts, her soul's gaze, will rest. No, they will not just rest on the deeds that can still be done for the anthroposophical cause from the Goetheanum, they will work faithfully and powerfully, energetically, they will be among us when we need strength, they will be among us, and we will be able to feel their quiet comfort in our hearts when we need such comfort in the various trials to which the anthroposophical cause is exposed. The will and testament that Edith Maryon drew up regarding her few possessions is touching. In it she remembered in an extraordinarily loving way all those who are close to her in any way. And so we look up into those spheres where you continue to live, conquering death, wanting to be with you, united with you in that unity that never dies, that is imperishable through all the circles of the eternity that weaves and billows through the world.
And so go then, You, soul so faithfully devoted to our holy cause! We want to look up to You. We know that you look down on us, we know that we remain united with you through all the circles of eternity. We live on with you, you who live the life that conquers death, as long as we are here, and when we are no longer here, we live on with you, united, united, united. |