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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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273. The Problem of Faust: Faust and the “Mothers” 02 Nov 1917, Dornach
Translated by George Adams

Rudolf Steiner
In order to have a picture let us take any river—say the Rhine. What is the actual Rhine? On reflection—I have already spoken of this here—no one is really able to say what the Rhine is. It is called the Rhine. But what actually is it when we look into the matter? Is it the water? But in the next moment that has flowed away water has water has taken its place. It flows into the North Sea and other water and follows it, and that goes on continuously. Then what is the Rhine? Is the Rhine the trough, the bed? But no one believes that, for were the water not there no one would think of the bed as the Rhine.
352. Cosmic Workings In Earth and Man: The Circulation of Fluids in the Earth 09 Feb 1924, Dornach
Translated by Mabel Cotterell, Dorothy S. Osmond, V. E. Evans

Rudolf Steiner
You know that the Danube rises in the Black Forest. Or take the Rhine which rises in the Southern Alps. The Danube flows through various valleys into the Black Sea; the Rhine flows through various valleys into the North Sea.
Now in order not to die out—we can see this by the salmon here in the North Sea—they make a journey every year up into the Rhine, and so get the name of “Rhine salmon.” But the Rhine makes the salmon thin, it loses its muscles again; the fat it gained in the salt ocean it loses in the Rhine. Yet in the Rhine the salmon can breed, for while it gets slender, the sense organs and in particular the reproductive organs, in both male and female, become well developed.
262. Correspondence with Marie Steiner 1901–1925: Correspondence 17 27 Nov 1904,

Rudolf Steiner
Show German 17 To Marie von Sivers in Berlin Sunday, November 27, 1904 Frankfurt - Cologne, November 27, 1904 My dear Marie, from outside the Rhine looks at me, from inside the thoughts of you. The Rhine mountains are covered with cold snow; thoughts of you with warmth.
Miss Keller 47 is in a certain respect a good theosophist, but very ill. I just drove over the Rhine bridge near Lahnstein. So I was in Heidelberg yesterday. Everything there is of the Hartmann-Böhme type.
274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: January 6, 1924 06 Jan 1924, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner
Now, when Schröer was a professor in Preßburg, he once heard that interesting folk Christmas plays were being performed out in Oberufer by the descendants of those German colonists who had moved from the west towards Hungary to settle there, from areas that were probably located north of the Rhine in southern Germany, directly bordering Switzerland, north of the Rhine and as far as Alsace. And that seems to be the origin of these Christmas games. It is the case – and we can still see this today – that these Christmas games were really still being played in the 13th and 14th centuries across the Rhine, perhaps later in northern Switzerland, at most in Brienz. The people then moved eastward, took these Christmas games with them as an expensive spiritual heirloom with a deep piety and then held it in extremely high regard.
And here I believe that this still has its special value in that the Swiss remember, perhaps still in northern Switzerland, but most certainly when they have turned their eyes across the Rhine, that these games were played everywhere there in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. So it is here in particular that we can connect very good memories with it, and that is why we believe that it is also quite good to bring these games here for demonstration.
274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: December 19, 1920 19 Dec 1920, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner
So that until the last decades of the 12th century, the need arose to present to the people, in a dramatic way, what refers to the biblical story, what refers to the Christian traditions, namely also to the Christian legend, throughout the widest areas of Central Europe – through Thuringia to the Rhine and across the Rhine to Alsace, then through all of southern Germany, through northern Switzerland.
As you will see from the introduction to the second play, it was performed throughout the Rhine region, and these plays were also performed on the road. Nevertheless, as Schröer found them, they came, as I said, to the Oberufer, to the Pressburg area – as they are also called Oberufer Christmas plays – for performance, east of Pressburg. So they were played there during the Christmas season, even though they originated quite elsewhere. Originally they were played where the Rhine flows through. They were taken along by a community that had migrated eastwards and settled east of the Danube in Banat and so on.
156. Occult Reading and Occult Hearing: The Human Being and his Relationship to the World 03 Oct 1914, Dornach
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

Rudolf Steiner
Simple contemplation shows us in every region and corner of the world that what we experience in our environment is not the reality, that we attach a false meaning to everything. Someone once said to me on the banks of the Rhine: ‘There is the ancient Rhine.’ It was a beautiful, deeply felt saying. But what, in reality, is ancient in the Rhine?
Ancient, at most, is the hollow that has been burrowed out in the soil, but that is not what is meant when someone speaks of ‘the ancient Rhine.’ What is it, in reality, that is designated by the phrase, ‘the ancient Rhine?’ If one says ‘the hollow’ ... well, there are hollows in the sea-floor too, and also streams.
Nothing is real in the Physical, everything is in flow. To speak of ‘the ancient Rhine’ has meaning only when we are thinking of those elemental Beings who actually have their life in the Rhine, when we are thinking of the elemental River God Rhine—a spiritual Being who is truly ancient.
184. Three Streams in Human Evolution: Lecture V 12 Oct 1918, Dornach
Translated by Charles Davy

Rudolf Steiner
We form it on the lines of the illustration I made use of here a few days ago: you remember how I took the image of Father Rhine. Someone stands on the bridge in Basle, looks down and says: “There's the old Rhine; the old Rhine ...” yes, but what do you mean by the old Rhine?
And what you mean does not seem to be merely the river-bed, hollowed out of the earth between the Swiss mountains and the North Sea. Then what is Father Rhine, the old Rhine, so often spoken of? It is not at all a substantial thing; no substance is left once you have the idea of Father Rhine.
Substance continually pours into the form; it appears, pours itself in, is destroyed—just like the waters of Father Rhine. Because of the illusion, the may a, that permeates the outer world, we do not see this flux of continuous dissolution and renewal which is the truth about the life perceived by the senses.
100. Theosophy and Rosicrucianism: Further Stages of the Development of Our Earth 25 Jun 1907, Kassel
Translator Unknown

Rudolf Steiner
The mists of Atlantis left the atmosphere, they were pressed down and appeared in the West as rivers. For the descendants of the Atlanteans, the Rhine was nothing but mist which descended from the air and then flew along as a river. In the Rhine they perceived the masses of water still permeated by light; in the Rhine they felt the presence of the sun's gold, which exercised such a pure and selfless influence upon the inhabitants of ancient Atlantis. They saw this gold in the Nibelung treasure of the Rhine, and anyone who strove to gain possession of this treasure, was their enemy. Richard Wagner, who describes this in music, was not clearly conscious of this truth, but nevertheless he was inspired by this powerful, encompassing fact. Remember the Prologue to “Rhine Gold”: Is the wonderful organ-theme in E sharp not the point where the Ego enters humanity? But even as the plant does not know the laws according to which it grows, so the poet does not require the full knowledge of what he writes.
277b. The Development of Eurythmy 1918–1920: Address on Eurythmy and the Christmas Play 11 Jan 1920, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner
It shows us - as you will have the opportunity to hear shortly afterwards - how these Christmas games came from further west. You will hear about the sea and the Rhine in the introduction, in the so-called “Star Song”. Of course, these were not present in the Oberufer region, where these plays were last found. When the “sea” is mentioned, Lake Constance is meant; when the Rhine is mentioned, it is because these plays originally existed in a region along the Rhine. The people migrated eastward and took it with them, while education in western countries suppressed it, so that at most it was still maintained in secret by these German colonists until the mid-19th century, faithfully preserved, to perform these things in old piety.
55. Supersensible Knowledge: Richard Wagner and Mysticism 28 Mar 1907, Berlin
Translated by Rita Stebbing

Rudolf Steiner
This selfless, love-filled wisdom flowed with the water into the Rhine and reposed beneath it as wisdom, as gold. But this wisdom, if taken hold of by egoism, provides it with power.
We see the Ring closing, as Alberich takes the gold of the Rhine from the Rhine Maidens. Alberich is representative of the Nibelungs, who have become egoistic, of the human being that forswears the love through which he is a member of a unity—a dan or tribe.
No human ear could fail to hear in that long E-flat major in the Rhine-gold the impact of the emerging human “I.” Wagner's deep mystical sense can be traced in his music.

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