The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have had the honor of giving a lecture here almost every winter, as in various cities in Germany, on topics in the field that I dare to call spiritual science. In our fateful time, however, it will be appropriate to turn our attention to the events of which we are all participants and witnesses during this time. This seems all the more appropriate to me, esteemed attendees, as it is my conviction, flowing not from a dark feeling but from spiritual science itself, that precisely what spiritual scientific world knowledge is, is intimately connected with what the German people and the German soul have produced as the world picture of German idealism, which revealed itself most impressively and powerfully out of this German soul at the end of the eighteenth and in the first half of the nineteenth century, but which has continued to work and has worked into our days.

In the true sense of being a study of spiritual life, spiritual science wants to be a continuation of what the natural scientific world view has achieved for the outer world of the senses. But to mature the spirit for such an understanding of the spiritual foundations of the world, this world view of German Idealism seems to me – as I said, I say this from the knowledge of the spirit itself – but this world view of German Idealism seems to me to be the actual root and the actual source. Therefore, allow me this evening to present a kind of reflection on this world view of German idealism and its influence on the present, its effect on the whole of time formation and on the world-historical development of humanity.

Of course, this world view of German idealism is born, entirely born, as we shall see, out of the essence of German nationality, and in this respect one could deny it a certain comprehensive validity according to the saying often heard today: All knowledge, all science must actually assume an international character and becomes untrue to itself if it proves to be in any way shaded by the aspect of one nation.

As plausible as it may seem at first, I would like to say, as self-evident as such an assertion appears, one must still say that from a deeper world view point of view it is misleading. It seems self-evident because it is, I would say, the most extraordinary thing that can be said about science and penetration into world knowledge. When we speak of the internationality of knowledge and insight, we are actually saying no more than that the sun or the moon are the common thought of all people. That is what they are; but the way in which what people have to say about the sun and the moon speaks from the souls, from the hearts of people, this way, it is different according to the talents, according to the spiritual directions and dispositions of the different peoples. The most diverse talents are involved in order to make this knowledge fruitful for human spiritual culture in one direction or another. That is precisely what is at stake: the extent to which what can be known can penetrate into all human spiritual development in a healthy way. But in this the talents, the soul directions of the different peoples have their very distinct specificity. Otherwise, how could it be otherwise meaningful to understand that one of the most German minds, Goethe, when he had begun his journey through the world, in order to see not only what was offered to him in the contemplation of art, but also what nature could offer him. How else could it have been possible for him to write to his German friends from Italy: “After all the natural phenomena and facts I have seen in public, I would now most like to take a trip to India - so said Goethe - not to discover it, but to see what I have discovered in my own way.

The way in which we view what is given to everyone is what matters when we consider the actual impulses and driving forces for the progress of humanity as a whole.

Now it is precisely possible for spiritual science to look at the souls of nations in a truly cognitive way. To do so, however, one must start from a spiritual-scientific insight that - like so many insights today - may be regarded by some as paradoxical, perhaps even fantastic. But what I will say next about the souls of different peoples from a spiritual-scientific point of view is something that may still seem fantastic and paradoxical to the present day, but which human knowledge wants to incorporate, just as certain physical and certain scientific knowledge has incorporated.

If we consider the soul today in the light of current psychology, we see everything that swirls and lives in the soul in terms of impulses of will, feelings, perceptions, thoughts and ideas as a unity. Of course it is; but that does not lead to any real knowledge. Nor does one come to a real understanding of the soul itself, as one might come to a real understanding of light if one did not perceive its interaction with material existence, with material things that confront it, in such a way that one would believe that one would emerge from the light the different shades of colors: the reddish-yellow nuance on one side, the green nuance in the middle, the bluish-violet nuance on the other side - just as the physicist, in his interaction with material existence, must observe these color shades, structured from this one light , and how he cannot come to an understanding of the deeds of light, as Goethe says, in any other way, one cannot come to an understanding of what the human soul actually is if one does not, I would say, also divide it into three shades of its being. And so we call the first shade of the soul being - corresponding, as it were, to the red-yellow shades of light in the rainbow - [...] then the human sentient soul. The human sentient soul contains everything that often wells up unconsciously and subconsciously from the dark depths of the soul. Everything that lives in a person without them immediately having an intellectual grasp of it – their passions, their desires and so on, as well as what gives people this or that temperament – all this wells up in the sentient soul. But in this sentient soul is contained at the same time, in a certain way, if also, one might say, in a natural way, that which can be called the eternal powers of the human soul, which pass through births and deaths and can reappear in repeated earthly lives.

Let us distinguish – as it were, as a parallel phenomenon for the greenish shading of the light – let us distinguish the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. This is the part of the soul through which man acquires an overview, a rationally considered overview, a level-headed overview of that which would otherwise live indeterminately and unconsciously in his soul as affects, as inner tremors.

And as the third shade of life - corresponding to the color blue-violet in the light - we speak of the consciousness soul. It is that through which the human being is most connected, from his soul existence, with the surrounding physical world in which he finds himself; it is that which contains within itself the most temporal, the most transient, power of human being; it is also that through which the human being appears individually as a personality, through which he puts the world to use, through which he puts that which he deliberately lets flow out of the subconscious soul life into practical life.

And just as the one light, the one sunlight, lives in the different colors of the rainbow, so the one I, the one, self-aware being of man, lives in the totality of the shades of the soul. And just as the light appears as the unity of that red and green and blue, as the unity of everything, so the self appears, so the personality, the individuality of man, the actual I appears.

I cannot say more today in the way of an introduction to this scientifically well-founded fact, law of the soul, because it seems appropriate to me to apply this law of the soul to the different national souls, insofar as they are spread over European intellectual life.

We have to say that [...] what can be called the soul of a nation is just as much a reality for spiritual science, something alive in itself, not just an abstract concept that summarizes the characteristics of a nation, but something alive in itself. You will also find the necessary references for this in our spiritual science literature, especially in my Theosophy.

And here we must say that the individual nations differ so much that in one nation more of the shades of the sentient soul comes to the fore, in another nation more of a different shade of soul life. In this way the European peoples are structured according to their folk souls – not the individual people, but to the extent that these individual people belong to the folk soul – they bring to manifestation that which lives as the shade of the rainbow in the individual folk souls.

In this context, the approach that I would like to say is justified by spiritual science shows us that when we look to the south, to the Italian people – to some extent this also applies to the Spanish people – when we look to the Italian people, we see that the folk soul of the Italian people is expressed through the shades of the and everything that can be observed in the various expressions of this Italian national soul, in its good and bad aspects, is connected with the fact that the Italian national soul is dominated by the shades of the sentient soul, that everything springs from the sentient soul.

Today, we only want to emphasize the best qualities of the Italian people that come from their emotional soul; but it will be seen that the Italian people, insofar as they appear as a national soul – not as individual human beings, as I said – must have a certain one-sidedness because their expressions and revelations come from the emotional soul. Yes, if we take the greatest – I will refrain from the development of art, the actual visual arts, but they could very easily prove exactly what I have to say – if we take the greatest – Dante, Giordano Bruno – we learn, precisely when we immerse ourselves in them, that what they have achieved in a gloriously designed world view is created entirely from the sentient soul. One only has to read Giordano's work to see how he has become a great inspirer. When one delves into what he has brought, it is like an expression of feeling for the world view that man can create out of the abundance of the world's phenomena. Feeling lives in this one of the greatest [spirits of] Italians, in Giordano Bruno. I would just like to hint at this.

It is particularly important to look at the French national soul from the point of view that has been gained. This French national soul shows itself to the spiritual-scientific gaze in such a way that it actually sets the tone for the chiseling of the intellectual soul. Everything in the French spirit that appears great but also one-sided stems from the fact that the intellectual soul finds particular expression there. And today we shall mention only that which has influenced the development of an actual world view. The greatest Frenchman in this field, under whose influence French world-view life still stands today, was born at the end of the sixteenth century and lived into the seventeenth century, namely Descartes or Cartesius; but it is precisely in this Descartes or Cart esius, the man of world-view who emerged at the dawn of the newer development of world-view — one can see how in him in particular everything lives that can lead from the intellect to a world-picture. His saying, “I think, therefore I am,” has become famous. Thinking, that is, that which lives in the soul of the intellect, is now based on the being of the soul itself.

The human mind still has the peculiarity of building the world as if it were externally mechanical. It is indeed the peculiarity of the mind that it is unable to penetrate the inner vitality of the world, that it shrinks back, as it were, from the inner vitality, and that it wants to construct everything. But this is particularly evident in Descartes, in Cartesius. And now we will draw attention to one particular way in which this world view of Descartes came about: I would say that it is the one-sided expression of intellectual life. Descartes looks at the world; and after he has given himself over to doubting everything (and this doubt is also, in turn, an expression of the intellectual way of looking at the world), he comes to saying to himself how he can form a world picture that has sensuality. Indeed, this world view becomes such that everything mechanical only wants to be included in it. The world appears as a great mechanism. And it is characteristic of this – I would say genuinely French – world view that Descartes explicitly states: we can only perceive soul in ourselves, as humans. Animals are moving machines. Descartes denies that animals, or indeed all of nature except for human beings, have souls. Animals are automatons.

Thus, for Descartes, the whole of nature except for human beings is like a complicated machine, and animals are within this complicated machine. Indeed, it is precisely the rational mind that recoils from the living. And this intellectualism, it remained in its one-sidedness, and in the end it led to the fact that precisely from France and right up to our times the impetus has been given to establish the actual materialism of the world view, of mechanism, one might say, the world view,

Dear attendees, one could very easily reproach the one who describes the relationships of the folk souls in this way today: Yes, you are describing the feelings of the present time, because the war has brought about a situation in which what we ourselves regard as our world view, as the source of our national identity, is being vilified and even defamed from all sides in Europe. And so we are now trying – I would say – in this time to either justify or avenge ourselves.

Now, esteemed attendees, there are listeners here who know that what I am saying about the different national souls in these difficult times of European events is something I have said again and again for many years, long before this war, and not only to Germans but also to members of other European nations. I consider this to be a firm result of spiritual scientific knowledge about European conditions.

The mechanistic nature of this worldview has been so ingrained in French culture to this day that it has allowed what was French, materialistic or mechanistic world view to emerge. And today we may recall how Goethe, even as a young man, confronted the French mechanistic worldview from his German consciousness, which seeks to take account of the living soul and the vitality of the worldview. He said: They bring us this mechanical play, a mechanism only, a worldview as if the whole world were just a game, a real automaton! Yes, if only what one sees in the world of phenomena could at least be explained to one! These are moving atoms! But then, when he has explained how the atoms collide, he withdraws and leaves the whole world unexplained.

This is what repels Goethe, even as a young man, about the one-sidedness that arises from a purely intellectual development of a world view. And basically, to this day, we can see how this mechanistic world view affects what we seek in a worldview, a folk worldview. For only a few individuals have tried to work their way out of it, for example, the famous philosopher Bergson, I don't know whether one can still mention him today, after the beginning of the war, after the mood of the French, or whether the word Bergson is now taboo as his name in France, I don't know. It is precisely Bergson who, since the war broke out, one might say, has continually presented his French to his French in the most savage manner against the German essence, namely against the German world view, and has managed to that it is precisely the Germans – who were great in a certain way, especially during the period of German idealism – but who have now fallen so low in the present day, [the Germans] have become a nation that only trains itself mechanically and in a machine-like way. The Germans have become a nation that itself represents only a kind of machine!

Bergson probably thought – Bergson, who formed this view of the German people because the Germans opposed the French with cannons and rifles – he probably formed this view because he believed that the Germans will oppose the products of what he calls the “greatness, the great age” of the Germans to the French cannons and French rifles by reciting Novalis and Schiller and Goethe, because that is all they would rely on, right!

Well, this Bergson, he has in a sense worked his way out. But I showed in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - which was not written during the outbreak of the war, but appeared at the very beginning of the war and was finished long before - that those of Bergson's thoughts that are reasonably plausible could be found long before that in much more intense and much more thorough form in the minds of German thinkers! But quite apart from that, Bergson always wants to be seen as the one who brought the French a world view that went far beyond the mechanistic and materialistic view of things.

Now, this world view, how did Bergson himself present it to the Germans in his lectures, to these Germans who are said to have come down so much since the time of their greatness? It is just a shame that it has been possible to prove, especially in recent times, that Bergson copied entire pages – not just repeating, but copying – from the German philosopher Schelling, the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and so on, and so on!

What the Frenchman is able to counter as a higher world view to the German, whom he defames, esteemed attendees, is something he himself has copied! It is necessary to bear these things in mind more often in the present if one wants to have an understanding of the mutual relationship between the European peoples and what is now being said about this relationship by the opponents of this German essence.

And, dearest attendees, when we turn our eye to the British national soul, we find that this British national soul bears the very shade of the consciousness soul. And in every detail of this British national soul, one can see how it expresses this consciousness soul, how the British, the Englishman in particular, has the intention of putting what wells up from his inner being into the service of practical life alone.

This is what English culture has in itself, without taking into account the development of the whole world view. Starting with Milton and Bacon, it can be seen everywhere that a world view was actually sought that was to be placed only at the service of the actually immediately tangible life. But I will refrain from that now, I will only point out that in the very last period, this English national character, insofar as it really arose from the British national character, has led to a very peculiar direction: truth, that is what a person who has a sense of truth regards as something that is intimately and genuinely connected to the soul as a reality. Ladies and gentlemen: The English – and in this case in harmony with the Americans – have developed a world view that they call pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism, dear attendees, is characterized above all by the fact that it treats the truth, the concept, the idea of truth itself, in a highly peculiar way. Truth as something that connects the soul with reality, with spiritual reality, is something that this pragmatism, this primeval English product, does not recognize at all. Man perceives truth as an idea, as an idea - in the sense of pragmatism - purely for the purpose of dealing with the external world of the senses, with external tangible reality, in order to intervene in it. In the sense of this pragmatism, truth is a concept that proves useful for practical life. One could say that truth is a tool for usefulness in the very outermost sense, including scientific truth, when understood in this way. Truth has no independent significance, but only serves as a tool for finding one's way in the outer life – that is what this pragmatism has brought forth.

Do we not see this consciousness soul, which places everything that the human being produces in a spiritual way only at the service of the external life? Do we not see it at work in all the details - most honored attendees - that are found in the three peoples mentioned, that order and inner understanding will come into the matter when they are considered in terms of the guidelines that can only be briefly sketched here, but which can be fully substantiated from the insights of spiritual science?

And if we now turn our gaze to the center of Europe, let us turn our gaze to German spiritual life, insofar as it is rooted in its national character. Let us turn our gaze to that spiritual striving within the German people that is to lead to a world view, to such a world view that at least corresponds to the German being, the German national character, then we find confirmed in the most comprehensive way that spiritual science also shows in other respects that this German soul is shaded in such a way that it appears like light in three different color shades: in reddish-yellow, in greenish, and in bluish-violet. That the German soul is such that the I, the self-awareness, works through the three different soul nuances, the unity of the soul-living, working through all three soul nuances, this turns out to be the essence of the German national spirit, the German national soul, in a truly lively, penetrating observation.

And this can be said in a completely objective sense; it does not require any kind of one-sided nationalistic view, as we see it emerging from the Italian, French, and British national souls.

The German is in a position to be able to truly rely on what an insight into his nature, striven for in the soul, gives him, and [he is in a position] to understand his nature from this insight.

And if one wants historical proof that this I, this self, the whole living personality in German national character is really effective through the three soul nuances, then one can present precisely the three great world-view men who, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, so clearly emerged within German intellectual life and sought to reveal German national character at the highest spiritual level. Kant, who tried to educate himself from philosophy, was indeed ahead of them; but we do not want to look at him, although he provided the foundation for the others, so to speak.

But before our soul we want to place one of the most German men, one of those men who knew - even when they strove with their thoughts to the highest, to a world view - that they can only gain this world view in the right sense, in the living sense, within the German essence if this world view is the result of a conversation with the German national spirit itself. And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, knew that in the world view he created, German essence was most wonderfully revealed. How does he appear to us when we first consider his personality only in terms of appearance?

Allow me, esteemed attendees, to mention just a few essential traits of his life, so that we can see how this whole man, Fichte, attempts to obtain, from the unity of human life, from the self itself, that which illuminates the world in its deepest life and can bring it to knowledge for man.

The young Fichte, how does he appear to us? Two traits, wonderfully real in this sensitive beauty, we can hardly find them in any other mind: the six-year-old son of a simple, rural man is first of all a decent student; and because he is such a good student, he is given the book “Gehörnte Siegfried” by his father as a Christmas reward - he can already read. It soon becomes apparent that Johann Gottlieb Fichte is becoming somewhat inattentive in his studies; he is reproached for this. We see him one day standing by the stream that flows past his parents' house, throwing into it the “Gehörnte Siegfried”, which has become so dear to him, on which he has pinned his entire soul. And when his father comes along, the father realizes the reason for the boy's strange behavior: he could not tolerate, in the face of the iron concept of duty that was already living in him at the root of his soul, that what was dear to him as a human being, as a personality, should remain with him if he could violate his duty over it. Thus, even the boy Fichte, the six-year-old boy, feels trapped in a world that is, I would say, completely permeated by forces of duty.

Later, when Johann Gottlieb Fichte was nine years old, the village where his parents lived was visited by the estate neighbor. He actually wanted to hear the sermon on Sunday; but he came too late. What happened? Because the pastor had already delivered the sermon, they showed him the young boy, the nine-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, who at first behaved awkwardly, but then, when he saw what they wanted from him, came to life and now the whole sermon, which he had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, had listened to as a nine-year-old boy, and he now recites it word for word to the neighbor of the estate, so that everything he said comes from his soul – he had connected with the innermost view of his soul with what he had just heard, and so he could let it flow out again from the innermost. Thus he lived a spiritual life in the immediacy of his own being. Thus he was prepared to find in Fichte the world picture of German idealism, which was able to flow to him, I might say, admittedly from a certain one-sided point of view, but still from a genuinely German one.

Fichte's fundamental awareness of the fact that what lives in the human being, what is inside this I, how it contains the source forces of the world itself – that which pervades and permeates the world in a divine-spiritual way – how this can be found if only man plunges completely into the depths of his inner being, this is evident in all of Fichte's work. He was appointed to the professorship in Jena relatively early, which at that time was the center of German intellectual life. But the way in which Fichte as a teacher affected his listeners is really quite different from what one - I would say usually dreams of.

People who heard Fichte characterize him in the following way: When Fichte spoke, it was like rolling thunder that discharged in sparks of lightning; and when he spoke, he wanted to educate not only good, but great individuals. And one of those who had listened to some of those standing nearby said: What Fichte said revealed that he had not practical, but bold images, energetic images, that his imagination was not graceful in the proper sense but forceful and powerful, and that he speaks in the realm of thought, in the realm of ideas, not like one who merely makes grand words, but like one who is able to rule in this invisible, in this supersensible world.

When Fichte spoke to his listeners, he did not merely seek to communicate to them the content of what he had to say to them. He never spoke the same thing twice about a subject; he never spoke in such a way – I would say that he had only a certain content in his soul that he wanted to convey to his listeners, but rather he had in his own inner being an overall feeling of what he wanted to say, an overall feeling, and above all he sought to establish an inner bond between himself and each individual listener. He wanted that which lived in his soul to become active, not just as a word, but as a force in each individual listener, [but] that it resound in each individual listener himself. He wanted to pour a living fluid over his entire audience. He wanted the listeners, when they had heard his phrases, to leave with a different inner life than when they came. He wanted to awaken something in them. But that is how he worked, vividly, seizing the self.

And so Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was able to completely negate, I would say, that which emerged from Descartes' rational world view. Striving to be in one's own self and to strive for the divine in the self, by starting from thinking, and because one thinks, one shows – Fichte could not approve of that either – so the self would have been something dead. For him, the ego was something that could never become dead, for the reason that it constantly creates itself. It cannot cease to be - because it constantly creates itself. That is to say: He saw the essence of the ego - Fichte - in the will. And by the fact that the ego wills itself, it places itself into the world through its own power.

But this also had to result in a world view for Fichte that saw in the will that pervades the world as the actual active force in the world. And the wonderful thing about Fichte is that he says: This external sense world, as it presents itself to us, is not the true, real one. Why is it there? It is there so that man can appear within this sensory world as a sensual being; so that in this human being the will that permeates the world and expresses itself as the divine duty that permeates the world, so that this will forms a material, in order to fulfill the duty, in order to fulfill the moral. Thus, for Fichte, the whole world is permeated by moral substance, by moral reality. For him, the whole world is a spiritual whole of duty, and that which exists as an individual is so that duty, so that the will, so that the divine that is alive in the will can live out itself.

Fichte calls the external sensual world matter, the sensualized material of duty. If one tries to hold together Fichte's placing in a divine-moral world order with the mechanistic materialism that emerged from a unified rational world view, as with Descartes —- Cartesius —, one tries to recognize how this Johann Gottlieb Fichte lived - I would like to say - a certain inner connection of the soul with what, as the divine, flows through and permeates the world, how he then tried to see this connection in the individual national spirits. But Fichte could only ascribe to the German national spirit the ability of a national spirit to grasp this living connection with the universal spirit in the ego. And so Fichte became quite aware that the German national spirit, in connection with the development of humanity, would be called upon to bring living knowledge in place of mechanistic, dead knowledge.

But what is true is that the “Addresses to the German Nation” are pulsating with an ethos, a world-historical sense of duty. Fichte delivered these magnificent addresses in Berlin, in the midst of the enemies who had invaded Berlin at that time, and during his Address to the German Nation, where he sought to show how the German national spirit is called upon to grasp, out of the living self, the connection of the human being with the spirit of the world, when he delivered these speeches, which can still have a wonderfully inspiring effect on the German mind today, the marching French regiments drummed outside. He could have been captured by the enemy at any moment. But he also stood firm as the German man, aware that he had to express the world-historical mission of the German national spirit.

One need not, honored attendees, take a one-sided view today that one should accept the philosophy, the worldview, of such a mind in terms of its content as dogma. Today we can go beyond that. We do not have to profess everything that Fichte said here or there, or what the others said, which we will discuss later; we can turn our attention to the way these people strive and how, in this striving, they show – which Fichte was also fully aware of – that they wanted to draw from the depths of the German national spirit.

Thus, we see Johann Gottlieb Fichte as one of those who, out of German Idealism, sought a world view. We want to look at this striving in him, and also in the others, not at what they said. One need not be a follower of anyone whom one finds to be a great and admirable personality, but one can continue to be inspired by the individual striving, even in those areas where one believes that one cannot go with him in terms of the content of a teaching. But it is not the doctrine that matters, it is the personality that matters, which, as it stands, can serve to characterize the German people themselves, because it must lie in the essence of the German people if, as I would say, with Fichte, such a thing can arise from this German essence with such awareness as Fichte brought forth from this German essence.

Then we see Fichte's succession from another, from Schelling. Schelling is also such a personality. I am convinced, dear attendees, that precisely these three figures, whom I am speaking of here, will be called upon again when the time, which is certainly a time of great hopes and activity that we are living through, but which is also a difficult time of trial, when this time will bear fruit.

We see Fichte's successor in Schelling. In him, too, we have a personality who wants to create a world picture directly from the depths of the ego, because he is clear that the divine-spiritual is at work in what man experiences in his innermost being, and that this divine-spiritual floods through all nature and all being and can be grasped in its activity in the world. If only man is able to experience his ego strongly enough within himself.

If for Fichte the divine essence is something that permeates the world – I would like to say – like a great weaving and working morality, then for Schelling the divine essence is first of all the great artist who, out of the artistic weaving of his own being, first confronts nature in order to see his own truth, his own being and working in the mirror of nature. For Schelling, God's work of art is nature. No natural science that is to be abstractly intellectual - a natural science that works in such a way that with every idea that is brought forth about nature, the human soul feels at the same time related to nature. But Schelling feels this nature in such a way that he says: Now man has emerged, now other animated beings have emerged in nature. But all of nature had preceded this, as it were, as the unconscious and subconscious, which had to be present beforehand like a skeleton. The whole spiritualized world view is nature; as the past and at the same time as the solid ground for the present; as the past in terms of material on which the spirit can stand, having prepared its existence in the existence of nature. And so, for Schelling, nature and spirit grow together, but they grow together in such a way that what lives out of Schelling as a world view of German idealism is again connected to the entire personality, not just one-sidedly with the sentient soul, one-sidedly with the consciousness soul, one-sidedly with the mind soul, but out of the fullness of the soul's being. One would like to say: This whole Schelling was there.

Those who knew him personally described how, even in old age, he spoke with his eyes sparkling, as if he wanted to pour out to his listeners through the shining gaze of his eyes what lived in his inner being as a spiritualized, ensouled nature, whereby he always felt that the soul of man was interwoven with all of nature. Schelling felt that this world view, which I would describe as having been woven out of the German mind, out of the soul of the emotions – as was the case with Fichte, out of the soul of the will – carried him to ever greater heights, to the point where he could ultimately be understood only to a limited extent. God as the artist, nature as a wonderful work of art, knowledge of nature through the senses, which Schelling believed was so interwoven with the human ego that he was carried away to say: To recognize nature is to create nature.

Of course, these spirits were one-sided; but they were as one-sided as all human beings are one-sided, who have the faults of their virtues, not the faults of their small characteristics. - To recognize nature is to create nature! He felt that whatever lives as a force in nature can be grasped by the soul if that soul only grasps itself in its own ego, that nature can be recreated.

And the third one is the much-maligned Hegel, who is, however, revered by some in the present day. If Fichte tried to revive in the will that can permeate everything, in the ego, if Schelling tried to create an idealistic world view in the world mind that comes to life in the ego and spiritualizes and ensouls everything, then Hegel tries to create a world view out of pure concepts, out of the idea. And with Hegel in particular it is obvious that he wanted to grasp a world picture in concepts, in ideas, to compare this Hegelian world picture with the mechanistic, with the intellectual one of Cartesius, of Descartes: there everything is intellectual! But what did Hegel want? Hegel did not want the concept, the idea, in such a way that his world picture was only an instrument, as it were, to recognize an external reality. Hegel wanted to have this world in such a way that the human soul, for its part, experiences the concepts themselves, that it lives with its I into the icy regions, but thereby also forms the experience of the pure concept. For Hegel had the inner experience - one may call it the inner experience - that when man grasps the ideas of the world in their purity, that he may then partake with the innermost part of his I-being in what, as divine thought itself, underlying all of the world, participating in the thought-work of the Godhead, because a thought in the soul is, so to speak, only an ideational representation of that which, as a divine thought, permeates the world - that is what Hegel wanted.

This world view is also one-sided, because it reduces the divine spiritual beings that underlie the world to mere logic, because the whole world is reduced to a mere skeleton of its reality. But it is significant that for once — I would like to say — there appeared a stage in the development of the German being, this inwardly living feeling and interweaving of a thought that permeates the world: I want to unite myself with the thought that is active in the world, and I am convinced that in so doing I have not only something in my soul that outwardly reflects the world, but that when thoughts flow through my soul, it is divine activity itself that allows its thoughts to appear in my soul — those thoughts according to which minerals, plants, animals and human beings are created. Outside, God creates the form and the facts according to the ideas; then, having stripped them of the material, he lets these ideas flow through the human soul, and man participates by surrendering to this flow in a mysticism that is not vague, not an emotional mysticism, but an idea-mysticism, crystal clear: Man participates in the efficacy of divine thoughts in the world!

Yes, esteemed attendees, with these three figures – who, much more than one might think, also in the period when they were rarely mentioned, in the second half of the nineteenth century and up to the present day, live on in the German essence – in these three figures, the world view of German idealism presents itself to us, that German idealism that was called upon – and we can see this directly and objectively in these minds, the spirits of this German idealism, - was called upon - I would say cognitively, I emphasize explicitly, not religiously, but cognitively - although the cognitive is a support of the religious, the religious emerges from another part - to conjure up the second great tidal wave in terms of a human world view from the depths of human existence.

Let us look across to Asia. Asia, especially India, still retains, I would say, an ancient world view in which the human being has also tried to come to that from the depths of his being, which as divine-spiritual flows through, works through and lives through the world. But how does the Asian and the descendant of this ancient Asian, the present-day Indian, attempt to make the divine-spiritual activity and flow in the world present in their own soul being? By attenuating and paralyzing the soul and paralyzing the I. The I must be extinguished so that the human being can give themselves over to the general flow of Brahman. This is the ancient striving for a world picture, I would say, the primeval striving for a world picture. Characteristic of this is that the ego is tuned down, paralyzed to the point of extinction, so that what the human being experiences in his ego does not stand in the way when he wants to revive in his soul that which flows through the world in a divine-spiritual way, giving it soul. To extinguish himself so that the Divine may work in him, that is the ideal of this Pan-Asiatic world picture.

This world picture was no longer possible when the greatest event in the world development of humanity had taken place. This world picture was no longer possible when the Christ Impulse had entered into humanity. From the religious side, humanity was given a deepening, of such magnitude that the Asian religion may never again emerge in its strength, for it could never again be adequate to this event, in which the Christ Impulse lives as the highest event. It was the destiny of the German national spirit to have created an understanding of earthly existence that is adequate to the Christ Impulse.

And these three spirits are like the three symptoms in which the striving for such a world view is expressed. As I said, how does one not seek such a world view by extinguishing the self! We have seen how these three spirits in particular – Fichte, Schelling and Hegel – want to fully live out the I, how they place it at the center of the three soul shades, not by extinguishing the I, but precisely by fully experiencing it, by elevating the I; how the divine-spiritual flows into this I, that is what was incumbent on the German national spirit. And it could do so because it was able to let the I shine through the three soul nuances, just as the unified light shines through the three rainbow nuances.

To place oneself in the more recent development of the world as those who now place everything that is recognized of the existence of nature and soul in the service of such an idealistic world view, that was the duty of the greatest German thinkers, who knew themselves to be one with what the truly German national spirit wants in the further development of humanity.

It seems appropriate to me to point this out to you today, esteemed attendees. What will become of the great external events will be decided by weapons and other circumstances. But it seems appropriate to me, especially in the present, to delve into the nature of the German national spirit itself, which is now being reviled and slandered from all sides, and which, precisely because it must work in the manner indicated, is so little understood by those who, out of their hatred, today all around us, not only misunderstand the German world view, but also want to misunderstand it. But they cannot understand it because they work in a one-sided way, in the one-sidedness of their particular shade of soul; whereas the German must work out of his nature, out of his whole being, towards a wholeness.

A kind of reverent mood is poured out over what the German spirit is meant to achieve in the world. This German national soul is particularly predisposed to acquiring knowledge through nature and the soul, and then enriching this knowledge in the soul so that this knowledge is like the soul's approach to the divine being.

If we do not see this – and I would like to read these words to you literally – if we do not see this beautifully when we look at those who always wanted to visualize from the depths of the German being, that which is the German folk spirit? Do we not see this striving - to know what the German can know, how to make it accessible to the divine-spiritual, to develop a devout mood in science as well? How beautiful and wonderful it is, for example, when a German — and that is precisely why he may perhaps be mentioned today — who appears in Austria as one of the greatest German-Austrians, delves into the German essence, even if he has not perhaps arrived at the concepts that have been developed today and presented to us, so as to feel the full expression of what has been developed in ideas today here: I am referring to Robert Hamerling, Austria's greatest German poet of modern times, who spoke the beautiful words, feeling like a German in Austria, spoke the beautiful words: Austria is my fatherland; but I feel it: Germany is my motherland - thus expressing the unity that has been so firmly forged today through Germany and Austria, through Central Europe. All these peculiarities of the German national soul, which I have been trying to develop today from the idealistic world view of the Germans - at the time when they believed they could turn back the tide, when the Germans came over from Asia, bringing with them the urge to grasp the Allgeist, which they would later express in their art, in their education, in their philosophy, in all their being and working in the world, by elevating the ego, not by dampening the ego. And there, as in a beautiful poet's dream in his “Germanenzug”, Robert Hamerling remembers - the old ancestors of the Germans are still sitting over there in Asia, while these old ancestors of the Germans are moving into Europe, into the West , Robert Hamerling describes beautifully how these Teutons are camped on the border of Asia and Europe, how the sun goes down - he beautifully describes the moon that rises, the whole landscape -, how the Teutons are camped. Only one is awake: the blond Teut, the youth. But in front of Teut, the future destinies of the Germans are written in the stars in wonderful signs. And the genius of the Germans, the spirit of the German people, speaks to the blond Teut, to the leader of the Germanic peoples to the German West. And Hamerling says beautifully:

"To whom does the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so tender, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the sounds of the strings
His innermost self? Who draws the senses so magnificently
Into the blue of heaven, granite hieroglyphics
of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
of the searching thought to the stars
so boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is led so high, so deep by his urge, his foreboding?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where are all the zones of earth and heaven
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

Not from such a self-exalting consciousness, not from national immodesty, as we often find among our opponents today, but from a devout consideration of the nature of the German, of the spiritual nature that has prevailed throughout world history.

The poet speaks of duty, the Austrian poet, in complete harmony with those who have created a German world view, an imaginative world view of the Germans, out of the German world view.

That is why it is so profoundly true what the “Philosophus teutonicus” Jakob Böhme said about all research and reflection on that world view that has a right to exist, which, fundamentally, for the German national character - so Jakob Böhme believes - the search for knowledge, for science, must be a path to God, even if it does not encroach on religion. Jakob Böhme expresses this, thereby characterizing the guiding principle for the world view of German idealism, beautifully from the depths of the German mind. Jakob Böhme says:

“When you see the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

"When you look at the depths of heaven

This is the union of the most beautiful sense of the German national character with the highest striving for knowledge of that which, in a divine and spiritual sense, permeates, interweaves and suffuses the world. Thus, in order to elevate his ego, the German seeks to penetrate into the innermost nature of things, and this is indeed something that can be understood only to a limited extent.

One can see how little it can be understood! There is one of those who, shortly before the beginning of this war, used to move around in Germany as foreign spirits, talking about all kinds of friendships with the German essence, about all kinds of understanding that they claim to have acquired for the German essence: that is Emile Boutroux. Shortly before the war, he even lectured at German universities about how one should revere the depths of the German spirit. And now the true Frenchman [Boutroux] is telling his fellow Frenchmen – he wants to be funny, of course, the good [Boutroux] wants to be funny – he is telling them what a difference there is between the French, the English and the Germans; what we - though for the French, certainly in a joking way - have sought today from the depths of the German character, yes, Boutroux talked about that in a similar way to his French not too long ago. He said: Yes, when the French want to recognize a lion or a hyena – you don't get the news exactly, but that's roughly how he spoke – and in any case, what I am saying is essentially not inaccurate – when the French describe a lion or a hyena, they go to the menagerie and observe the lion or the hyena; when the English want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they travel around the world and observe the life of the lion or the hyena. But when the Germans want to recognize a lion or a hyena, they neither go to a menagerie nor travel around the world, but retreat to their study and design the image of the lion and the hyena from within, without looking at the outside!

It is certainly a witty saying, and we are accustomed to the French speaking wittily from their intellectual culture; it is just a shame that this joke is by Heinrich Heine, repeated by Boutroux, because it comes from Heine; and the Frenchman, who we are accustomed to making good jokes, made a German joke in this case, to make a witty comment about the English and the French! This is another illustration of how the opponents of Germanness try to ascribe to themselves something higher than what a German can live with!

However, this same man recently told his Parisians what a barbaric people the Germans actually are; one can already deduce this from the word. For example, he said: the Germans have no word for generosity; therefore they don't even have this quality, they lack it, only the French have it. On the other hand, the Germans have a word that the French don't have: that is the word 'Schadenfreude'; so only the Germans have the quality of Schadenfreude. The French don't have this ignoble quality. And similar things more are what indicates the spirit from which one today vilifies and degrades the German essence.

But one has not always looked at this German essence in this way! And it would be particularly interesting to see which minds have tried to find their way into this German essence, as one can also see from this just how little account is taken of the actual meaning of this German essence, this spirit. Take, for example, the writer of “The Life of Jesus” — Ernest Renan — he wrote in a corresponding way even during the Franco-Prussian War about German essence to David Friedrich Strauß, who wrote about German essence. Strangely, the Frenchman, Ernest Renan, wrote; he says that at a certain age he realized what this German essence actually means. And he makes an interesting comparison. He says that after he had absorbed the French character in his education, he approached the German character through Goethe and Herder, and it was as if he encountered realities instead of mere concepts, whereas before he had only seen a lot of faded paper flowers. And then he compares the height of German intellectual life, which has been revealed to him in this way, by saying that everything he got to know outside of this German essence seems to him, well, like elementary mathematics to differential and potential mathematics. We shall see in a moment how such a mind itself utilizes, in terms of feeling, what has come to it through contact with the German essence.

But first, let us see a little more of how this Central European, German essence is viewed in the East, in that East from which the European West, that is to say our West, is currently suffering so much for what is, after all, its sphere of influence, its work for freedom and democracy today, this European West. If we have to consider the Russian national soul, we have to say: in Russia's national soul, the direct driving force of the I, everything still lives as something external. The Russian receives his religion as a foreign one, the Greek-Christian religion, which he does not have within him in the form of rebirth, as the German has experienced it from his innermost being, but which he accepts as something like a cloud that hovers over him, that he has from outside. While the Italian works from the sentient soul, the Frenchman from the intellectual and mind soul, the Englishman, the Briton from the consciousness soul, the German from the actual self, the person who truly belongs to the Russian national soul, works from the subconscious of the ego, which still has the ego that the ego has not yet absorbed into itself, which the ego still wants to see in a mystical darkness. This Russian soul, this eastern Russian soul, works like the national soul that has not yet fully come to consciousness.

And this is why this still immature national soul has not only so misunderstood the German national soul, but also all the national souls of Western Europe, especially in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our own times, so infinitely misunderstood them.

People have not even noticed what the relationship is, let us say, between the nature of the German spirit and the Russian spirit. In selfless German modesty, one has naturally included the great Russians – Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky. They are not to be disparaged here; they can be fully recognized; but one must become aware of the gulf that exists between the Russian and the German essence, and which, especially in the Russian essence, has come to such an immature outbreak and revelation in our own time.

In the course of the nineteenth century, we encounter the best Russian minds, which - I would like to say - philosophically and artistically express, as in a world view, what, in political terms, the “Testament of Peter the Great” – whether it is forged or not, that is not the point now – which, in political terms, aims to achieve the complete annihilation and replacement of Western and Central Europe, as it exists today, with Eastern Europe! [The “Testament of Peter the Great” is the only thing that should be considered sustainable.] But everything, I would like to say, even Russian literary-philosophical and artistic thought, is in the service of this “Testament of Peter the Great”. And this is what we encounter again and again in all of nineteenth-century Russian intellectual life.

Then we encounter the best minds in Russia, who turn their gaze to what minds like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel have achieved. I would say that Herzen is able to observe this in a single such spirit. He seeks to delve into what Western culture has brought forth; he finds that it has all grown old, has become decrepit, that it must all disappear, that it is all superficial, because he cannot comprehend how this world view of German Idealism is inwardly lived and interwoven; and so it becomes worthless to him. In his book From the Other Bank, Herzen expresses how all these ideals that have sprung up in Western Europe must be destroyed and how something else must take their place.

One of Herzen's opponents, also a Russian, wrote to Herzen: So you want to destroy everything that has emerged in Western Europe: Greater, more significant – as a Russian wrote to Herzen, one of his Russian opponents, to appeal to his conscience – Greater than all the ideals of Central Europe, is the Russian sheepskin coat to you? – the friend wrote to Herzen!

What does he mean by the “Russian sheep's clothing”? Well, Herzen said it: In what this European culture, this European spiritual life has brought forth, there cannot be anything redemptive, anything salvific for humanity; but that which is salvific for humanity is the Russian peasant; that is, the one who, in all his originality, contains within him that which must flood the whole of Western and Central Europe. And this appears to be so deeply ingrained in Russian souls, especially in the most Russian of Russians, for example in Dostoyevsky, the great artist – whom we want to acknowledge in terms of his skill – that it is increasingly apparent in his work, when we take a closer look at it, that he regards German culture in particular as decrepit and obsolete, and that he already sees Russia as destined to be the redeemer. Basically, the delusional rage that is now to be poured out over Europe is nothing more than the brutal expression of this tendency, which has even found expression in great Russian writers; however, care has been taken to ensure that the good Germans do not become too aware of this, which, I might say, has always lived and breathed between the lines of Russian intellectual life! And so it comes about that - and those who know me better know how much I appreciate Tolstoy - but what is in Tolstoy, especially in such older works as “Anna Karenina” and so on, that shows how he - Tolstoy - always aimed to depict the German character in such a way that it appears decrepit and inferior.

Why have the Germans paid so little attention to such things? Why are they now surprised at the fact that hatred is being heaped on them from all sides? Well, you only have to take the fact that, for example, the older translations of Tolstoy, namely those works by translators that people still read, up to the last translation in the middle of the nineteenth century by [Raphael Löwenfeld], which people no longer read, these translations all either left out the passages in question entirely or translated them differently, so that no one actually knows the real Tolstoy!

It will be necessary, dear honored attendees, to go a little deeper into the nuances that live in the expressions of souls, so that the German knows how to fulfill his mission in the world. And so it came about that even insightful Russian minds, such as the great philosopher Soloviev, rebelled against this generally Russian view, against the view of those who, according to a Russian world view, had grown old and died, and that Russianism should overthrow this European essence.

If I emphasize individual personalities, it is because I want to cite facts and show by individual characteristics how many there are.

There is, for example, one Danilewski, who attempts to address the question in broad terms, entirely in the spirit of the Russian essence I have just hinted at, how Russia must expand, how Europe's west and center are ripe to because the European West and the Center have fulfilled their task; and Danilewski once asks the question in a book that is so completely formed from the Russian point of view: Why does Europe not love us, why does Europe fear us? Now he seeks to answer this question from his own point of view, and Danilevsky writes for his Russians something like this: Europe does not love us because Europe instinctively senses that we are the ones who are actually the only ones still entitled to exist, and who are to replace what lives in the rest of Europe. But Soloviev takes up this question, and Soloviev is one of those who has drawn from this life himself. And the great philosopher Solowjow, who, unbiased by his own Russian nature, takes up this question: Why does Germany not love us? He does not answer this question in the way Danilewski and the spirits of the most diverse kinds of Russians speak, that Europe feared Russia, but Solowjow answers Danilewski's question: Why does Europe not love us? Why does Europe fear us?” and Danilevsky's answer to this: ‘Because Europe instinctively senses that the Russians are the only ones who are still entitled to exist and should replace what is still alive in the rest of Europe,’ Solowjow replies to these words of Danilevsky:

“And yet both the content of his book and his later admissions, as well as those of his like-minded friend”

referring to a certain Strachow

“point to a different answer: Europe looks at us with apprehension and fear”

Solovyov wrote his reply, and it is certainly necessary for anyone who wants to get to know the conditions in the Russian east to listen to these Russians. Solovyov himself says:

"Europe regards us with apprehension and mistrust because dark and obscure elemental forces live in the Russian people, because its spiritual and cultural forces are poor and inadequate, but because its demands are clearly and sharply defined. The calls for what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully out to Europe: that it wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, conquer Germany, and seize Constantinople and, if possible, India.

And when we are asked how we intend to replace what we have destroyed and failed to accomplish, how we plan to rejuvenate the world intellectually and culturally, we either have to remain silent or spout meaningless phrases. And if Danilevsky's bitter confession is true, that Russia is beginning to fall ill, then instead of dealing with the question “Why doesn't Europe love us,” we would have to deal with another, more important question that is closer to us: “Why and how did we become ill?” Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as it showed in the last Russian war; so our suffering is a moral one. We are burdened, according to the words of an old writer, by the sins hidden in the national character and not conscious to us - and so it is necessary above all to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts must only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question of true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of the sins of Russia."

Thus the Russian Solowjow, from a spiritual insight into the Russian character, thus the great philosopher Solowjow about Russia itself. And it is interesting to see this in conclusion: how have others perceived this relationship between Russia and the West, even the further West – with whom they are now in league or who is in league with them, one does not quite know how to say – how have others perceived this relationship with their further West? Oh, there are also interesting facts here! For example, a book by the Russian writer Yushakov was published in 1885. In 1885, he wrote a book in which he speaks quite differently from how he was later spoken of regarding the views that he attributes to his Russian people. It is interesting to take a look at Yushakov's ideas.

This man looks across to Asia and says: Yes, over there in Asia, we have peoples who have brought a very old culture from ancient times into more recent times. These peoples, how they have been mistreated by the Europeans. Russia must look across to Asia, and must bring redemption to this sacred, venerable, but by the Europeans mistreated Asian culture, this spiritual culture of Asia. Nice words Jushakow speaks. He says that Russia alone is capable – because it cannot yet grasp the human interior in such a way that it has been made sick and aged by the ego as in the European West – Russia alone can feel related to this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe. And an old myth brings Yushakov back to mind when he says: Over there in Asia, Iranian, Turanian peoples are fighting. He himself also includes the Indians, the Persians, and so on, among the Iranian peoples. And then Yushakov says: These have found a wonderful, ancient myth of Ormuzd and Ahriman for their destiny. But we always see Ahriman and Ormuzd at work over there in Asia forever. And there, in his book, Yushakov says – in 1885 – and he points this out in his memoirs, that the Iranians worshiped the good Ormuzd over there in Asia; the good Ormuzd gave the Iranians all the fruits and crops that the earth can produce; they took them for themselves. Then they joined forces with Ahriman. These Europeans have worked like Ahriman, like the evil Ahriman himself. But Russia, by working across into Asia, will liberate people from the evil Ahriman. What the Asians have received under the blessing of the good Ormuzd, the selfish Europeans have appropriated for themselves. Russia will cross over to Asia and help by founding an alliance, yes – Yushakov says it, I have to repeat it to you – an alliance that will be formed with the greatest ideals in the world, as the most spiritual alliance in the world – Yushakov says it all, I am only repeating it. It will be formed by Russian peasants and Cossacks, who will rush over to Asia, which is groaning under European rule, and will carry over what Russia will be able to bring. Then the peasantry and Cossacks will advance into Asia, and Russia will redeem Asia from Ahriman. 1885, think Sic, written by Jushakow. It is interesting to hear some of what Jushakow said at the time in the book, which is called: “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. It says that the comrades of Ahriman, the evil god – from whom Russia must liberate Asia and bring order and harmony – are primarily the English.

The English – says Yushakov – have behaved in this Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to clothe themselves in English fabrics, to fight each other with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels and to play with English baubles. And then he says:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but her very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula.”

And so he continues, Yushakov:

“I do not wish anything similar for my homeland – I can only be pleased that it is sufficiently far removed from this state, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

Apparently because these Russians were so keen to distance themselves from this Englishness, so that they could free Asia from this hideous England, they soon allied themselves with this England, not to free Asia, but to destroy Europe.

One must also look at world development from this intellectual perspective in the nineteenth century, and in this way delve into what actually constitutes the German character and how it stands now, this German character, which has to defend itself in a way against the ring that has been formed around it, yes, in a way that can be simply hinted at when numbers are spoken.

These people – who want to keep Germany and Austria locked up in a big fortress today – are taking a stand for freedom, for the rights of small nations, and for all sorts of things they believe in. You only have to look at the numbers: 777 million people in the so-called Entente around the Central European powers, against 150 million; 777 million are “fighting” - let's put that in quotation marks - “fighting” against 150 million, and fighting in such a way that to this day still want to strike at the very essence of their actual bravery, they also want to strike at the German spirit, which they believe they understand so well, that 777 million people are turning against 150 million, joining forces to starve them out, to defeat them with starvation, the better part of bravery.

Actually, they had no need to be envious of what the Central Europeans were taking away from them; for the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth, compared to 6 million square kilometers of the Central European Powers. One need only let these numbers speak. These numbers speak to this day, and will also speak in world history, ladies and gentlemen, that after all, within these 150 million present-day Central Europeans and on these 6 million square kilometers of Central European soil, those people live who have the world-historical, spiritual mission that we were allowed to speak of, and which they ascribe to themselves not ascribe it to themselves out of national chauvinism, but out of their spiritual gifts, out of the spirit of their Germanness, to which they have not devoted themselves through their egoism, but to which they have to approach if they want to offer the best of their being on the altar of this their national spirit. And those who feel this German essence in Central Europe feel a close bond with it, especially the best in Austria and Germany – and I am allowed to speak about this since I have spent thirty years of my life in Austria:

Precisely the best Austrians, those who have grown up with Central European culture, like the excellent philosopher Carneri, know how to experience and fathom the relationship between their own people and the German national spirit and German essence not out of national chauvinism but out of a sure knowledge of the essence of their own people.

For example, Carneri, the most important Austrian philosopher, says of the English: “Carneri, a wonderful man who, out of the deepest suffering, has founded a spiritual world view that is so completely in line with our time, a conceptual world view from German-Austria. Carneri talks about how the English have really focused their attention on external practical culture and he says: It has become so practical, this culture, that the English had to learn from the Germans the fact that the great playwright and poet Shakespeare lived among them. For it is true that it is only through the Germans delving into Shakespeare that Shakespeare has been recognized at all. And if one day someone has to write the story of Shakespeare's greatness, it will not be an English chapter in intellectual history that they have to write, but a German one.

All this characterizes the nature of the German world view, which creates out of all intellectual inner life, in contrast to everything around it. And so we may well believe that this is what the German must strive for above all else: spiritual science, knowledge of the spirit, just as there is knowledge of nature. Knowledge of the spirit, which must be based above all on the sources, on the roots that lie in the world view of German idealism. This is, as I said, not a conviction born out of blind national sentiment, but a conviction born out of knowledge. It is that which humanity is to scientifically fathom in the future about the spirit, that this must grow out of German national culture – and above all out of the ideal world view of German national culture – as it has been attempted to describe today.

And how little understanding there is among other nations today – let me say this in conclusion – this war can show the German so clearly how little understanding there is on the part of other nations towards the world view of German idealism and the German spirit, and how he must first ensure and strive to ensure that what he is called upon to create out of the depths of the German being can become part of the world development of humanity. The French, how did they look at this world view of German idealism? Or the Russians, for example, how did they look at this world view that the Germans have formed, this world view? The Russians look at it as if it only existed to be destroyed by them, as something decrepit and worn out. While we must see roots and leaves in it, from which the blossoms and fruits must first ripen in the future! We want to commit ourselves to this view! But the Russians need a new delusion; because the ego does not yet live in their soul, they must dream of a new delusion. They need a new delusion.

What do the French need? What do the French need today if they want to characterize their relationship to the German essence? Well, perhaps one could refer to one of their youngest poets to avoid doing them an injustice. What do the French want? They have been so accustomed to their nature being everywhere in Europe, just as the Germans were accustomed to their nature living in the Germans themselves, just as the Germans were accustomed to the way they felt the power, the driving force of what, for example, also lived in this world view of German idealism, up to Lessing, until they had to free themselves, the Germans, [so] these French were so accustomed that their nature lived everywhere in Europe. And after that, they believed that nothing could actually be done without what they did and what they produced intellectually, that everything had to come from them, that they had to be the cause of everything. In a very interesting and witty poem, Rostand, one of their own poets, recently illustrated how the French – that is, his own – national character can be compared to the cock crowing in the morning; and when the cock crows, the sun rises. And because the sun rises when the cock crows, the Frenchman believes that with his crowing he makes the sun rise. So he says to himself: If I don't crow, the sun can't rise!

This is said by the French poet Rostand himself as a characteristic of the French nature. The Frenchman thinks: If he doesn't crow, nothing at all can happen in the world. And that is why it is so incredible that he no longer occupies the position he once did; for it is actually the case that the German character, as expressed by Ranke, for example, is to be defended against the delusion of the crowing of the French national spirit, as early as 1870, when the Germans had to face the French: “We are still fighting against Louis XV!”

The French need a new delusion. The Russians need a new mission. The English – well, one really doesn't want to do them an injustice. What should one say so as not to do them an injustice? They declaim to the world: for the sake of the violation of Belgium's neutrality, for the sake of justice and democracy, we must undertake this war to the point of destroying the German essence; for these Germans are disgraceful people. They preach the principle of might over right. It is likely that one only forgets, as a result of a particularly refined education, that the English minister who decreed this – only recently – that the phrase “might over right” comes from the English philosopher, English utilitarian philosopher Thomas Hobbes. But: “might over right” – and England has adhered to this phrase for centuries. [gap in the transcript] as a professor in England himself, where he said: freedom and democracy, that is something that cannot be united, which should be advocated after the last English history, but that Great Britain's expansion [gap in the transcript], he says, is also a truth, also a practical truth, as the English world view must strive for. Yes, what can you say? “Might is right” – since Thomas Hobbes this principle has been winding its way through English history, concealing the real reasons why England tramples underfoot the entire mission of the German people. Yes, one would not want to do such things an injustice, but one must say: the English need a new lie to drown out that which cannot be compensated for.

The Russians need a new delusion; the French need a new conceit; the English need a new lie. The Italians – yes, a very outstanding man told me even before the Italian war broke out: “Italy needs this war!” There are people, of course, who are not so naive as to have believed that Italy could not join the Entente in this war. Italy needs this war; we must have this war; the Italians have become lethargic, sluggish and lazy; they are actually on the road to the abyss - said this important political figure at the time - and need to have something that will shake them up again, that will awaken them to life, otherwise they will become completely rotten and sluggish! What do these Italians need? These Italians needed a new sensation in order to have something at the same time – just as the French needed imagination, the English needed a new lie, the Russians needed a new delusion, a new mission, so the Italians needed a new saint, something very special! – They truly have a saint, namely, holy egoism – sacro egoismo – which is preached everywhere and on whose altar people are sacrificed. And the apostle of modern Italian nationalism, the hierophant, is Gabriele d'Annunzio! Perhaps history will one day rank him among the buffoons of the mind – that can be said without any national chauvinism. But he will nevertheless stand without dignity as the one who also made sacrifices to this new egoism, the sacro egoismo, which Italy represents and to which they have dedicated themselves, this new saint!

When we see all this going on around us, we can truly say that, without the Germans needing to become as nationally egotistical as those who want to surround, encircle and contain them, we can truly say that, from the inner fertility and knowledge of the greatness of the German essence, to which we humbly bow, we cannot, in arrogance, say that we experience in the German essence: It is the germs, it is the roots, it is the leaves – and the blossoms and the fruits must develop from them. And we can look to the future with confidence and hope!

And finally, I would like to say that – as if in a unified thinking – those who understood the German essence in Central Europe always felt it. One of my teachers in Austria once spoke a beautiful word. I may perhaps read it to you at the end, a little poem. It is called “Austria and Germany”. Today, when Austria and Germany are welded together, I may perhaps read it, this little poem:

"Let Russia and England wisely deliberate,
Perhaps not even find it unwelcome
If we get into a little bit of a fight here,
If they take away our good right!

You, German brothers, will not - advise here,
The enemy's attack will only unite us
And all ambition will fade among us
Before: being one people in word and deed.

And if one among us has failed,
If discord has reigned in a German heart,
There is only one thing that now inspires us:
What we have in common, in joy and in sorrow!
So may we also have in common:
A German war, if not a German peace!

Thus spoke the German of Austria in 1859. Those who feel that they are part of the German national spirit, who recognize it without national chauvinism, are so united in their awareness that loyalty springs from the soul to this German essence. Then this Karl Julius Schröer, who has remained so unknown, but who felt German essence in Austria quite extraordinarily, then he said:

A spirit arises, a giant to behold
[Who does not yet long gather all his strength
The German spirit rises up, aflame with courage
Wherever you look in all German regions.
He has been called a master in many a field,
In art and knowledge, in the building system,
he is first to be seen
then he will be truly recognized by the world.

To see him as a whole, this also includes the symptom that so clearly shows how the immortal martial forces come from the German essence. Likewise, the idealistic world view of the German stems from the primal power of the German essence, which has borne its roots and its leaves, and - looking towards it - we may have faith in the future: it must struggle through to its blossoms and fruits in the future, undisturbed by the hatred of the opposition.

This awareness wells up in us as 150 million people facing 777 million, as standing on 6 million square kilometers against 68 million square kilometers; this wells up in us from the spiritual, from the soul, from the heart of the German spiritual being!

So let us speak out of the knowledge itself and out of the most justified feeling: Yes, by being aware of our essence, we may believe, we may hope that the blossoms and fruits to the roots and leaves of the German being will unfold in the future.

Therefore, we can confidently live into the future of this German national spirit, also from the depths of the German endeavor.

And so may it be, because it must be so!

Dear Attendees!

The momentous events in which the German nation finds itself justify my speaking, as I have done for many years in other German cities, about subjects related to spiritual science. This year, as in the past, last year, I shall not speak about a narrow subject of spiritual science itself, but about something that is intimately connected with the spiritual life of the German people, with that which is suitable to reveal something about the position of the German people within the overall development of humanity.

If I do this, it is certainly not to give expression to mere emotional views, which are particularly close to the soul in these difficult but also, in a certain sense, hopeful times, but because it is not based on dark feelings and perceptions , but rather, as I believe, on real facts, cognitive facts, well-founded conviction, that what has always been characterized here as spiritual science, that it is rooted in the innermost depths of precisely those expressions of German intellectual life that we can count among the peaks of that intellectual life.

We have no need, dearest ones present, as Germans in the present, to express our feelings and thoughts by denigrating and even slanderously distorting, before all things – as it is also done by the most outstanding personalities in the ranks of our enemies – that which what is outside of German life - as it is done from the other side in relation to the German essence - but we can look at it from a purely factual point of view, based on the German national character.

It should be mentioned briefly in the introduction that spiritual science, as it is meant here, is based on the fact that it is possible, from within the human soul – through processes of the soul's life, which have been described here in this city many times and which can also be found in our literature can be found in our literature, that it is possible to develop such powers in the human soul that lead a person to an understanding of that which is not exhausted in the time between birth and death, but which goes through births and deaths and represents the eternal, the immortal essence of man. That such a deepening of the soul life is possible, and such a strengthening of the powers of the soul life, that the human being becomes aware within himself within his physical body that which has shaped this physical body out of the spiritual world and which, when the human being passes through the passes through the gate of death, returns to the spiritual world, that such knowledge is possible, and that such knowledge must gradually be incorporated into the spiritual life of humanity in our time, that is the spiritual-scientific conviction as it is meant here.

And this spiritual-scientific conviction, which – as I believe – is true spiritual science, is contained in the most beautiful and meaningful striving of the German people.

Now, precisely one objection could be raised: it is supposed to be about spiritual science, about that which gives the mind a similar knowledge to that of natural science for external nature, so it is supposed to be about a science. People who stand at a certain point of superficiality will immediately object: Yes, science is something completely international!

This objection is so overwhelming for many because it is so endlessly superficial. One could say: superficial to the point of being taken for granted; because the moon, for example, is also common to all peoples internationally. But what the individual peoples have to say about the moon, what struggles out of their souls to characterize the moon, that differs from people to people. And if one could also say that this is limited to poetry, then the one who is not merely a scientist, who sees in science not only that which is a description of external things in the most external way, but also that which one can know about things , emerges from the foundations, from the basic forces and basic drives of the human being, and is individual, as the human souls themselves are individual, that is to say: that is why they are shaped so differently, depending on the way in which the individual peoples are predisposed to knowledge of the world. But these predispositions, these inner impulses of the individual people, are what carries humanity forward – not what can be described as “international” in a superficial sense that takes for granted everything that has gone before.

If we want to characterize the German quest for knowledge, what immediately comes to mind are three figures, three great figures, which should only be mentioned in the introduction to today's discussion. But the development of German thought rests on the ground they prepared. These three figures are perhaps not often mentioned in the general German nation today. But that is not important. What is important is that these three figures are difficult to understand in what they created, but that these three figures will nevertheless play an ever greater and greater role in the development of German intellectual life in the future. And these three figures are: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel – the three figures who, as world-view thinkers, formed an enormous background, [who] from the depths of German nationality provided that from which the great creations of German intellectual life also flowed, which we encounter in Goethe, Herder, Lessing, Schiller, and which, after Greek culture, represented a greatest cultural flowering in the development of humanity.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, what do we see before us? He who only appears to be a difficult philosopher to understand, who rather felt that what he had to give as so-called philosophy is really, in the highest sense, the result of a dialogue that he himself held with the German national spirit. And when we approach Fichte, what does he show us?

He shows us how a personality rooted in the essence of Germanness, in its quest for knowledge, starts from the premise that the human soul itself has something through which it can grasp and inwardly see that which lives and weaves through the world as spiritual and divine in its own inner experience.

In terms of the power with which this came to expression in Fichte's soul, one might say that Fichte stands almost completely alone in the history of human development. Fichte tried to get into his own soul what pulsates and lives and weaves through the world. He was clear about the fact that one could not get to that point, [to experiencing in one's own experience what pervades the world as its fundamental essence, divinely and spiritually], through external observation, [not] through the senses, nor through the mind that is bound to the brain, but only by invoking the soul's deep, hidden powers. And in this he shows a fundamental disposition of the German character: this growing together in the innermost part of the soul with the secrets of the world, this not being able to be satisfied otherwise than by experiencing in the innermost part of the soul what spreads in the great, wide universe as the most hidden, the most mysterious.

One need only recall a few details about this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which I will mention because they are so characteristic of a figure like Fichte, and one will see how we have to revere in him a personality who, by virtue of his innermost disposition, must seek to give himself completely with his soul to that which he can call experiencing the mystery of the world. Fichte, the son of very simple people, from a simple Saxon village, is seven years old; he was already at school and was a good schoolboy. As a reward, he received a book from his father for Christmas when he turned seven: 'Gehörnte Siegfried' (The Horned Siegfried). After a while, it became apparent that he, who had previously been very eager to learn, was becoming careless about his studies. This was pointed out to him. One day, his father meets him standing by the stream that flows past the simple house: “Der gehörnte Siegfried”, which the boy had thrown into the stream, is floating in it.

An extremely characteristic trait for seven-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. What had passed through his soul? What had passed through his soul was that he said to himself: I have neglected my duty by taking an almost irrepressible interest in this great, powerful material of Siegfried; but duty is what must come before everything else. That is why the book is thrown into the water! To live up to his duty.

And another example: our Johann Gottlieb Fichte is nine years old; the neighboring landowner comes to the simple village one Sunday to listen to the pastor's sermon. He comes too late. The landowner is very sorry that he was unable to hear the village pastor's sermon. Then one reflects and realizes that there is a nine-year-old boy who remembers well what the pastor said in his sermon. They call the nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte; he steps forward, awkwardly, in his blue peasant's smock; but soon he gets into the rendition, so that he repeats the entire sermon with heartfelt sympathy for the neighboring estate owner – not from a dead memory, but he repeats it because his soul has grown together with what he heard and what then tinged his ear to his soul.

This is what is characteristic of this growing together of Fichte's own soul with that which is experienced. And so this develops more and more in Fichte, so that in the end the whole universe is pulsating with will. The world will, the divine world will, it weaves and lives through all spaces and through all times, it sends its currents into the soul weaving of the human being.

And when this weaving of the soul has been completely surrendered, then the soul experiences within itself a stream of the infinite world-will. Then one is united with that which pulsates through the world as Divine-Spiritual. Then one is borne by that which flows as the world-duty on the waves of the will, which shines into our soul and which is the highest that Fichte sought to grasp. Thus, his world view arises from the innermost essence of his personal character. This is the most German thing, to seek out the most personal and the most objective. Fichte is not seeking some soul essence that can be proven, but rather a soul essence that continually participates in the divine-spiritual creative power of the world, so that it can create itself in every moment. And in this inner creativity, which rests in the divine-creative, lies for Fichte the guarantee of the eternal, which goes through births and deaths and which lives in the spiritual world even after the human being has passed through the gate of death.

In his beautiful speeches in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life”, Fichte says of what flows from the eternal duty of the divine power into the soul of man, in Berlin in 1806, which he calls “Instructions for a blessed life” - of which Fichte says: People talk about the fact that the immortal essence of man only comes into its own after death. The one who really gets to know the soul knows that immortality can be grasped directly in life within this body; and that is why he is immediately certain that - even if this body disintegrates into its elements - that which is grasped within it through real knowledge goes through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

But Fichte is also convinced that the eternal spirit must be grasped in the most intimate inner self at the same time. Therefore, as a teacher at the then-famous University of Jena – because it was the home of the greatest German men – he is fundamentally quite different from any other teacher. He does not teach in order to impart a certain content, a certain set of propositions to his students, but prepares himself in such a way that what he has to teach is first an inner life in his soul, so that he experiences what he wants to let flow into the souls of his listeners.

One listener who understood him well once said beautifully: Fichte's speech rushes along like a thunderstorm. What he had to say in words escaped him as if in a raging thunderstorm. It is clear that he does not just want to educate good people, he wants to educate great souls. Therefore, his endeavor was not just to communicate something to people, but to let something pass into them, so that these souls became something else when they left than they were when they entered the lecture hall. And more and more he referred to the power of the soul, to the strength that lies within the human being, which is beautifully demonstrated in the following sentence. In his lectures, there was always a striving for the direct coexistence of one's own soul life with that of the audience, which he sought to achieve through such beautiful things as this one, for example. An audience member, the naturalist Steffens, described it like this. In the course of his lecture, Fichte called upon the audience: “Think of the wall!” So they thought of the wall. He let this happen for a while – so said the man, Steffens. “And now think of the one who thought of the wall!” [was Fichte's next prompt].

There the human being was referred to himself. There the listeners were taken aback at first; they could not grasp it immediately. But it was the way to refer the human being to his own soul, as to the power that can arise from it, in order to live together with the divine-spiritual powers of the world.

And so there he stands, this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, truly such that enthusiastic listeners could say of him: He lives in the realm of concepts as if in a transcendental world; but in such a way that he not only dwells in this transcendental world, but also rules over this transcendental world. And Fichte was aware that what lived in his soul had been in intimate dialogue with the spirit of the German people itself.

In saying this, I am not characterizing something out of national narrow-mindedness, but rather something that Fichte experienced directly as his perception, and through which he was able to have such a great, such a significant and supportive effect on this German nation in one of the most difficult times for the German people.

One need only compare what it means that a worldview like Fichte's could arise from a particular nationality with what is the pinnacle of the Romance worldview, a worldview that in turn arose entirely from the essence of the French national spirit. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, we have the French philosopher – one of the greatest and precisely one of those who most strikingly characterizes French nationality: Descartes or Cartesius.

He also started from what lives in the human soul. He can therefore be compared favorably with Fichte. His “I think, therefore I am,” the “Cogito ergo sum,” has become famous. But what does it consist of, what he says: “I think, therefore I am. - Cogito ergo sum”? – By the fact that the thought lives in me, I can prove that I remain myself. That which lives in the soul is revealed, it is proved by a logical conclusion. Fichte wants to grasp it in direct life, that is the distinguishing feature. This extends to the broadest aspects of the world view. You can see this from a single detail.

Dear attendees, you see, Descartes, who creates out of French folklore, comes to form a view of the world. What is this view? Yes, this view is this, that – I have to pick out one example because we don't have much time to characterize everything in detail – that he comes to see not only the external nature as one – one might say soulless, but that he also sees the animals as a soulless world. Only humans have a soul because they can experience it inwardly within themselves. Thus Descartes says: animals are no more than moving machines.

This then continued to have an effect on the French world view well into the eighteenth century, when man was also made into a machine. When this world view then confronted Goethe, Goethe, out of his German consciousness, said: Yes, they offer us a world view in which the whole world is a machine, nothing but atoms and molecules bumping into each other. And if they could at least explain to you how the beautiful, glorious world comes from this mechanical pushing, then one could still be interested in such an undertaking. But they simply put the world machine in place without explaining anything about it. That was Goethe's objection to what comes from the French West as a mechanistic worldview.

However, Fichte's view can be compared with this, which wants to immerse itself in every single creature and being, to live with everything, in order to recognize the will, the divine will in everything. This immersion in the world of beings is German.

This confronting, only seeing soul in oneself, making everything a machine - [that is not spoken out of national narrow-mindedness] - that is the French way of doing things, for example.

Now we are looking at Fichte's world view from a different perspective. For him, that which is only revealed to the senses is what he called: a material field for the fulfillment of duty. Everything that is not divine spiritual will, which weaves and lives through all beings, that which only presents itself to the senses, that is, as Fichte says, material material for duty to have an object on which it can exercise itself. That is the great thing that Fichte wants to experience – the spiritual in his own soul – and that he brings to the world, experiencing this spiritual in his own soul also from the other things.

Let us compare this with what emerges, for example, within the English world view, insofar as this English world view has emerged entirely from English nationality. Of course, it is not the individual who is meant; the individual can always rise above his nation; but what is meant is that which is connected with nationality. We see that not only in older times the world view of Bacon of Verulam is based merely on the useful, merely on that which presents itself externally to the senses, for which the spirit, which experiences in itself, stands only as bands that bind together so that the spirit can find its way. There the spirit is only the means to bring the external sense into a system. There is no co-experiencing with what lives as spiritual in all sensuality. And that has been preserved until today. We see pragmatism at work there. For pragmatism is a word for something that, placed next to the Spruce worldview, really looks like darkness next to light.

What is pragmatism? For pragmatism, there is not a truth for its own sake – truth that is sought so that one experiences it as truth in the soul – but the truth: Now, that is something that man forms as a concept, as an idea, so that he can find his way in the outside world. So man forms the concept of the “uniform soul”; but he does not want that in his soul, which is something like soul unity, but because man shows different expressions of his being, does this and does that. And one finds one's way around by assuming a concept like “uniform soul”. It is useful for holding together external, sensory things, for inventing something like truth. Truth only exists because it allows us to orient ourselves in sensory things. And in that which can be experienced at all, truth has no independent meaning.

The opposite is the case in Fichte's quest for a worldview. What is external and sensual is certainly not underestimated; we are not dealing with a false, world-alien knowledge. But we are dealing with a desire for the soul to grow together with the world spirit and with an assertion of truth, which is experienced in the spirit as the most original, living and breathing in the world. For Fichte, things are there to reveal the world, not as they are for the pragmatists as the only reality; while that which is called truth is only there to have such bindings and brackets with which to summarize the externally coincident sense world so that the mind can comfortably survey it.

I am not exaggerating, that is how things are! And so Fichte, in developing this view more and more, stands in 1811, 1813, before his Berlin students and tells them that anyone who wants to penetrate the world must look to the spirit. He speaks of a new spiritual sense – Fichte – and means by this that this sense can be developed, that when one speaks of the experiences of this sense, it is really, in the face of people who do not want to admit it, as if a single seer were speaking among a crowd of blind people! But Fichte strives to achieve in the human being that which directly connects the soul with the spiritual world. And from this he also draws the strength that is so profoundly evident in his “Speeches to the German Nation” at one of the most difficult times for the German people, through which he wanted to pour supporting forces into the future of the German people, into their souls.

One can only characterize this extraordinary personality in these few words because of the shortness of the time! The even lesser known Joseph Wilhelm Schelling then stands there as his follower. But precisely this shows the infinite versatility of the German nature: that Schelling, too, wants to arrive at a world picture through the soul's living together with the secrets of the world, but — I would like to say — through completely different soul forces. While Fichte is the powerful man who wants to experience the will in himself and, in his own will, creates the world will, the eternal world will. Schelling creates out of the soul. And through this out-of-the-mind-creation, a world picture arises for him, through which nature and spiritual life grow together wonderfully. Even if it is difficult to read today what Schelling created - it is not at all important that one accepts the content, but the striving - even if it is difficult to read: one does not have to accept it like a teaching, in relation to which one must become a follower or an opponent. Look at people who have striven in this way – who have striven from the very heart of the German national character. Schelling strove to penetrate into every single being; to experience that which works within the being as a spiritual being. In this way, nature became for him a physiognomic expression of the spirit. And the spirit was that which built itself on the soil of nature. Just as the present human soul is built on the basis of its memories, so, in Schelling's sense, man felt himself to be facing nature with his spirit, as if he had lived through all times, but had left nature behind. And as he now looks at it, it offers him the memory of what he had previously created unconsciously, so that the ground for his consciousness could then be there. In this way, soul and nature grow together in Schelling.

While Fichte had to be characterized by his contemporaries as the one who, above all, stood before them in German power, those who listened to Schelling, and who appreciate him, characterized him as a seer, as a personality who, when he spoke, was surrounded by what immediately showed that he was shaping words while his mind looked into a completely different world.

Perhaps I may read such a word of a student and friend of Schelling, because it shows more than anything else how Schelling was seen by those who knew him. Even as a young man in Jena, Schelling had such an effect that the young men around him were immediately convinced that he not only had something to tell them that would immediately ignite their souls, but that, as he spoke, his spirit lived in the spiritual world and he spoke from within it. That is why Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, a man who himself tried to descend into the spiritual depths of the human soul, says the following. He characterizes Schelling as follows:

“What was it that attracted young people and mature men alike to Schelling's lectures, from far and near, so powerfully? Was it only the personality of the man or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation, in which this attractive power lay?”

No, Schubert believes, it was not only that.

“There was a compelling power in his lively words, which, wherever it met with even a little receptivity, none of the young souls could resist. It might be difficult for a reader of our time,”

— Schubert writes down in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the 1890s,

"who, unlike me, was not a youthfully participating listener, to make it understandable how it often felt to me when Schelling spoke to us, as if I were reading and hearing Dante, the seer of a world beyond that was only open to the consecrated eye. The mighty content, which lay in his speech, as if measured with mathematical precision in the lapidary style, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds to dissolve and from whose hand to receive the unquenchable fire, is the task of the understanding mind."

So it was once possible, esteemed attendees, to speak to the German people in such a way that it made this impression, from the spiritual world, that it could make this impression!

Those who knew Schelling, and I myself knew people who still heard him in his old age, say that what he had to communicate was effective simply through the glance of his eyes, which still burned in his old age; so that one saw: it is the personality itself that wants to grow together with the world by giving a world-view.

And the third of those who, coming from the depths of the German folk-soul, wanted to penetrate to a Weltanschhauung, is Hegel. Hegel, from whom those who do not want to make any effort when they are to absorb something flee at the first sentences - Hegel, what did he want?

Schelling tried to create a world picture through the German soul. To penetrate into the spirit and the spiritual worlds through the will: Fichte. Through that which thought is, through the pure thought that lives in the soul when this soul does not turn its eye to the outer world of the senses, does not want to devote itself to the outer world of the senses with the mere intellect, through that which lives as pure, crystal-clear thought in the soul, Hegel tried to grow together in his own soul with that which is at work in the world. So that he says: When I think the thought purely, when I give myself to the life of thought, to the life of thought free of sensuality, in my own soul, then it is no longer my own arbitrary thoughts that live in the thoughts that live in the soul, but they are the thoughts that the divinity itself is in its soul. Then that which is light and illuminates the whole world ignites a little flame in one's own soul, and through this little flame the soul grows intellectually together with the world spirit. The soul rests in the world thought. In the German way, there is a striving for that which can be called mystical, but not a mysticism that revels and wants to revel in dark, confused feelings, but a mysticism that, while emotionally striving for what all mysticism strives for - a living together of one's own soul with the secrets of the world - does so on the basis of crystal-clear thinking.

And this, in turn, is something characteristic of the German character: that the highest is striven for in all-spiritual clarity, not in confused, chaotic feelings. This is the world view that is in the background and from which it has also grown – from the same mother soil – from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other great works of art and literature of that time have grown, they too have grown from this same soil, as it were. And Goethe basically stands on this same soil.

And Goethe says – in contrast to Kant – in a small, beautiful essay on “Contemplative Judgment,” he expresses how he strives for a knowledge that has indeed resounded within the soul, but which is an immediate revelation of that which is to develop out of it in the world. The soul does not limit itself to merely looking at the external world of the senses and judging it; but when the soul withdraws into itself, then something should awaken in this soul, so that the judging power itself becomes a contemplation - so that one learns to see spiritually.

Goethe speaks of spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, which look directly into the spiritual, just as the physical eyes and ears look directly into the physical world. This permeates the Goethean soul.

And Fichte could rightly say when he published his seemingly quite abstract trains of thought in 1794, he could write to Goethe:

[“Philosophy has not yet reached its goal, as the results of reflective abstraction do not yet nestle against the purest spirituality of feeling. I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative of the latter at the present level of humanity. Philosophy rightly turns to you. Your feeling is the same touchstone.”]

There is a close harmony between what has emerged as the greatest, also in a poetic sense, from German intellectual life, and what lives in the background as a world view. Even if, in the period that followed, simply because the height of the outlook was simply astounding, something else came to the surface within the development of German thought than a pure continuation of the powerful thoughts of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, these thoughts are, after all, what lies at the depths of the German essence, what will continue to develop, has also continued to develop, as we shall see shortly, and what must lead to the most beautiful blossoms and fruits of the German essence.

When we call to mind the spirits of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, we see that they reveal from three different sides what can be gained from a different kind of dialogue with the German national spirit. But behind them, as if invisible, is the German national spirit itself. And one expresses more than a mere image when one says: like a shade of the German national spirit itself, what comes to the surface through Fichte, Schelling and Hegel is like a shade of that which the German national spirit itself expresses. And behind that, one senses what passes through the currents of German intellectual life as an even more powerful wave.

Hence the peculiar phenomenon can occur that the great minds of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were followed by lesser minds, who were less talented and who, in a certain way, sought to present that which had passed through German intellectual development as an aspiration through the German intellectual development in an even more beautiful, even brighter light.

It is indeed a remarkable phenomenon, is it not, that minds that were less talented than these greats had more opportunities in later times, precisely because the German national spirit also stood behind the greats, which could then continue to work through the following, who already had the inspiration of the preceding ones. We see one such in the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Hermann Immanuel Fichte.

Immanuel Hermann Fichte says it outright: that which the senses can see of man, which the mind, bound to the brain, can recognize of man, but can recognize through science, that is merely the outside of man; that contains only the powers that hold man together more for earthly things. But in this physical human being, according to Immanuel Hermann Fichte's view, there lives an etheric human being who permeates this physical human being and who is just as connected in his powers with the eternal world forces as the powers that live in the physical human being are connected to the actually perishable powers of the earth.

What has been described here in these lectures over the years as the spiritual background of man, as the etheric human being, is laughed at by the current, but even within Germany , because it is influenced by foreign countries —, this etheric man has also been pointed out here in this city in lectures over the years, again and again.

But we see an even higher, even more magnificent pointer to what Fichte saw in the human soul as a mere potential force, but which can be drawn out so that these eternal forces weave and live more and more. We see this even more clearly, even more magnificently, in an almost completely forgotten spirit, Troxler: Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler. Who still knows him? But he stands on the shoulders of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel! And he delves even deeper into the spiritual background of the world than his predecessors, who were far greater in terms of intellectual gifts than he was. He was simply able to receive the stimulus from them.

What do we see in this Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler? We see in this Troxler how he definitely points out that when a person develops their soul, when a person brings out of their soul that which cannot be there for the outer life of the senses, then spirit is found in the human soul, that which Troxler calls on the one hand the “supernatural spirit”. And by this he means that if a person develops what lies dormant in his soul, he is then in a position to have nothing in his soul life when he turns his senses away from the outer world, but that an awakening can take place that goes beyond the senses – a supersensible spirit, a spirit that sees spiritual processes in the world as the senses see sensual processes and beings: a supersensible spirit. Even those who, as idealists, as abstract idealists, want to grasp the world through ideas and concepts will admit this.

But Troxler goes further. He not only speaks of the supersensible spirit, but also of the 'super-spiritual sense'. What is super-spiritual sense?

When this spirit, which looks at the world, is able to speak not only of concepts, not only of ideas, but when it can describe actual concrete entities, which it can describe as one describes an individual animal, so that one ascends to a world of higher beings that cannot be seen with the ordinary s , but which the “super-spiritual sense” can see - something that, again, popular science can easily laugh at, but which, as an energetic striving in this faded, forgotten tone, of which I will now speak to you, comes to us in such a wonderful way within the development of German thought.

It becomes even more wonderful when we see the following in Troxler. Troxler says: When the human being brings forth the most beautiful thing that can live in his soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body; when he brings forth the most beautiful thing from his soul, the most beautiful thing in the soul that is bound to the body – when the soul becomes cosmic and is confronted with the world as a cosmic soul, then it develops in faith, in love, in hope. But faith, love, hope, for Troxler they are what outwardly reveals itself as the flower of earthly life, but only for this earthly life. Behind faith, behind the power of faith, which belongs to the soul insofar as the soul lives in some way, behind this power of faith, a higher power lives in the soul; the supersensible hearing, says Troxler. And faith is only the outer manifestation of a supersensible hearing, through which one can hear, as the sensory ear hears the sensory tones, the spiritual tones of the spiritual world, the spiritual language of the spiritual world , in a sense the soul in its world, because such a spiritual hearing takes place and because the soul lives in the body between birth and death, this spiritual hearing takes on the form of faith in the physical embodiment. This faith is the external revelation for the spiritual hearing.

Love, this most beautiful, this most glorious flower of the soul's life within the body, is the outer revelation for the spiritual seeker of what he calls spiritual sensing, spiritual feeling. Just as one physically reaches out to touch material things, so behind the power of love lies another power, the purely spiritual power, through which the soul can extend its spiritual feelers to sense what lives as a concrete spiritual being in the spiritual world.

In 1835, the beautiful lectures were published in which Troxler speaks so much about the spiritual-soul person who stands behind the believing, loving, hoping person. And behind what is the power of hope, the power of confidence, lies, in the soul, what Troxler now calls: spiritual vision, spiritual seeing.

When the soul enters the body, it transforms spiritual hearing into faith, spiritual feeling into the power of love, and spiritual vision into the power of hope.

And when the soul passes through death, that which was in its power of faith in the body between birth and death is transformed into spiritual ears; that which was in its power of light is transformed into spiritual touch; that which was in its power of hope is transformed into spiritual vision, into seeing the spiritual world.

Thus Troxler speaks of “sensitive thoughts” - where thoughts do not pass ordinary judgments on the outer world, but where thoughts are inwardly so seized, so vividly seized, that through thoughts the spiritual world is directly grasped. And he speaks of “intelligent feelings,” where the soul does not judge through the intellectual power of mere intellectual science, as Schelling once expressed himself - that is strong, of course, but great people have the faults of their virtues - , but where the soul really judges in such a way that it lives with its thoughts together with the outer world, as it otherwise only lives with the feelings, but in clarity; Troxler speaks of “intelligent feeling”. Truly, this forgotten tone of the German world view, of the development of German thought, is wonderful. It is not necessary to be offended by the fact that this wonderful, faded tone has not continued to live externally visible; that does not matter, esteemed attendees: The important thing is that it is there and that, although it has not become outwardly visible, it nevertheless lives on in what Germanness strives for and hopes for in the world, and that it will revive again in the midst of even this materialistic science; and that the world position of the German people is precisely in the spiritual realm: to bring man and his soul to the spirit, as it lies in the sense of this faded, forgotten sound - only externally forgotten sound - of the German development of thought.

Troxler quotes a beautiful sentence from his book in which he describes how he now conceives of the ethereal human being, the human being who is bound to eternal forces within the physical human being, who is bound to temporal power. Troxler says:

"In the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which for them was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire inner spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the outer one on his spirit body; Lavater also writes and thinks in the same way; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about Bonnert's under-skirt and Platner's soul-laced bodice Platner's soul-string-bodice, which are supposed to be hidden in the coarser body-coat and martyr's robe, we still hear him asking, “What was the point of and where did these extraordinary abilities and desires come from, which, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cut our earthy shell? ... In the stony limbs”

of man

“grow and mature in a way that is unknown to us.” “We could

continue to

"we could cite a myriad similar ways of thinking and poetizing, which in the end are only different views and conceptions in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.

That is a tone of the development of German thought that has faded away, but has not ceased to have an effect, and it is a great, powerful tone! If the German people today have the task of securing their place in the world through external forces, then what must be fought for today through the weapons is only the other side of the same essence, hidden in the depths of the German soul, which, through its versatility, could ascend to these peaks of thought life. - And Troxler says beautifully elsewhere:

"If it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... reveals itself in every anthroposophy, it is nevertheless undeniable that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of the human being must not be confused with either what it posits as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it juxtaposes as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

Troxler is clear about the fact that there is a higher human being within each of us. And when this inner human being begins to work, then first comes not anthroposophy – anthropology, human science, first comes when the outer mind observes the human being, anthropology comes first, Troxler says. When the inner human being comes to the fore and gets to know the higher forces, the spiritual forces, the spiritual feelings, then anthroposophy comes. One therefore has the right to call a science that has grown out of the innermost striving of a German national being anthroposophy.

And this must be stated, esteemed attendees, because it must not remain merely a forgotten and forgotten sound, but must become part of German national life again. And we shall see – perhaps official science will not accept the things, but it is only a prejudice that these things are too difficult to understand – a time will come when it will be recognized that the simplest person – it is precisely the simple souls that show this when they are approached in the right way – will understand that these things can be incorporated into the education of every child! Then this education of children will also be able to create from the very depths of German national character.

This must be mentioned because one truly does not need national narrow-mindedness to characterize the world position of the German and his task in the overall development of humanity, because one does not need to lapse into a tone like that of some Frenchmen, like for example, leading world-view thinkers like Boutroux and Bergson – yes, it is still called Bergson, although it does not sound very French – like Boutroux and Bergson, who are still talking such nonsense to their French. You wouldn't believe it! For example, this striving of the German to grow together with what lives outside in things, what the soul wants to grasp within itself. Boutroux, who traveled around here in Germany before the war, who was also allowed to teach at German universities, was allowed to preach, who spoke of the fraternization of the German and the Latin, Romanic being, now, for example, he speaks of the fact that he says: the French have no expression for “Schadenfreude”. The Germans are characterized precisely by the fact that they have the word 'Schadenfreude', they have such a word; so they have Schadenfreude. On the other hand, they have no word for 'generosity', only the French have that. So the Germans don't have that, generosity, only the French have that. He also indoctrinates his French with other things. For example, the French are very easily inclined to treat everything with a certain wit.

In this regard, it is perhaps not unnecessary to read the judgment on the French character. One could still have a small spark of faith that I also wanted to speak out of narrow-minded nationality here. Therefore, I will give another judgment - a judgment on the French character, French intellectual endeavor:

“Thirst for truth”

is the verdict of this judgment.

"is not a French passion. Appearance, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the center of gravity of the Frenchman is not within himself, but in the others, in the great multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it suffocates in the soul the courage to resist, the power of judgment, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

Everywhere just the opposite of what we have seen today. ... it suffocates everything!

So I am not speaking; not even a German speaks, but Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss Amiel, who as a French Swiss wrote these words on January 22, 1875. I have chosen the words of this man, this man of spirit who seeks to understand life, Henri Frederic Amiel, because he is actually a French Swiss who has only just become acquainted with German life, and can therefore compare it with what he knows within the French character. The Frenchman cannot easily understand this desire to grow together with the innermost essence that lives and moves in the most outwardly sensual thing!

That is why Boutroux gives a speech in which he ridicules the German who wants to grasp everything from within: “The Frenchman,” he says, “who wants to get to know a camel goes to the menagerie, where he gets to know the camel. The Englishman goes on a journey and seeks out the camel in its environment; yes, he travels to distant countries on earth to get to know the camel where it lives. The German withdraws into his study, goes neither to the menagerie nor on a journey to distant lands, but rather deals with the camel in himself, as he can recognize it from his own soul.

From this Boutroux draws the conclusion – yes, you can present this to your French people today, present it to your Parisians – from this Boutroux draws the conclusion: the Germans imagine that what they experience in their own soul is the delusion that this is the whole world. That is the one that really matters. And that is why, says Boutroux to his French audience, the Germans also imagine that they are something in the world. And then they don't look at the world any further; rather, what they imagine they are is directly divine-spiritual. And to explain that, he then made this joke.

The French are, as everyone knows, a witty people; but the joke that Boutroux made was by Heinrich Heine! And so it is not even a joke. It was born on French soil, on French intellectual soil.

Within German intellectual life, what I have called a forgotten tone is by no means something that perhaps only presents itself on the heights of philosophical endeavor, but it lives, it really lives. Isn't it, for example, truly wonderful? In 1856, a book was published, a small pamphlet by a simple pastor in Waldeck, in the countryside, in Sachsenberg, in the Principality of Waldeck. His name was Rocholl, and he was a simple parish priest; the little booklet is called “Contributions to the History of German Theosophy,” which shows, I would like to say, how its author is completely immersed in a view of the world as it reveals itself to the spirit. Even if some of it may not appear so simple as true in this little book today, but only fantastic, it does not matter whether one becomes a follower or an opponent, but it does matter that one sees how what man's striving is towards the spirit of the world can really reveal itself everywhere, especially within German intellectual life.

If I had time, I could give you hundreds and hundreds of examples that show how, in our time – but that was not so long ago, a decade ago – a foreign essence, which also has taken over German intellectual life, [how] in an incredible way, only what can live within German intellectual life has been forgotten at first by foreign influence; for it is precisely because of this that the German people will have to take their great position in the eternity of time development.

And that is what now has to defend itself in the small, relatively small area of Central Europe against the immense superiority of the rest of the world. For how will history speak one day about what is happening in the present? One can say in simple words how history will speak: 777 million people against a maximum of 150 million people in Central Europe! That is what history will have to record: 777 million people encircling 150 million people, defaming and slandering the spiritual life of these people.

They need not be envious of the size of the earth's surface, these 777 million people! Because they have 68 million square kilometers, the 777 million people, compared to 6 million square kilometers that the Central European powers have - 6 million square kilometers that are surrounded! History will have to record that. And history will say that these 777 million people, with 68 million square kilometers, did not want to conquer the 150 million people on the 6 million square kilometers by bravery alone, but by starving them.

The German may feel what is living in his national soul and what significance this has in the overall development of humanity. The German may live with calmness and confidence towards the future, precisely because he is aware of the forces that live in the depths of his national soul. They have always lived on; for what matters is not whether they have become famous, but that which is not known externally is revealed internally as the significant, the great.

It is often difficult to bring out what is actually German spirit in contrast to foreign spirit. For example – I may mention this because I myself have been in the middle of a struggle of more than thirty years in relation to this: Goethe, in his German scientific consciousness, turned against Newton's mechanistic optics, which is still not at all understood today. But physics is so inundated with Western mechanism that today every physicist still sees nonsense in Goethe's optics. And for thirty-three years I have endeavored to establish what may be called: Goethe's right over Newton. It will take some time before people realize the situation regarding the chapter 'Goethe's Right over Newton'.

Despite everything overwhelmingly self-evident that physics has presented to Goethe, there have always been individual German minds who knew whose side the law was on in this field! From Grävell, who wrote the beautiful book “Goethe Right Against Newton,” to what I myself have written about Goethe's physical-optical studies, about his color studies, one is dealing with something that, in terms of truly entering into German intellectual life, is still reserved for the future. But that future will come.

In the 1850s, from the same stream of the faded, forgotten sound of German intellectual life, a man emerged: Planck, Christian Karl Planck. He wrote beautiful writings, wanting to see nature everywhere as itself imbued with spirit, forming the subsoil for the spirit, beautiful writings: “Truth and shallowness of Darwinism”, “Foundations for a science of nature”, “Spirit and Nature” - wonderful writings, entirely arising from - as he was aware, as he himself was aware - from the very deepest power of German thinking, German feeling, German scientific ethos, he describes the German essence. I can only emphasize one example: when we speak of the Earth today, how does external science speak of the Earth, how does a geologist speak of the Earth? The Earth is a material sphere, and it is only mentioned in passing that man also walks on it. For Planck, it is not. For Planck, the Earth is that to which all living beings belong. Christian Karl Planck seeks to develop a conception of the Earth that corresponds to what someone looking at the Earth from the outside would see, with all that it spiritually carries. It is not just an organism, but a spiritual being, and man belongs to the Earth as part of it. And to merely imagine the earth in terms of pure physical geology, that would be for Planck's consideration as if one would only look at the tree in relation to the trunk, at a lignified trunk, and does not see that what blossoms and fruits are, is connected with the innermost nature of the tree. Just as these belong to the tree, blossoms and fruits, according to its essence, so when one has the earth before one, one cannot be satisfied with a mere geological view. And so it is with Planck.

And so, in Planck's view, something comes into play that he wanted to use to have a powerful effect on his contemporaries, but was unable to do so because they were not yet mature enough to absorb this view so directly. He wanted to say: By living with nature, one lives not only with external nature, but together with the spirit of nature. That is what he wanted, that the religious consciousness of humanity should be included in the moral, in the sense of right and wrong. The time in which Christian Karl Planck lived has not yet had the opportunity to see things in perspective. It has ultimately branded him as an “overly nervous person”. Such a thinker can often stand alone, not only in life. So that his last written work was published after his death by his dear friend Köstlin, under the title Testament of a German.

All that I have mentioned led to Planck being spoken of as a hyperexcitable person; so that those who today only have a vague idea of the matter might speak of a megalomaniac. But he is a person who lives deeply and consciously within the forgotten tone of German intellectual life – so consciously that in 1864 Karl Christian Planck was able to write about what he wanted to seek as a German scientist:

“The power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

of the author

“He is fully aware of the power of deeply rooted prejudices from the previous view of his”

sure that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.”

Now he continues:

“What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly anticipated will finally be fulfilled in our nation in the maturity of the times. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which has been visited with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parsifal).”

written in 1864, before Wagner's Parsifal!

“Finally, in the power of her unceasing striving, she attains the highest; she looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what the poem has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by her hero, is, conversely, fulfilled and made real purely naturally in the lasting knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.”

Thus Planck in 1864, with the awareness that he could bring forth a spiritual-scientific discipline out of the German tradition.

Now, many people will say, won't they, “Well, a poor philosopher who dreams in his mind doesn't know anything that actually lives in reality!” In addition, there are the practical people who know how to handle and judge practical life in the right way. When such philosophers come with their ideals: But what do they know of reality? Yes, I would like to give you an example of this Christian Karl Planck. The man died in 1880; in 1881 his Testament of a German was published – in 1881, ten years after the Franco-Prussian War had changed some of the German conditions. Let us note this point in time. How many Germans have since then believed different things about European affairs, have imagined what would come, statesmen and non-statesmen, diplomats and non-diplomats, what have they all imagined the “practical” people, who know how things are going out there! What have they all imagined! How they smiled at the idealists who, from their dream world of ideas, formed an idea about the currents in the world! Well, the “impractical idealist” Christian Karl Planck wrote in 1880 at the latest – because he died in 1881 – he wrote in his “Testament of a German”: A great European war will come!

"No political wisdom, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For more powerful than all wisdom is the nature of circumstances; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because it could not be given a free hand in everything, but rather a certain goal had to be set. And if it should come to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst.

And now I ask you to listen carefully to these words:

“And should it ever come to a fight, then, however much we may have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not find us on our side, but as in the East, we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South; hostile national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst on all sides.”

This is the “dreaming philosopher” of 1881, who says to people: You will be able to do whatever you want, I no longer believe it today - he couldn't say it then, but there is something in his words that clever people still [believed] in 1913, 1914, that for example Italy would be on the side of the Central Powers. The “impractical man”, the “impractical philosopher” Christian Karl Planck no longer believed it as early as 1880! You just have to get to know the true situation of life as it is today, the true situation of life that rests in the depths of the spiritual being, the whole situation as it is today was written down by a philosopher, by a German philosopher in 1880. It can be read by everyone! In 1912, the second edition of this “Testament of a German” was published by a publishing house that, at that time, had much more to do in its printing work than to deal with the “Testament of a German.” Rather, it preferred to focus on the numerous translations of the works of the French philosopher Bergson in Germany, as they say, popularized, that Bergson - I have in my “Riddles of Philosophy in their History as an Outline” also referred to Bergson in the new edition of the work “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century”. But however difficult it may have been, or in fact still is, to realize that, although I pointed out the full significance of Christian Karl Planck as early as 1900 in my “Welt- und Lebens-Anschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century) – supplemented by a prehistory of Western philosophy and continued up to the present – and conscious of the fact that a German philosopher can speak in this way, it did not even have the effect that I was able to point out in the past – written down even before the war – what, for example, is accepted as a particularly significant idea by those ignorant of Bergson, such as the famous sentence “Duration endures.” You could see that as saying nothing more than ‘Duration endures.’ It would be the same as saying ‘The heart beats.’ But what could be seen as something different was that in Bergson's work, the next thing that man has to consider in terms of a world view [...] is that he starts from man and puts the human being at the forefront, and the other beings as it were fall away from human development - that first the human being is there, then something arises from the realm of minerals, plants, animals, which some will consider madness, but which is the actual real world view - one admired that and pointed it out. One might say that in this case, because there is no full diversity among those who have so enthusiastically turned to Bergson's philosophy and regurgitate many things. One was somewhat saddened when Bergson concluded his speech by saying that during the war the Germans had sunk so low – and I already mentioned this last year here that the Germans have come down so low from their heights, as they once had in Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, [as they had it] in a Goethe -, [that the Germans] have come down so low now that everything is mechanistic with them, [that they] want to let everything merge into machines and the industrial. The good Bergson probably believed that the Germans would declaim a Novalis, a Goethe or a Schiller for them.

But I was able to show you at the time – this happened before the war – that what had been so admired as a weaker thought in Bergson, that in the German Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – but in the works that appeared as early as the 1870s, especially in 1882 —, [that this] appeared and was advocated in a much more powerful way by the German Preuss!

There we see how Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss, in his 1882 work “Geist und Stoff” (Mind and Matter), cites this entire forgotten and forgotten pursuit and current of German intellectual life as an example, and he very energetically points out that one must start from the human being. And only a view of nature that is not at all aware of the real connection between the human spirit and the spiritual can start from the lower beings and develop everything up to the human being, while what is otherwise present is seen as splintering. Preuss says:

"It may therefore be time to establish a [different] doctrine of the origin of the organic species, which is not only based on one-sidedly established propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time also laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypothetization and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the species concept according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist would have to start with himself as a human being, in order to gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking.

It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes and every other form that emerged alongside him borrowed its features from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos...

When its germs had emerged, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary strength to produce further human germs. What emerged was animal or plant...

Did Bergson not know whether he had actually known Preuss, Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss? Which would be just as big a mistake as if he had known him and simply written what Preuss's property is without pointing out that it is from Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss.

It would be conceivable for him – the latter as well; for it has now become sufficiently well known that Bergson – who accuses the Germans of a mechanical world view in order to prove how they have degenerated in the present day – has himself taken a very strange path. It is sufficiently well known that Bergson copied entire pages of his books – Bergson's books! from Schelling, Schopenhauer and other German philosophers, simply copied – not a mechanical way of writing his books! And to copy pages and pages from the personalities of a people, a people that is so reviled and slandered! You simply copy, and thereby gain great fame and praise.

These are things that are so easily forgotten in the present. Some people already see how things are! For example, Henry Frederic Amiel once said:

"Perhaps only the Germanic mind has the need to think for itself, to search for the origin of things. The Slavs and Romans are more strongly under the sway of convention, tradition, custom, prejudice, fashion; and when they break through them, it is as a revolt and rebellion, without therefore recognizing from within themselves the law immanent in things, their true standard, not the written, arbitrary one that has been read into them. The German wants to penetrate to nature; the Frenchman, the Spaniard, the Russian stop at convention. The root of the problem lies in the question of the connection between God and the world: immanent or transcendent - it decides from stage to stage the significance of everything else. If the spirit is outside of things, then it does not need to adapt to them. If the spirit lacks truth, then it must be given to it by the prophets. Then thought despises nature and is subject to the church, that is the Latin world."

Thus Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss, who wrote these words about the Germanic spirit and the French, Spanish and Russians in 1877, when he was staying in Ems.

Through such things, dear attendees, you get to know what actually lives in the six million square kilometers that are now not only being enclosed, but also vilified and defamed by the prominent personalities of those who live on the 68 million square kilometers.

But if we try to extract the essence, the most significant part of the individual national spirits as they now have to fight with each other, yes, we can truly say: if we look at the Italian national soul – I am sure there are many listeners here who know that I have been the war, not only to Germans but also to other European nations, so that they are not just caused by the mood of this war, these words, but are based on objective knowledge of the facts. If you look at the Italian people's soul, you can find a simple word to characterize it. The Italian turns to the world – of course I do not mean the individual, but insofar as he belongs to his people – the Italian turns to the world; but he says: this world must be such that I like it! Quite solely from this point of view – nationality is that.

The Frenchman also turns to the world. But he says: This world must think nothing but what I want, what I, in my French concepts, imagine the world to be. And if he encounters different thinking somewhere, then it must be subordinated. Woe betide if something exists that the Frenchman cannot understand from his Frenchness.

The Englishman, the Briton, thinks: Yes, the world is good too; the world, right, very good; but it must be made in such a way that it serves the Briton, that the Briton can assert his ego in this world above all else, and that it is otherwise arranged in such a way that it serves him. You can read about it in detail, especially in those who believed that they were creating from the depths of the English national soul - historians, philosophers - wherever you look, you can see it everywhere.

The German in his development of thought thinks: The world is there, and as I stand as a human being before the world, I want to develop my human soul so that it becomes the threefold image of the great world. That is the essence of German thinking and feeling.

The Russian, who thinks: the world as it is, is worth nothing at all; it must be replaced by another. And it is a matter of putting that world in the place of this world, in which the Russian person can flourish. That is the mood of the Russian people.

Henri Frederic Amiel, the Swiss Frenchman, once painted a strange picture of what it would be like if the Russian national character were to flood and dominate Europe - as it wanted, and as the entire Russian national current in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually portrayed it from its own impulses. Henri Frederic Amiel says:

“What terrible masters the Russians would be if they ever extended the power of their rule over the countries of the south!”

He names Russia as the country of the north, and includes France and Germany among the countries of the south.

"What they would bring us would be polar despotism, a tyranny the world has never known, silent as the fog, cutting as ice, rigid as iron, with the loveliness of falling snow and its cold splendor; slavery without return or relief. But probably they will gradually lose the virtues and vices of their semi-barbarism. The centuries will mature these sons of the north, and they will intervene differently than as a threat or discordant note in the harmony of nations...

In relation to Germany and Austria, the peoples allied with them, as we know, that time has not yet come. But just as the East, the Russian East, gradually learned to think about the European West in the course of the nineteenth century – what the European West is for it, which in the nineteenth century included not only Central Europe but also Western Europe, France and England – that which lies in the Russian people, incited by an incomprehension of the Western intellectual culture, especially also the German spiritual culture, has heated up to the point of megalomania, which has truly not only been counteracted in the “Testament of Peter the Great”, in the falsified or non-falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but has been counteracted in the whole developmental principle of leading personalities in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia.

You can read more about this in my booklet “Thoughts During the Time of the War. For Germans and Those Who Don't Hate Them”; it is currently out of print, but the second edition will be coming out soon. It is therefore not available at the moment because it is out of print.

It is a strange process. More and more, one sees in Russian literature, in the descriptions of Russian philosophers, a development of thought that says: everything that lives in the West, especially in German intellectual life, these thoughts that have emerged from Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and the others, are abstract thoughts that do not grasp the depths of what is happening. It is all decrepit; it is a world that must be done away with. And in its place must come the Russian world, the world that the Russian man will create. Kireyevsky is one of those who started with this way of thinking. In 1829, it was already a tone that had become dominant, then became political, and when the Russian steamroller was now to be sent over Europe. This Kireyevsky, who writes:

“The fate of every European state depends on the union of all the others; the fate of Russia depends on Russia alone. But the fate of Russia is decided in its formation: this is the condition and source of all goods. As soon as all these goods will be ours, we will share them with the rest of Europe, and we will repay all our debts to them a hundredfold.”

... 1829! So: all European goods, as soon as Russia extends over all of Europe. This is not only the political program, it is also the literary program, the artistic-aesthetic program, to possess all of Europe and then, out of good nature, to share as much as one sees fit - according to Kireyevsky.

But Russian intellectual life did not immediately embrace the West. As late as 1885, we find a book by Yushakov, who dreams, as is typical of deeply rooted Russian identity, of having to exert an influence in Asia first – a kind of Pan-Asianism. Yushakov constructs a curious theory: he says that there are peoples living over there in Asia who once had a wonderful spiritual and economic culture. They themselves – these Asian peoples – have in a wonderful but true legend of Ormuzd and Ahriman that which has arisen and developed within their lives. They call Ormuzd the good god; Ahriman was always the evil god. But the Iranian peoples, to which the Indians and the Persians also belong, have placed themselves in the service of Ormuzd. They have taken from the evil Ahriman that which opposed them, so to speak, that which Ahriman left to them, the evil Ahriman left to them, took from him. And in 1885, Yushakov looks particularly at the West, at the Western peoples of Europe, and especially at one Western European people: the English. How were they robbed of their gifts of the good Ormuzd by these English, these Asians! These English treated the Asian peoples in such a way, intervened with what could come out of their worldview. But what did they bring to these Asian peoples? - says Yushakov in his book “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”, 1885. These English came to the Asian peoples and thought that they were only there to dress in English clothes, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles.

Then he goes on to say: Now the Russians have to take charge of the cultural blessings. They will not take away from the Asians what Ormuzd has given them, but they will ally themselves with the poor people enslaved by Ahriman and share their Ormuzd with them, in order to work their way up with them and collect Ormuzd's goods anew in Asia. In their hearts, with the hearts of the Asian peoples, they will be - not I say this, but Jushakow. So it will be that they will go over from Russia, those from Russia who are the real future types of humanity from Russia, the farmer and the Cossack, the greatest bearers of the moral world order, the greatest bearers of selfless humanity. From the union of the peasant and the Cossack will come forth that which will make Asia happy again.

And then he, Yushakov, goes on to say, pointing again to England - 1885:

“England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula.”

So England's existence. And then he continues:

“I wish my fatherland”

my Russian fatherland

“nothing similar – I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as brilliant as it is sad.”

and has nothing to do with this terrible England. This was said by a Russian in 1885 about England, who longs for a state and is grateful that Russia is sufficiently far removed from what England brings upon the world.

In such things lie the reasons, not the logical ones, but perhaps the illogical ones, who will then experiment on the world, who will then take the place where the Russian people have treated relations with the Asians, which, in the opinion of these people, and which one would have to free from Ahriman again that the Russians did not initially ally themselves with the Asians to fight the evil Ahriman and destroy him with them, but that the Russians initially allied themselves with the evil Western peoples, with the evil English, to crush Europe. We need not descend into the [tone] into which so much has been descended today on the part of the opponents of Germanness [...], who for martial reasons have also become opponents of the German essence and national character. With the characterization of Christian Karl Planck given earlier, we can say:

"[...] the German mind has not in vain devoted its deepest and most intimate strength to this, [not in vain has even its poetry made the image of this indelible urge to understand itself and reality. That unbiased, purely objective and universal sense, by which it has become possible for the German alone to fully appreciate foreign education and nationality, and which gives him the genuinely human consecration in religious, moral and artistic respects, it also includes the knowledge of the general natural law of things, as soon as in the perfection of time] the mind has matured for it."

Therefore, we prefer to look at what, from a world-historical point of view, in terms of pure fact, the German spirit must strive towards. There we see something that existed long before the appearance of Christ on earth, in the form of spiritual striving in Asia. There they also tried to unite with the spirit that permeates and animates the world, the whole world, to attain a culture – for no culture can be attained otherwise. But how they tried to achieve this in Asia! By weakening, by extinguishing the I, by extinguishing the I as much as possible!

This world view must belong to the past, now that the Christ Impulse, the greatest impulse to have come to Earth, has entered into life on Earth, and given it true spirit and meaning. This world view of the Orient can no longer found a real spiritual view. There the I must not extinguish itself, but must strengthen and uplift itself, and through this elevation grow as I into the spiritual universe, into the spiritual universe.

Panasiatism has thus shown this Hinduism, whose height had been reached by extinguishing the ego. In more recent times, after the influence of the Christ Impulse, the realization of the self has been sought through knowledge, not by damping down the self, but by the self becoming aware of itself, experiencing itself, so that in its experiencing it has a sense of the world. The German receives this as his task; such a task was always present in the depths of the German people's striving for knowledge. And those who lived in Central Europe as Germans were united in such striving.

And finally, I would like to mention a few words from an Austrian German, an Austrian German who says of Austria, “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland,” to express in the 1860s - it is 1862 written in 1862 to express how a shared spirit unites what was later – it only happened after Robert Hamerling's death – was later welded together so firmly by external ties, as Central Europe now stands. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, Austria's greatest poet in the second half of the nineteenth century, summarized this in the words: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland.”

I, as a closer compatriot of Hamerling, I, who myself lived almost thirty years of my life in Austria among Austrian Germans and fought with them, I may point out precisely this seriousness of the German character within the German-Austrian. Robert Hamerling expresses this trait, this trait in world history, beautifully in his “Germanenzug” (The German March) – as I said, written in 1862 – where he describes, as in a dream, how the ancient Germanic peoples migrate from Asia to Europe – and in them, as in a germ, the later Germans – how they seek out their new European homeland. It is beautifully described: the moon rises; it is evening. The Teutons lie down to sleep, these future Teutons migrating to Europe; only one is awake: the blond Teut. The genius of Teutonia, the genius of the later, the future Germany, speaks to Teut. He speaks of the spirituality that must rest in striving, which is German striving. Then Hamerling says, that is, he lets the spirit of the German people say it to the blond Teut:

"To whom will the word break out of the depths of the soul one day
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly into the strings So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Whom does his urge, his foreboding lead so high, so deep?
Who grasps the near and the far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

This is the very deepest knowledge that can be derived from the tone of the partially forgotten tones quoted today from the development of German thought. It is a tone that can never be anti-religious, the tone that will also grasp all knowledge in man in such a way that this knowledge is offered as if on the altar to the world spirit, to the spiritual, real world. that tone of which Jakob Böhme, the “Philosophus teutonicus” - as he was also called - has spoken in the beautiful words that suggest the true popular character of German knowledge:

Wenn du, O Mensch, die Tiefe

he means the depth of heaven, the blue

and the stars and the earth,
so you walk in God,
so you strive in God,
so you die in God,
and so you will be buried in God.

These are deep, German words.

And Robert Hamerling, Austria's great German, who knew how to empathize with even the smallest German being – just by the way, I mention that in 1884 a statue of Strasbourg was erected in Paris and the German flag in front of the statue was burned, that went so close to Hamerling's heart that he wrote the words:

"May you believe in revenge
And in the victor's wreath in the future

he wrote to the French

Hope not to rob back
A clod of German land!
You may rave like ravens<
Around an Alsatian statue,
Strasbourg you will not have,
Strasbourg nevermore!

So it sounded from Austria to the French as they danced around the Strasbourg statue and burned the German flag.

But Hamerling also knew how to remind people of the fact that the German spirit is the continuation of the greatest that once appeared in the world spirit in the ancient Orient, from which the ancient ancestors of the Germanic peoples emerged; he knew how to point out that, just in a pre-Christian manner, by a lowering of the ego, man wanted to merge with the universe, but how this still lives, is raised to a higher level, lives in the German character, which has to bring the greatest that the world once created in the Orient to this world in a new form, as befits Christian development.

This connection with the whole development of humanity comes to Robert Hamerling's mind – also in his “Germanenzug” – this basic trait that everything the German recognizes should grasp his deepest being, become one with his whole personality; but that at the same time it is something that is a world-historical mission and ties in with the highest aspirations of humanity in the past. Therefore, Robert Hamerling again lets the spirit of the German people speak:

"But however proudly you may strive,
high above other swarms,
you will always keep the ancient, sacred fire:
the dream-filled, drunken drunkenness of God,
drunken with God, the blissful warmth of the heart
of the ancient Asian homeland.
This holy ray, a temple fire
of humanity, free of smoke, with a pure flame
will glow in your chest and soul
and remain a pilot at your helm!
You strive only because you love: your most daring thought

We may and must actually immerse ourselves today in that which can bring us to the realization of how truly the roots of a high spiritual striving live, which must have an effect on the future for the benefit of humanity. This spirituality lives in the most beautiful expressions of German intellectual life in the 6 million square kilometers that are threatened today by people who live in 68 million square kilometers.

And one does not need to speak out of national sentiment, but out of objective knowledge, when one speaks of the world vocation of the German people, which cannot be overcome by those who today - not understanding it - not only revile but slander it.

We Germans may look back to that which, in Germany's greatest spiritual period, has incorporated itself into the development of German thought and what lives in it and will flourish again. And we may look to what has presented itself to us in such a way that we look to it as to roots and germs. And by recognizing the rooting and germinating power of that which has passed, we have faith in the continued effect of this past. And in this belief in what we have to cherish and cultivate not only for the sake of the German people, but for the sake of humanity, we may love these roots of German national identity and cherish the hope and confidence that what has been recognized as germs and roots will bear blossoms and fruit in the future! Despite everything and everyone who rises up against it today, we are imbued with the power that expresses itself on the one hand in German intellectual life and that today has to undergo such trials in relation to our external daily life. We look to the future and trust this power, which must carry the German essence in the future as it has carried it in the past.

From this, what was meant by these arguments can be briefly summarized, according to feeling. Again, in the words of Robert Hamerling, looking at what is being said against us, the Germans, and against our name, today, looking at what the German essence must be in the development of humanity, what I wanted to express today out of true, discerning feeling can be summarized in four short lines by Robert Hamerling, an Austrian German who sensed how strongly what is today welded together by the same, by such great and such sorrowful and such trials and tribulations rich time conditions in Central Europe belongs together. He, Robert Hamerling, who felt this, he coined the beautiful words with which we want to conclude this reflection:

“And when ever the German name
sees a hostile day,
From ocean to ocean
will find its way the German mind.”

Esteemed Attendees!

As I did last winter, I would like to take the liberty of speaking this evening about a topic that is intimately connected with the development of German intellectual life, and thus deviate from what I have been privileged to do for many years, both in this city and in other cities in Germany: to speak about a narrower topic of the spiritual-scientific worldview.

This deviation is certainly close to the human heart due to the great, momentous events in which the German people find themselves, due to the facts unfolding around us, which on the one hand represent a severe test, but on the other hand must become the source of many significant hopes for the future.

And besides, I don't think there's any need to speak out of a narrow-minded nationalistic spirit when one ties the great periods of German intellectual life to the spiritual-scientific considerations that have been cultivated here over the years. For it is my conviction, not based on some obscure feelings, but, as I humbly believe, on the recognition of the facts, that precisely what I have often shown here as a striving into the spiritual worlds is contained in its most significant germ in the most diverse endeavors of German intellectual life, in the flowering of this intellectual life.

If spiritual science wants to be science, then one could very easily – I would say – from a certain point of view, a matter of course, a matter of course that is superficial after all – one could very easily say: science must be international. And wanting to tie science to certain popular endeavors is unacceptable from the outset. So many people say. And it is so obvious when one speaks in this way that the matter of course already becomes superficial.

I will just say about this comparatively: for example, the moon is international, dear attendees, the same moon for all peoples; but what the different peoples have to say about the moon, from the soul, arises from their different dispositions. Now one could indeed say: that may apply to poetry, to literature. But if science is to become a worldview, then what science has to say must be objective, must be exactly the same for all people. But whether science penetrates deeply into the sources of existence or remains on the surface – to name only these two extremes – depends on the different dispositions of the individual peoples, on the impulses that the individual peoples have to give to humanity with what science is to them. And it is of the greatest importance that these impulses, these forces [...] arise out of the inherent qualities of the peoples! This is what is important for the overall development of humanity, not what can be common to all in the abstract sense!

To [hint] at what is actually meant here, one need only recall a saying of Goethe. When Goethe, on his great journey to the south, had not only viewed and explained the most diverse works of art in his own way, but had also studied natural facts and natural beings, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: After all that I have seen of knowledge and nature, I would most like to make a trip to India - not to discover something new, but to see what has already been discovered in my way.

The way of looking at what one is able to bring from the soul to the world phenomena and the world weaving is what matters. And that is intimately connected with the folk souls. And when one speaks, most honored attendees, of the German national soul and its effect within the German nation, it seems immediately obvious to anyone familiar with the course of German development that the summit reached by the German national soul at the end of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, must be reached. There, a worldview background was created, a background of knowledge, by minds such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which, within European intellectual life, became a second [...] flowering period after the Greek one, through Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and others who belong to them. Behind Goethe's “Faust” and the other great poetic and artistic achievements stands what German world view has created in the field of thought development in those days.

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, appears first before the souls of today in such a way that it seems so obvious to consider German minds in connection with the development of their nationality. Johann Gottlieb Fichte appears first as the great orator in the “Speeches to the German Nation”. If you consider what was achieved by those speeches, each word of which must still ignite in the German soul today, for the simple reason that in one of the most difficult times in German history, every mind was invigorated and strengthened by these words, and how they actually shed light on the possibilities for German development. And because these speeches arose from the most intimate feeling for German national character and from the most intimate kinship with the innermost forces of the German national soul.

But how easily one would say: Yes, what Fichte spoke to the German people in his enthusiastic, fiery speech back then will easily find its way into every soul. But if you start from what Fichte's world view actually is, then you come to something difficult to understand. Oh, honored attendees, if only this prejudice of the difficulty of understanding such creations as Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's could fade away: Never could a personality like Johann Gottlieb Fichte have delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” if one had not experienced that world view in one's soul, which only appears difficult to understand and which he felt, always felt, had arisen in him as if through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. For that is how he felt about what he had to say!

Now, spiritual science, esteemed attendees, as it is meant here, is based entirely on the premise that there are dormant forces in the human soul that are not used in ordinary external life, not even when one intelligently observes this , nor in ordinary external science; but which must first be developed, [which must first] be brought out of the depths of the human mind, and developed into what can be used for Goethe's expressions: spiritual eyes, spiritual ears - through which one can look into, listen to, the spiritual world - spiritual eyes, spiritual ears!

Spiritual science assumes that such a real inner sense is not bound to a physical organ, but slumbers purely in the soul, but can be brought out of it. Spiritual science assumes that such a sense is able to perceive a real spiritual world that is around us and to which we belong with our souls and with our spirit, just as we belong to the physical-sensual world with our body. Only that when we look at the physical-sensual world with the organ of the physical-sensual body, it presents itself to us, which dies with our death. Whereas when the inner sense of man proceeds just as scientifically as the other senses or external science and through the external mind bound to the brain or nervous system, when the inner sense proceeds in this way with regard to the spiritual world, then man comes to the observation of those forces that are within him and that permeate the entire external world. [He comes to the observation] of those forces that represent for him the eternal, the immortal forces of the soul that go through births and deaths.

To awaken such an inner sense, such inner forces, was Fichte's, Johann Gottlieb Fichte's, unchanging striving for a worldview. He strove for such a sense. He could only do so because this unique quality - we will see later why I say “unique” - of the German national spirit lived in him, this will to acquire in one's own soul, through an elevation, through a strengthening, through a development of the soul forces, something that cannot be acquired if these soul forces are not strengthened , but which is one and the same – not a vague fantasy is meant here – which is one and the same as that which, as spirit, as real, objective spirit, is as objective as the external natural objects are objective for the senses, which, as spirit, permeates and interweaves the world.

For Fichte, the human self was able to live into this human self if the human self was able to grasp itself inwardly in such a way as to grasp what pulses and weaves and lives through the world as its secrets.

Fichte believed that when a person comes to experience this inner self, this center of the soul, in the right sense, in a truly direct and powerful way within themselves, then not only does he live as an individual human being in such inner experience, but then the life of the world, the world spirit, that which is the creative spirit in all things of existence, lives in this inner experience.

This desire to recognize with the innermost sense organ is what is so characteristic of Fichte. And it is characteristic of him because it was in his very nature. It was in his nature to grow together with that which made an impression on him. He did not just hear something, he did not just see something, but when he heard something, when he saw something, he put the whole feeling and life of his personality into what he heard, into what he saw. He was so immersed in what he perceived that he felt creatively immersed in it – recreating the world, recreating nature, recreating every other human life. This was present in him as a personal disposition.

To illustrate this, I would like to mention a few episodes from the life of Fichte, or rather Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He was a small boy of seven years old, a simple weaver's son; there he stood once at the edge of a stream that flowed past his father's small house. He had thrown a book into the stream! And he stood there crying, watching the book float away. Then his father came along and saw what had happened. The fact was that last Christmas his father had given the boy, who was precocious and did well at school, the “Horned Siegfried” as a present. On the boy, on the seven-year-old boy in the blue farmer's coat, the child of simple people, the mighty, the primeval Germanic deed of “Horned Siegfried” made such a powerful impression that he became completely absorbed in it. And then it turned out that one had to say: Although he used to be so diligent, conscientious and dutiful at school, he is now less attentive. He was reproached for this.

What did the seven-year-old boy do? He said to himself: “I like ‘Siegfried’, I love him, I am attached to him; but he must not take my duties from me, so I throw him into the water.

And again: He had turned nine years old. The neighboring landowner had come to the village where Fichte lived to hear the pastor's sermon there on a Sunday. He had arrived too late to hear the sermon. Then someone came up with a solution. They said: “There is a boy of nine who is so good at listening to sermons that he might be able to repeat the most important parts by heart.” And so they brought in nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He stood there awkwardly in his blue peasant's smock. Once the ice was broken, so to speak, he began to develop the sermon as he had heard it. But not, as children relate, by reciting the words from memory. Rather, he recreated them! So that one could see: the inner fire of the soul had grown together with what had reached him from the pulpit. Even as a boy, he was so intimately united with what was around him that he absorbed everything from the world. That was what he realized, and what led him to his world view, [what led him] to his world view in such a way that he felt: What lives as will in the individual person does not live merely as will in that individual person, but what lives as will in the individual person is like that drop taken from the sea, but which is of the same kind as the whole sea. The will that man learns to recognize in his ego, that throbs, lives and weaves through all existence as the will of the world. And when man pronounces “I,” the will of the world speaks in him.

Thus in his world view, the individual ego grew together with the will of the world. And as if on the wings of the will, what radiates from the divine-spiritual existence, from the divine-spiritual will existence, shines into the human soul as duty.

To him, duty became the highest, the most significant, that which enters a person as a duty – in relation to the world and its phenomena – as a task; this was an immediate inspiration of the divine spirit of will, which pulses and weaves and lives through the world.

And so, in his will as in his ego, Johann Gottlieb Fichte felt at one with the existence of the world. He believed that when he spoke, he spoke not out of personal arbitrariness but out of that which the God who wants to speak in the soul wants to say. And one really cannot imagine that anyone could have been more earnest than Fichte was when, for example, he spoke to his audience in Jena and tried to convey to the souls of his listeners what he had experienced in his soul as a world-certainty.

It was not a matter of merely communicating certain content, certain sentences, so that they would be heard, as was the case with other speakers; no, but for him, when he ascended the lectern, it was a matter of carrying in his soul something to carry in his soul something of which he knew - in true humility, in all modesty: “The world-will, ruling through the world, speaks through me; it must be carried into the souls of my listeners on the wings of my words. And there must be established that connection between the souls of my listeners and the divine-spiritual world-will, by which I myself am aglow and inspired.

And deep within his soul – within Fichte's soul – was the realization that the deepest thing in the world must be grasped by the innermost part of the soul. In turn, here is a short story, which is familiar to those who have studied Johann Gottlieb Fichte, about how he made the following demand of his listeners, for example. As an example of how he sought to establish an immediate personal connection with his listeners, he said: “Gentlemen, think the wall.” And so the people thought about the wall; it was easy for them. After he had let them think about the wall for a while, he said: “And now think about the one who just thought about the wall!” Then the people were already somewhat strangely touched; they did not really know what they should do; they were referred to their own inner being. They should become strong in themselves, in their own inner being, that which, as something impersonal and spiritual, permeates and interweaves the world.

In this way he sought to reach his listeners. And his words were not words shaped in the ordinary way. People who knew him well said: His speech rolls along like thunder, and his words are discharged like individual lightning bolts. He sought not merely to educate good souls, but to educate great souls.

And another said of him: Oh, with Fichte it is so that he lives and moves in the realm of the invisible world of thought; not like one who dwells within, but like one who rules this invisible world.

It was out of such a spirit that Fichte then, in his Berlin lectures from 1811 to 1813, said things that were probably not often uttered before a university audience. He spoke of a “new sense”, of a spiritual sense that is necessary for man if he wants to know the eternal in contrast to the temporal. He spoke of this by comparing this sense with another sense that prevails in ordinary life. He said: “My dear listeners! If a single soul – he meant Fichte's soul – were to appear among a number of people who cannot see Fichte and have never seen Fichte, would they not declare what he has to say to be fantasy? But it is the same with everything that your senses can see compared to what man can see when the new sense - as Fichte called it - the spiritual vision, opens up to him, through which a new world arises.

A genuine spiritual-scientific striving is developed here out of German scientific striving! And Fichte said, being aware of the contrast between this German striving and the Romance striving in relation to knowledge, Fichte said: This striving, that is a striving that emerges from the original source of the living, and that does not merely want to establish a knowledge of the dead.

Even more thoroughly than Fichte was able to do, one can point to certain Western views of eternity, which show quite clearly how different Fichte is from the world development of humanity than, for example, similar spirits from the Romance, French tradition. Take the excellent philosopher Descartes, Cartesius, who was active in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In a similar way to Fichte, he wants to start from what is in the soul: “I think, therefore I am” - “Cogito ergo sum”. But what does it represent? An endeavour to use the intellect to clarify what one already has. Fichte's energetic activity strives to develop in the soul something that one does not yet have, in order to recognize the actual, deep secrets of the world. And one need only mention one thing that comes to light particularly strongly in Cartesius, in Descartes. Descartes also tried to gain clarity about nature from the innermost depths of his spirit, from the innermost depths of the human spirit. About that which is around us. But he does not start from the living and therefore cannot come to the living. And it is characteristic of Cartesius, of Descartes, that he regards not only the other natural phenomena, but also the animals as inanimate, as moving, soulless machines. This is no exaggeration, this is a genuine Descartesian theory: only man, who experiences a soul within himself, actually has a soul in the true sense of the word. The rest of nature is soulless.

Compare this view of nature as something soulless, compare the directly living in Fichte: the soul of man stands in it in the divine will, which pulses and weaves through the world. He looks at external things, but he looks at them in such a way that man is called upon to see in external, material things that in which he has to see the divine will... ... and living everywhere, everywhere ensouled.

The time will come, honored attendees, when people will indeed pay attention to these differences between the individual nations, because the realization of these differences of such outstanding minds must bear fruit. We Germans have no need to prove all that we have now heard from some outstanding personalities on the enemy side. We Germans have no need to join in the tone of not only the misjudgment but the slander of German intellectual life, as we can hear it everywhere. But we do have reason to penetrate into the peculiar, into the essence of German intellectual life.

And then, like Fichte's follower, we see standing before us, also unrecognized, but as a personality who will already celebrate his resurrection, Joseph Wilhelm Schelling. Schelling does not stand there like Fichte. That is precisely what is significant in German intellectual life, this versatility, this diversity. He does not stand there like Fichte; Fichte stands there as if emerging from the contemplation of the individual personality, becoming aware of the world-will pulsating and interweaving through the world. Fichte's entire personality is active out of the will. Out of the soul, out of this German soul – for which the other languages of the West do not even have a literal translation – out of this German soul, Schelling creates his magnificent view of nature and spirit, which only appears difficult to understand.

For Schelling, nature is not something dead, something merely mechanistic; rather, nature is that which has been created out of the same forces over the course of millennia and millennia, out of the same forces that the human soul feels within itself when it truly goes within. And then Schelling looks at nature and can say to himself: That which lives and moves out there in nature – the same powers of the human soul that now come into being in human souls – have created that, have created a foundation for themselves, a preparation; so that they can arise and appear internalized in the human mind, in the human soul.

And so, for Schelling, soul and nature grow together in such a way that he coins the certainly one-sided sentence: To recognize nature is to create nature!

It does not matter at all whether one becomes a follower or an opponent of these great people, whether one agrees or declares oneself to be an opponent of what these great minds have expressed; today this can even appear childish; it does not matter; but what matters is to look at these personalities and to see the best in their personalities, their spiritual striving. It must not be a matter of repeating what someone has said out of the spirit of his time, but of strengthening and empowering oneself in relation to one's own soul forces, in order to perhaps create something completely different today from what Fichte can give than what Fichte gave.

If you see it the way those who heard Schelling, Friedrich Joseph Wilhelm Schelling, did – I myself met people who heard him in his old age and who fully confirmed what those who were young when Schelling was young had to say, when Schelling was at the University of Jena at the end of the 1790s. This is how they spoke, for example – I am telling you what Schubert, who himself was a deep spirit who wanted to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, wrote in his diaries after hearing Schelling in Jena: If someone came during a few afternoon hours on a weekday, Schubert says, you saw an eventful life in Jena. But this eventful life did not come from some kind of frequent celebration, not from some other kind of gathering; rather, this eventful life was because the hour was approaching when not only students, but mature men of all professions went to Schelling's lecture hall. Schubert continues: “The personal impression Schelling made on me was of a great, powerful man.” When Schelling spoke, it seemed to him as if he were standing there and his spiritual musings were directly connected to the spiritual world and his words were shaped in such a way that he grasped what he had to say from what he looked into: the spiritual world.

Fichte came across as a powerful person, as a powerful representative of the German essence. Schelling came across as an educator, a philosophical educator, who appeared to his listeners as if he was surrounded by an aura of spirituality, which he knew how to communicate even as a young man to those who listened to him. And those who heard him in his old age – as I said, I myself still knew people like that – [they] assured that the eye, which still sparkled in old age, spoke of the immediate personal nature of nature, which presented itself to him in the communications that he sought to give to humanity, not out of prudent wisdom, but out of an inner vision of the spiritual world. And Schelling speaks of the so-called [intellectual] views. In this way we have coined the word in his way for the new sense, for the spiritual sense, the spiritual sense that can be awakened in man and is able to look into the spiritual world. Schelling's way of speaking of this spiritual sense may be one-sided; but the fact that it could be spoken of with such earnestness in German intellectual life is one of the most significant intellectual blossoms, in the presence of which one must feel in the right sense.

The third person to be considered among those who created the world view from which Goethe's “Faust” and the other works of art emerged is Hegel. In Hegel, we again notice how he strives to relive in what the soul experiences in itself as an individual soul that which permeates the world, that which pulses through the world. But while Fichte sought this in the will and Schelling in the mind, Hegel sought it in pure, senseless thought. And when thought becomes completely pure, when thought does not lean on that which the senses observe externally, but when thought creates itself as free thought out of the soul, then for Hegel it is not the human soul alone but for Hegel it is the divine world-being that penetrates into the soul and that now kindles its world-thoughts, which gave rise to things outside, in the human soul as the light of the soul itself.

In Hegel, we have a remarkable kind of mysticism that does not want to revel in dark feelings, not a mysticism that wants to live only in feeling, because it believes that in feeling alone it is more closely in touch with the secrets of the world than in thinking. We have a mysticism in Hegel that is intellectually clear and yet not intellectually superficial, a mysticism that is suffused with the light of ideas, with the light of thought. But Hegel seeks to bring to life in his soul those thoughts that truly bring man together with divine thoughts. I would like to say: mystical, but not mystical darkness, but mystical light, mystical brightness.

Hegel did indeed oppose the idea that the new meaning, the inner meaning, should become something that man could only receive through a special disposition; and that is why he criticized Schelling, who spoke of [intellectual] intuition. In a sense, Hegel was right, because for every human being – you only need to read about it in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” , for every human being, this new sense is attainable if only he wants to develop it. And this new sense, basically it lives most beautifully, most gloriously in that man, in the German, to whom Fichte, when he showed him his seemingly so dark, arbitrary teaching, wrote in 1794: Philosophical endeavor, like every pure philosophical endeavor, weaves itself into the spirituality of your feeling; for this pure spirituality of your feeling is actually the touchstone. - So Fichte wrote to Goethe in 1794.

And Goethe himself, in the beautiful essay he calls “Contemplative Judgment,” spoke of the fact that there cannot be only one way of looking at the world that relies on the external senses. Rather, just as the power of judgment judgment otherwise judges only about the external sensory experiences, so the power of judgment can develop an impulse in itself, which unfolds an inner life, so that it sees the spiritual, as the senses see the sensual.

Kant still had this inner vision, this vision of the spiritual through the human spirit, of the divine spirit through the human spirit. Goethe said: Let us then bravely face this adventure of reason! And it is from this inner sense that everything Goethe wanted to offer to science was created. And Goethe, in his scientific and cognitive struggles, showed most clearly how the German mind must understand the world differently than the Western mind.

In his early youth, Goethe encountered what Descartes' worldview had become within the development of the French world view. While Descartes still regarded animals as machines, de La Mettrie had already written the book “Man a Machine”! The mechanistic worldview, rooted in the French national character, is a mechanistic view of the world, a view of the world as a mechanism.

And when this worldview was presented to young Goethe, he said, from his German worldview: “Now they are telling us about atoms that collide with each other; this great world machine. If only they would explain to us how this beautiful and diverse world can arise from these colliding atoms. But after they have shown us how the atoms collide and push each other, they do not explain anything more about it!

Now, this striving has been preserved in the mechanism to this day. The mechanistic world view is actually the French world view. Of course, esteemed attendees, this is not meant to apply to the individual members of a nation; individuality can rise above nationality, above that which has been discussed and which arises from the character, from the inner nature of nationality. And here I believe that the right thing has been said. I would like to let the voice of a man be heard, the voice of a man who may perhaps be heard when considering the striving of the French nation towards a scientific world view. This man says:

"Thirst for truth is not a French passion. Appearance is more important than essence, the shell more than the kernel, form more than substance, the shiny more than the fertile, public opinion more than conscience. This means that the center of gravity of the Frenchman is not within himself, but in the others, in the multitude. Individuals are zeros; the digit that forms them into a number comes from outside: that is the sovereign, the writer of the day, the most-read newspaper, in a word, the current master of fashion. All this can be deduced from an exaggerated sociability; it stifles in the soul the courage to resist, the power of judgment, personal conviction, the cult of the ideal."

This was not written by a German out of one-sided national sentiment, but rather, dear honored attendees, it was written in 1875 by Amiel, Henri Frederic Amiel, the French Swiss at the University of Geneva! He could know as someone who, although he was deeply familiar with German intellectual life, was bound to French intellectual life by his blood ties. And in 1862, Amiel wrote the following:

"I feel a common bond with a Goethe, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Leibniz, who are nevertheless sufficiently different from one another, while French philosophers, orators or mathematicians leave me cold despite their great qualities, because they do not carry the sum of general life within them, do not control all of reality, gag me or make me suspicious. What the French lack is direct knowledge of the living unity, a sense of the sacred, a feeling for the mysteries of being; what is theirs is the foundation of specialized sciences, the art of making a book, it is style, politeness, grace, a sense of order, art for art's sake, discipline, elegance, truth in the details, staging, proselytizing zeal, strength in practical conclusions. But for the journey through Inferno and Paradise, other guides are needed; they are rooted to the earth, in the realm of the finite, changing, historical, and limited. Mechanism and dualism are the pinnacles of their intellectual flight. To break out of this circle, they must force themselves.

One does not want to present a one-sided view, not out of national sentiment; therefore one must choose something that is said by someone who says it out of his own attachment, out of his blood ties to the French nation.

But the time has come when, just as other things, the relationship between the individual elements of the nation must be recognized objectively. And once one has achieved something like Fichte's achievement – Fichte, for whom that which lives outside in the world of the senses is, so to speak, the nationalized field of duty – if one compares that with what lives in the British, in the English world-view, then one need only point to where one will, take old Baco of Verulam, who would accept nothing except what the senses see externally – everything else is an 'idol' to him; and his book about idols is an attempt to prove that what man can grasp in his soul has no objective validity beyond sensuality. And if we go up to Spencer and all those who have a similar view, we arrive at the latest English world view, which has been developed out of the English view: it calls itself pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? It is not something that applies to us Germans. For us Germans, as with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, it is something that experiences truth, and by experiencing truth, one lives together with the world spirit. But the Romance peoples and the British have no conception of the objective world spirit at all. It is something that will only be fully recognized in the future. [...] Truth [...] is something that arises in the soul as a result of this soul growing together with the world spirit itself. Then the soul brings this truth to bear on external things, and the external things become a revelation of spiritual truth. What are they to pragmatism, to this pragmatic product of a worldview? A caricature! I say this, as I said, out of pure fact, not out of any antipathy. For this pragmatism, truth is only of value insofar as one connects concepts and ideas in the spiritual, which are actually only brackets, only bands that bind together the external sensual facts, so that one can find one's way in the external sensual world. Truth has no meaning in itself, has no value in itself.

A person, for example, commits an act; he has thoughts. All this is expressed. We seek the soul for thoughts and actions. The soul is a real being for us. And as we grow together with the truth, the soul itself becomes a reality for us, it is grasped as a reality.

For pragmatism, the soul is a concept that was formed to orient oneself, to hold together the otherwise disintegrating thoughts of man as with a bracket. Truth is what is useful if one wants to understand the world. - The pragmatist forms concepts and ideas with a view to usefulness, so that he can find his way in the world.

One has only to compare this with what lives in the characterized summit of German intellectual life, and one will be able to get an idea of the spiritual world position of the German within the developmental history of humanity.

But now something else comes. If you look at Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, they are great, important minds, geniuses; they represent the coming together of man with the secrets of the world from three different sides: from the side of will, from the side of thought, and from the side of feeling. If anyone today still thinks – and most people do, in fact, think – that it must be so, that they are difficult [to read and understand], then I may well express my conviction that there is a way to present what these spirits have achieved in such a form that even the simplest mind can grasp what it is about, if it only wants to. These spirits can be fruitfully employed in schools; [that they cannot be fruitfully employed there] is merely a prejudice. But the peculiar thing that confronts one when one contemplates these spirits, esteemed attendees, is that in their triplicity something like a unity hovering over them asserts itself! One has the feeling that something is being expressed in three ways, invisibly prevailing over the three. It is what one might call: the German folk spirit itself.

Amiel - again the French Swiss - has sensed something of the fact that the German folk spirit itself seeks to grow together in the souls with the innermost reason for things. Therefore Amiel says:

“Perhaps only the Germanic spirit has the need to think for itself, to search for the very basis of things.”

Amiel therefore goes on to say:

“The German spirit, like the collective inspiration, passes into these characteristic personalities; it speaks through them.”

Therefore, dear attendees, it could happen that personalities actually came along, personalities whose work is largely forgotten today. Therefore, I may speak today by wanting to reopen this as if it were a faded, forgotten pursuit of the development of German thought. Personalities who are largely forgotten today, they appear after the great personalities just mentioned. And the strange thing is that, while these personalities are smaller minds, less ingenious, after the three greats, they even show greater achievements in the field of spiritual searching, more penetrating achievements than the great ones who preceded them. Of course, the great ones need stimulation; but the lesser ones who follow usually achieve greater things, at least more penetrating things, from what has once been stimulated within German intellectual development. They are closer to the soul's inner search for the concrete spiritual world, for the search for spiritual entities that can be found with the characterized sense, just as one finds concrete external natural objects and natural facts through the external senses.

And among these lesser spirits is the son of the great Johann Gottlieb Fichte: Immanuel Hermann Fichte. Certainly, there are not many today who still occupy themselves with this Immanuel Hermann Fichte; but Immanuel Hermann Fichte – to mention only that – already stands there and says: the human being whom we observe with our outer senses, the human being who is made of flesh and blood, is bound to the perishable earthly in terms of his material and his powers. But in this human being there is another human being. This other human being – I mentioned him earlier in these lectures. People still laugh about it a lot today. But they will not always laugh! That other person, whom Immanuel Hermann Fichte calls the “ethereal man”, is a supersensible, higher person who has certain higher powers through which he is just as connected to the eternal spiritual aspect of existence, to the whole universe, as his perishable body is bound here to the physical-sensory powers of the earth. And the etheric body, which Hermann Immanuel Fichte assumes, is what first builds the physical body!

And another spirit can appear before us, again more or less forgotten, but no less significant and no less characteristic for the innermost freedom and for the innermost strengthening of the forces of German intellectual life: that is Troxler. Who still knows him today? But how he stands before him who got to know him! Troxler wrote his beautiful lectures on a world view in the 1840s. In them, we see emphasized, again and again, how the human being who stands before us with his senses lives within a spiritual world, a spiritual human being who has a spiritual world around him just as the sensual human being has a sensual world around him. Troxler speaks of abilities that the soul has, which are only hidden in ordinary life. Troxler speaks of what he calls the “super-spiritual sense”.

What does he mean by that? When Troxler speaks of the super-spiritual sense, he means that the senses we usually call that and that have different organs are not the only organs of perception for humans; but that humans can perceive another world with new organs, with new senses, with purely spiritual senses, which is just as full of content as the external physical world.

I have said here before that many people today believe that there is a spiritual world in general. And anyone who bandies a few pantheistic terms about, thinking they are talking about a spiritual world – spirit, spirit and more spirit – is merely bandying abstract terms! Spiritual science speaks of the individual spiritual beings that can be seen; just as one does not always say only “nature, nature, nature!” when faced with the external physical world, but rather “lilies, tulips, carnations” and so on. Specifically, one shows what physical nature produces individually. In the same way, one can show what spiritual nature shows individually. This is what Troxler means when he speaks of the 'super-spiritual sense'. And then he speaks of the 'supersensible spirit', which is not dependent on sensuality, but which knows itself within the spiritual, which feels itself as a body within the spiritual.

But Troxler goes even deeper in his discussion of this spiritual, this higher human being, who goes through births and deaths. And it is wonderful how Troxler – not in an abstract, indefinite way – addresses the higher human being in a very definite way. Even if this is a faded, forgotten tone in the development of German thought, it lives in it. And whether one notices what is alive there or not is certainly important for understanding; but even if one has not noticed it, it lives in the development of German thought and will be noticed! It will celebrate its resurrection as an actual spiritual science!

Then Troxler sees that in the human soul, insofar as it experiences itself between birth and death in the outer physicality, three forces live - as the most beautiful forces according to Troxler's world of vision. First there is the power of faith - that which man has as the power of faith. What a person has as love power, he has it as the power of his soul, but in the soul, insofar as this soul lives in the body. Behind the power of faith, however, there is another, higher power for the soul itself, and Troxler calls this spiritual hearing. That is to say, he believes that the human being can develop the outer form, so to speak, the shell for a spiritual hearing, through which the human being, when he becomes aware of it, can perceive the language of spiritual beings, which speak of the eternal secrets of existence. Thus, faith appears as the outer shell of a much deeper power, an eternal power in man. Spiritual hearing is love, the power of love, which expresses itself in the body as the most beautiful, greatest flowering of the human soul. Nevertheless, for Troxler this is only the outer expression of the power of spiritual touch, of spiritual feeling. The one who loves has the most beautiful flowering of human existence on earth. For him, love is the shell for the powers of which he can become aware, which extend the spiritual organs in the material world so that he can touch the spiritual world as he touches physical things with his physical senses of touch.

And what lives in us as the power of hope is in turn the shell for Troxler, the power of spiritual vision.

So that Troxler sees a higher person in the ordinary person - a higher person who has a spiritual sense just as the physical person has a physical hearing; who has a spiritual feeling just as the physical person has a physical feeling and who has a spiritual vision, a spiritual soul. And that we can be seeing, loving and hearing people in the body, that is for Troxler because, when we go through the gate of death, our soul goes out of the body. The power of faith then appears as spiritual hearing, the power of love as spiritual touch, the power of hope as spiritual strength.

It is in this spirit that Troxler also expresses the following very beautifully. He knows that, in terms of feeling, we are closer to things on a human and spiritual level than with the mere abstract mind. But one can develop such thoughts that are just as close to the direct experience of the thing as feelings usually are. Nor does Troxler seek a sentimental mysticism. This is foreign to the essentially German nature! That vague, hazy sentimentality of mysticism is not part of the German character; it is also foreign to Troxler. But Troxler nevertheless speaks of “thoughts felt” - of thoughts that, like feelings, live as thoughts in the soul. He speaks of “intelligent feeling” and of sensitive thoughts - thoughts that touch the spiritual life!

Troxler is completely imbued with this view. And he once speaks of how he feels in harmony with the entire spiritual life of the German people through such a view, insofar as this spiritual life has appeared in great personalities after Christ. There Troxler says once - I will read these words to you myself:

"Even in the past, philosophers distinguished a fine, noble soul body from the coarser body... a soul that had an image of the body, which they called a schema, and which was the higher inner man... In more recent times, even Kant in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer seriously jokes about an entire internal spiritual human being who carries all the limbs of the external one on his spirit body. Lavater writes more and thinks the same; and even when Jean Paul humorously jokes about the Bonn under-skirt and the Platner soul-corset, which are said to be hidden in the coarser body-skirt and , we also hear him asking: “What is the purpose of and where did these extraordinary abilities and desires come from that lie dormant in us, like swallowed diamonds, slowly cutting through our earthly shell? ... In the stony limbs of

of man

“grow and mature in a way that is unknown to us... We could”

says Troxler further.

"cite a myriad of similar ways of thinking and creating, which in the end are only different perceptions and representations in which... the true, only teaching of the individuality and immortality of man is contained.

Troxler also speaks of the possibility of a science of man on the path of knowledge he sought, through which – to use his own terms – the “super-spiritual sense” in union with the “supernatural spirit” can grasp the supernatural essence of man in his “anthroposophy”.

Troxler cites these [individual personalities], and many others could be cited who, entirely from the essence of German national identity, sought the way to the real, true spiritual world. And before Troxler's [inner eye] stood a certain science. He thought: When man observes man himself with his senses and explains this observation with his mind, which is connected to the senses, then anthropology arises – the science of man through the senses. But anthropology arises from man observing man as a sensual being; but the spiritual man, the higher man with the awakened senses that we have already spoken of, can also observe man; then a higher science arises. In 1835, Troxler spoke beautifully of this higher science, as anthropology is, saying:

Although it is highly gratifying that the latest philosophy, which... must reveal itself in every anthroposophy... must reveal itself, is moving upwards, it cannot be overlooked that this idea cannot be a fruit of speculation, and that the true individuality of man must not be confused either with what it sets up as subjective spirit or finite ego, nor with what it confronts it with as absolute spirit or absolute personality.

This German spiritual life developed entirely out of the German national character. And is it not wonderful to experience such a phenomenon as this: In the 50s of the last century, a simple pastor in Sachsenberg in the Principality of Waldeck published a simple little book, a wonderful little book that is at the height of spiritual science, that stands apart from all materialism, but also from all mere intellectual and conceptual considerations, that sets out to consider the human soul in such a way that it can grasp spiritual reality.

Some of the simple Rocholler writing, which is simply written for seeking circles, may seem fantastic, but that does not matter; what matters is that we have here a simple person, at the pinnacle of education, leading a way into the spiritual worlds. It is the intention that counts. That is why intentions such as this little book, which was published in Waldeck in 1856, are so infinitely important. And anyone who might think that I am choosing to present these phenomena in order to prove something is quite mistaken.

However, over the past few decades, circumstances have developed in such a way that even the vast majority of scholars were numbed by what Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel had created, and descended from this height, thinking: the one-sided, materialistic Darwinism had proved powerful, the French materialism had proved powerful.

But what I am characterizing is not something that can be explained away by German intellectual life alone; rather, hundreds and hundreds of such phenomena could be cited. When people actually become aware of this, they will see the depth of German insight that can be drawn from German national character. For that is what really strives for a German world view, from German intellectual life.

Perhaps it may be mentioned, just as an aside, how profound these things actually are. Who among physicists, overwhelmed by French mechanism and English utilitarian philosophy, does not laugh inwardly when he praises them outwardly? I may well speak about the matter, for more than thirty years have passed since I endeavored to bring out the deep significance of Goethe's Theory of Colors in opposition to that theory of colors which is completely overwhelmed by Newtonism and by mechanism in general. Whenever you talk to a modern physicist about Goethe's theory of colors, all you get is, “Goethe's theory of colors doesn't tell you anything.”

This is quite understandable for someone who is familiar with today's circumstances; but there is something here. And that is that Goethe, through his direct coexistence with the mystery of the color spectrum, has created a tremendous work about nature and dared to oppose the intellectual appropriation by the British in Newton, and that the world has not understood it. But the chapter has yet to be written: Goethe - also in the theory of colors - is right against Newton, when one will grasp even more deeply what Fichte calls Germanness within Europe.

I could point to many other minds. As I said, you only need to pick them out. For example, I could point out a soul researcher - Schultz-Schultzenstein is his name, that is certainly a German name: Schultz-Schultzenstein - who tries to place the soul life of man under the concept of “rejuvenation” in the 1850s of the last century. Schultzenstein was able to offer some wonderful insights! He said that the human soul can only be properly understood in its life here between birth and death by observing the experiences it has as feelings and thoughts at the various stages of its life. And as it progresses, one can follow how the soul, like a previous skin, sheds what has already been experienced, and something continuous, something alive is renewed and rejuvenated within the soul.

I can point to another mind, whose literary activity also began in the 1850s and who died unnoticed in 1880. In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” - [...] already in the first edition, which appeared in 1900 - I referred to Karl Christian Planck. He was a mind that was aware of how it created from German national character. Who knows him! But that does not matter, because what was in him as a force is at work in the German character, is at work in Central Europe and brings forth what belongs to the best life in Central Europe.

I would like to mention just one thing to show Karl Christian Planck's originality. Today, from the point of view of natural science, anyone who believes that they understand everything – to look at it the way the French look at the earth, the way the English observer looks at the earth, the way the geological observer looks at the earth – they look at the universe that consists of matter. For Planck, such an observer of the earth is like someone who would look at a tree only in terms of the trunk and the wood, and not in terms of the essence of the tree, the leaves, the blossoms and the fruits! For Planck, we do not see the earth in its entirety if we do not also see the whole human being on the earth. Planck looks at the earth as a spirit would, from the outside. And in what the geologist sees, we see only part of the earth, like the trunk, the wood of the tree, but nothing else of the nature of the earth. For Karl Christian Planck, the Earth is not only a living being, but a living, spiritualized living being. And what the physical human being himself is – as a flower, as a fruit – that belongs to the essence of the Earth. – A spiritual – Goethe would say – a spiritual worldview. And Christian Karl Planck is aware that he comes to such a spiritual worldview from the depths of the German people. Planck already expresses this beautifully in the 1860s. He has written several books; the books he has written breathe the breath of such a worldview. In 1864, in his book “Grundlinien einer Wissenschaft der Natur” (Foundations of a Science of Nature), he expresses beautifully how he is aware that he has come to his view, which sees the spirit in nature, from the depths of the German essence. I will read the words to you myself:

What power

writes Planck

deep-rooted prejudices from the previous view from his

the author's

writing, the author is fully aware of this; but just as the work itself, despite all the unfavorable circumstances, which, according to the author's

situation and professional position,

a work of this kind has been opposed, but has fought its way to its realization and its path into the public, so he is also certain that what must now first fight for its recognition will one day appear as the simplest and most self-evident truth, and that in it not only his cause, but the truly German view of things, will triumph over all still unworthy external and un-German conception of nature and spirit.

What our medieval poetry has unconsciously and profoundly foreshadowed will finally be fulfilled in our nation as the times mature. The impractical inwardness of the German spirit, which was met with harm and ridicule (as Wolfram describes it in his Parzival)

In 1864, before Wagner, these words were truly written!

finally, in the strength of its unceasing striving, it attains the highest; it looks into the last simple laws of things and of human existence itself; and what poetry has symbolized in a fantastically medieval way in the wonders of the Grail, the mastery of which is attained by its hero, that conversely receives its purely natural fulfillment and reality in the enduring knowledge of nature and of the spirit itself.

Karl Christian Planck died at the age of eighty. He left behind a writing that he called “The Testament of a German”; the first edition was published in 1881; the second edition by Diederichs Verlag in 1912. Who has dealt with it?

Well, people had other things to do! For example, they had to deal with the books published by the same publishing house by a man who lives in a rigid spirit - of course, that is not meant as a criticism of him at all; they also dealt with the books by the French philosopher - his name is still Bergson - a French name! He is the one who, since the beginning of the war, has not found enough defamatory words for the German worldview and German intellectual life. I think I actually said last year that this Bergson kept saying to his Frenchmen in Paris: the Germans once had a significant intellectual life, but now they have completely degenerated; all that can be seen is their mechanistic life. I said last year that in earlier times, good Henri Bergson would recite Novalis and Goethe and Schiller to you, in a time when he might not yet have called it “mechanical.” It cannot be emphasized enough. One looked out into the world with admiration. Not only now, during the war and the period of hatred – I have also tried to point out before what Bergson's “philosophy” is like.

A special feature of Bergson's philosophy is the following: He comes up with an idea; but he puts it forward in a light-hearted way. It consists in saying that one does not proceed correctly when one looks at the development of the world in such a way that one regards the subordinate beings as the origin of what man descends from, because one must start from man. That is indeed a very good thought: we must start from man. Man is the most original thing before any other being of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdom existed. This is not understood today, but it is nevertheless founded in the writing on the reorganization of the world view of Bergson.

This also emerged in Planck's work: before the other things were there, man was there, albeit in different forms, and then he pushed away certain things that he could not use in his development, and so man came into being by excluding the plant and animal kingdoms. Just as man secretes his bones inwards, so that which is placed at the top, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, secretes itself out of itself. This is a thought, esteemed attendees, that will become established in German intellectual life once the material colorations of Darwinism have been refuted and correctly illuminated.

All right, Bergson presents this; but I was able to show – as I said, just before the war, so that people would not think that it is only under the influence of the war events that things are now being characterized as they are here – I was able to show that precisely this idea, which – in a somewhat simplified form – the French philosopher Henri Bergson – that this idea, which already in the 1870s, 1882 [published], lived in the German thinker Wilhelm Heinrich Preuss – also a faded, forgotten aspiration of German intellectual life – was powerfully and energetically advocated by Preuss!

I am quoting a few words in which I have cited this Prussian, this German view of the matter; I am quoting these words from Pruss's book “Geist und Stoff” - 1899 in second edition already published. It says:

"It may therefore be time to establish a [different] doctrine of the origin of the organic species, which is not only based on one-sidedly established propositions from descriptive natural science, but is also in full agreement with the other laws of nature, which are at the same time also laws of human thought. A doctrine, at the same time, that is free of any hypothetization and is based only on strict conclusions from scientific observations in the broadest sense; a doctrine that rescues the species concept according to actual possibility, but at the same time adopts the concept of evolution as proposed by Darwin and seeks to make it fruitful in its realm.

The center of this new doctrine is man, the only species on our planet that recurs: Homo sapiens. It is strange that the older observers started with natural objects and then went so astray that they could not find the way to man, which Darwin only managed in the most miserable and thoroughly unsatisfactory way by seeking the progenitor of the Lord of Creation among the animals, while the naturalist would have to start with himself as a human being, in order to gradually return to humanity through the whole realm of being and thinking.

It was not by chance that human nature emerged from the development of all earthly things, but by necessity. Man is the goal of telluric processes and every other form that emerged alongside him borrowed its features from his. Man is the first-born being of the whole cosmos...

When its germs had arisen, the remaining organic residue no longer had the necessary power to produce further human germs. What did arise became animal or plant...

and so on. Bergson, the Frenchman, either does not know this German predecessor – which, in the case of a philosopher, would of course be just as big a mistake as if he knew him and did not name him; but the latter is to be assumed in the case of Bergson! He accuses today's Germans of mechanism! In the meantime, it has been possible to show that entire pages in Bergson's books have been copied from the Germans, whom he now disowns. Entire pages of arguments have been copied from Schelling and Schopenhauer by Henri Bergson! This is perhaps not a mechanical way of constructing intellectual life.

I would like to say: With something like this in the background, Germany's enemies now dare, insofar as they are represented by such personalities, to defame and belittle the German essence. But precisely from what is now at stake, in the world-historical development, this German essence will learn to assert that which lies at the bottom of its being, also in world-historical becoming.

Dear attendees, what is happening now – before world history – needs little saying to characterize it as one might imagine an objective act is characterized: There are enemies surrounding Central Europe. One need only mention a few figures that will speak strongly in the future, when things will be seen differently than Germany's enemies see them now: 777 million people, not counting the Italians, stood around Central Europe facing a group of 150 million. 777 million against 150 million. Do they need to be envious of this Central Europe? Well, the property of these 777 million people covers 68 million square kilometers, compared to the 6 million square kilometers of property owned by the 150 million in Central Europe. And these 777 million – multiplied by Italy – against these 150 million, they are in a position where they not only want to fight with weapons, but also want to have the better part of the rest of the world, want to starve the 150 million people. And leading people - people called “great personalities” from Germany's side - they indulge in the most vicious accusations and slanders of the spiritual life that has emerged in the 6 million square kilometers in the middle of Europe and show how little they understand of what is alive there.

Besides Bergson, there is, for example, the French philosopher Boutroux – shortly before the war, he was still traveling around in Germany, even giving lectures in German about the close scientific relationship between Germans and Frenchmen! Now he is saying things like this to his fellow Parisians: The Germans imagined that they had come to the end of all searching. With this, they also imagined that they were at the center of the divine order of the world and that they could rule over all men. [...]

We do not need to fall into this tone; but it is necessary to point out such facts and to get to know the facts. After all, Boutroux also managed – well, the Frenchman is witty – to make a joke not too long ago: the Frenchman, the Englishman and the German are talking about the pursuit of a worldview, of knowledge of external things; Boutroux said to his partner: the Frenchman, if he wants to get to know a camel, goes to the menagerie, looks at a camel and then describes it. The Englishman goes to the area where camels live, looks at the camel and then describes it. The German neither goes to the menagerie to see a camel nor to the area where camels live in distant lands, but goes into his room and studies the camel in its inwardness in its being and creates the camel in himself out of his being. The French are witty! Just this joke about Boutroux comes from Heinrich Heine!

And so much more could be said. It must be said: the German does not really need to fall back into the ways of those around him! But the German has all the more need to engage with that which is currently the best part of his nature in the pursuit of knowledge. The German nature will also overcome those prejudices which arise from the fact that, under the influence of French and English materialism, a person who searches for spiritual science is still considered today to be a dreamer, a person who does not live in reality: Oh, when you see someone like Planck or [someone like] Preuss – well, these people can spin theories, but to engage with reality, to see what lives in reality, that's what the “practitioners” are for; someone like Planck, you can't use him for life!

I could give many examples; I will just mention one in connection with Planck, since I was allowed to discuss him: about 35 years ago (Planck died in 1881) he wrote words that I will even read out. He was not a diplomat; he was not a politician; he was not one of those preachers who believe that they have a complete understanding of the workings of the world, that they have “lived it all,” who know how to speak authoritatively about everything from a broad perspective and disdain those who live only in the spiritual world. He was none of these. He was a simple man of vision! But a man who was able to see into the course of events. And what he developed before 1881 is written in his Testament of a German. He died in 1881. In it he wrote about what presented itself to him in the development of Europe. And he looked at it with discerning eyes. He wrote that war must come. And about this war he wrote the following words:

“If a people, universalistic and central by its very nature, is now in the sharpest contrast to its earlier history, unites to form a pure nation-state and, for all others, increases to the highest military armament, what else can be the consequence in a time of the highest national aspirations than ultimately the most comprehensive clash?”

So says the “impractical man of world view”! How many people who were practically inside the circumstances did not believe, when the war broke out, that the Italian would also stand against Central Europe! But the impractical man of conviction knew how to say this in 1881. Not only will the Russian East rise up against Central Europe, but as in the past we will also have to defend ourselves in the West and in the South.

“It is not only the antagonism of political interests that must provoke him,”

"but, as it is now becoming increasingly clear, above all the conflict of economic interests in their still nationally bound, still inorganically opposed form. And the more the contradictions and evils that this state of affairs brings about in relation to the universalistic increase of means of communication, which have already been discussed earlier, must come to the fore, the sharper the tension that arises on all sides as a result.

And to this is added another contrast, in which the inherent one-sidedness of our Western culture has created an enemy, and which, by the nature of things, must become hostile above all to the German spirit. From the very beginning, as we saw, Western Christianity and its striving for a full, humanly present mediation of the divine content has gone hand in hand with the rigid otherworldliness and bondage of the Oriental and Byzantine essence, for which ecclesiastical and political power and authority directly coincided. In this rigid unity, the Christian East remained just as unfreely confined as, conversely, in the West, the free national development overgrew religious unity and pushed it into the background. But the one-sided, secular, and outwardly material character of Western culture, which is rooted in this, has also made it possible for the unfree East to appropriate these external cultural means without having to absorb the deeper, free, spiritual side of that development. On the contrary, it only helped him to confront the West, which had fallen into a one-sided national separate existence, all the more consciously in the self-confidence of his distinctive religious and political unity, and thus, in view of the still unfinished state of other Slavic tribes and the disintegrating Turkish Empire, to claim an even more far-reaching significance for himself. And precisely because of this, by the very nature of things, he becomes an opponent of the nation, which also in this respect has its central and unifying human and universal calling, of the Germans, and especially of that empire, which for a long time has based its existence precisely on the comprehensive interweaving of German and foreign elements.

No political cleverness, no love of peace on the part of Germany can prevent this hostile clash within the current merely national order. For more powerful than all cleverness is the nature of the circumstances; and already now, despite the friendly attitude of Germany and Austria, the hostile mood of the Russian East is only emerging all the more clearly because one could not give it a free hand in everything, but had to set a certain goal. And if it comes to a fight one day, then, however much we have to fight it for the good of Europe, the latter will not stand by our side, but as in the east, we will also have to defend ourselves in the west and south at the same time; on all sides, national jealousy will rise up against the new empire in their midst.

But it is precisely the realization that in this last and most difficult struggle the completely inadequate nature of all previous purely national orders comes to light, that above all the universal position of the German nation, linked as it is to a series of foreign elements, is completely incompatible with it and could only lead to unending struggles. This realization will give this bloodiest of struggles its forever decisive significance and will open the minds of the nations, which are now still trapped in dull externalities, to their ultimate and lasting calling. The realization will dawn, amidst blood and tears, that it is never the mere nation-state and its commercial society that can bring peace and reconciliation, but only that of the universal law of vocation, that only in it lies the renewing rebirth for all the inner wounds, for the relationship of states to one another, for the degenerate conditions of the Orient, and for the corruption and externalization of one's own education. If the first struggle, which was intended to prevent our national awakening, has brought it to completion precisely for that reason, then conversely the second, which is caused by the very inadequacy of all this national order, will also lead beyond it forever to the humanly universal goal.

It is from the German spirit that a renewal of humanity must come, so that there may be a victory over that which lives in a sense indicated by these facts and which has come from an un-German spirit, especially in more recent times, and which can be characterized by saying: the power of incompetence that crushes all justified striving must be recognized. The German spirit is strong and vigorous and will recognize this in this area and will heal the world in this area when it becomes aware of what still lives in German intellectual life as a forgotten pursuit in many cases.

We have been able to glance over to the West on many an occasion. Finally, let us glance over to the East with a few words. This whole East, yes, how does it present itself? Central Europe?

The German essence: can it be characterized in relation to the West in such a way that one can say that one truly does not need to belittle the West in any way. One can know that the scientific spirit emanated from Italy before the dawn of the newer intellectual life. This scientific spirit has emerged from the south. One can know that the French spirit also gave rise to the rational conception of the world; that the sense of utility emerged from the English spirit, the view of the world in such a way that everything is placed in the utility. But just how far removed this British spirit is from the German spirit, well, you can tell by the fact that if someone wanted to try to characterize Fichte's theory of knowledge, where he repeatedly attempts to describe the self feeling and experiencing itself in the world spirit, if you are able to fully penetrate this field of knowledge, it would look strange linguistically alone...

If I say: “I represent the I” – not even that could be adhered to, [instead of the German word “ich” the English “i”] – not even that could be adhered to, that one [in English] goes from the lower-case “i”, as one writes in German, to the capital “I”, when you have experienced the “I” – Fichte calls it “reproduction”, the progression of culture in the “I” – within yourself, how should you call it when you want to move from the small “I” to the large “I”, since grammatically the personal “I” is written “I” everywhere.

You could say: the German essence relates to the Western essence in the same way that the Italians were the contemplatives, the French shaped reason, the utilitarian principle shaped the English; but the principle of internalization is part of the German essence. The Italian looks at the world. By looking at the world, he says: the world is quite right; but it just needs to be reshaped a little, it needs to be made to correspond to our ability, not a compulsory language, but a word that has been experienced. It is precisely when you look deep, deep inside, especially into the best sides of intellectual life, that this word is true.

The Frenchman says: This world is also worth / gap in the transcript ]. The Englishman says: [gap in the transcript] The German says: I also like the world. And within himself, he wants to create a small image of the world. The Russian, yes, one only needs to think of such characteristic figures as Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's “The Brothers Karamazov”. But this type of Karamasov character is poured out over the whole of the East in the nineteenth century. [...] Ivan Karamasov himself says: I would still accept God; but I cannot accept the world from God. The world, in the Russian sense, is actually something that should be replaced by another, namely by the one that is made for the Russian people.

It is a seemingly radical word, but anyone who follows the development of Russian thought in the nineteenth century will find it to be true. For it is indeed strange: from the first decade of the nineteenth century in Russia it is emphasized that in the Russian countryside there lives - Dostoyevsky said it, for example, despite the greatness of Dostoyevsky, one must also bear in mind the greatness of Dostoyevsky -: the Russian person is the one in all people who, through his universal humanity, must place his spiritual life in the place of others. And man faces the world in such a way that one can say: in the nineteenth century, he is increasingly coming to say to himself: European intellectual life is decrepit and has had its day. That must be eradicated. Russian intellectual life would be young; it must dominate. The Russian language means joy, means love. The West – and that includes Central Europe, but also France, Italy, Spain and England – means struggle, means war, means selfishness. This is the underlying tone of all [Russian] intellectual life in the nineteenth century.

Outwardly it does not appear so strongly; but it is so. Only strange: Who is then actually the first to have pronounced the nature of the Slav, from which they then want something quite different than lies in the Russian national spirit? They claim that a noble man spoke of it first, and they have built on that. Who was it that first characterized the matter so beautifully, coined a word, an idea, on which they then based the whole of the nineteenth century? Herder! Herder was basically the first Slavophile. But the word of a Slavophile has degenerated into megalomania. And it came to pass that it resounded again and again: Europe is decrepit, and Russian intellectual life must take the place of European intellectual life.

Dear attendees, as I said, just one more fact: in 1885 a book was published that was written by the Russian Yushakov. Yushakov stands on a somewhat different cultural ground than the one I have just mentioned – the literary counter-image, presented for that which has emerged up to the present day and up to our current terrible events – Yushakov, 1885, a remarkable book! He does not look to the West, but to the East, to Asia, to the Asian peoples. Now, as Jusakhov says in his, as I said, remarkable book: These poor Asians, they have shown themselves how they have gradually struggled from their cultural life up to the corresponding present culture, they have shown it as the struggle between two spiritual beings. But this struggle represents a reality in Asia. According to Yushakov, the two spiritual powers under whose influence the Asians were, were represented as the good Ormuzd and the evil Ahriman.

Ahriman was always the one who was the negation of Ormuzd. Jushakow says to the Iranian peoples, to whom the Persians and Indians also belonged: Ahriman, the evil spirit, took away these fruits of both material and spiritual culture from them.

But what have the European peoples of the West done? - Jushakow asks. They have squeezed out of those Asian peoples what those peoples had acquired under the influence of the good Ormuzd! Russian culture must intervene here. Russian culture is the only one capable – Jusakhov says, I am not saying this – of lovingly embracing the Asian peoples. Two powers stand in the world that will bring happiness in the future – and above all happiness to the Asian peoples; these two powers are – I am not saying this, Jusakhov is saying it! , these two powers are: the Russian peasant and the Cossack, the two great representatives of [Russian] humanity - says Yushakov in 1885. And he does not go to Asia to bring love to the Asians, to bring love to the Asians in turn, sooner or later the evil that the Western peoples have brought over Asia, which he could not really talk about in those days in the case of Germany, will be brought to light.

Strangely enough, the book is called “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”. And there Yushakov says in relation to this: The English show by their treatment of the Asian peoples as if they believed that these Asian peoples were only dependent on this unloving English love. And then Jushakow says how he imagines the relationship between his people and the English. He says to England - these are his words, his own words:

"England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples who inhabit the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland - I can only rejoice that

my Russian fatherland [according to Yushakov]

is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as splendid as it is sad.

Thus in 1885 the Russian Yushakov on England.

He is probably not primarily concerned with the alliance between Russia and England, but with restoring the blessings of Ormuzd to the Asians. Russia will now cross over to Asia, says Yushakov, because in Russia the alliance between the all-fertility developing farmer and the all-chivalry bearing Cossack is rooted in a deep culture, Yushakov believes, and they will prefer to spread Russian spirituality across Asia first.

Thus writes one of those minds that thought this way in Russia and already expressed it in the 1820s – in 1829: Western Europe and Central Europe are decrepit, have outlived their usefulness. But we in Russia, we have the right to bring this Europe under our rule. And when we have it – so says Kireyevsky – when we have it, then we will share what we have with the others, insofar as it is right.

This is not only the “right” thing to do in the political sphere, since the falsified “Testament of Peter the Great”, but also in the entire intellectual and cultural life. And what is going on through this Russophile: the excellent Russian philosopher Solowjow has said it himself. And you can read this in my book 'Thoughts During the Time of War' – it is not available at the moment, but it will be published again in a while. Solowjow himself said it: what is alive in Russian intellectual life comes from what one could call: Russia still has a long way to go before she attains the maturity of her own nature; for Russia is still today, in fact, in the midst of it, thoroughly in the midst of unclear mysticism. That is all. One has to be 'mystical' if one is to be able to say: This German spiritual life seeks the tool of mystical endeavor. On the contrary: fully conscious thoughts, light-imbued, thought-filled views, clear views; the German seeks an image of the world in order to shape his own being as similarly as possible to this image of the world.

The other nations should not be disparaged. But what can they recognize that the German strives for, that he strives for consciously, so that he makes his own image of man similar to the image of the world? The Italian cannot strive for it so consciously if he only strives from his nationality. He would have to be taught this, as it were, by suggestion, so that what is a striving for knowledge in him would have more of an effect than a morality.

The Frenchman wants it more as an intellectual art, to give the mind pleasure, to give the mind a sense of well-being. This is basically something that lies in the fundamental character as a French imprint of the mechanistic view of nature.

The Englishman wants – he would certainly also accept Fichte's science if one could transform its truths into a principle or a machine, if one could place it in the pragmatic order of life, could make pragmatism out of it, as it was mentioned today.

The Russian still needs unclear, hazy mysticism everywhere today. I have already mentioned Ivan Karamazov from Dostoyevsky's work “The Brothers Karamazov”, who is a true representative of the Russian who has absorbed Western European culture. God would be there, yes, God, but in mystical obscurity. And one can say: when the Russian becomes atheistic, he wants a mystical atheist. The Russian can become atheistic, but he almost wants the atheist to be revealed to him by God! You could also teach him Fichte's philosophy, you could also teach him Hegelianism; but then it would have to be found mysteriously on an altar somewhere or at least bear the imprint that it came into the world in a mysterious way!

In short, the various nations surrounding the German nation still stand today in such a way to this German spiritual life that there is truly every reason for the German to become aware of the germs and roots and diversity in his spiritual being! And the fruits and blossoms will come when the German becomes truly aware of this, aware of it precisely through the difficult time of trial in which he is currently mired.

Yes, what has been attempted to be presented in brief, dear attendees, developed on the 6 million square kilometers in the center, compared to the 68 million square kilometers in the surrounding area! And as if by bonds, which are also bonds of the spirit, this Central Europe is held together. The alliance between Germany and Austria is truly such a bond, one that is also based on the commonality of the spiritual life flowing through the two countries, through the two national territories.

I may say this because I have lived in Austria for more than half of my life, almost thirty years, and have participated in all the times of these thirty years in the way in which the German essence must live there in Austria, must live in multiform Austria. I have come to know what it means to take the word of one of the most German of Austrians – Robert Hamerling, the greatest son of Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century – and to feel it in the innermost being of someone who grasps the sense of belonging in Central Europe. Robert Hamerling said: “Austria is my fatherland; but Germany is my motherland”.

Robert Hamerling, as early as 1862, in his wonderful poem 'Germanenzug', spoke of this inwardness of the German world-view. Does it not appear to us in a beautiful form, this inwardness of the German world-view, when we see, for example, how Jakob Böhme, in very early times, speaks of how the German strives for knowledge, but in such a way that he wants to use it to enter into the spirit of the world? He expresses it so beautifully:

“When you look at the depths”

he means the depths of heaven

“And the stars and the earth, you see your God. And in you live and are you also. And the same God rules you also.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge is in this God. And when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

Fine words! If we take this, which I have tried to illustrate today: it turns out that in this internalization of the German essence – in this desire to grasp what, as divine spirituality, permeates and animates the world within one's own inner being – lies the profound world-historical calling of the German. And it is so intrinsic to the German that it really stands out like a second wave in the great upheaval of the human race. If we look across to the Orient – looking differently than the Russian Yushakov – then we find in the Asian peoples how they have dreamed of, how they have also once tried to penetrate into the spiritual that lives and breathes through the world. They tried to bring the I so close that it was as if asleep, [that] the actual human inner being was asleep, and so the human being could merge into what the life of the world spirit in the principle of the All interweaves and lives through the world. Now that the greatest impulse for the evolution of the Earth has been introduced – the Christ Impulse – the Asiatic type is no longer the one that can dominate the human race.

The German nature has found the right way to penetrate into the spiritual world in the sense of the Christ impulse, so that the ego is not eradicated as it was in Asia; [but that which is sought in the future of the world as a divine-spiritual, that is achieved through the elevation, through the strengthening - not through the weakening - of the ego. But the I is precisely exalted, strengthened, in order to grow together with the whole world. Thus ancient human striving continues in the newest form, as in historical vocation the essence of the German spirit.

This is beautifully shown by Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, in his “Germanenzug”, in which he describes in beautiful words how the ancient Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, once migrated from Asia to Europe, so that we take part in it, that we take part in the setting sun, in the mild twilight that spreads; and when everything sinks into a deep sleep, only one remains awake: the blond Teut. While everyone else sleeps, he is occupied with the thoughts of the future German being, the German task. The genius, the spirit of the German people, appears before the blond Teut and speaks to him of the future of the German people. This is how Robert Hamerling feels it and expresses it through the genius of the past to the blond Teut just as the Germanic peoples, the ancestors of the Germans, are crossing over from east to west. Thus speaks the genius:

"To whom will break the word from soul depths
Like your people, so rich, so delicate, so powerful?
Who breathes so solemnly in string sounds
His innermost? Who zich'n the sense so magnificent
Into the heavenly blue, granite hieroglyphics
Of the soul's upsurge from the narrowness of life?
Who finally ties the strands
Of the inquisitive thought to the stars
So boldly and strives and fights on all paths?
Who is so high, so deep, his urge, his hunch?
Who grasps the near and far so faithfully?
Where is every earthly and heavenly zone
reflected as in your thinking, O Teuton?

And how related, but on a higher level, appears the spiritual search for the divine reason of the world. Here, too, the genius of the German people speaks to the blond Teut as if through Robert Hamerling's mouth, from that which I just hinted at through the words of Jakob Böhme, where devotion becomes knowledge, where devotion becomes the world view, devotion to the divine spiritual forces of the world. This is how Hamerling has the blond Teut say to the genius of the German people:

"But however proudly you may strive,
Soaring high above other swarms,
You will always retain the ancient, sacred fire:
The dream-filled drunkenness of God
of the ancient Asian homeland. This holy ray, a temple fire, will glow in your chest and soul, remain with you and be your pilot at the helm! You only strive because you love: your most daring thought will be a devotion that seeks to merge with God."

Yes, the German needs to become aware of his German essence. Then he will find the right relationship to the events of the present! For he may trust in that which exists as the source, the root and germ of spiritual striving within the German nation. And whatever has such germs may be felt with hope and confidence that its blossoms and fruits will develop, despite everything that rises in hostility in the world against this spiritual foundation in German development.

I think that a truly objective, not a narrow-minded, consideration of the German nature says this. And the German can rely on such an objective consideration. Then he can also look objectively at the way in which one not only simplifies but also defames what extends over 6 million square kilometers compared to 68 square kilometers.

Anyone who looks at this, at the roots and the hoped-for seeds, blossoms and fruits of the future, may summarize what today's contemplation was, summarize it sentimentally in a few words. Words that are intimately connected with the whole feeling of the German essence, all German essence. They, too, are by Robert Hamerling, and they, too, prove how Central Europe has been welded together from this side and from the other side of the Ore Mountains, but has also been welded together by this common spiritual weaving and essence in this Central Europe.

Therefore, let us conclude today's reflection with a word from Robert Hamerling, the Austrian German, a word that summarizes in a sensitive way what I have tried to bring before your soul in a longer exposition - an unfortunately all too long exposition. Robert Hamerling says out of the sentiment from which he said “Austria is my fatherland, but Germany is my motherland”:

“And if ever the day
Should prove hostile to the German name,
From ocean to ocean shall run
The course of the German spirit!”

Report in the “Mitteilungen für die Mitglieder der Deutschen Sektion der Theosophischen Gesellschaft (Hauptquartier Adyar), herausgegeben von Mathilde Scholl”, No. 13/1912

At 10:15 a.m., the Secretary General of the German Section, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, opens the tenth ordinary General Assembly with the words:

"It is my duty to begin by welcoming you all most warmly in the name of our Theosophical movement and in the spirit that brings us together. These assemblies always give us the opportunity to see many of our friends gathered in one place at the same time. And what is most important for a true Theosophist is undoubtedly to know that they are united with many friends and like-minded people, that is, with people who, in the spirit of our time, have filled their hearts with inspiring ideas about spiritual matters. That our thoughts and feelings are forces that already have meaning as individual meanings within reality is something that, as Theosophists, we hold dear. But that the confluence of a larger number of such individual forces means something quite different must be admitted by anyone who regards spiritual life in terms of reality. Anyone who thinks that the spread of Theosophy depends solely on how externally, on the physical plane, fellow human beings are convinced by an external propaganda or by words, is only just beginning to understand spiritual life. But anyone who has penetrated the meaning of spiritual knowledge knows that the forces that invisibly rule the world, the forces of good will, which flow together from genuine theosophical hearts, also yield in a supersensible way a stream that flows into the evolution of humanity. Thus we will be increasingly inclined to see an external assembly of Theosophists as a symbol of what takes place between and from the hearts, and cannot be perceived in the external world. This is what expresses the holiness and dignity of the theosophical worldview, but also what entitles this theosophical worldview to intervene in our human evolution in a very unique way as an element that draws its true power from the supersensible.

The fact that we also find some understanding in the world, in addition to the predominant misunderstanding of our view that we encounter, is perhaps attested to by the progress we have made this year. We need only point out that we were able to stage our performances in Munich with increasing interest, that our artistic endeavors, which we express in our mysteries, have been successful in the succession of recent years. In 1909 we were able to organize one performance, in 1910 two and in 1911 even three. This is just one of the symptoms that speak for true progress, not for a mere semblance of it, within our movement.

Another symptom is the fact that our Weltanschhauung has already built itself a home in Stuttgart. Those who have a real understanding of Theosophy do not need to be told what it means that the aspirations of Theosophy can be so circumscribed by spatial boundaries that are themselves born of the theosophical idea. I am not above confessing that I find the whole way in which this Theosophical home within Stuttgart came into being almost more significant than what ultimately emerged, because no reality corresponds to the ideal

has emerged, because no reality corresponds to the ideal

. It is a building that has been created in association with an understanding architect who knew how to give the theosophical ideas an external form. Even more, I consider another to be a touchstone of the theosophical attitude in our circles. The building has been created without the need for propaganda in the outside world. The whole matter remained among Theosophists and even today, after the building is finished, it is still a matter among Theosophists.

Such a confirmation of our Theosophical thought is surely the best welcome that we can receive here today for our souls; and in this sense, that the Theosophical movement may not lose that which is most important is that the Theosophical movement may only work where it encounters this attitude and not where it has to work with the outer advertising drum. In this sense, let our Theosophical thoughts flow through this association.

So, after welcoming you most warmly, we have arrived at the business part of our General Assembly, and I ask you to treat it as such.

First item on the agenda:

Determining the voting ratio of the delegates from the individual branches.

It was necessary to clarify the voting rights of members of the Swiss branches within the German Section.

Dr. Steiner: “I must note here that we are now obliged to allow the Swiss branches to vote in the German Section, to which they still de facto belong. A Swiss Section has been founded. Those Swiss branches that belonged to the German Section refused to join the Swiss Section. So the alternative was either for the Swiss branches to join the German Section or to leave the Society. Yesterday I received a letter from the President of the Theosophical Society stating that these branches had the right to form a new, independent body. Before this is formed, according to all previous practices of the Theosophical Society, the former Swiss members of the German Section must still be counted as part of the German Section. Otherwise they would be left in the lurch if we did not grant them the right to vote within the German Section.

I now have to ask whether delegates have been elected by members who do not belong to any branch.

Mr. Krojanker remarks that the section members do not know about each other. Dr. Steiner replies that it is up to the section members themselves to get to know each other; they have the right to elect delegates according to previous resolutions of the general assembly. He suggested forming a center where all section members can report. This would be a start towards unification. Mr. Krojanker declared himself willing to accept reports from section members so that they could be united in the future and the election of delegates could be arranged.

The voting ratio was then determined. The representatives of the individual branches and the bearers of their votes are as follows:

Second [agenda item]: Reports of the General Secretary, the Secretary, the Treasurer, the Recording Secretary and the Auditors.

Dr. Steiner: “In previous years, I have given a factual report on the work of the German Section at this point. However, in view of the fact that, according to what the Executive Council can foresee, a number of lengthy matters are to be brought before the meeting, I would like to dispense with the usual address at this point. Instead, the business report will be given.”

The report of the secretary, Fräulein von Sivers, on membership trends follows.

Number of members: 2318 compared to 1950 in the previous year
New members: 458
Those who have left or can no longer
be found and have therefore been deleted: 67
Those who have transferred to other sections: 3
Those who have died: 20

Six new branches were founded:

Bochum, Graz, Heidenheim, Linz, Neuchâtel and Tübingen.

Two new centres were formed: Hamburg and New York.

Total number of branches: 53, of centres: 5.

Dr. Steiner: “There is something to be added to this report. It is a matter of commemorating our dear members who have passed away from the physical plane this year.

This year in particular, we have lost a large number of members who have left the physical plane through death. It is fitting that we remember these members in a heartfelt way.

Above all, I would like to remember an old member of the German Section and the Cologne branch, our dear Miss Hippenmeyer, who combined an ever-increasing warmth for our theosophical thoughts with an extraordinary amount of activity for the broadest world interests. Those who knew her better were as drawn to her beautiful, good, theosophical heart as they were to her world interests. Miss Hippenmeyer did not pursue these interests in a philistine way, but undertook extensive journeys that could be called world tours. Considering only the external, purely technical difficulties of these trips for a single traveling lady, and Miss Hippenmeyer was still a frail lady, then this is something to be admired. She was extremely active in our theosophical cause in a very likeable way, and it was painful for all those who had known her to hear that she left the physical plane in Java on one of her great journeys.

Furthermore, I have to mention an extraordinarily active co-worker, who also belonged to the Cologne Lodge, our dear friend Ludwig Lindemann. I still have the impression I had when I saw Ludwig Lindemann for the first time, who vividly presented his tendencies to me. Since then, it has grown day by day, despite the fact that the greatest obstacle for him was present, namely a serious illness. Nevertheless, he had no other thought than to stake his entire existence on the dissemination of theosophical thought. And when he had to go to Italy for the sake of his health, he worked there to cultivate the theosophical idea. He founded the small centers we have in Milan and Palermo. He was able to establish the most intense and heartfelt Theosophical life in these places. Ludwig Lindemann was loved by all who knew him, with the kind of love that can arise from the naturalness of the spiritual connection with a person. Lindemann pursued his great theosophical interests intensely, and I could feel, when I visited him in the last weeks before his death, how a deep, heartfelt, theosophical enthusiasm emerged from his decaying body. So it was a deep satisfaction for me to see how our Milanese friends felt deeply connected to our dear friend Lindemann. When I was in Milan, I was shown the room that had been prepared for Lindemann, where he could have lived if he had been able to come to Italy again. At the time, I was firmly convinced that he could have worked for a few more years if it had been possible for him to come to Italy again; everything was prepared for him there; karma willed it otherwise. But we look back on him as Theosophists look back on someone who has left the scene of his life and work in the physical world in our sense, in that we feel just as faithfully and warmly connected to him as we did when he was still among us on the physical plane.

I have to mention a third personality who left the physical plane perhaps unexpectedly quickly for many; it is our dear section member Dr. Max Asch. In his very eventful life, he had to endure many things that can make it difficult for a person to join a purely spiritual movement. But in the end he found his way to us in such a way that he, the doctor, found the best remedy for his suffering in the study of theosophical reading and thought. He repeatedly assured me that no other faith could arise in the soul of the physician, no other remedy than that which could come spiritually from the theosophical books, that he felt the theosophical teaching flowing like balm into his pain-torn body. He truly cultivated Theosophy in this sense until the hour of his death. And it was a difficult renunciation for me when, after our friend had passed away, his daughter wrote to me asking me to say a few words at his grave, but I was unable to fulfill this wish because that day marked the beginning of my lecture series in Prague, and it was therefore impossible for me to pay this last service to my theosophical friend on the physical plane. You can be assured that the words I should have spoken at his grave were sent to him as thoughts in the world he had entered at that time.

Furthermore, I have to mention a friend from Berlin, a member of our Besant branch, who, after various endeavors, finally found himself in our movement as if in a harbor. It is our dear friend Ernst Pitschner, who has been among us for a long time, afflicted with the seeds of decay, and was united with us in the most intense way in our theosophical work until his death. It was a peculiar karma that after a few weeks his wife followed him into the supersensible worlds.

Furthermore, I have to remember our dear member Christian Dieterle from Stuttgart. He has found his way into theosophical life with difficulty, but with extraordinary ambition, and in the last few months he was a man who thought in the most intense theosophical way.

Then we want to commemorate an older Theosophist who was snatched from the Mühlhausen branch, Josef Keller. It is one of those cases where, even though you have only met a person once in your life, you immediately recognize a deep state of mind and heart in him. Keller was a deeply convinced theosophist, especially in his last months, and all who knew him will keep him in faithful and loving memory.

Furthermore, I have to mention a man who, confined to his bed by a serious illness, was introduced to theosophy through the mediation of a person dear to us, Karl Gesterding.

I must also mention our dear friend Edmund [Reebstein], who was taken from us at a relatively young age after a short illness, and who those who knew him well came to hold in the highest esteem.

I have the same to say about Mrs. Major Göring, who worked with us in our branch for many years.

This time, the list of our deceased is so long that it would take too much time to say everything I would like to say.

I still have to mention our members Erwin Baumberger from Zurich, Georg Stephan from Breslau, Mrs. Fanny Russenberger from St. Gallen, Johannes [Radmann] from Leipzig, Karl Schwarze from Leipzig, Wilhelm Eckle from Karlsruhe, Georg Hamann from Hannover, Wilhelmine Mössner from Stuttgart I, Walter Krug from Cologne, Mrs. Silbermann from Heidelberg, Mrs. [Liendl] from Munich I.

Today, I still consider it my special duty to commemorate the departure from the physical plane of a personality who was well known in all theosophical circles, who was snatched from us by a painful death, who has done a great deal, and whom we remember with love, as we do the others. I am referring to Mrs. Helene von Schewitsch. You know her books, so I do not need to characterize her in more detail. I must emphasize that the circumstances were such that I always complied with her request when she asked me to give a lecture in her circle during my stay in Munich. I would just like to hint that for me this whole life presents itself as something deeply tragic; and I may well say that Mrs. von Schewitsch met me with extraordinary trust and that I am justified in saying: This life had a deep tragedy. I was also granted the opportunity to look into this heart; and please understand that what I call tragic is meant in the sense that most of you would understand it from my lectures.

We fulfill a duty of warmth to express outwardly how we are connected with the dead in our thoughts by rising from our seats.

Report of the Treasurer:

In this report, the treasurer, Mr. Seiler, points out that it is extremely difficult to complete the cash report in time because the branches send in their accounts very late, often only a few days before the general assembly. There was also a great deal of disorder and inaccuracy in filling out the pre-printed forms, so that the treasurer had great difficulties, especially because many reports were not received on time. Cash report for the 1910/11 financial year:

Dr. Steiner: “You have just heard how difficult it is, although it would be desirable, to do the right thing at the right time. But what use is it, even if it is desirable, to close the till on August 31 and send the report to the individual branches 14 days before the general assembly, since we only receive the documents we need from the branches a few days before the general assembly. It seems to me – and this is my personal opinion – that a theosophical fairness should also prevail in the Theosophical Society, which should consist of asking why something is not done when it is not done, and asking why it is not done. It could be said that it is the duty of the General Secretariat to urge the lodges to do so, but what is the use of that if the lodges do not do it anyway. We will lose little if we are not able to swear by the letter.

The Society itself must first gain an insight into the way in which this equity is understood.

I am obliged to read a letter at this point, and I ask you to assess it quite objectively. I am obliged to read the letter because it is expressly requested; however, I would ask you to form an entirely unbiased opinion and to wait to discuss the letter until we reach the third point: proposals from the plenary session. It is in the interest of the meeting to postpone other items, such as the granting of discharge to the entire board, until the third item. Therefore, I ask you to first listen to the reading of this letter. I put to the vote whether you agree to wait with the discussion until the third item.

The vote shows that the meeting agrees.

Thereupon Dr. Steiner read the following letters:

Leipzig, December 8, 1911

To the General Assembly of the Theosophical Society (German Section) Berlin.

Article 11 of the statutes states: The financial year of the Section ends on August 31. Annual accounts prepared by the treasurer and audited by the auditors shall be sent to each branch by the secretary general 14 days before the annual general meeting.

It is clear that the Secretary General has not fulfilled this duty for years. I therefore asked him at a members' meeting of the Leipzig branch on November 5 to ensure that the annual accounts are at least available to the delegates at the General Assembly. He rejected my modest request for trivial reasons. On November 27, I made a similar request at the Leipzig members' meeting, but it was also rejected. For this reason, I unfortunately see no choice but to approach the General Assembly itself with the request to raise the following motion at point 2 of the agenda (report of the General Secretary) for resolution:

Proposal: The Secretary General of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Steiner, is requested:

1) to fulfill the statutes of the German Section in the future with the utmost diligence and to send the annual accounts to each branch 14 days before the General Assembly for review and examination in accordance with S 9 and S 11, and

2) to formally request indemnity for this time due to his breach of duty.

If, contrary to expectations, the General Assembly ignores the constitution and statutes, that is, law and justice, and rejects my 'motion or an analogous amendment to it, I will consider whether I should not call on the supervisory authority, that is, the Royal District Court in Berlin, to help the statutes to their rights and thus have all resolutions of the General Assembly declared unlawful.

The inevitable consequence would be a new General Assembly, which would then have to be convened in accordance with the statutes of $ 11.

Dr. M. Haedicke, a practising physician in Leipzig.

---

Leipzig, December 8, 191[1]; Burgstraße 2 To the General Secretary of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Steiner in Berlin.

Dear Dr. Steiner,

According to the statutes, every member of the Theos[ophical] Society has a consultative (but no decision-making) vote at the General Assembly. Therefore, I ask you, in your capacity as General Secretary and executive officer of the Executive Committee, to read the enclosed letter to the General Assembly at point 2 of the agenda (report of the General Secretary) or to have it read by the secretary. Even in Saxony, there is an end to complacency and sloppiness when it comes to administrative matters. At the same time, I would like to remind you that I spoke here at the meeting in favor of tolerance and also said, among other things, that the Catholic Church is tolerant of lawbreakers and does not expel them. You disputed this. I remained silent because, as a Catholic, you knew or should have known better. And yet you were wrong. The Catholic Church does not excommunicate lawbreakers, that is, murderers and thieves! Of course, anti-modernists and other heretics are excommunicated, because there is no freedom of belief or conscience, only obedience to the Church.

How progressive and freedom-breathing and fraternally conciliatory our Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution appear in contrast: no distinction of faith or race, no “belief in any dogma”.

Dear Doctor! You have signed this constitution with your signature and therefore, as a man of honor, you must either keep the constitution sacredly and faithfully or have this constitution amended or resign from office. Since you have now publicly spoken of “theosophical dogmas” here, I ask you to recant or to draw one of the three conclusions mentioned above. For it is obvious without further ado:

1) that the Theosophical Society has no dogma at all and that such an assertion is therefore a blatant contradiction of § 3 of the Constitution, and

2) that your assertion of a 'theosophical dogma' is a contradictio in adjecto such as 'dark sun' or 'tolerant Jesuit'.

Please explain on this occasion that the Theosophical Society has no dogma and logically can never have one, just as Theosophy is not a spiritual science, but according to Blavatsky “the wisdom of those who are divine”.

With theosophical greetings! Dr. M. Haedicke.

The postponement of the discharge is accepted by the assembly by vote.

Dr. Steiner asks if anyone has anything to say about the cash report.

Pastor Wendt: “Where do the 789 marks 75 pfennigs of congress taxes go? And why was the congress canceled at the last minute when most of them were already on their way to Italy?” Dr. Steiner: “Since I have been interpellated in this way, I have to answer this question. I will do so as best I can. However, I have to go back to the events that led to such congresses.

In 1904, the decision was taken to hold these congresses of the then-founded Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society. At that time, the decision was taken to hold such a congress every year. The way in which these congresses are to be prepared was determined, and how the section leaders of the country in which they were to be held were to participate in the event. It was also decided that each section should send a certain amount of money, I think 50 pfennigs per capita.

Now I come to a point that seems important to me, namely that in Paris – on the occasion of the 1906 congress – not only was the decision taken to hold a congress only every two years, but that another matter was also discussed at the same time. Specifically, they discussed – and I ask you to pay particular attention to this – whether they could evoke bitter feelings by asking our then-living president Olcott to found a European congress. The question arose through Commander Courmes, who was particularly close to Olcott, and it was of great concern to everyone involved at the time that Olcott might feel hurt if a separate body of European sections were established in which Olcott had no say. It was clear to everyone that the Federation was established in this way, that the president had no say in it. It was extremely difficult for us to make such a decision; but it had to be made, and it clearly showed that only the Federation of Sections itself and not the President of the Society had a say in it; and as far as I know, Olcott never felt this decision to be a painful one. This decision meant that the external events were taken over by the section of the country concerned, which was chosen for this congress in each individual case. This year, Genoa was chosen. Our friends have devoted themselves with the greatest intensity to the preparation and organization of this congress. Of course, money was needed for this, and since this money is usually spent eight days before the congress, we have no right to talk about the money that has been dutifully paid over in any sense here.

Certain difficulties arose beforehand, namely cholera. I did not rely on what was reported in the newspapers and so on, but above all trusted in the reports of our friend, Professor Penzig, who repeatedly assured me that it was not possible to speak of an epidemic in Genoa. I was therefore able to determine the number of German participants in Munich with a clear conscience and give it to Professor Penzig.

I was obliged to travel for a few days after the Munich cycle and arrived back in Munich on September 10th to make my preparations for Genoa. There I found a letter from Professor Penzig, in which he expressed his pleasure at being able to welcome so many of our members to Genoa and assured me for the last time that there was no risk of illness or quarantine difficulties. On the evening of September 10, I received a telegram: “Congress is canceled, please notify members.” Now the various addresses had to be found, and that was of course very difficult; we did not find about seven or eight, and I am sorry, Mr. Pastor, that you were among them.

But at the time, it was my responsibility to also find out the reasons why the congress was not taking place. Therefore, on the morning of the following day, after I had received the telegram on Sunday evening, September 10, I sent a telegram saying, “Since the cancellation must be extremely strange, please state the reasons.” In the evening I received the reply, “I have acted on strict orders from the President and the Secretary of the Congress. Please contact them.”

The section as such is of course authorized to cancel the congress, and we had to comply. If I had received a cancellation from London or somewhere else, I would still have traveled to Genoa, but in this case the cancellation was legally binding, even if it was incomprehensible. But I am not talking about justifications, but about facts. This has happened, and you will see from it that we could not possibly have objected to the sending of our congress funds, which have been used, and we cannot object to their use in the slightest."

Report of the auditors:

Mr. Tessmar, as auditor, stated that he and Ms. Motzkus had duly examined the books and found them to be correct, and he again came to speak about the reports not sent in on time by the branches.

Third [agenda item]: Motions from the floor:

Dr. Steiner: “There is a motion in two parts. One motion regarding Dr. Hugo Vollrath. The first part of the motion reads as follows:

Proposal:

The undersigned members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society hereby submit the following proposal to the General Assembly to be held in Berlin on December 10 of this year:

a) The General Assembly resolves to re-examine the events that led to the expulsion of Dr. Hugo Vollrach of Leipzig at the General Assembly of October 26, 1908, and to elect a commission of seven members for this purpose.

b) The selected commission should begin its work no later than six weeks after this year's General Assembly and forward the results of its investigations to the Secretary General of the “German Section”.

c) No members are to be included in the selected commission who, without knowing the exact circumstances, voted for the exclusion at the time.

d) The elected commission shall decide whether the resolution of October 26, 1908 is to be upheld or annulled.

Weißer Hirsch, December 6, 1911, signed H. Ahner, Chairman of the Lodge of the Grail in Dresden. Paul Krojanker, M.d.D.S.

Proposal:

The undersigned members of the German Section of the hereby submit the following proposal to the General Assembly to be held in Berlin on December 10 of this year: a) The General Assembly shall resolve to that led to the exclusion of Dr. Hugo Vollrath in Leipzig from the “Theosophical Society” at the General Assembly on October 26, 1908, and to elect a commission of seven members for this purpose.

b) The elected commission shall begin its work no later than six weeks after this year's General Assembly and shall forward the results of its examinations to the Secretary General of the “German Section”.

©) Only those members who did not vote at the exclusion conference of the board can be elected to the commission.

d) The elected commission has to decide whether the resolution of October 26, 1908 should be upheld or annulled.

signed Curt Richard Müller

[Rudolf Steiner:] “Regarding these proposals, it is necessary to present to the General Assembly a pamphlet that Dr. Hugo Vollrath has written on the same matter.

Some time ago, Dr. Vollrath sent this pamphlet to the members, in which he first printed what I had to say on behalf of the board at the 1908 general assembly on the matter in question, so to speak as the mouthpiece of the board; and to this Dr. Vollrath adds special remarks. The board has now decided – so that it cannot be said that we are keeping anything from the members – to have Dr. Vollrath's remarks read out.

Mr. Selling reads out Dr. Vollrath's statement, which has the following content:

To the board and members of the German Section of the Theosophical Society: At the Seventh General Assembly of the Section, at the request of the Leipzig Lodge, represented by Mrs. Wolfram, the decision was announced that the undersigned had been expelled from the Section.

At the time, I did not attach much importance to this decision, as I recognized the purpose of this event and was not directly prevented from working for the Theosophical Society. Based on the good law of karma, I saw it as a test that informed me about the Section's ethical view of the Theosophical Society and was to prepare me for even more difficult tasks. My close environment knew that I had been sacrificing my honour and reputation, as well as my property and work, in the service of the Masters, the founders of the Theosophical Society, since 1902.

But as it turned out, my expulsion was the source of an incalculable flood of hatred of the worst kind. The harmless friendly relations that I had with many members were immediately and hurtfully broken off, and people believed that they now had a duty to insult me as soon as my name came up. Since Ms. Wolfram has recently stated completely new reasons for my expulsion that were not possible at the time, and since the agitation is increasing, even against my new colleagues, who are also being systematically worked against me, I would certainly now incur a great karmic debt on my work by omission if I remained silent any longer.

According to the protocol, I was excluded because the Leipzig lodge felt its neck was being choked. But now that the throat was free again, they didn't leave me alone to work, and they continued to stir up hatred against my colleagues, worse than before.

I therefore submitted the following motion to the Section Executive Council and the General Secretariat:

1. to drop the motion by Ms. Wolfram regarding my expulsion in a dignified manner,

2. to elect a court of honor to decide and clarify existing misunderstandings and rumors.

My reasoning for point 1 is: Mrs. Wolfram submitted her application shortly before the start of the 7th General Assembly, instead of at least 14 days in advance, contrary to the statutes of the section. The delegates and board members present in Berlin were surprised. They did not have time to examine Mrs. Wolfram's accusations. Especially when such serious decisions are made that shake the very foundations of the Theosophical Society, the members, or at least the chairpersons, should be consulted. Furthermore, in the life of an association, it is incorrect to attack a member without giving him the opportunity to defend himself against the secret attacks. I demand the right to defend myself. By defense I do not mean justification, but an opportunity to present evidence against the attacks, so that the Theosophical Society as such is not karmically burdened by false representations of facts.

My reason for point 2 is: The Court of Honour has to establish a balance between the tensions that arise within the German Section. If this natural authority is ignored, brutality and lawlessness will prevail. But arbitrariness is not freedom! The arrangers of my exclusion have claimed that I absolutely need the German Section, which is why I am trying to get back into it.

Those who are under the spell of this phrase, consider my work after the period of my exclusion as head of the board of directors of the Bund für Gesundes Leben and the board of directors of the German Society for Psychic Research, as editor of good theosophical literature and as editor of “Theosophy” and as editor of four other ethical journals, all of which are in the service of the lofty cultural idea of the Theosophical Society. When Mrs. Annie Besant appointed me as the secretary of the “Bund des Sternes im Osten” (The Starry East), I do not consider it as a personal merit, but as a sign of trust that honest great people have placed in me. These are people who, free from fear, have the courage to renounce realpolitik and remain true to principle, for only in this way are they worthy and suited to hold in their hands the great message of redemption from the White Lodge and to proclaim it to the spirit of the age.

I shall comment only very briefly today on the most serious accusations and slanders. I therefore ask you to read the protocol carefully, as I must assume that you are familiar with it. Dr. Steiner and Fräulein von Sivers had had bad experiences with the Secession of the Theosophical Society, the so-called International Theosophical Fraternity (L.T.V.), as well as with the Theosophical Society of Paul Raatz in Berlin. I had no connection with these associations, neither commercially nor as a collaborator. Dr. Steiner was well aware of this. He knew that I had moved from Wilhelmstraße 120, the headquarters of Paul Raatz's association, to Motzstraße 17 because I did not agree with the principles of the society, which takes an oppositional stance. This happened before I even became his student. I was often with Dr. Steiner three to four times a week. As soon as Dr. Steiner saw me somewhere, he would inquire about my relationship with his antipodes in Leipzig, the representatives of the I.T.V. When I told him, when pressed to take action against these people, that I felt obliged by certain friendly relations to let people work in peace, and that in such important matters I left the course of events to the law of karma, to which Dr. Steiner replied: “I should bear in mind that after all this was about money, about hard cash. We are karma, it cannot work if we do not want it to. It is not acceptable that I sit on the fence.” I told him that I was financially independent and that it was important to me not to sit on the fence, but to work for our cause. However, I allowed myself to be influenced by Dr. Steiner's objections because I believed that without him, working for the Theosophical Society would be very difficult for me. He also knew that it was only at his and Frau Wolfram's instigation, for they were both well informed, that I demanded the return of my capital from the Theosophical Central Bookshop of the I.T.V. in Leipzig, by means of which the bookshop was maintained at that time, and which indirectly led to its collapse, which soon occurred. It was only as a result of this that the lawsuits were possible, for which I was reproached shortly afterwards. In these lawsuits, my opponent was always convicted. My opponent was sentenced to prison five times. I was never punished. Dr. Steiner wrote part of my first court submission with his own hand; only when his opponents accused him of wanting to use me to gain possession of the bookstore did he withdraw from me and suddenly no longer understand me, as he said.

Mrs. Wolfram was always annoyed by my seemingly passive behavior towards the work of the Theosophical Society at the time, and occasionally offered me offices and positions. She wanted to make me chairman of the Leipzig Lodge when Mr. Bresch resigned and before Mr. Jahn took over the position. Since I was returning to Berlin that same evening with Dr. Steiner, I had to give up the negotiations for the position of chairman. I never forced myself on Dr. Steiner to work with him. I constantly emphasized to him that I live and die for the Theosophical Society, that the interests of the Theosophical Society are mine, and that if the Master can find a place for me somewhere, he will find ways and means. My only evening lecture at 17 Motzstraße took place at the request of Miss Sivers, who publicly invited me to do so at an earlier evening lecture.

The idea of starting a bookshop matured in conversation with Dr. Steiner. He complained that Miss von Sivers was wearing herself out with work that was not paying off. She had a lot of book orders to fulfill, while the publisher M. Altmann in Leipzig only gave her a small discount, and she had to add postage, packaging and labor costs to this. I was told something similar by Miss von Slivers herself. Since I was now in a position to intervene here, and since I am not ashamed of any practical work, even of the kind that could lead to the accusation that it is done for the sake of profit, I naturally considered it an act of philanthropy to provide a remedy, and Dr. Steiner promised me to publish his manuscript “Die Geheimwissenschaft” and to give Fräulein von Sivers her translations. At the time, we had considered publishing Schur's La pretresse d'Isis. With great sacrifices, I immediately launched the existing bookshop, the Theosophical Publishing House. Allegedly because of the “incredible red” of a brochure, Fräulein] von Sivers wrote me a rude letter, I still have it in my hands, and both she and Dr. Steiner broke off all relations with me without any discussion, , despite the fact that I personally brought the entire print run of the brochure to Motzstraße 17 for destruction and despite the fact that I promised to fire my managing director A. Strauch immediately if he were to write a brochure again without my exact instructions.

I was Dr. Steiner's student and got to know the exercises of his system thoroughly, both those that I received personally and those that he distributed to others. I was amazed at the handling of these sacred things, but most of all at Steiner's inconsistency. He once told me, verbatim, that the tablecloth between us was completely cut, while he told another student, a young lady who wanted to leave his circle, that he could not sever the connection himself.

Since I believed that I had the trust of Dr. Steiner and Fräulein] von Sivers, and since both were quite sovereign in the section at the time, I created a literary department that would serve to provide good translations by foreign contributors. Anyone who provided their contributions free of charge was to be listed as an honorary member. Two members in the Netherlands and Russia who were personally acquainted with Dr. Steiner were listed as honorary members. If this department proved to be practical, it should become viable, and at the next general assembly I hoped to be able to officially hand over this department to the section as a valuable working group. In the meantime, however, I was expelled, and this work was thwarted because they did not ask what was achieved, but what your actual motives were for doing it. But if you look for motives, it is easy to be deceived into seeing your own thoughts.

The Theosophical Society is not responsible for the private lives and opinions of its members. Dr. Steiner should know that. Anyone who wants to form an objective opinion about Dr. Steiner's polemic regarding the open letter can obtain any copies from me free of charge. Dr. Steiner did not even read the letter properly before trying to generalize some of what he had read. This lack of objectivity would already be enough to discredit a modern scholar as being unscientific. But an occultist has a duty to show much greater objectivity than a modern academic. What I said in the open letter is based in some points on the Secret Doctrine, and anyone can accept what corresponds to their reason and conscience. As is well known, scholarly disputes and blind faith have no place in the Theosophical Society. What I have said about the nervousness of certain circles is my personal experience, which I do not allow Dr. Steiner to reinterpret or generalize. As the saying goes, “battled dogs bark.” Since I have not committed myself to any particular system, but see the revelation of truth in all systems, I have a much freer judgment of the entire Theosophical movement in Germany than Dr. Steiner. Dr. Steiner, through his many speeches in support of my expulsion, has given even the most uninformed observer a truly vivid picture of restlessness and over-excitement. A section that finds its calm and stability in divine law and in the spirit hardly needs to be stirred up by a single member who does not even hold an office, either on the executive committee or in any lodge. One has only to read between the lines of the protocol. The purposeful worker does not let others upset him. When I explained my motives in an open letter regarding the acceptance of a publishing house logo, a relatively unimportant thing, I was accused of all sorts of evil motives. The sharp condemnation of Dr. Steiner, as an occult teacher, is out of place. His words: “Nonsense, grandiose amateurism, drink your own concoction, rolled out tin” are no proof of understanding and tolerance towards the opinions of aspiring members. Anyone who wants to be a soul-carer and claims such a position for himself must show leniency. But tolerance is the basis of all joint work. What would happen if Dr. Steiner were to be judged and his divorce matters made the subject of a general assembly? Dr. Steiner is not to be slighted here in any way, for he has already dramatized his criticism in this case in his 'Rosicrucian Mystery', in which, on page 38, he has the exiled wife of John clearly describe the situation. I have not slighted any member of the German Section, and anyone who claims the opposite can come forward. I have not allowed myself to interfere in the inner life of others. When I spoke to Dr. Franz Hartmann a few weeks ago, he complained that he was very often harassed with letters in which the most severe accusations were made against Dr. Steiner's occult training, which had already sent a number of people to the insane asylum and to their deathbeds. Dr. Hartmann gave me various names. I too have received addresses from people who have lost their physical and mental health as a result of Steiner's training.

Certain manipulations by Steiner's management are in direct violation of commercial law. Is it up to the majority of the section to decide whether this is good or not? As long as such and similar matters, which are of a deeply invasive nature, are still occupying public opinion in Germany, does Dr. Steiner have the right to discredit members and expose them to the ridicule of his section without any defense?

Occultism is the practical science of love and wisdom. Why then does Dr. Steiner alone have the right to polemics and condemnation? He made ample use of this right during the time of his agitation against his colleague in the Theosophical Society, C. W. Leadbeater, in the private sessions of the German members with Fräulein von Sivers during the Paris Congress of 1905. I was surprised at Steiner's devastating polemic; and although I held him in the highest esteem at the time, I could not refrain from pointing out the state of the Theosophical Society in entirely objective terms. However, I was sharply rebuffed by Fräulein von Sivers and Dr. Steiner. After the meeting ended, both assured me that they had no personal animus towards me.

It is untrue, if I am to speak in the terms of Dr. Steiner, that I send my things out into the world as 'Adyar things'. I have always upheld the principle of the Theosophical Society that each member is responsible for what he writes, and not the Society or its official representatives. The success of my work to date confirms the correctness of this principle.

It is untrue when Dr. Steiner claims that my expulsion was the result of a majority vote. Dr. Steiner abstained from voting in the board meeting. The representative of the Dresden Lodge was against it. One could only speak of a majority decision if Mrs. Wolfram's application had been properly submitted to the chairmen of the lodges at least 14 days before the general assembly so that the members could have been informed of its contents. Of course, it is difficult to do this now because the members have already been influenced against me. With this exclusion manipulation, the section has shown that its association morality is even lower than the social-democratic association morality. When one of its members is expelled, the reasons for the expulsion are officially announced so that the person concerned can defend himself. It is common practice at general meetings, as evidenced by the minutes, to spend hours discussing trivial matters, but when it comes to an expulsion, which is not a trivial matter, public opinion is feared.

It is generally incomprehensible how an occultist can believe that spiritual progress can be achieved by majority decision. Anyone who believes this is not only uneducated but also superstitious. Belief in the majority is a delusion.

However, I had great patience with Mrs. Wolfram. As long as I listened to her lectures on Friedrich Nietzsche – she gave me this private lecture twice – I was her good friend. I had to confront her several times when she attacked representatives of the Theosophical worldview in her lodge lectures, and I did so in a considerate manner. She was constantly dealing with some person. She made certain demands, according to which she judged the value of the members. For example, when I did not want to blindly admit that Dr. Steiner was the greatest initiate in Europe and that at the next presidential election, Dr. Steiner must take the place of Mrs. Besant, because Dr. Steiner was a much better speaker, as she wanted to convince various, even older, members at the Munich Congress members at the Munich Congress, and when I did not ask her for advice at every opportunity, when founding the Theosophical Publishing House, this woman's hatred was poured out on my head, a hatred whose energy is all the more admirable because it revealed a great negative power that must ultimately serve the Master's work indirectly. To avoid all slander, I decided to found a lodge in Leipzig myself, as had already been done in Munich, Stuttgart and other cities. However, this only increased Frau Wolfram's hatred. When Dr. Steiner gave a series of lectures in Leipzig in 1908, she banned my colleagues and me from attending, even though the lectures were public. Dr. Steiner later lifted the ban. She informed her members that they would ensure that Dr. Vollrah would not only be removed from the German Section, but also from the Theosophical Society altogether. She used the sanctity of the inner circle (E.S.) to cause one of my co-workers, under the guise of silence, to abandon me shortly after the founding of the Theosophical Publishing House, so that the company would be forced to file for bankruptcy. Dr. Vollrath, she claimed, was insane and now his father would still be able to place him in a decent mental institution. (The witnesses are still alive.) She based this atrocity on the testimony of her teacher, Dr. Steiner. She promised my colleague a position in Dr. Steiner's general secretariat. Another colleague suffered, in her opinion, from dangerous megalomania. This poor man, in his physical organization, could not protect himself against the occult attacks of this woman as I could, and his delicate, sensitive constitution suffered from the most terrible mental depressions for months. These experiences were a terrible chapter in the history of the Theosophical Society for me. Over the past three years, Ms. Wolfram's bullying has spread throughout the section. When I was seen at the Budapest Congress, a real witch hunt began. It was only when I explained to the General Secretary of the Hungarian Section that I would appeal to our esteemed President that I was graciously allowed to attend the congress, even though I had already had the admission ticket for months.

In her report, Mrs. Wolfram says that I cried and screamed. It was certainly enough to make me scream. I cried once, and I am not ashamed of that even today; the others present at the time are still on the physical plane today. It was a moment when the sublimity of humanity and the dignity of womanhood seemed to fade in one of its representatives. The immediate proximity of unsuspected malice triggered a pain in me that I could not hide at the time, although I almost did not know tears! Today, after four years, despite a lot of work, this mental result is still vivid in my mind.

I knew the source from which Mrs. Wolfram took the money for the education of her two children, she had two at the time. This was very embarrassing to her, and she feared my knowledge, which partly explains the bold effort to get rid of me.

The subtle psychic tact of the occultist, who looks deeper into the psychic life of others, does not allow him to completely reveal the psychic life of his opponents before the public, because by doing so he draws the attention of others too much to the unimportant, the person, at the expense of the essential, the principles and the tasks of the Theosophical Society, which, however, are the primary focus of attention and concentrated interest. I have therefore only attempted to give a few brief explanations that may serve to clarify to some extent the deliberately veiled circumstances of my expulsion. However, I cannot yet foresee what the consequences will be, as that depends on the response I receive from the German Section.

It is in my nature as a representative of the Aryan race, after three years of trying to remain silent, to enter the realm of gentleness and peace as an undefeated warrior, not as a learned, diplomatic couch potato by the warm stove. Where should we go in the Theosophical Society to decide by majority vote whether a general secretary can eat old cheese, wear an artist's tie, or send his wife a bill of divorce? The authority of an occult teacher, a master or a theosophist cannot be established by a majority vote! Do we have the right to see only the lowly in our members? Or is it our duty to expect great things from them, since we are not the heralds of greatness, truth, beauty and strength? Are we not working on a civilization based on brotherhood, love and wisdom? Should we not therefore be the first to praise and practise these qualities in ourselves, in our environment, in our circles? Should arbitrariness, majority decisions and realpolitik take the lead in the Theosophical Society, and members who take the side of principle be ridiculed? No, “A limit has tyrants' power! When the oppressed can find no justice anywhere, when the burden becomes unbearable, he reaches up into the heavens with courageous courage and brings down his eternal rights, which hang above, unalienable and unbreakable like the stars themselves.

In order to finally put an end to the terrible and fruitless attacks on my colleagues and my work, I am having this petition to the section printed in large numbers and sent to all members of the section in order to awaken the public conscience in them and to of an arbitration tribunal, where at least the grossest expressions of organizational arbitrariness within the section can be discussed and where the rumors that have been circulated can be examined for their value and which can then make decisions on a just basis!

I have had an excerpt printed from the minutes of the seventh General Assembly, which literally records the entire proceedings and is necessary for an easier understanding of the matter.

Dr. Hugo Vollrath

[Rudolf Steiner:] “Dr. Vollrath wrote to me yesterday”:

Bund des Sternes im Osten. Secretariat for Germany: Dr. Hugo Vollrath, Leipzig, Salomonstr. 18. Date: December 8, 1911.

Dear Doctor!

I have heard that a number of members of the Section will be holding a meeting tomorrow in

in Berlin tomorrow to discuss a motion regarding my exclusion. Wouldn't it be better if efforts were made to ensure that the discussions that will be necessary to form this commission are as brief as possible? I have seen that more dust is being raised than is necessary, and that our opponents see this matter in a completely different light than I would like in view of your position. Because basically you are infinitely closer to me than to those who want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Should it be the order of things that I become a member of the section again, it would naturally be much more pleasant for me to be able to offer you the hand of reconciliation, which comes from a sincere heart, without much annoyance and without causing new ill will. However, should you be completely opposed to this, either because you still harbor the old mistrust towards me, then I am also prepared to take the measures that my mental self-preservation instinct puts into my hands. The holy beings will continue to stand by me.

However, I always consider it more appropriate to go to the root of the problem first in order to save time and effort.

Should the balance in the section be disturbed in any way by my possible re-admission, I would of course be prepared to resign voluntarily. The founding of the Free International Section, German Branch, would then be the natural consequence.

If you consider a meeting with me before the General Assembly advisable, I would be grateful if you would notify me, at the Evangelical] Hospice of St. Michael at the Anhalter Bahnhof.

With theosophical greetings! Yours sincerely, Dr. Hugo Vollrath.

Göttingen, December 8, 1911. Dear Doctor!

This letter is prompted by the fact that Dr. Vollrath has just written to me asking me to sign his application to the Section Assembly to appoint a commission to examine his exclusion from the Section.

In response to this, I am writing to you directly today: I support his application for the appointment of the examination commission for the following reason: I was not present at the 1908 meeting at which Vollrach was excluded. However, from the report and the further communications about it, I have gained the impression that the decision at that time was not taken in a satisfactory manner, even if it seemed appropriate at the time due to the circumstances. At present, both you and Ms. Wolfram herself would wish for this matter to be definitively settled formally, sine ira et studio.

Finally, I would like to mention something that is probably self-evident to you: I strongly disagree with the tone and content of Dr. Vollrath's printed response and the reasons for his request for a re-examination of his case. If his request for this requires my support, I hereby give it, because I am entirely in favor of him receiving impartial justice to the fullest extent. But I ask not to be identified with Dr. Vollrath; and since I am not aware of the actual circumstances myself, I ask that this support of my motion not be used factually either for or against Dr. Vollrach.

Sincerely yours, Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden.

Mr. Michael Bauer wishes to speak:

If he objects to the expression “rolled sheet metal”, then I am convinced that sheet metal is much too good a thing; one could say cardboard lid instead. If you write such things, there is no need to look for a way to ridicule such a person. But there are many other things, so we cannot refrain from dealing with the matter in more detail. Not to mention all the logical contradictions.

What should cause us to look into the matter more closely is not the pamphlet itself, which was written outside the Theosophical Society; the reason why we have to deal with it is a very sad one, namely that, according to this pamphlet, there are people within our Society who share the same attitude. A year ago, one could still say, “I believe that Dr. Hugo Vollrath was justifiably expelled.” Today, one can no longer say that. Today one must say, “I know that Dr. Hugo Vollrath was justifiably expelled.”

Dr. Vollrath speaks of the deliberately veiled circumstances of his expulsion. Those of you who voted at the time are therefore complicit in the deliberately veiled circumstances. It would have been right to expel Dr. Vollrath simply because he sent those notes, and only for that reason.

Today we have heard about individual forces and effects; that is precisely the nature of our development today, that individual people can connect with one another, that is precisely the deepest moment of Christian development. But when one engages in propaganda, one appeals to feelings that do not go hand in hand with free humanity. Those who do this are not working in our interest. Any member who engages in propaganda must be excluded. They say: tolerance must determine us, brotherly love commands us to tolerate such members among us. – If they say that, then they clearly don't know what a society is. Of course we have to tolerate what goes on in the world that we cannot prevent, but we must keep far away from those who cannot work in our spirit.

Dr. Vollrath did not include a statement from the General Assembly in his pamphlet. He said: “A society that excludes anyone loses its cosmopolitan character.” But what does that mean! One could just as easily say: A garden from which a weed is thrown over the fence loses its existence as a garden. A society must reserve the right to expel members, because it is its duty to remove all elements that no longer belong if it wants to continue its work in the right way. From this point of view, we are a society. The tolerance that is always invoked should not only be practiced towards our opponents, but also towards our friends. It is necessary that we clear the air and clear our minds. If we let this continue, if we say, “We have to let these people in, what kind of society will we end up with?”

Of course, many things can be touched, but it does not belong in our society. I once experienced that someone said: We should deal with things in our lodges, such as the cooking box.

But all of this is actually not the most painful thing about the whole thing, when we say that the very foundations of society are under threat, and when we then still have to hear from members: “Maybe he was wrong after all.” The most painful thing for me is a completely different point. Clear your mind of everything you have gained in the way of clarification, elevation and strength through Theosophy, as we received it from Dr. Steiner, and imagine that your library contains only books that you knew before. then please consider for a moment what you have been able to experience over the years in terms of joy, upliftment, the joy of knowledge, and inspiration. If you compare that with the experiences you had before, you will have some idea of what society was like before and what it is like today. I belonged to it. It must be said that something tremendous has happened in these last years, for which I have only one expression of Rama Krishna: “When a saint comes, he can make buried springs flow; a messenger of God can make springs flow where there were none.”

We have experienced this, but we have also experienced that there were people among us who poisoned and defiled these sources. It has become very clear to me that we cannot continue in this way. We cannot simply let society grow without countering the danger that we will have a majority that actually does not belong in society and that can make it impossible for us to work in the right way in this society. Our society is an organism through which our inner life is meant to have an effect on the world. If the inner life is too lazy, too comfortable, so that it can no longer expel disease material, then it must face decay. Today we may still have the opportunity to make the body healthy, and I appeal to you to be energetic today in ensuring that we no longer have such things before us in a future General Assembly, that attacks can be directed against us from within society. The General Assembly must do something here; this is not about the person of Dr. Steiner, it is about society and its organism. Something must be done today that cannot be done later. We have no choice but to proceed radically.

I do not yet have the motion that may arise, and I have no intention of anticipating anything. What I wanted to do was give you an idea of the enormity of this moment. We must not approach this matter with complacency, with sleepiness. It is not a small thing, it is not enough for us to dismiss Mr. Vollrath; it is necessary that we unanimously enter upon a path to heal the organism by excluding from society what does not belong in it.” Mr. Ahner: ”You are looking in one direction and you expect me to give my opinion on what I have just heard. It is always a significant thing when those elements from all parts of our fatherland gather here who are called upon to carry forward the high goals that Theosophy pursues in order to offer something to all of humanity so that it may develop further, in accordance with the wishes of the high masters.

Today, we are dealing with a matter that, in my opinion, should not occur in a Theosophical Society. I do not want to go into the whole story here, as it is before us. I don't want to say a word about what Dr. Vollrath might have done wrong, because it is completely hopeless for me to give a clear picture. Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden supports these proposals, in that he actually wants a commission to investigate the facts again. At the time when Mrs. Wolfram's proposal to expel Dr. Vollrath was read, I myself was a member of the board of the German Section. I found no reason why such a zealous and active member should be excluded. I pointed out at the time what Theosophy is. One thing is important, and I refer here to a Bible verse that is true: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

There are hundreds of us here, shouldn't He be here among us? I believe He is, and I hope that He is in all our hearts, that Christ-spirit that says: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you.” And now, as we approach Christmas, this festival of love, where Christ was born, He should also be born in us. Let this birth take place, let us forget everything, let us act fraternally, love for love, heart for heart! I have taken care of the persecuted, I ask you to give me a hand, you have me completely. Let love be done for love."

Mr. Krojanker: (Initially incomprehensible) ”It is not possible, we have to go back to the facts. I must confess that I was very surprised by the reading of the Vollrath brochure, which is called a pamphlet here. This could not have been foreseen by us applicants. I also consider it a wrong decision by the board. If a commission were appointed, it could go into the details; here before the general assembly, that is not conceivable. We should decide to elect a commission; it should only re-examine what actually happened. The General Assembly should only decide whether a commission should be elected. I must emphasize that it is far from my intention as a petitioner to offend the board, but from what I have examined, I must assume that it has not been sufficiently informed. Therefore, a commission should now be elected so that these matters come to light. As for what Mr. Bauer said, I must confess that I found the theosophical part of his speech quite appealing, but we do not need Mr. Bauer to tell us what Theosophy is. He has allowed himself to make a judgment about the reasons that lead us to stand up for Vollrath. I have considered this for a very long time, and I assure you that if these things are not carried out on the basis of the theosophical movement, they will be carried out outside of it. If Mr. Bauer, in his capacity as a teacher, is upset that some sentences are not entirely correct, then I find that absolutely incomprehensible. I also strongly disagree with everything that is printed there. I ask you to accept the proposals, and they should not be mentioned again. I only ask that the facts be examined individually before the commission. But I emphasize that I do not want to identify with Vollrath's printed work at all. Do not forget that in Vollrath we have a person who is not yet mature inwardly, who is full of anger. He let time pass and only wanted to vent his feelings in this pamphlet, as it is called.

Dr. Unger: “Allow me first to address a few things that have just been said. The point is to come to the aid of our friend, Mr. Bauer, in the face of the accusations that have been made against him, and to underline, as it were, what he has stated. It was said: ”We do not want Mr. Bauer to tell us what Theosophy is.” But we were constantly told by Mr. Vollrath and his comrades what Theosophy is supposed to be. Furthermore, it was said that the applicant did not agree with the form in which the brochure was written; nevertheless, the application was made, as he says, in the interest of the Theosophical Society. It is important to me that this be stated. Because if someone morally supports what another person hurls as dirt and filth against the Theosophical Society and supports it with reference to an inadequate form, that is not logic. That is not acceptable. It is double-speak to say, “I don't agree with what is being said, I'm just supporting the motion.” It is claimed that the board members at the time were not informed about what they were deciding on. Either one or the other is true. If you do not agree with the pamphlet, then you cannot accuse the board of not having been informed. The applicants demanded that Dr. Vollrath be given the opportunity to justify himself. We have the justification before us. This is what it looks like, this justification. Smear, defamation, poison and threat, that is the content of this justification. Mr. Bauer said quite correctly: “We see from what lies before us what kind of spirit is behind it.” But if something like this is supported, then the person making the request is aligned with this spirit! That such support could come from our circles is something that must be said: it cannot continue. Mr. Krojanker objects to Mr. Bauer telling us what we should understand by Theosophy; but that does not prevent it from constantly happening from the other side. Mr. Ahner said he did not want to give us a lecture on Christianity. But now he has told us what his Christianity is and talked a lot about love, Christianity, brotherhood, and God knows what. But where is love in this pamphlet? Where is the brotherhood and Christianity? That is the question. Those who overflow with love and then apply this love in such a way that they support such a pamphlet must be told that they may be in the Theosophical Society, but they are not in the Theosophical movement! Someone who speaks with love on their lips but performs such acts has no idea of what we want Theosophy to mean. Anyone who has ever really been involved in our work knows that we have to stick together like glue to be able to share in the spiritual wealth that we have acquired over the past ten years. This work must be respected. There is no point in saying that our only conditions for admission are the three points of our statutes. We do not have to accept everyone who applies to us, in any way. Three years ago, the motion was adopted, with general understanding, to protect our work. This Society of ours should gradually become a body – that is the view of all of us – that should become an expression of what exists as the theosophical spirit. Let the Theosophical Society scatter, the theosophical movement remains. It would be better for the Society to scatter than for a little title to be lost from the spiritual wealth that we have conquered. It should be emphasized even more sharply: What we have gradually acquired as the theosophical movement, which can never be completed, can never be delimited in paragraphs, that really exists. But if we can get such proposals that, according to the statutes of the Society, the theosophical work can be thrown under the bus according to the rules of procedure, then we will just change the statutes.

The tasks are there, whether the Society will be able to fulfill them is decided by this hour. For what is to be formed in Munich in the next few years, for the growth of the theosophical work that we have conquered and that is to gain life in the world, we need a physical body, we need members, but not paragraphs, they will never achieve that. If it has been said today that it was a significant event that we were able to hand over a building to the theosophical life in Stuttgart, then it may be stated here from our own experience what Dr. Steiner said in the consecration speech for this building: “What is needed is trust.” It is not necessary for everyone to contribute their wisdom; a board has been created for this, as an expression of trust. And to beat the board at every opportunity is not on; we will achieve nothing in this way, and we certainly would not have built this Stuttgart building if the members had not generously exercised this trust. Through commissions, as demanded by today's proposals, we would not only have no building, but also no money for it.

As a result of this pamphlet and of what has happened today, the board feels deeply offended in what is the actual point of honor of the board. It must expect the rescue of its honor from today's meeting.

The idea has been mooted that a commission should be formed from this meeting, not one in the sense of the applicants, but one that may elaborate a draft for a new constitution that makes it impossible for anything like what is expressed in these proposals to ever happen again. I am convinced that if the members of the Theosophical Society were also members of the Theosophical Society, any statutes would be right. Since that is not the case, we have to adapt the statutes to the spirit of our movement. The board itself refrains from making such a request because it expects the meeting to restore its honor.

It would perhaps be better to dismiss such attacks by ignoring them. There is certainly something appealing about saying that we do not want to deal with dirt. But here it becomes a duty to call a spade a spade. If we want to have the opportunity to delve into our work, then we must first clear the table, and the sword of wrath must also be used.

It may be that some would rather hear objective theosophical discussions at the present time. But it is important to express one's indignation; it is important to me to emphasize that I am not ashamed of such indignation. I would be ashamed if, as our friend Bauer said, we were so sleepy that we could not be roused to action. It should be made possible to stop people from being kicked between the legs, and to protect the General Secretary and the Executive Board from such filth, in accordance with the statutes. That is why the Executive Board expects you to take action today!"

It was decided to take a break of one and a half hours at Dr. Steiner's suggestion, and to continue the meeting at four o'clock in the afternoon.

At half past three, Dr. Steiner reopened the session by reading a telegram with the following content: “I hereby send the German Section my respectful greetings and best wishes for their General Assembly. Kinell.

This was followed by a speech by Pastor Klein on the significance of Theosophy, based on the words of St. Paul about the “Wisdom of God”.

Dr. Steiner then announced the contents of the list of speakers, which included the following speakers: Mr. Arenson, Mr. Molt, Pastor Klein, Pastor Wendt, Mr. von Rainer, Mr. Schmid, the architect, and Mr. Walther.

Mr. Arenson was the first to be given the floor: “When I first heard about the proposals that had been put forward for this General Assembly, when I was told that the seemingly impossible had become possible, that there were members in our society who offered their hand to could be submitted, who supported, so to speak, what Dr. Vollrath demanded in his pamphlet: namely, to be heard here and to start again with an examination of this case - that's when I first had the thought, the impulse: to move on to the agenda; there is nothing else to do but simply ignore such things. But then, after careful consideration, the result was somewhat different. It is certainly a good thing to do positive work and, when we are confronted with something, to simply move on to the agenda. But we cannot possibly do that in this case. This is an act that must be undertaken with all our energy if we do not want to see ourselves fall victim to the dirt.

Now, if we proceed to the matter itself, one might ask: what is this request for a retrial actually based on? Such a retrial of a case is only justified if new material has been found that is to be examined to determine whether it is suitable to shed new light on the existing evidence. We know that this is not the case; we know that there is no reason to reopen a procedure that was carried out with all due care at the time. I can only say here very briefly that the members of the board who took the decision at the time examined the matter in a way that is no longer possible today. It is complete ignorance of the actual circumstances that simply wants to make us believe that we followed an instantaneous impulse and thereby caused the expulsion of Dr. Vollrath. On the contrary, we were privy to all the details and knew exactly what had happened. We knew every detail and knew it in such a way that if we had presented the whole situation in a few words, anyone else would have been able to make the same decision within a few minutes that was made at the time. So we were privy to what had to lead to the well-known decision. It is difficult to verify this now, because everything we had thoroughly considered at the time has been cast in a completely new light by what has since been made known in writing and word, and therefore can no longer lead to an understanding of the situation at the time.

We can say – and this is certainly not meant ironically, but is the bitter truth: the key to the truth can be found in everything that Dr. Vollrath says, simply by reversing the things he claims. Let us take a specific case to show what is meant by this. Dr. Vollrath says in his pamphlet that Dr. Steiner in Paris at the time took strong action against Leadbeater. The relevant passage reads as follows: “Occultism is the practical science of love and wisdom. Why then does Dr. Steiner alone have the right to polemic and condemnation? He made ample use of this during the time of the agitation against his colleague in the Theosophical Society, C. W. Leadbeater, in the private sessions of the German members with Fräulein von Sivers during the Paris Congress [1906]. I was surprised at Steiner's scathing polemic, and although I held him in the highest esteem at the time, I could not refrain from pointing out the state of the Theosophical Society in a completely objective manner. However, I was sharply rebuffed by Fräulein von Sivers and Dr. Steiner. After the meeting ended, both assured me that they had no personal animosity towards me.

The truth of the matter is as follows: At that time in [1906] Leadbeater was in very difficult circumstances, and Dr. Steiner was the only one who defended him energetically and factually. It should be said in this context, since most of our members in Germany did not even hear about the case, that even our president Annie Besant was a fierce critic of Leadbeater and, with regard to what it was all about, made the statement that it was a “moral insanity”, whereas Dr. Steiner justifiably took the side of Leadbeater and defended him. That Dr. Steiner acted in this way has later earned him many reproaches. What the case of Leadbeater actually was, is not our concern today. The fact stands, however, and can always be substantiated by witnesses, that exactly the opposite is the case of what Dr. Vollrath expresses in his pamphlet. So we can go from sentence to sentence.

Furthermore, when we read what Dr. Vollrath writes: “It was only when I explained to the Secretary General of the Hungarian Section that I would appeal to our esteemed President to intervene that I was graciously allowed to attend the congress, even though I had already had the admission ticket in my hands for months.” It should be noted that those who were present know that Dr. Steiner did not refuse him attendance, but made it possible. But when Dr. Vollrath says that he was not admitted despite having had the admission card in his hands for months, it must be explained that he had obtained this admission card by submitting his diploma from the German Section in Budapest, which had been invalidated by his expulsion, and was subsequently given the admission card.

And so it goes on. It would take us too far to want to rush through everything that is written here in this libel. The only thing that can be said is that in such a way, every sentence contains some hidden malice. Take what you heard earlier. Isn't it the purest irony when Dr. Vollrath says on page 9 of his diatribe: “The subtle psychic tact of the occultist, who looks deeper into the psychic life of others, does not allow him to completely reveal the psychic life of his opponents before the public, for by so doing he draws the attention of others too much to the unimportant, the person, at the expense of the important, the principles and the tasks of the Theosophical Society, to which, however, attention and concentrated interest are primarily directed. I have therefore only attempted to give a few hints that might serve to clarify to some extent the deliberately veiled circumstances of my expulsion. However, I cannot yet foresee what the consequences will be, as that depends on the response I receive from the German Section.

This tells us who the investigator of souls is; someone who is tactful enough not to reveal the inner life of his opponents completely to the public. But this tactful investigator of souls reveals just enough to have an effect in his own way, according to the old principle: “Even if it is not true, something of it will stick.”

I did not offend any member of the German section of honor; anyone who claims the opposite may come forward.

To put this sentence in its proper perspective, I would like to say the following, which I regret to have had to say before: <501> <502> <503> <504> <505> <506> <507> <508> <509> <510> <511> <512> <513> <514> <515> <516> <517> <518> <519> <520> <521> <522> <523> <524> <525> <526> <527> <528> <529> <530> <531> <5 She was mortally embarrassed and feared I was in on it, which partly explains her bold attempt to get rid of me.

My friends, anyone who speaks in such a way is no longer considered a decent person. A person who says something like that, which, it must be said, is not only mean but also threatening, is not worthy of being heard among decent people. But we also stand for something other than just being decent people. What is generally considered a virtue in the world should be something we take for granted, something we don't even have to mention as something special. We have something to advocate that stands high above all that is recognized as an ordinary duty, as ordinary virtue. Therefore, it is also our duty to act in such a way that there is agreement and harmony, and that is why the previous speaker emphasized so energetically that we cannot simply go about our business or accept a vote of confidence as is usually the case. No, our esteemed leader, the entire board of directors has been outrageously offended by what has happened. There is only one thing to be done about this: the General Assembly of today must express itself in some characteristic way so that we may be sure in the future that such things will not take up our precious time again, that such things will not create an atmosphere in our meetings that should not really be present at Theosophical General Meetings.

Take everything into account. Isn't every word spoken, both by Dr. Vollrath himself and by his supporters in support of the motion, full of contradictions? Or is it not a contradiction when it is stated in the letter from Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden that he does not agree with the tone and content of Dr. Vollrath's statements, but that he nevertheless supports his application? Isn't it strange that Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden can't agree with either the form or the content - what is actually left? - but still supports the application? “I wasn't at the general assembly,” ‘the content of Dr. Vollrath's submission goes against my gut feeling,’ ‘the form goes against my gut feeling’ – but I support the man: these are contradictions in terms, there is nowhere to find a solid foothold. We are supposed to be hit by a bolt of lightning out of the blue. We do not want to reopen old issues, not something that has been decided and settled long ago and for which there is no reason to deal with it ever again, to subject ourselves to new negotiations. It is not a matter of dealing with something that has long been thoroughly settled, but rather of taking a stand against such currents that express themselves by proceeding in an incredible manner, sometimes even in a completely improper form. I would just like to remind you of the letter that was read to you, in which the submission of the cash report, as provided for in the statutes, is requested. They are threatening legal action and court proceedings; and then these people still claim to be doing all these things in the interest of Theosophy.

And then: Is there not a grotesque contradiction in the fact that the same person who wrote this pamphlet is also the author of the other letter, in which he extends the hand of reconciliation and expresses himself in a way that makes it almost unbelievable that these two documents came from the same person? For us, who have been active on the Executive Council for many years, it has become clear that we cannot continue to work in this way under any circumstances. We have done our duty in our time; we knew that then, we know it now. But today we can do nothing more. Today it is the Theosophical Society, that is, its German Section, that has it in its hands to work now for good or ill. We have just heard from an authorized source what it means for us to have entered this movement, which is manifested in our German section. We have heard words that will certainly have a lasting effect in the hearts of those who are Theosophists by nature, not because they pay their dues, but because they feel in their innermost being what a blessing it is to be able to serve such a movement. And also in the words that described this great and powerful thing, it sounded to us like a powerful reminder that such a good, which is entrusted to us, also imposes a great responsibility on us. The purpose of my speech is to make this responsibility clear to you, so that you can agree that we can only earn such a good if we remain aware at all times of the tremendous responsibility that we have taken upon ourselves. Let us be clear about one thing: it is not the opponents who can destroy our society, the external form of the Theosophical movement; nor Doctor Vollrath, nor those who want to support him. But we ourselves can destroy it if, in a false sentimentality, we fail to firmly reject those who want to shake the foundations of our movement and our beliefs. We want to stand up for our cause with all our might as people who do not believe that they are already Theosophists, but who are earnestly striving to become Theosophists.” Mr. Molt has the floor: “I believe I speak on behalf of everyone present when I express my sincere thanks to Mr. Arenson for his warm address, but at the same time I also make myself the mouthpiece of it by saying: There is no need for an appeal to take the right path in this case. I have the feeling that we are doing the author of the diatribe far too much honor by going into the details of it at all. I have the feeling that, on behalf of the vast majority here, we must refuse to allow our precious time and the beautiful mood with which we came here to be spoiled by such things. It must sound like a cry of outrage and indignation through our ranks that on such a day these things are still brought up; and I must confess that I regret those who have come forward as petitioners in this matter and dared to support such a thing. I believe it is self-evident that we close the debate, and I also believe that no vote of confidence is needed for the board to show that it acted correctly at the time. We only need to let the words from the diatribe sink in to see that Dr. Vollrath is quite rightly excluded. If he had not already been excluded, he would have to be excluded not once, but three times today. In order to shorten the debate and to express our feelings, I have taken the liberty of formulating a motion. I find it beneath our dignity to go into the matter again with even a single word. I have divided the motion into three parts. They read:

1. The tenth General Assembly hereby expressly expresses its outrage and indignation at the diatribe of Dr. Vollrath.

2. It therefore rejects the proposals of Ahner, Krojanker and Müller.

3. It requests these gentlemen, who by submitting their proposals have obviously opposed the spirit of the movement, to draw the conclusion by resigning.

Dr. Steiner: “Since the proposals made are substantive and not procedural, those esteemed friends who are already on the list of speakers will still have the floor.”

The next speaker is Pastor Klein: “Christian love and tolerance have been evoked with moving tones. This touched me as a Christian preacher, and I had to ask myself whether we are not violating a commandment by opposing the whole thing here. But I must also remind Mr. Ahner that he has only painted a one-sided picture of Christ. Christ Jesus was by no means always the “good savior,” and by no means always did words of forbearance and tolerance flow from his mouth. There was a point where this loving, forgiving Christ was adamant, and that was when the cause itself was at issue. The Pharisees were also good people; people who led honorable lives, who fought for their religion with complete honesty, in short, people who were excellent in many respects. But we also know that Christ took a very ruthless approach against these very people, who always raised the question, “What is true Christianity, what is true Judaism?” — in much the same way as we always hear from Dr. Vollrath, “What is Theosophy®?” in the most ruthless way. I only recall the expressions ‘brood of vipers,’ etc. These are strong words. And why was the mild, forgiving Jesus compelled to hurl them against these Pharisees? They believed that he acted out of false, evil powers, that he cast out devils with Beelzebub and so on, and they generally mistrusted his very appearance. That is the crux of the matter. So to those who appeal to our tolerance and leniency and say that we should make peace with Mr. Vollrath, I would like to remind them that those who were once zealous against Jesus, who so thoroughly misunderstood his nature, who so ignominiously rejected his nature, were fought with the sharpest expressions, and that by Jesus of Nazareth himself, in whom the Christ dwelt. We see here in our case, too, that the man who imparts God's wisdom to us is misunderstood and misrecognized in this way. But anyone who, in addition, ascribes such motives to him as has been done here, anyone who misunderstands him so thoroughly and pursues his opposition in such an ugly form, can no longer be in our ranks - for the sake of Christ and our cause. Christ Himself was the one who confronted the Pharisees when they misunderstood and misrepresented Him. We have a clear conscience when we confront these things in the same way. We, who knew nothing about the whole affair until now, could say: appoint a new court in the matter. Mrs. Wolfram should defend herself once more. We could do that if we were a bowling club or a war veterans' association. But we cannot do it because we are a Theosophical Society. Because we form a spiritual community, these things must be handled in a completely different way. If we were to stir these things up again, we would be saying that we have no confidence in our leader or our board of directors. “We weren't there at the time,” we could say, “we want to review the matter again.” But in doing so, we would be saying that we do not trust our teacher to see through Dr. Vollrath. But if he can't, then he's not our teacher, he can't be our leader. But if he does have this ability, then we must not apply the usual standard, the standard of other associations, and say: Here, another investigation is needed, here an honor court must be set up, and so on.

This afternoon, I have already explained what I understand and think about this matter. Therefore, under no circumstances can we allow our leader to be disparaged in this way. After all, an association can proceed in the proposed manner if its chairman has been attacked. But when a man who imparts divine wisdom to us is attacked in this way, then this is something we cannot tolerate under any circumstances.

Mr. Bauer said that it is bad that such a procedure has still found defense in our own ranks. There is something else that is bad. And that is what I will say now: I find that despite being expelled from our section, Dr. Vollrath receives tremendous support from the President of our Theosophical Society, in that she honors him with her trust in a very special way and gives him offices, so that his action against us through President Annie Besant still receives special support and strength. We must therefore go to the root of the evil. We must make Adyar aware that we consider any support for Dr. Vollrath, whether directly or indirectly through Adyar headquarters, to be a detriment to the Theosophical work in Germany. We will not tolerate the General Secretary of our section being constantly insulted here, and that such personalities find protection and support there. And that is the crux of the matter. I feel very strongly that we are at an important point in time and we must make it clear to Adyar that we will not tolerate such behavior and that we support the man who has insulted our leader and general secretary.

I ask you to accept the following proposal: After the General Assembly in 1911, after extensive negotiations, once again approved with great unanimity and determination the revocation of Doctor Vollrath's membership pronounced by the Executive Board and the General Assembly in 1908, the General Assembly shall give headquarters in Adyar that from now on any direct or indirect support of Dr. Vollraths, as has occurred recently, must be regarded by the German Section of the Theosophical Society as damaging to its reputation and its work.

Molt: “I move that the debate be closed.”

Ahner: “Since the whole matter has come to this, I would ask that the debate not be interrupted. It would be a disadvantage to the accused if they did not get a chance to speak after being exposed in such a way. This is required by the dictate of justice and consideration for each of the attacked. It is no art to fight someone whom you know cannot defend himself."

Dr. Steiner: ”I have resolved not to intervene in this debate in any way and have therefore refrained from transferring the chairmanship to someone else during the debate. I think it is not important that I transfer the presidency to someone else during this debate, but rather that you agree with the objectivity with which I am trying to conduct the matter. You will therefore also agree that I now say a few words to you.

It is impossible for us to accept a motion to end the debate now. The matter must be discussed, and we have no right to propose or accept a motion to close the debate at this stage, after so many questions have been raised in the course of the debate. There are matters of the utmost importance to us and to our Theosophical Society. What would really do harm here would be to conveniently sweep the matter aside by accepting a motion to close the debate. Although this method of avoiding overly long debates has been used frequently, I ask that you not postpone the debate in this convenient manner today, but consider it your duty to actually bring the matter to a conclusion. With the comments that Pastor Klein has made, so many new aspects have been introduced into the debate, and now we are supposed to accept a motion to end the debate? That is impossible. I do not understand why, in the course of such a debate, when there is still a long list of speakers to come – quite apart from the question of who is the defender and accuser, the accused and the attacker here – they should not be given the fullest opportunity to speak? Since further discussion of these matters is desirable, I would ask you not to put forward the impossible motion to end the debate.

What I have just said also applies to the motion, which I will receive in writing and which I still have to read out.

On behalf of the Hamburg and Bremen branches, the delegates of these branches propose “that, after the discussions that have taken place appear to have sufficiently clarified the situation regarding the motions that have been tabled, the discussion be closed, the motions that have been tabled be rejected, and the executive committee of the section, in particular Dr. Steiner in particular, express its thanks and trust by standing up from their seats; the General Assembly may further authorize the Executive Council to bring similar motions before the Executive Council for final decision in the future, while at the same time preparing appropriate amendments to the statutes that would make similar occurrences impossible in the future.

G. F. Scharlau, J. G. Schröder, Sister Louise Hesselmann, Albert Dibbern, Leinhas.

[Rudolf Steiner:] 'Today it is not a matter of obtaining a vote of confidence, but of bringing the matters of principle at hand to a decision. It is not about the board, not about the person of Dr. Vollraths, not about me, but about matters of principle, and there you cannot express your opinion by rising from your seats. We cannot deal with the matter in such a convenient way today.

The motion to end the debate is rejected.

Thereupon the motions of Molt, Hamburg and Bremen are withdrawn and the debate continues.

Pastor Wendt: “Three years ago, I was the one who proposed that we no longer consider Dr. Vollrath as one of our own for the time being. I said to myself at the time that the young man could improve in three years. He has not done so, on the contrary, he continues to drill. But now it is high time that we got to the bottom of this rabble. I am an old man today; but in the past we often had to drag foxes through our student fraternity. But if the boys wanted to back down from a duel, they were thrown out without mercy. For us, that was a matter of course. But if today our cause is denigrated as it has been here, then I say today too: throw them out. I don't want to sit in hell with such boys, with such vermin, let alone in heaven.

Dr. Steiner: “We want to avoid the expressions ‘boys’ and so on.”

Pastor Wendt: “The fact of the matter is that someone wants to remain in our society even though he is working against it. If we work against the truth, we have made a mistake, we know that. But if we also deny the mistake, then we cannot move forward at all. It is far too sacred, far too serious a matter to bring the Christ-Principle into the world for me to consider it justified to use it in this way in the debate. I also said to the Lord, after I became aware of these things, earlier: Now we are divorced people, now it is over between us. How can you say such things and then threaten to expose us in this way? My dear son, I said, there is something else involved here. I would like to point out that the best way out of this situation – so that we don't have it every year – seems to be to protect ourselves in the future by adopting the following motion: Any member who has violated the spirit of the Theosophical Society, as judged by the General Assembly, shall be expelled. If necessary, I could explain the seriousness of the matter to you in more detail. It is an old matter: if you don't exclude, you don't include. However, under the prevailing circumstances, we have to protect and preserve our work and not carry water on two shoulders. We have to say very clearly: man, you don't belong to us.

Ahner: “It is regrettable that we have to deal with this matter here, and it is not really a matter of considering what happened at that time in this old story. I myself was on the board at the time: when the motion to expel Dr. Vollrath was tabled by Mrs. Wolfram. But I must openly admit that I had not received the slightest information about the matter before. I was simply faced with a very dark story and was indeed highly astonished to hear this motion from Mrs. Wolfram. At the time, I could see nothing more in the matter than personal matters between these two personalities. And for this reason, I said to myself: You cannot exclude someone from the Theosophical Society because of personal misunderstandings. Dr. Vollrath was never given the opportunity to defend himself. He was not invited to the board meeting, he was not given the opportunity to present material to the board members so that they could have gained insight into the matter. Only Ms. Wolfram was heard. “But a man's speech is not a man's speech, it must be heard by both.” That is, I believe, an old German saying that is still valid today among people who love justice.

I must also confess here that I do not intend to speak out personally for Dr. Vollrath or to somehow oppose any member of the board. For me, people mean nothing in this matter. I consider people to be irrelevant in this matter. Only in people in whom the person has the upper hand, in whom the person wants to be everything, can the personal have validity, because, as you know, before God the person has no value. So I say: personally, I consider this matter to be of no consequence. I would drop the motion if my suggestion were accepted. Let the spirit of Christian love prevail and let Dr. Vollrath be a member of the section. Then all will be well. Would he be able to do any harm? No. If that is what you mean, then check the 2000 members of the Society, check their hearts, and start with the principle of social democracy: those who don't toe the line get the boot. Do what you want, but I have to say: today is a decisive day for the Theosophical Society. Annie Besant, if she were here, would certainly speak in favor of peace, and the old doctor Hübbe-Schleiden, who is now eighty years old, also supports the motion. The petition, which was written by Dr. Vollrath, is something I completely negate. We did not write this and do not need to represent it. But I say: do not judge according to the earthly mind, but reach into your heart, think that your intellect is something transient, and that we let go of the personal, which has no standing before God. Let Christ speak in you. The ministers have presented everything quite nicely. But I must confess: There are always passages in the Bible that can be used to prove the opposite of what is said. I understand what is said about the spirit of love in the Bible. I believe the reverends will also have read the chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians that deals with the high song of love; or if they have not read it, then take a look at it.

Arenson: “It is not true that only Ms. Wolfram was mentioned in this matter; it is quite as described in the protocol. We have had the opportunity to thoroughly examine the matter. Mr. Vollrath has had the opportunity to speak. It is not for us to decide whether Mr. Ahner was able to get involved in the matter. If he says that it was not the case, we believe him immediately. But the rest of us have gained a complete insight into the matter and were able to make our decision.

Dr. Steiner: “It should be a custom here to point out the truth even in seemingly insignificant things: Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden is not 80, but about 62 years old – Mr. Günther Wagner corrects 65 years. I ask not to consider this pedantry when I emphatically defend his youthfulness.

Mr. von Rainer has the floor: “As the Chairman mentioned, the debate is not to be regarded as a personal one, but as one of principle, and I see this whole debate not as a question to be decided that affects persons but rather the question of whether the constitution of the association can continue to exist in its current form, whether it can continue to exist in our society in the same way as it generally exists in associations. If we consider what has been said today and the way in which proposals have been put forward and justified, we have to say to ourselves: there is something about it that is characteristic of our current association and public life and that is based on a misunderstanding of universal human rights, in that every person in an association or in public life should be granted the right to say anything they want. It is simply an abuse of the word. We have to admit that fine words have been used to support the proposals, but we must also say that they are only words, misused in the way indicated. It is not a matter of the proposal being based on good and fine reasons, but something else, and the proponents and defenders of each of the proposals say that they want nothing to do with this. It is about the content and form of the proposals that have been put forward here. Therefore, we have to say that a statute in the form it is today cannot continue, and so I propose: The tenth General Assembly shall decide that a commission be set up to revise the statutes in line with the views expressed by Mr. Bauer and Mr. Unger, whose members are to be appointed by the board.

If you adopt this proposal, you will support the positive side of what has been discussed here today, and emphasize it. You will show that you have confidence in our leadership. Because we have this, we put it in his hands to write a statute that is right for our society. The board will then also be able to find an expression that our assembly is beginning to understand what is offered to us here as members of the Theosophical Society. It will be a powerful impulse that will be born of us, in which the board will have a powerful stimulus and which at the same time must give it the confidence for its further work. If someone reads something like this pamphlet, then on the other hand he should also have the opportunity to know what is to be thought of the ramblings about Theosophy and its leaders. Then the words that have been spoken will not be in the least able to affect the relationship to our leader in any way. I therefore recommend that this motion be unanimously adopted.

The next speaker is Mr. Walther: “This morning, the supporters of the document that has been presented to us so often have argued that Dr. Vollrath was wrongly expelled. In response to this, I, as a participant in that General Assembly, can state that Dr. Vollrath was allowed to voice his objections at the General Assembly, i.e. publicly before all members, that we all heard his objections and were also allowed to hear the reasons that led to his expulsion, and these reasons were of a very serious nature, because they concerned the life of part of our society, namely the Leipzig branch. When our board said that our Leipzig branch could no longer exist if a member like Dr. Vollrath continued to harass this branch, then we had to come to the aid of this branch, also out of our Christian duty. We had to support this proposal, and we supported it almost unanimously at the time. There may have been a few of us who did not agree with it at the time, but the vast majority certainly did. Today we are faced with an even more weighty matter. Today we have to defend our entire body against the attacks that have been made against our section from another side. It is not about personalities here, it is not about whether this or that person is on the board, or whether this or that person teaches among us, but about what is taught. As members, we have the duty to examine the teachings that are offered to us and then to decide after the examination has been carried out. Speaking for myself, I believe that this decision is not based on personal affection for my teacher, but rather on my innermost realization, in the same way that it was described by our dear member, Pastor Klein, based on an insight that was gained through hard spiritual work. It was not the person of the Führer that led me to him, but the cause. Based on this fact, I feel compelled to speak to you and say: examine the truths that are given to you here, compare them and then decide. And when you have examined the issues with all your intellectual power, you will find where you have to go, then you will decide according to the matter at hand, then you will see that it is important to protect a body of wisdom here, which is to be stolen from us by falling into the hands of the uncalled. The danger of such a possibility has already been pointed out. Therefore, I request that the last proposals, which were communicated here, be put up for discussion, so that a new statute can be worked out, which offers the possibility of protecting this wisdom. Even if we had to work all alone in our theosophical groups, we still want to stand firm, because we have recognized that it is wisdom from divine heights that is in question here, and that we must work towards forging a shell, as it were, for the German Section by drawing up a statute that will no longer allow elements to enter or act within our society that want to breach the building we have built with so much effort. Therefore, I ask you to comment on this proposal, so that we can have the statute of our board of directors, in which we have had and still have confidence, drawn up, so that it will also carry out this work for our benefit.

The next speaker is architect [Schmid]; “In response to the words of the previous speakers, or rather the proposal of Mr. von Rainer, there is only one thing to be added, (at this point Mr. Krojanker interrupts to say that he had earlier requested to speak , to which Dr. Steiner replies that Mr. [Schmid] is already ahead of him on the list of speakers), that it is not said that it is left to the discretion of the board to elect a commission, but that the board may carry out this work itself. It is very important to me that the motion be adopted in this form, because in a way it allows us to express what we want from the whole thing, namely that we consider our board to be fully capable and trustworthy, both in the past and in the future, to work out all such things on its own. In this way, we also point out what has already been suggested this evening, that only the board should process such documents among themselves. In view of Mr. von Rainer's new motion, it will not be important to maintain that. However, I ask that a vote of confidence be expressed – although we have no need of it – that we consider the board sufficient to make these amendments to the statutes itself.

Dr. Vollrath has the floor: “So much has been said back and forth that I still have something to say. Above all, Dr. Vollrath has been accused – and downright bad motives have been attributed to him – of wanting to damage Dr. Steiner's reputation. I feel qualified to say that this is not the case. Dr. Vollrath would not have made this submission in any way if he had not repeatedly heard from members who had come to us from the Leipzig Lodge that Ms. Wolfram claimed in her courses that Dr. Vollrath had stolen intellectual property by compiling lectures by Dr. Steiner and then publishing them. Dr. Vollrath was very upset about this. I told him at the time: It's no use to stir up the whole exclusion affair again. But he said: No, it must be done, I can't let it rest; because, first of all, only translations appear in my journal Theosophy, and secondly, it would never occur to me to interpret Dr. Steiner in any way. All I care about is that the matter be hushed up in some way. As for the state of the matter, and how much of the information he received was true, Dr. Vollrath was not sure.

But even the meeting at that time only knew to a very small extent that Mrs. Wolfram did not have a good motive for her actions against Dr. Vollrath. That she did not have one can be seen from the fact that she received me in a way when I visited her as a result of her invitation that can no longer be described as theosophical. She received me with the words: “Do you already know the latest? Dr. Vollrath has gone mad.” This was very painful for me, who had known Dr. Vollrath for ten years. I believe that if someone is really ill or has a nervous breakdown, you should not talk about it in a Theosophical Society, because as a Theosophist you must know that such things affect people. It may well happen that a person goes mad, not from illness, but from the bad thoughts of others. I am convinced that all those who have a hand in this created a heavy karma for themselves. I would just like to say here that Doctor Vollrath is being accused of improper motives. Consider this: you don't distribute Theosophical writings if you want to harm the Theosophical Society. We have lost many thousands of marks in our work, and we are losing more every day; we have not yet earned anything. But Dr. Vollrath is also differently inclined than the others. He does not want to cling to the coattails of Dr. Steiner; he does not want to be led. I think that's why he could still have been considered a member. Then they could have told him at the time: Leave it alone, don't bring these things into the world. Doctor Vollrath is a strange character who always does the opposite of what the other wants if you don't tell him the truth and say everything openly. But if you had told him, “Leave it alone, it's no use, stop it,” and explained the reasons for it, then he would have been open to reason. I am convinced of it. In a movement as large as ours, no one should expect that all their companions are equal to them, equally intuitive, equally courageous, and so on. But the first step on the path is to be gentle with people of highly dissimilar character and qualities and so on. One sign of regression would be to expect the other person to love what you love and to act as you do. As Mahatma Kuthumi says: “Until you have developed a complete sense of justice, you should show compassion rather than commit the slightest injustice.”

Mr. Krojanker has the floor: “Even in a political association, it is not customary to attack opponents as personally as has been the case here. If there has been regret that a general assembly of the Theosophical Society was forced to deal with such matters and to come to terms with them, then I must certainly shift the blame from the applicants. We left it up to you to simply elect a commission. The details did not need to be discussed here; and despite this discussion, you do not yet need to be informed. In order to be sufficiently informed, such a commission would have to be elected. Why does the board feel personally offended? Because such a commission is to be elected? Just look around the world and consider the matter in comparison to a court outside. Of course, it is taken for granted that a judge passes sentence to the best of his knowledge and belief. But can he be angry if a matter is referred to another court for reconsideration? No, because it may be that the first judge did not see this or that at all. It seems very strange to me that this wish should be attacked in this way. It is not a question of offending Dr. Steiner, it is not a question of offending the Theosophical Society. A distinction must be made between Theosophy and a General Assembly of the Theosophical Society. The General Assembly is there to deal with worldly matters. If you don't want that, then why not just get rid of the General Assembly? If you call a General Assembly, then you assume that there will be negotiations, and the things that have been brought up here are things that are quite possible within the framework of a Theosophical Society. But that's no reason to tear down those who swim against the current, as has happened here. No one has the right to judge how much of a Theosophist I am or am not, no one can judge how I can or cannot benefit the Theosophical Society. Here you have just heard Mrs. Vollrath, and she spoke with infinite care. If you expel the matter from the Society, it will continue to exist as such, and in particular the Vollrach-Wolfram affair should not yet be terminated.

Why have personal hostilities been directed against us? Are our names under the proposal of Dr. Vollrath or under our own? Does it perhaps have something defamatory? Does it violate the essence of the Theosophical Society? No, everything in it can stand and is factually justified. If you do not want to accept our proposal, then the matter will not come before the commission. But the personal attacks should be able to be avoided.

Dr. Steiner: “In a certain respect - and that is why I have to say a few words here - there is a hidden attack on the management of the day in what Mr. Krojanker says, since this is the second time he has criticized the fact that these things are being dealt with so broadly. There is a hidden attack against the management in this, as well as in Mr. Krojanker's statement that the whole brochure did not need to be read out. A proposal was made here that I could not have taken responsibility for submitting to you if the documents had not been created at the same time, which allowed you to make a decision to a certain extent. I would like to ask you whether, with regard to the judgment of this application, some of the facts on which the application was based were not really brought to your attention after all. You had to know why you were supposed to agree to a commission of seven members. Certain documents were needed to reach a decision, and I must confess that from this purely business point of view, which I will maintain for the time being, I do not see how, on the one hand, a decision should be made on the motion that has been tabled, and how, on the other hand, we should not do what can enable individuals to find the right position and the right judgment in relation to the matter. The other would be: we make the proposal, you accept it under all circumstances. I would just like to ask here what the authors of the proposal would say if the proposal had been rejected outright? The authors of the proposal should see it as a great concession on our part that we have spent the whole day dealing with it so that we are familiar with all the documents that can serve to form a correct opinion. We did not drag out the matter for our own pleasure, and it is good that the possibility of speaking two languages in the world is being done away with. For on the one hand it would mean that in the Theosophical Society there is nothing but blind faith, and one knows nothing but to repeat what is said from certain places. But if certain authorities appeal to the members in a corresponding manner to really carry something through to the end, then on the other hand, it is said: Why not cut the debate short and just read us the necessary documents for reaching a decision. This just against the hidden accusations against the management. Meanwhile it has become six o'clock. Mr. Tessmar and Ms. Wolfram are still on the list of speakers. I very much regret that the facilities at the architect's house did not allow for a different schedule. I therefore ask you to now get to work on the items outside and, when everything has been consumed, to gather here again for a get-together. There are two possibilities: one is that we receive the scheduled artistic performances, the other is that we continue the debate we have started today and postpone the social evening until tomorrow. In the latter case, we would be able to continue the interrupted debate at eight o'clock. Otherwise, the debate would have to be continued tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. I ask you, since we are now voting on the time of day for the meeting, to consider yourself the original meeting."

The meeting decided to continue the debate at eight o'clock.

Continuation at eight o'clock in the evening:

Ms. Wolfram wants to state that she never said anything that could have harmed Dr. Vollrath. She had only answered questions truthfully. These answers had been spread by lodge gossip, of which she herself had known nothing. She had only found out about it at the general meeting of the Leipzig lodge. The claim that she had accused Dr. Vollrath of intellectual theft was groundless, since Dr. Vollrath himself was not the author. Furthermore, Ms. Wolfram objects to Mr. Krojanker's threat that the whole matter would be continued outside of the Society if all motions were rejected within the Society, stating that she has long been prepared to face the kind of eventuality that seems to be meant here. Ms. Wolfram also emphasizes that she refused to provide the publisher Wahres Leben with information that had been requested about Dr. Vollrath.

Dr. Vollrath admits the possibility of lodge gossip. She believed what she was told. She also informs Mr. Krojanker, who is not present, that there has been a misunderstanding on his part, as he believed that the brochure should first be submitted to the commission to be elected, not to the General Assembly.

Dr. Steiner: “Please excuse me for intervening in the debate at this point with a few necessary comments. I would like to say what I would like to say at this moment in the form of a few questions. Of course, it is entirely up to Dr. Vollrath whether or not to give the answer.

In what I am very happy to admit is an extremely likeable way, Dr. Vollrath has addressed a number of issues that are important to me in two ways. On the one hand, it gives us some insight into what Dr. Vollrath is actually complaining about, because we couldn't find that in the document. On the other hand, what was said is interesting to me because we can see from it how the proceedings of that commission would be conducted. They would keep bringing up new things and there would be no end to it. So let me ask the question, and I would like Dr. Vollrath to answer me. Dr. Vollrath stated that her husband complains that he has been accused of publishing things that come from my books or my lectures. I would now like to note that I myself have never discussed such things, or at most only ironically. I would have to go back quite a long way in my not only theosophical but also pre-theosophical time if I were to regard as plagiarism everything that has been taken from my ideas by others. I would only seriously object to it if it could lead to error. In this case it has not led to error. Within certain limits, I regard what is produced spiritually as a good that is brought into the world for the purpose of being spread. But it has been said today, and this is not in the brochure, that Dr. Vollrath felt offended by this accusation; why did Mr. Vollrath not include this matter in his brochure, but did include, for example, the matter of Leadbeater, when objectively speaking the opposite is true? It is not the same thing that while old members did indeed speak about Leadbeater as if he had to be thrown out with the heels of one's boots, I defended him at the time. If Mr. Vollrath feels attacked by what Dr. Vollrath has said, why doesn't he write about this, but write something that is not true. It is not the same thing whether a strange picture is created by Dr. Vollrath's brochure, if it is sent to Adyar, when people there hear that I attacked Leadbeater and did not defend him. Now I ask the question: Why does Dr. Vollrath not say what he really has to complain about, but instead says something that is not objectively true?

I would also like to note at this point that it would be rather strange of us to be intimidated and influenced by threats. It would be important, and very important to me, if everything that could be said were said. We do not want to be spared in any direction. We just want to get to the bottom of the truth. That it could be said that something would happen if we did not do the will of the minority, that is, I must admit, a strange way of conducting a debate.

Please, Dr. Vollrath, do not take this in any other way than that I am trying to conduct the matter as objectively as possible. It would be very easy to bring up many more things, but I will refrain from doing so. Of course it is not my opinion that we want to force you to answer in any way. Of course, this does not have to happen immediately.

Mrs. Dr. Vollrath: “I do not know the specific reasons that led Dr. Vollrath to write this. The impetus is that he has been attacked again. That is why he wanted to present the earlier events.

Dr. Steiner: “Does anyone else have anything to say that could help us to form an opinion on the motions that have been put forward?”

Pastor Klein: “I would like to ask to what extent Dr. Vollrath has recently been harassed and attacked by members, and what the insults that have been inflicted on him are supposed to be?”

Dr. Vollrath: “They only ever spoke about the Leipzig Lodge. Dr. Vollrath says that he became aggressive because a knife was held to his throat. He had to defend himself.

Would it be possible for me to make a request? Is it not possible to hear Dr. Vollrath before a commission or the board so that he can defend himself? Permission should be granted to bring about a debate. If it is possible, I will make this request; that is the only thing I would like to do.

Dr. Steiner: “I note that, following the events that have taken place, I personally have the following to say about them. However, I ask that this be taken as my own personal opinion. I understand the whole matter in such a way that I do not think that being excluded from the Society should be seen as a condemnation in this case. It is not a matter of denying someone the right to be in society; it is a matter of the fact that Dr. Vollrath's views were in conflict with those of the Society. There is nothing dishonorable about that. At the time, I myself asked that the measure be mitigated and that Dr. Vollrath not be excluded, but rather no longer considered a member of the Society. That clearly states what it is about. It only says that we cannot work with him. It was meant in a highly objective way that I made this request to the board at the time. I would like to note that I am naturally inclined to listen to Dr. Vollrach, but that every word would have to be absolutely established. Consider that Dr. Vollrath presented exactly the opposite of what actually happened at the Paris meetings. I would consider a discussion fruitless if every word were not precisely fixed. Furthermore, you yourself, Dr. Vollrath, would have to be present at such a discussion, since you are the applicant. I consider the matter itself to be completely fruitless, but I take the position that it should not be omitted for that reason, because it could bear fruit if this fruitlessness were established.

I would like to make a brief interjection. According to one proposal, only those who did not vote at the time should be elected to the commission. I did not vote.

Of course, I now have to treat Dr. Vollrath's statement as a proposal. The board will have to comment on it. However, this is not possible immediately; it would first have to be discussed.

Pastor Klein: “I request that the motion be rejected, because I consider an agreement to be out of the question after what we have heard from the pamphlet today.”

Dr. Vollrath: “Doctor Steiner is above such things. Doctor Vollrath should just be given the opportunity to make amends.”

Pastor Klein: “Although Doctor Steiner is, of course, above such things, we are not. We must protect our leader.”

Dr. Steiner: “It would be really quite good if we did not put things on a personal level. Here, there is the possibility to separate the person from the matter quite easily. We would have viewed the matter in a completely wrong light if anyone could have the opinion that personal matters had been discussed here. What do we have to do with Mrs. Wolfram and Dr. Vollrath, what do we have to do with Dr. Steiner? They could be three completely random people. Take, for example, the designations, signatures A, B and C. Signature B refers to a lady; it does not matter whether this is Mrs. Wolfram or someone else. Something has been written about this lady. It is not important that it was written by Dr. Vollrath. I am asking you now, quite objectively, without regard to the person, what the person who has a sense of feeling in their body, who takes things as they have come before our ears, what that person thinks about the moral quality of this sentence: “I knew the source from which Mrs. Wolfram took the money for the education of her two children; she had two at the time. She was very embarrassed about this and feared I was aware of it, which partly explains the bold effort to neutralize me.

So the fact is that the motion has been tabled: a person who has written such a sentence is to be reintroduced into society. One can assume that there would be nothing else at all other than this sentence. I now ask you whether it is possible for someone to write this sentence and be within our society. If anyone is of the opinion that there should be someone within our Society who is allowed to write such a sentence about a lady, then there are two possibilities: either there is some truth in it – and then nothing at all should be said about it – or this sentence has been written down, perhaps without thinking. I now ask you: is a Theosophist allowed to write something like that without thinking? Should only love and the like be spoken of? Should we not even ask whether someone who belongs to our society is capable of developing this love if they are able to write this sentence? Is it acceptable for such a sentence to be written in a Theosophical Society? I would consider it a great misfortune if such a sentence were to fall from the sky and rain down here. In our case, it is about the fact that one reads a thing, that it is taken as a discharge of some human manifestation. I ask you to note that the violation of the feeling that is given with this sentence is almost monstrous, so that I do not understand how one can even come from a human point of view to defend such a thing. It is not just that this is written here, but that it is possible to write such a sentence at all. This would also be considered a serious insult in civil society. These are things that come into play as nuances of feeling. Disregard everything else and consider whether it is possible for such a sentence to be written in a brochure that is associated with our society. Today it is not a matter of sitting in judgment on anyone. It is not a matter of these things being said, but rather of realizing that in Theosophy the main thing depends on feeling and sensation. There we do have a standard that we can apply. Therefore, I think it is really necessary that we look at the matter from this objective point of view. It is a fruitless task to want to communicate with someone who speaks a different language. There is no basis for understanding. It is really like speaking German and the answer being given back in Chinese. We could listen to Dr. Vollrath, but nothing would come of it. The law of karma is the law; one must stand up for what one has done. You cannot make such a statement to the world today and apologize for it tomorrow. That is why Dr. Vollrath's letter was read to you.

Please consider this as my personal opinion. I would not have mentioned it if I had not felt that it had not been sufficiently taken into account. Apart from everything else, please consider what has been put into the world here as an objective document; then it is a basis for reaching a decision on Dr. Vollrath's request. This cannot be dealt with immediately. It must first be discussed by the board.

Pastor Klein: “But the general assembly can request that the board does not vote on it.”

Dr. Steiner: “But the board can still hear Dr. Vollrath if it sees fit.” Mr. Tessmar: “I could not speak here as a board member, because I have no mandate to do so. But I would like to give my personal opinion. I have a favorable impression of the way in which Dr. Vollrath has spoken, but I consider a debate with Dr. Vollrath to be completely fruitless. What more should be said on this matter? Mr. Krojanker spoke of instances. In the external world, the Reichsgericht can decide as the last instance in the German Reich; it cannot go any further. But something very similar has happened here. The General Assembly sanctioned the decision of the board as the last resort. So something has been done. Then Mr. Ahner said that he was on the board at the time and had no idea what Dr. Vollrath was accused of. But that is not true. You can't make such a decision if you don't have something to base it on. When Dr. Vollrath says that Dr. Steiner is defending Mazdaznan, and we are all very surprised, and it turns out that Dr. Steiner was talking about Ahura Mazdao, then it all just stops. There are some things that are impossible. If the opposing side does not understand this, it cannot be explained to them in words. If you do not have the feeling that it must then be over, you cannot be helped. What would happen if we said, “Well, here is the brother hand, come, Mr. Vollrath?” Then we would have the same story tomorrow. The applicants do not trust the board. I personally have no trust in Dr. Vollrath. If Mr. Vollrath were to be readmitted, it would be said: “You see, the board was wrong!” Secondly, however, there is still the threat of external judgment. This is such a mean and hidden threat that it is quite impossible to negotiate with this party. It is about the theosophical cause, which is above our feelings. It is about the theosophical life. This morning, during the speeches by Mr. Ahner and Mr. Krojanker, some members applauded. This shows that misfortune has already taken effect. If you own a garden and want to have beautiful strawberries, then you have to throw out the weeds. You have to kill the caterpillars or you won't get any strawberries. It is bad enough that someone like me, who is no parliamentarian, has to speak in this hall where we have already been privileged to hear so many wonderful lectures. I would much rather not have to speak. I would also much rather help Dr. Vollrath. But it is impossible. “Diem perdid”, this day is lost. Some action must be taken to ensure that it does not happen again. What Dr. Steiner has given us, I have let flow into my heart; and when Mr. Krojanker brought forward a matter years ago, I said at the time: It is not the person that is important here, but the matter. So create the possibility that a person like me no longer needs to speak here before you."

Dr. Steiner: “It is now really necessary to get down to business. So consider the motion tabled that the board respond to Dr. Vollrath's motion tomorrow. It's just a matter of a yes or no. But the motion cannot be dealt with at this moment. The board must be able to come to a decision. That's a matter of course. I suggest that you let me ask the board to say either yes or no tomorrow. I can't possibly have a vote on the matter here under the rules of procedure.

Fräulein von Sivers: “We could come to an agreement about this right away. We know that Dr. Vollrath cannot present true facts and often distorts the truth.”

Dr. Steiner: “It is impossible under the rules of procedure for the board to comment now on something that can only be discussed by the entire board.”

A motion is made that the board withdraw for five minutes.

Dr. Steiner: “It would of course be much more clever if that didn't stop us.”

The motion is put to the vote and rejected.

Mr. Ahner: “I would like to correct something. Mr. Tessmar said that the board was fully informed at the time and that I must also have been informed. However, I did not have the opportunity to hear Dr. Vollrath myself at the time, so I cannot vote with a clear conscience. You have to hear both parties. In response to my vote, I was no longer elected to the board.” Pastor Klein proposes that Dr. Vollrath should no longer be heard in the matter.

The proposal is put to the vote and adopted.

Dr. Steiner: “We now come to a number of proposals, most of which are highly complex. There are four proposals. First is the Molt proposal, which actually consists of three sub-proposals. The first point is: The tenth General Assembly should express its outrage and indignation.”

Fräulein Stinde: “So much indignation has already been expressed here that it would not be necessary to explicitly repeat it.”

Fräulein Brandt: “There is no need to express one's indignation, since one can only feel sorry for Dr. Vollrath.”

Dr. Steiner: “It will be necessary to say what we have to say more forcefully than by expressing our outrage and indignation. It is necessary that we do things that are less directed against a personality. The diatribe was not read for judgment, but for the purpose of reaching a verdict.”

Mr. Hubo: “I would like to ask Mr. Molt to withdraw this part of the proposal.”

Mr. Molt: “I believe it was enough to state our outrage earlier, and therefore I believe I can withdraw this point.”

Dr. Steiner: “We come to the second point of the Molt proposal, that the meeting reject the proposals by Krojanker, Müller, Ahner.”

Mr. Hubo supports this motion and proposes that a vote be taken immediately.

This motion by Hubo is put to the vote and adopted.

The Molt motion is put to the vote and adopted by the meeting with all but one vote against. The Krojanker, Müller and Ahner motions are rejected.

Dr. Steiner: “We now come to the third point of the Molt motion: ”The gentlemen who, by supporting the Krojanker, Müller, Ahner motions, have violated the spirit of the Theosophical movement, would like to draw the consequences of their actions by declaring their resignation from the Society.” Mr. Ahner: “As I understand from this request, it is considered un-Theosophical to have a different opinion from the majority, and to come to the aid of a brother in distress who has done no little for Theosophy and whose activities have received full recognition at headquarters in India. He has been appointed secretary of the Star of the East by Mrs. Besant. If you cite a person's personal opinion as a reason for no longer recognizing him as a brother, that is your prerogative. For me, that is not a reason. I take the Christian position. I do not consider it a disgrace to stand here as Dr. Vollrath's defender. I have already said that it is very convenient to go with the flow. But I will not accept the accusation of not helping the helpless. I do not need a Theosophical Society or a Theosophical meeting to arrive at true knowledge. All spiritual development must come from within. You can cram your brain full of dogmas, but that won't help you see the light. Judge as you will, I see no reason to resign."

Dr. Stein: I am reluctant to intervene in the debate because it is about the decision. I would like to note that today must be seen as an extraordinarily meritorious one. Something has been done, because the most important thing that has happened is that a number of prominent figures have spoken here so that we could hear opposing opinions. Words are also deeds in a sense. Let me now also present my opinion. I see absolutely no reason why this point of the proposal, which has just been read, should be accepted. I do not see that this point achieves anything other than the exact opposite of what the proposer would like to achieve. We have the proof of my belief from the speech of our dear friend Mr. Ahner. You only succeed by such a motion in saying out in the world what has just been said here: In the Theosophical movement, the one who helps a helpless brother is thrown out. — I ask you to examine these words a little. As Theosophists, we must always stand on the ground of truth. The question, then, is whether one has the right to say, “We have come to the aid of a helpless brother.” This sentence contains an accusation in which there is no reality, namely, that the others had mistreated the helpless. But in truth, has anyone done anything to Mr. Vollrath? What happened then? A society of more than 1000 members declared that they no longer considered Dr. Vollrath to be one of them. This is identical to saying that I cannot associate with a certain person in my home. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own theosophy. So in reality nothing has happened, except that it has been established that everyone has the right to say that they cannot work with this or that person. If you then call this person helpless and say that you have stood by him, this is a very serious accusation. At the time, I told Dr. Vollrath: “If you were a member of the Berlin Lodge, the matter would be quite different; it would not be necessary for you to resign.” We would have digested him. Now, when someone comes and says that he stood by this helpless person, it is a serious accusation that does not testify to a very loving disposition. But it is also objectively untrue, it is not a reality. Because nothing happened to Dr. Vollrath. It would be a real overestimation of the Theosophical Society to declare it a corporation in which one must be a member to be a Theosophist. I may also have a reason for not being able to work with someone because he is much too brilliant for me. I find it quite incomprehensible when someone comes and says: “I want to be in a society that doesn't want me at all.” What tyranny would come into the world if everyone could force a society to have them at all costs. If tyranny could go so far that anyone could be in a position to force themselves on a society that doesn't want to work with them, where would we end up? If you agree to this third point, you will achieve nothing more than that words such as “I stood by a helpless person, so I was thrown out of society” would be heard out in the world. I believe that if every member is aware of what has been expressed today, that words are deeds, that is enough. It is not possible to reach an understanding if words are used that are not objectively correct.” Mr. Molt withdraws his proposal. Pastor Wendt's proposal concerns the exclusion of those members who supported the proposals regarding Vollrath.

Dr. Steiner asks that this proposal not be accepted because its content is identical to that of the Molt proposal, which has already been withdrawn.

Pastor Klein (submits a resolution): “I would like to ask you to listen to a few very urgent words from me. I attach the greatest importance to you considering this resolution very seriously. It is not possible for Adyar to award Doctor Vollrath special titles. It is not possible for this to continue. Adyar must be aware of what happened in 1908. It is quite incomprehensible that Doctor Vollrath was appointed Secretary of the Order of the Star of the East. It is either/or! If Dr. Vollrath insults the General Secretary in such a pamphlet and the General Assembly vigorously declares its opposition to this fact, then such an honor is impossible. This is not about Christian brotherhood, but about clarity. Christ said, “I am the truth.” But surely Adyar knows how this has been handled. Adyar headquarters is not acting clearly. And it cannot be that Adyar headquarters continues to operate in the same way as before. I want it to be known in Adyar that we are not willing to tolerate and consider it damaging to our work when Dr. Vollrath is supported by Adyar in this unclear way, to put it mildly. I am well aware of the implications of this step, but I believe that we would only have done half the work today if we did not send a signal to Adyar that the trust placed in Dr. Vollrath there after the events of 1908 were known, has wounded us to the quick; that you can't do everything with the German Section, and that it cannot agree with the awarding of the title to Dr. Vollrath.

Dr. Steiner: “It is necessary, since this point is a very serious matter and I am the General Secretary, that I comment on this matter. For me, this is not in the least about me personally. However, it may indeed be necessary to protect the Society if its living conditions are cut off and the Theosophical teachings can no longer be spread as before. On this point, we can more easily and more definitively than before separate the factual from the personal. The factual is as follows.

At the end of October or the beginning of November, the document from Dr. Vollrath that has been read to you today was published. This document is now available and has been printed in as large a number of copies as possible. It contains a number of things that, if they were true, would be enough to justify the claim that not a single dog would take a piece of bread from us. Imagine that the things written there were true! I would ask you whether there is no blemish on those of whom they are said? No dog would take a piece of bread from those named. At around the same time, an 'Adyar Bulletin' appeared. It listed Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden and Dr. Hugo Vollrath as representatives of the Star of the East. We, the German Section, are an integral part of the overall society. Is it right to stand up for the president wherever possible, or is it an abnormal state of affairs not to be able to stand up for her? Let us assume that I myself was faced with the question: “Do you stand up for the president?” - Jab. - Will I then be told: “But then you are agreeing with the person who wrote this brochure. Because the President appoints as her representative someone who acts against you? But let us assume that someone would say: “You don't need to do that. You can stand up for the President even though these things are in the brochure, because the President can make a mistake. - But the President was, as was her duty, fully informed about the facts from the very beginning. She was told with the necessary clarity from the outset what had happened. Nevertheless, the President has delivered this vote of no confidence against the General Secretary of the German Section. So either one or the other is in every way fragile. Misses Besant had to know how things stand. The situation is such that Adyar has currently put the General Secretary in the impossible position of having to defend the President. This is an abnormal state of affairs, and I assure you that there can hardly be a more painful alternative for me. It is a very painful matter for me. You know how far I have always gone in defense of the President whenever possible. But there is one thing that must be absolutely decisive, and that is to be absolutely sure of the truth. I have set myself this one task and I may mention it. He who may not know the occult basis but only the history of the occult movement knows how closely connected charlatanry and occultism have always been. It is a fundamental occult experience that there is only a thin cobweb between the two. But there is one thing I can ascribe to myself, this ideal I have set for myself: it is to be tested whether absolute sincerity and honesty in all details can be combined with an occult movement. If everything else we can do here fades away, I want one thing to never fade away: that a Theosophical movement once existed that set itself the motto: It shall be shown that one can truly be an occultist and at the same time a representative of unadorned, absolute truth. Anyone familiar with the history of religious movements will agree with me.

I therefore consider it a serious anomaly – if I may express my personal opinion – when it has become impossible to defend the president due to the short-sightedness of Adyar politics. The most painful thing is that this could have happened in our Theosophical movement. It is a deep pain for me, more painful than anything else, because I must confess that no one loves Miss Besent more than I do. But the pain is wrung from the truth and the truth is what can be called the highest. But, measured against love, it is, as a poet says, cruel. This is something that needed to be said.

Now one could easily say: Then we will just leave the Adyar movement. The Adyar policy is not identical with that of the Theosophical Society. But we cannot take the position that we don't like it or that we are no longer playing along. Rather, it is a matter of knowing positively what we really want to represent in the world. Either what we want is the truth – and then it will prevail – or it is not the truth, and then no one can save us. So I cannot see that resigning would be a necessary consequence for us. If we are always aware of what we want, then we can always say what we want. No matter how many members we are, we know what we want and can express it.

Theosophy stands above any office in the Theosophical Society. So we can say it to the President in Adyar. Our job is to say: This is what we want. And whatever they may think in Adyar, we want to do this, if we make a start with this motion to place ourselves on the ground of a sovereign will. If we use such language, it is only the consequence of what has been said today. So if only a hundredth of the things discussed today are justified, then we may well say: We want that, and no matter how many members of the Society are against it. This does not apply to teachings, but to administrative matters. And if we start not just repeating every word from Adyar, then we have something to say. In a way, it will depend on our understanding of how to speak clearly with Adyar. We will find the continuation then already. It is always only about administrative issues, other things do not belong here.

Theosophy is cosmopolitan, as it spans the globe, but at the same time it is excessively individualistic. There is no point in setting up as many sections as there are national borders. In that case, we could also set up as many sections in Switzerland as there are cantons. These current institutions do not correspond at all to the theosophical spirit. But that is not the whole story. The point is that a painful anomaly has been created, and that we have no choice but to face it. But we must also express this. Therefore, I ask you to comment on this proposal.

Fräulein Stinde: “I would like to support Pastor Klein's proposal. If he hadn't made it, I would have done so.”

Dr. Unger: “I would like to ask whether it would not be worth considering whether this resolution should be drafted a little more carefully. It would be a further suggestion or request that a smaller group be appointed to discuss the way in which this protest is to be expressed, and that this group be given a certain amount of time.”

Pastor Wendt requests that the drafting of the resolution be entrusted to the board.

Dr. Steiner: “I once again request that the matter be carefully considered from the point of view that I have just stated. It is impossible to defend Adyar now if one does not want to distort the truth. This can, of course, also be distorted in the outside world. I also ask you to consider that things that have happened cannot be erased by apologies. So we are faced with the question of whether the resolution should be considered.

A vote is taken.

The assembly approves the adoption of the resolution.

Pastor Wendt's proposal that the board be entrusted with the task of drafting and promoting the resolution was also adopted by the assembly.

Mr. von Rainer:

I would like to propose the appointment of a commission to draft the statutes in line with Mr. Bauer's and Dr. Unger's statements.

A vote is taken on this proposal.

The proposal is accepted.

Dr. Steiner: “In order to avoid any grounds for this General Assembly being declared invalid, it is necessary that the Assembly grant me indemnity, since according to the statutes, the accounts are to be sent to the individual lodges by the Secretary General fourteen days before the General Assembly, but this has not happened.”

Mr. Arenson: “It is my opinion that such a declaration by the General Assembly would have to be linked to another, namely this one, that the Assembly forbids itself from speaking to our Secretary General in such a tone, quite apart from the fact that one could have inquired as to what reasons led to the delay; that something like this would happen in other expressions.”

Mrs. Wolfram: “I would like to add that Dr. [Haedicke] was fully informed of the difficulties of such matters.”

Dr. Steiner: “I also told Dr. [Haedicke] that if there is any leakage, it is not our fault, but that of the individual lodges. It would therefore be futile to talk to a gentleman who has heard these reasons multiple times and yet continues to raise the issue again and again. So Dr. [Haedicke] writes: As a man of honor, you have signed the constitution with your signature and must therefore either uphold the constitution, change the constitution, or resign from office. Now that you have publicly spoken of “theosophical dogmas.” This is an assertion that does not even appear to be correct.

We will not go into the logic. We see from these things that are possible that one has to accept these impossible, palpable things as an instruction: So please explain when you get the chance that the Theosophical Society has no dogma and logically can never have one, just as Theosophy is not spiritual science, but according to Blavatsky, the wisdom of those who are divine.

So someone comes along and says: There are no theosophical dogmas. But then he claims that I should have to declare that Theosophy is divine wisdom.

So what we have here would be to give indemnity for breach of duty this time.

Mr. Seiler: “I will not go into the fact that the district court is being threatened. I would just like to say that you cannot prosecute the General Secretary. If someone is at fault, then it is me. If anyone has to apologize, it is me. This can only come from the fact that Mr. [Haedicke] is a very young member who does not even know how things are done here. He should know that you can't approach Dr. Steiner with such things and understand that we have to make every effort to keep the General Secretary as free as possible from such things. It seems to me to be a gross impropriety for members' intentions to reach this point, so that Dr. Steiner should publicly apologize. Surely that cannot be demanded of our General Secretary.

Dr. Steiner: “But according to the paragraphs, there is no other way than for you to grant me indemnity, because otherwise Mr. [Haedicke] could declare the General Assembly invalid. I think we have all had enough of this meeting; we would then have to go through the whole thing again. Therefore, it is necessary that we formulate the point as it must be formally formulated. It cannot be that we make an incorrect decision today. It is necessary that you give me indemnity because the statutes have been violated.

Mr. Tessmar: “It is clear that Mr. [Haedicke]'s motion is based on correct facts. It is just not formally correct because the gentleman in question does not know how the cash report is created. You have the wonderful situation here that we auditors can now also justifiably say: No, it's our fault! The fact of the matter is that Dr. Haedicke is actually right in his proposal. Here in the statutes, the words are: “Shall be delivered by the Secretary General.” But he must first have something to deliver. My personal opinion is that it doesn't really matter that much, but that theosophical work is being done.

You, Dr. [Haedicke], are now the one who has done what I have wanted for eight years. You have done something good by this. Because now the statutes will be changed; and that is for the benefit of those who have not understood the theosophical cause and have therefore become clause sniffers. A Lex [Haedicke] will no longer exist.

I would like to make a motion here that the General Assembly grants the Secretary General indemnity.

Mr. Hubo: “Following Mr. Tessmar's motion, I would like to request the addition that this alleged omission be considered unindebted, and that we move on to the agenda regarding all other points of the [Haedicke] motion.

Dr. Steiner: “A motion has been made to grant the Secretary General immunity. Whether or not he is at fault is irrelevant.”

The General Assembly grants the Secretary General immunity by vote.

Dr. Steiner: “There is another proposal, the Arenson proposal: 'The General Assembly should express its disapproval of the tone adopted by Dr. [Haedicke].”

The proposal is adopted.

Dr. Steiner: “We now come to the granting of discharge to the board. I would like to explicitly note that it is not at all important to me to resign from the office of a General Secretary at any time, if it should become necessary for the reason that the two offices, the leadership of the Theosophical Society and the office of the General Secretary, would no longer be compatible with each other due to the way in which the Society must be run. This could arise if a certain equity did not prevail between the lines of the theosophical life. Why should that not be possible? You must consider what I am saying now in the light of the fact that I never want to be anything other than a theosophical teacher and that everything must be done by me that must be done in the interest of representing the theosophical truth. Anyone who finds himself in such a position must, of course, say something unpleasant to this or that person. He is obliged to speak the truth. But the truth does not always have to be understood. Since the Theosophical teacher is obliged to tell the unvarnished truth to each individual person, he must naturally have enemies and opponents. It cannot be otherwise. The nature of this antagonism, which is caused by the activities of the theosophical teacher, may under certain circumstances be incompatible with the activities of the General Secretary of the Theosophical Society. If the time should come when a combination of these two offices is no longer conceivable, then it will be necessary to consider another arrangement.

I would also like to note that no one has the right to say that I have said anything against the President of the Theosophical Society today. It has only been said that it is impossible for me to defend the President.

We now come to the granting of discharge to the board in its entirety.

The meeting grants discharge to the entire board.

Dr. Steiner: “We now proceed to the election of the new board, insofar as the board members have not been elected for life. The Board proposes the following members of the Board whose terms have expired for election: Mr. Bauer, Dr. Grosheintz, Mr. Tessmar, Dr. Unger, Ms. Noss, Ms. Wolfram, Ms. Smits. Furthermore, the Board is to be expanded by twelve new members, since one member of the Board must be elected for every 100 members, and the Association has grown by 1180 members since the last election. For this election, the board proposes: Ms. von Bredow, Ms. Völker, Ms. Wandrey, Mr. Del-Monte, Dr. Peipers, Dr. Noll, Countess Kalckreuth, Mr. von Rainer, Count Lerchenfeld, Prof. Gysi, Mr. von Damnitz, Ms. Mücke.

The following are proposed by the assembly: Pastor Klein, Mr. [Walther], Mr. van Leer, Ms. Winkler, Ms. von Eckardtstein.

Mr. Molt on the agenda: “I would like to ask that the proposals of the board be accepted. I believe that would be the best expression of a vote of confidence.

Dr. Steiner: “This motion must be voted on immediately.”

The motion by Molt is adopted.

Fourth item [on the agenda]: Reports by the representatives of the branches: There is a report from the Zurich branch. It is proposed that, due to the late hour, this report be included in the “announcements”.

The proposal is adopted.

Fifth item of business: Miscellaneous:

Dr. Steiner: “I would also like to note that the first general assembly of the Johannesbauverein will take place, if possible on Tuesday. The time will be announced.”

Since no one has anything to add regarding the fifth point, the Secretary General closes the business portion of the General Assembly. The Board's response to Dr. Vollrath's motion will be made the following morning. (The Board has declined to negotiate with Dr. Vollrath for well-founded reasons).