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! Every year I have had the privilege of speaking here in this city about topics in spiritual science. Our friends in the spiritual science movement here were of the opinion that this should also be done in these fateful days. Now it will seem understandable that these days of ours require a very special kind of consideration, even for those striving in spiritual science. After all, all our feelings and emotions are intimately connected with what is happening in the East and the West in these fateful days. We must look with heartfelt sympathy at those who are faithfully obeying the demands of duty, who are giving their all, body and soul, for what has become so deeply embedded in the course of European and indeed human development. In all our thoughts, in all our reflections, there must be a connection to the great arena in which decisions are not made and judgments are not passed in words, in concepts and ideas, but where decisions are made and judgments are passed through deeds, through life, through blood, through death.

What I would like to consider before you this evening, dear attendees, is said to be so connected with the great events of the times that the question is asked, as it were, from these events themselves: What impulses, what forces, what powers in the course of human development have led, could lead to the fact that the bearers of Central European culture, that the bearers of Central European spiritual life are now enclosed as in a mighty, enlarged fortress on all sides, have to defend themselves on all sides; not only have to defend themselves, but are burdened from all sides with all possible insults, yes, defamations. Perhaps spiritual scientific conceptions, perhaps perceptions that arise from spiritual scientific feeling, are suitable for characterizing, at least in some strokes, the larger connections that have led to our fate-shaking events in the world's development up to our time.

Among the things that the materialistic age has particularly laughed at can be mentioned the idea, the concept of the folk soul, which I tried to present in my book “Theosophy”. For the spiritual scientist, this folk soul is not just an abstract, empty concept, not just an abstract summary of the characteristics of some people. This folk soul is a living, real thing.

For spiritual science – as has often been emphasized here – the concept of reality, and also the concept of personal and individual reality, does not end with the visible. Behind the visible, everywhere, the invisible reigns. If we approach nature spiritually, then, behind what nature reveals to us externally, we find spiritual entities that are effective not only for a superstitious, traditional worldview, but for real spiritual scientific research. Behind all that we ourselves are, behind all that develops in us between birth and death, there reigns that eternal, immortal self, which, however, presents itself to man in forms and entities that he ignores in everyday life. The supersensible self rules in us, passing from birth to birth and from death to death on earth. And in all historical development, invisible, supersensible, but as real as the external beings of the animal and plant world, there are real, personal, individual beings. The spiritual researcher speaks of such real, ruling spiritual beings when he speaks of the soul of a nation. And he tries to grasp the nature of these folk souls on the basis of his knowledge; he tries to penetrate into what these folk souls are, in order to gain an understanding from this penetration of how the folk souls prevail in the folk souls, in the feelings and impulses of the folk souls, and how the folk souls relate to each other through this rule.

First of all, I would like to hint at how the spiritual researcher arrives at speaking of such higher spiritual beings, including in the sense of folk souls, which would be far too involved to explain in detail. In our material life, we relate to the things of the external world, to the things of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms; we look at what is around us within the horizon of these kingdoms; we form ideas and thoughts about them and absorb them. We know that our soul lives within us, and when we form thoughts, images and ideas, then these thoughts, images and ideas relate to beings outside of us.

What we can draw from the beings, we acquire, so to speak; we then carry this further into ourselves from the mineral, animal and plant world that extends around our senses. We form images, thoughts and ideas about the world that is below us as human beings. Spiritual research shows us – I can only hint at this today with a comparison; listeners who have heard me here often know that this is not just a comparison but a result of spiritual research – spiritual research shows us how we as human souls relate to external reality. Thus, in the invisible, there is a spiritual world above us; and what the things of the mineral, animal and plant worlds are for us, we ourselves are as souls for a spiritual world. We can say comparatively: just as the things of the sensory world become thoughts for us, so we become thoughts, so we become perceptions and ideas for the spiritual world. And the folk soul is one of the beings in the spiritual world that are closest to us. And just as we humans can relate to the external world by simply surrendering ourselves to it with our senses, giving it little thought and rarely rising to the realm of the ideal, so the folk soul can relate to the individual people of a nation by living itself out completely in the individuals, entirely [with its will impulses] – and with the folk soul it depends on will impulses – that it expresses itself entirely in the individuals, that this folk soul rises little into a spiritual realm, but rather submerges more and leads a life in the folk individuals themselves. From a spiritual-scientific point of view, we find such folk souls more among the western peoples of Europe. We find that folk souls there rise little into a spiritual realm; on the other hand, we find that they intervene decisively, tyrannically and dogmatically in the individual soul life of the members of the Western European peoples.

Another thing is conceivable and is actually in the character of the folk souls. This can be compared to when a person is more of a dreamer, when he has little eyes and little sense for the outer world; when things pass by him unnoticed, as it were, and he lives more in his own ideas. The behavior of the individual human soul towards external things can be compared to the Russian folk soul. It hovers, as it were, nebulously over the individual members of the people, does not enter into the individualities of the people; cares little about them; is only loosely connected with them.

Then there are people, and we have a representative person of this kind in the history of the development of Central Europe, who on the one hand lovingly contemplates the outside world with all his senses, but then again does not get stuck in this outside world, but develops a full ideal, spiritual-soul life, and with this spiritual-soul life plunges into what the senses around him offer and reveal. In the most eminent sense, Goethe is a representative of this kind of mind. Goethe, whose way of thinking has been called “a concrete thinking” by an important psychologist of his time, because this remarkable Goethe soul connects lovingly with everything outside through the senses, and at the same time rises so strongly to ideas. Schiller could not quite understand this in a conversation he had with Goethe, so that Goethe had to claim that he saw his ideas with his eyes. His intellectual and spiritual life was so highly developed, as was his life of the senses and outer life. The German national soul is a type of national soul that can be compared with this disposition of the individual human soul. The German national soul has proven itself as such over the centuries and millennia of German development in Central Europe.

This German national soul appears to us, on the one hand, as intimately and intimately concerned with the individual human being. On the other hand, we see how it was able to withdraw into the spiritual realms in order to open up new sources of spiritual life there, and then to go down again to the individual human beings in the German nation. A folk soul that lives in the spiritual and in the individual at the same time, that appears to us in the succession of time as if it were coming down among the people; [it appears as if it were coming down rhythmically], we see it in the decisions in which our ancestors assert themselves as opponents of the Roman development. We see how this folk soul, even then, was permeating the individual human personalities in Central Europe, how it imbued them with strength so that they could oppose in a very specific way what was intruding on them as Romanism. We then find how this folk soul withdraws, then breaks out again, submerging itself in the individual personalities, even producing a supreme one at the time of Walther von der Vogelweide [Wolfram von Eschenbach]. We find, as later when Germany was crushed from left and right, from north and south, during the Thirty Years War, this national soul gathers strength in the unseen, and then in a heyday of German spiritual development at the turn of the eighteenth, nineteenth century, it in turn submerges into the individuals.

If we observe history in its rhythmic course, we see it as alternating between the submergence of the national soul in the individualities and a return to the spiritual. And it is from this return to the spiritual that the rejuvenating forces of German development come.

If we consider the fundamental feature of this familiarity on the one hand and the soaring flight on the other of the German national soul, we understand how, within the development of German culture, what is produced as the highest , what reaches to the heights of art and intellectual life, is rooted in the simplest impulses, in the primitive of the national soul; how it was unthinkable in Germany from time immemorial that Germany's high culture was not at the same time popular culture.

And so, in these fateful times, I would like to invoke two personalities in their last moments, their dying moments, so to speak, and characterize something.

How did that which Schiller was able to be for his people settle into German hearts and minds? What worked in Schiller's mind itself? The rejuvenating powers of the German national soul! He knew himself connected to these deeper powers of the German national soul. Through one of his friends, Heinrich Voß, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, we are led into Schiller's death chamber, as it were, and get to know Schiller's last days and last moments. There we get to know him, this Schiller, as he, so to speak, already died physically in his last days, but as he, gathering all the powers of his soul, nevertheless took part in what surrounded him. There you can see how the spirit prevailed over the worn-out body, which showed a dried-up heart at the autopsy, but in which there was a warm glow. We see that this worn-out body was maintained solely by the strong soul forces that dwelled in it.

We are told how difficult Schiller's last moments were. It is touching to see how, in these last moments, he still made an effort to say this or that, which he believed he still had to communicate to those around him so that it could be passed on to posterity. We are told how Schiller had his last, his youngest child brought to his bedside, how he looked the child in the eye for a long, long time. How he then turned to the wall. And young Voß recounts that he believed – and rightly so – that Schiller looked at his child as if to say: Yes, it would be necessary for me to be your father for much longer, because I still have so much to tell you.

And it may be said that the entire German nation can imagine that the feelings that turned to the child in these last moments were turned to the entire German nation itself; as if the German nation must feel what Schiller still had to say to it. For in Schiller, the German nation can feel how he was carried in everything by the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul.

Let us recall the words that have been quoted frequently in recent times, which Schiller, so to speak, left as a legacy, and which show how he felt connected to the German people. These words only came to light long after his death. But they show us how Schiller himself felt carried by the forces of the German national spirit.

He who forms and rules the spirit

must ultimately gain mastery, for

finally, at the goal of time, if the

world has a plan, if human

life has any meaning, finally,

custom and reason must triumph,

the brute force of form must succumb

and the slowest nation will overtake

all the fast, fleeting ones.

[...]

Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the center of
Europe's peoples,
he is the core of humanity,
those are the flower and the leaf.

He has been chosen by the world spirit, during
the battle of time
to work on the eternal construction of human education
and to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and kept it within himself.
Everything that was valuable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times,
he has preserved,
it is not lost to him, the treasures of
centuries.
Not to shine in the moment and
play his role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, but
the day of the German is the harvest of
all time.

Thus Schiller knew himself connected with the power of the German national soul.

Now we turn our gaze to another German, to a German who has risen high, one might say, into the often seemingly cold philosophical regions; we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. But Fichte, who in Germany's most difficult times, when Germany was depressed from the west, tried - as he himself put it - to hold his “Discourses to the German Nation” from the innermost “root of the stirrings of life” of his people. He, the philosopher, who perhaps put forward the most vigorously willed thoughts to humanity, he who shaped the sharpest thoughts, he knew himself as being connected to all the primitive sources of the German people, and it was out of this consciousness that he delivered his “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time. But he also felt connected to everything that came from the German people and determined Germany's fate. And again this shows itself to us – we can look at it without sentimentality – it shows itself symbolically in his last moments.

He often deliberated with himself, Fichte, whether he should personally go to war. Then he told himself that he had to work through the power of his mind. His wife worked as a nurse in a military hospital in Berlin. She brought the military hospital fever home with her. She recovered, but Fichte was infected by this fever. And in his last moments – and this was strangely characteristic of this seemingly abstract and at the same time most popular philosopher – in his last days, when his crystal-clear, life-energetic thoughts feverish fantasies, he was outside with the German armies, at Blücher's crossing of the Rhine, he took a faithful part in the fighting, and felt himself in the midst of the battle. Thus, even in the feverish fantasies of the dying philosopher, the strongest German philosophy led to intimate communion with the deeds of his people. His son offered him a medicine. He pushed it away with his hand and said, letting his thoughts wander from the most human philosophy to the way he felt on the battlefields, he said: “I do not need medicine because I feel I will recover.” He recovered to death.

Such examples, esteemed attendees, show us how the forces of the German national soul were at work, where the individual souls that belong to this nation are making the way that they must describe as the most humane, as the one leading to the highest goods of humanity.

And everywhere it is shown how this German national soul does not rule over the individual in a tyrannical way, how it does not pour some kind of collective, dogmatic world view into souls; how it is experienced in the individual souls, how the individual soul feels it as its own power. And how, nevertheless, the highest developments of the supersensible spiritual life are brought into these individual souls. And again and again we see the individual soul seized afresh in all that it has to accomplish on earth, carried down from the spiritual heights by the soul of the nation.

How did this Central European people once receive Christianity! So that it was felt like the most personal impulse. We read the retelling of the Gospel stories [in Heliand, the work of the Saxon monk], we read them as something that arose directly from the most personal spiritual life, but was nevertheless the revelation of a supreme being.

And we move on. We see how later on the individual German soul is seized; so seized is it by that which encompasses the whole soul of the people, that this German soul in German mysticism in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth century feels God so that this God lives directly in all that the individual can will, feel and love, what the individual soul feels directly within itself as the eternal-living. How the words of Master Eckhart resound in us: “If you love God, then you can do whatever you want, [for then you will only want the eternal and the one, which God also wills. I will not ask God to give himself, I will ask him to make me pure, then he will flow into me of his own accord. God is a pure good in Himself and therefore does not want to dwell anywhere, for He may pour Himself entirely into a pure soul. When it is so pure that it sees through itself, then it need not seek God in the form, but it sees Him in itself and enjoys all creatures in God and God in all creatures, and whatever it does, it does in God and] God does in you.” That is to say, they maintain a familiar dialogue not only with what they are as individuals, but also with what, as the soul of the people, whispers and rests through all the minds of the people.

And think of Angelus Silesius, who lived in the seventeenth century. How he empathizes with the individual soul of the human being with the whole soul of the people. How we read there - I will quote only one saying - how Silesius, the “Cherubic Wayfarer,” has made countless such sayings.

I neither live nor die. God himself dies in me, and what I am to live, he also lives for and for.

This means feeling at one with the spirit that lives and breathes in the world. At the same time, it means carrying within oneself a supreme consciousness of immortality. When a person feels connected in their soul to the divine source of existence, they say: “I neither die nor live. God himself dies in me.” There is the certainty that God does not die; but that it is God who goes with me through death. There I feel so connected with God that through this my immortality is granted. There you see the peculiarity, how intimately the soul of the people lives with the individual mind of the people.

When we look at the human soul from a spiritual scientific point of view, then we see – not by dividing it up in the abstract, but by looking at this soul in a truly scientific way, and this is not what science does today, but it is something that the science of the future will certainly do – we see that we can distinguish three soul elements, three soul expressions in the human soul. Just as one can distinguish the different color shades in the spectrum, so one can and must distinguish quite scientifically in the human soul: the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. And within each of these there is that which is called the human being's ego, the actual self of the human being. Just as light reigns in the reddish-yellow, greenish, and blue-violet parts of the rainbow, so the power of the self, of the ego of man, reigns through the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul.

Now the peculiar thing about trying to understand the peoples of Europe from a spiritual scientific point of view is that it shows that the soul of a nation, for example the Italian soul, relates primarily to the individual human being in such a way that the soul of the nation stimulates the sentient soul and works through the sentient soul. In the case of the French nation, the soul of the nation works through the intellectual or mind soul. In the British nation, the folk soul works through the consciousness soul. In the Russian nation, the folk soul hovers over the soul forces, leaving the soul forces in a kind of [anarchic] state. The German folk soul directly stimulates the I. It does not express itself in a particular part of the soul, but by taking hold of the whole soul; hence its rejuvenating power. Hence the possibility for the German, when seized by the power of his folk soul. [At a certain time, it lovingly seized what was offered in Italy, France, and England, but always rejuvenated it, elevating it within itself to an independent existence.] How lovingly did the German spirit of his time take hold of what was offered to humanity by Eckhart and Tauler! But how did it rejuvenate it by stimulating the whole self through the whole spectrum! How did it raise it to the most independent, personal and inward existence! How was he, with his ever-rejuvenating power of the I-seizing folk soul, how was the German in the present able to present that which encompasses the whole human being as the highest representative of humanity. No other nation could have produced a work of literature like Faust, because no other nation is so deeply moved in its immediate self by the national soul, through all the elements of the soul's spectrum. But that is also why this German essence is so little understood and so misunderstood in all directions.

If we look to the West, we see how everything that arises most deeply from the German soul, what is present there in a completely undogmatic way, always stimulating striving, is expressed in a crude way through language; how it is often not understood and is either rejected emotionally or critically. One is tempted to say: the best that the Central European folk soul instills in the people of Central Europe is “understood” in the West, even when it is tried to be understood, in such a way that precisely the immediate invigoration is lost. And this extends even to the contemplation of the figures.

We can learn a lot about the peculiarities of European cultures by considering how much is understood in the West when it is understood through the Western European strength of the national soul. Herman Grimm, the art historian, once said quite rightly [about a book about Goethe by the Englishman Lewes]: “A certain Mr. Lewes in England has written a book about a person who was born in August 1749 in Frankfurt, who died in March 1832 in Weimar, to whom Mr. Lewes attributes [“The Sorrows of Young Werther”, “Clavigo” and so on], such fates, which we know Goethe experienced. To whom he also attributes the writing of Goethe's works. But everything he describes about this man is only coincidentally connected to the man who was born in 1749 and died in 1832. For that which connects Goethe's work with the life of the Central European folk soul has not been transferred, not even in the slightest, into the book that Mr. Lewes has written about a certain Goethe, who is not, however, the creator of Faust for the Central European in reality. One can grasp the external, the coarse, that through which the other appears. But that which lives in the folk soul, animating the individual soul, is lost, one does not see it. This is perhaps a little too radically expressed in Herman Grimm. But it shows what it is about.

And so we must also find that in the way German essence is understood by French essence, there is something that proves to us that the French soul of the people is such that it enters into the soul of the mind, determining the mind's soul, directly tyrannizing the soul of the mind, so that the soul of the people thinks in the individual and radiates through the impulses of the will of the individual. While the German folk soul becomes the confidante of the individual human being.

And if we now look over to the East, to the Russian people. In Russia, much attention has been paid to Kant, to Hegel, Belinsky. But all this shows a very particular peculiarity: the thoughts of Central Europe become strangely ghostly in the East. They are felt and experienced not in the soul-elevating sensation, but like thought ghosts, conceptual ghosts; like what lives in the secular of the national groupings that lives above the individuals.

In saying this, I am expressing something that is just as much a part of the strict body of knowledge as the physical, chemical and biological truths are. Even though it is more difficult to talk about these things because people are indifferent to physical, chemical and biological truths, whereas the truths presented here are related to the fate and nature of man. But we live in a time in which the human soul must rise above that which impairs the human [...] and we live in a time in which such things must be spoken, in which we must gain understanding for the impulses that are going through the world and that have brought about what is now there.

It is rightly said that the two Central European peoples have been surrounded and enclosed in the last decades, as if with iron clamps, the Central European states. But for the spiritual researcher, this encirclement begins much earlier. And the outer, one might say materialistic encirclement, which had its main organizer in Edward VII, this materialistic encirclement is the last [representative] of an ancient encirclement that began in the year 860 of our era. These connections must be borne in mind. In 860, on the one hand, the Normans were standing outside Paris and, on the other hand, the Varangians came down [outside Novgorod and Kiev] and threatened Constantinople, and then, when they pushed into the Slavic area across Russia to Kiev, to Constantinople, on the other hand, parts of the Normans pushed in [into the Romance element], and we have a coiled snake in Central Europe. Those who remained Central Europeans were to be surrounded and encircled. And in the West, we have the nations pushing in and becoming permeated by a folk soul, pushing into the Romance element, which then, from south to northwest, becomes the substance of the folk soul's nature, so that thinking becomes dogmatic, so that on this side everything must be taken dogmatically, so that we see how what is directly human, what arises from the intimate contact of the human soul with the folk soul, is taken dogmatically in the West by the intellect soul, which is permeated by the traditional Romanism. [Thus Central Europe is isolated. This must be taken dogmatically. If the world is not taken in this way, the folk soul, which is permeated with the old Romanism, will not be individualized.]

On the other hand, in the East we see how a folk soul comes into being when the Varangians, who are related to the Normans, merge with the Slavs, are permeated by the Slavs, and are permeated racially by the Byzantines in religious terms. And we see that what arises there remains at the level of the racial personality, as something aloof and unapproachable, which never comes down. Thus in the East one is dealing with that which directly asserts the racial element. Towards the West, with that which is an ancient and renewed feeling, which dogmatizes the individual. They see that one can only understand what human souls produce by doing so.

In the center we see that which is encircled and enclosed from all sides, which always wants to bring forth something new and wants to offer on the altar of human development that which can arise from the intimate connections of the individual souls with the folk soul.

Thus we experience the remarkable phenomenon that to this day, even in our most painful days, what emerges in Central Europe is observed by the West, but in observing it, it must necessarily be misunderstood because it is measured not by human experience but by one's own dogma; by what the soul of the people tyrannically commands from the soul of reason. We are experiencing some very characteristic phenomena in this regard. On the surface, people want to acknowledge that the Germans have achieved a great deal, that they have attained a high level of culture in thought, in philosophy, in poetry, and in other branches of art; but then, when a man has sipped a little and even translates it quite ingeniously into the realm of Western popular culture, as Henri Bergson did, when a man surveys something ingeniously, it is still German conceived in the French manner, German translated into the way of the West. And now he feels compelled – we had to read this around Christmas, how he spoke in the so-called [Academy of Moral and Political Sciences], we had to read it, how he tries to characterize the German character. And this German essence appears to him as if it only wanted to be embodied in cannons and rifles, in what the silly chatter calls “German militarism”; that militarism to which Germany has been forced, not by itself, but by those who surrounded it. One would like to ask such a man what he actually expected Germany to put up against its enemies other than rifles and cannons. Did he perhaps imagine that Novalis or Schiller or Goethe would be recited to the armies of Germany?

The question is: What does the Central European have to defend? What he has to defend can be seen from a consideration of what the German national soul is to the individual German. But such considerations will only become important when they can take hold of and find an echo in the reasonable people of the world within a somewhat broader horizon. Today logic is not exactly what is being whispered throughout the world. We have even had to hear that when there was a manifestation from the German side, the response from the left and right in Europe was: We did not want this war. They did not want it. Yes, from a logical point of view; that is quite correct, from a logical point of view. You can believe it. It is just as right as when a number of people surround the house of another person. He sees that he is locked in his house. He goes out and beats those who surround him. And then they say: We did not want the beating. The logic is exactly the same in both cases. Logic does not whisper today through what is called the “intercourse of nations”, especially through the newspapers. It can be seen everywhere through facts: what the German national soul says to the individual German can be grasped in the West, it can be heard, but it cannot be effective for the reasons just given.

We are experiencing strange phenomena. This power of the German national soul - in enlightened minds, in minds that want to deal with it, something of it has come to light after all. It is not exactly pleasant to speak characteristically about the Central European people in the midst of them. And so I will choose a different approach. I would like to raise the question: Has this German character really always been misunderstood, as it is now, even outside the German-speaking areas? There is a man who certainly belongs to the most important minds of the nineteenth century. And I would like to read to you a passage from a book about Goethe, who appears to him as the representative of the German character, [Emerson]. He says, a man who lives far away from Central Europe, he says about Goethe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public.

- [A trait] is mentioned that Goethe shares with his entire nation:

that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are satisfied only when it works for or against a party in line with its convictions. In France, one is delighted to see brilliant ideas, wherever they may lead. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they write stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness, but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. There is intellectual activity, so what is it expressing? What are people's opinions? Where do they come from? Where do they get all these ideas?

The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

[We see that the rejuvenating effect of the German national soul has not always been recognized.

For this reason, the terms of distinction used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, view their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something else in mind that is even better. [...] He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from contact with the truth.

Thus, one felt what the German could achieve in contact with the truth, that is, in contact with his national soul, where one wanted to feel it.

Now one could say: That was a long time ago. And it has been said. The Germans have changed since then. Instead of poetry, they have made cannons. Now, so that this too can be countered, the saying of another man should be mentioned here, who in his way must have touched - we will soon see why - to the west that which is the German national character.

The source of the stream of

— Germany's —

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a large extent practical and material.

And elsewhere the same man says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of suspicion and free us from the need to prepare for attacks that no one really has in mind.

Who said that? Well, Lord Haldane said it. You may remember how he said some other things a few months ago! Not so long ago, just a few months before this war broke out, a lecture was given in Manchester by a few Englishmen who were supposed to educate English journalists about the German character. From the newspapers that are now appearing, one can see what fruit this has borne, what use it has been. But we will soon see what was said in Manchester, in England, about the German character.

Woods

- the Englishman –

essay was the forerunner of the even more epoch-making Homeric research of Wolf; and the Greek ideals of art and life became for Goethe and Schiller at Weimar, as in the case of Herder, the ideals of [primeval] song, the instruments on which the German spirit played itself up to a music that was new and yet at the same time, in the deepest sense, its own.

Now come some remarkable words:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

Spoken in Manchester to enlighten English journalists; that's why they are so enlightened now!

Imagination, feeling, will asserted their right to be heard beside or above reason, and under their transforming pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of illumination; wisdom was sought from the child and the flower; science, philosophy, and poetry drew near each other. In England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left science and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In Faust, at the end of his eventful life, we see a portrayal of present-day Germany, the Germany of restless, bold will and action, and we can understand all the better why the [great] citizen of the world, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable place as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

And now a very curious thing. The following was also said in the same lecture cycle in Manchester shortly before the outbreak of the war:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason.

So says an Englishman!

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. Because the events of the years 1866-1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war

- in this he was, however, mistaken -

which in earlier centuries had so often lured France onto the wrong track;

- that has been said, not in Berlin and not in Hanover, but in Manchester. -

they put the German people in a position to develop their previously stunted political abilities, and they helped to build a new European system on a secure foundation that preserved peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to achieve, namely to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

This was said in Manchester, a year before the war. The matter speaks for itself, we hardly need to add anything.

We see, then, that people have sometimes known what the Central European nation has to contribute to the overall culture of humanity. Yes, sometimes they have even known it quite thoroughly. Here is another example of how thoroughly they have known it. There was a certain man, also over there in the West, who was closer to us than the others we have just spoken of; a certain man whom the world calls a mystic. The man has undoubtedly written very brilliant works. Once he expressed himself about where the deepest thoughts of his soul came from, and he cited three world-historical phenomena. The third is the German poet Novalis. When we hear his poetry, we have the immediate feeling that the rejuvenating power of the folk soul speaks intimately to his soul, so that it can express what the folk soul is telling him. Now, what does this man feel about Novalis? He says:

What people describe on earth, what poets say, a Sophocles, a Shakespeare, what these Desdemona, Ophelia, what Hamlet and so on experience, it all happens between people. But if a spirit from a different plane were to descend to earth, could this spirit of a different plane find something on earth that also interests him, the spirit who is not of the earth?

And the man now finds that what the German poet Novalis expressed could also interest a spirit who descends from another plane as a genius. He finds that Novalis touched on secrets of the human soul, which the soul must often keep silent about, because it can only find the right words in the solemn moments of life to express these secrets, these supersensible secrets of life. So says the man. And we want to write these words very deeply into our souls, for they are beautiful, these words that he says in reference to his experience of Novalis. He says:

On these heights alone are memories that the soul can form, and images that resemble it and are as compelling as itself. There, humanity ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the spiritual realm to the earth.

- and of those lights, says the man, Novalis has lit many. And he continues –

but in their works, the aforementioned people

- including Novalis -

left the little village of passions and said things that are also of value to those who are not of the earthly community.

Thus one speaks of one of the most German of Germans, Novalis. A man speaks thus, and we could assume that this man, who obviously loves the spiritual, would instruct all those who now speak of the German “barbarians” with the words: For these words, which I have now read, are also from the man of whom I will read something else:

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak, childlike voice amidst the useless cries that surround it.

Yes, it can be said that in the midst of the useless shouting that is now speaking of Germany's “barbarism,” such words as those of the man can hardly be heard. But who said all this? Maurice Maeterlinck. Well, you know how Maeterlinck himself has gone among the useless shouters in recent months. We don't need to add anything to that either.

But then, when we hear such voices, we say to ourselves: They are proof that what wells up from the German national soul into the individual German souls is already penetrating across the borders, but it cannot come into effect. And it cannot come into effect properly even where it seems ghostly. I have shown that it has a ghostly effect in the East. Yes, if one asks: What is it that people feel from this participation of the German national soul in German culture, even those who speak of Western European culture in the East? One can often hear something like the words I would like to read to you now. When Herman Grimm speaks of the alleged Goethe of Mr. Lewes in the way I have mentioned, we notice a coarsening in this Mr. Lewes; but how what one wants to absorb but cannot absorb becomes ghostly towards the East is shown to us by words that Mereschkowski spoke about Goethe. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed and shriveled into a dwarf by an evil spell; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German burgher and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.

Thus Mereschkowski speaks of the poet of Faust. Nor should one be deceived by the words which Mereschkowski says about Goethe in the final sentence of his essay. If one reads the foregoing, which is inspired throughout by the same spirit, one sees that Mereschkowski cannot rise up to Goethe, that he sees him only as a ghost. And much of this kind could be cited. But of course, when one of the leading spirits of the East, about Chekhov, Mereschkowski himself has to say:

No era, no people, as if in the midst of eternity there were only the end of the nineteenth century and in the world only Russia. Infinitely sharp-eyed and bright-eared [for] everything Russian and contemporary, he is almost blind and deaf to the foreign and the past. He saw Russia more clearly than anyone else, but overlooked Europe, overlooked the world.

One can find it understandable, must find it understandable, that Central Europe is currently only a specter for the East, which is transferred up into the national soul hovering over the individual. There is not enough time to prove this in detail, but it could be proven. On the other hand, it can truly be said that what can be called “the rejuvenating power of the German national soul” not only gives us insight into the nature of the German national soul in the past, but also gives us strength, faith and hope for the German national soul in the future.

Indeed, the German knows how to take Goethe somewhat differently than the others. And for this I may cite a saying that Herman Grimm in turn has done about Goethe. This saying has been done in lectures on Goethe, in lectures that speak differently than the one whom Herman Grimm himself has dismissed in the manner indicated, Lewes. Herman Grimm perceives Goethe as a confidant of the German people themselves; but also as an impulse, as a force that works and will continue to work within German culture, just as cosmic changes in the earth must work in relation to physical conditions. Herman Grimm says of Goethe:

Goethe has worked in the spiritual life of Germany as a powerful natural phenomenon would have worked in the physical. Our coal deposits tell of times of tropical warmth when palm trees grew in our country. Our opening caves tell of ice ages when reindeer were native to our country. Over vast periods of time, dramatic upheavals took place on German soil, which in its present state gives such an appearance of eternal immutability. The comparison can be drawn that Goethe's influence on the intellectual atmosphere of Germany was roughly equivalent to a telluric event, which increased our climatic warmth by so many degrees on average. If something like that happened, a different vegetation, a different operation of agriculture and with it a new basis for our entire existence would occur.

This is how Herman Grimm feels Goethe within German intellectual life. Gradually, a different intellectual vegetation, a different intellectual climate, will occur through Goethe, says Herman Grimm.

This same Herman Grimm, in a manner that brought out the whole character of the German spirit, spoke of how the German folk soul has worked in German culture to arrive at views that seek the universal in the particular national spirit. Thus Herman Grimm demonstrated the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul by showing how he himself was attuned to the course of the world spirit at the end of the nineteenth century. For in 1895 the beautiful words were spoken that express the mood of a German who knew himself to be one with the living and breathing German national soul. Herman Grimm said:

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people today is the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious endeavors of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national difference can be maintained in the face of the ethical worldview.

Herman Grimm continues:

We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland,

he says, and then the significant words follow:

But to long for or to hasten the moment when this could happen through war, we are far removed. The assurance that peace is our most sacred desire is not a lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill to men” permeates us.

But the fact that Herman Grimm saw through his time, that he was not a dreamer, that he was able to grasp reality under the guidance of the German soul, is attested by what he now says:

As a totality, men acknowledge themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned as it were in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and to whose judicial procedure they seek to adapt their internal dissensions. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French of today are at pains to present the war against Germany that they are planning as a moral imperative, demanding that other nations, and even the Germans themselves, recognize it.

You see, in 1895 Herman Grimm had a clear view of how things stand. Those who are accustomed to seeing things this way do not let themselves be called out: Who wanted the war!

Among the hundreds and hundreds of testimonies I could present, here is one more. A person who is not particularly fond of Germanic nature writes the following words:

As far as I am concerned, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. Since the Crimean War, a long time has passed and, it seems, it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again.

Yes, my dear attendees, these words were not spoken just a few months before the war. They were written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Even those who saw things clearly never realized that the nations pushed into the middle of Europe would be locked up like in a fortress by those who misunderstood and do not understand them on all sides.

It is curious when, in the face of such words, one tries to express the opinion that the Germans wanted this war. I would like to use the few moments remaining to me for this lecture to present something about this “the Germans wanted this war” that may speak volumes to anyone who wants to see clearly.

Let us assume that someone had observed what was going on in the weeks before the outbreak of war - in the spring of 1914, when the press was perhorresziert the political horizon - and he wanted to express that; what would he have had to say in 1914, after the events that took place? He would have had to say something like the following:

[One could see how a press campaign was gradually beginning in St. Petersburg, how strong pressure was being exerted on Austria that, if accepted, would have resulted in Austria and Germany becoming dependent on Russia. And yet one could not have contradicted the Russian friends when they said that there was no reason for a war between Russia and Germany.

Not true, in 1914, in July, it could have been expressed quite well, and it could have been applied to the immediate events of the present. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have not read you anything that was said in July 1914, but, with some modification, the words that [Bismarck spoke on February 6, 1888 in the Reichstag] to justify the military bill. And now I read his own words, so you can see that I have not only the words, but only the time somewhat rectihziert:

[...] how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [through which German politics was attacked], I personally was suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year until 1879 to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this, because if we estranged ourselves from Austria, then we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such a dependency have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: We have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our politics (for a certain time) to the Russian politics would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

However, if things are as they have been presented, if the national soul in the West and in the East must behave in relation to what the strength of the German national soul is, then it will be a mistake to believe that this war was wanted by Central Europe in 1914. For it has been clear for decades how everything has been done to bring about the current events.

Not only the subtle Herman Grimm spoke of the will for peace in Central Europe. It may also be recalled that not only where, like Herman Grimm, as a man ethically on the heights of his time, was in touch with the German national soul, but also where one was politically inspired by the German national soul, one spoke in a similar way.

In 1888, in Berlin, again Bismarck spoke in such a way that no desire for war was expressed. Bismarck said:

With the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be, one does not attack. If I were to stand before you today and tell you - if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are: We are seriously threatened by France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe it as a diplomat after military intelligence about this, it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today. Yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would have the confidence in me to grant it. I hope not!

One day, my dear audience, we will come to feel, not only from reason but also from our instincts, something of the real causes of this war and the driving forces that led to it. One will sense something of the will that concentrated against Central Europe in order to stop the eternally rejuvenating German national soul in its element.

The images that can be gained by surveying the workings and weavings of European national souls in recent decades show how the storm is looming. Can we not say the following: If one wanted to delve into the goings-on and workings of the German national soul as they were in the times before this war broke out, could one not come to the following thoughts? Allow me to read this to you as well. You will see in a moment that I also have a certain idea:

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it. [...]

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

Across every border and across the water sit the adversaries, commercial and political, waiting anxiously for the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce and overwhelm, and Germany knows it.

[This is how Mrs. Wylie wrote in her book “Eight Years in Germany,” which was published about two years before the war. It is quite good when such people try to delve into the German national soul.

So, these are the things that are awakened as an echo when one tries to understand what the German seeks in intimate dialogue with his national soul. And what was it that the German always tried to find in his dialogue with his national soul? It was always that which should enable the individual human being, the individual human soul, the individual human spirit to find its way to the spiritual heights of the world, where all things have their source and origin, where the eternal part of the human soul itself also has its source and origin.

Spiritual science, precisely because of its sources, must believe in the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; believe because it is aware that in the course of world history this German national soul has always ascended to spiritual heights , descended to the human selves in order to convey to them the truth of their eternity. Spiritual science has its roots and its source in German idealism, and we can prove that spiritual science is closely related to this German idealism.

What does spiritual science say, not in the abstract but in concrete terms, about the future of the human soul? That in this body lives an immortal self that goes through births and deaths again and again; that when spiritual initiation is attained, when spiritual knowledge and spiritual reality are attained through research, the soul is grasped outside of the body; that it looks back at this body as if at an external object, so pre-sensing that which the human soul experiences when it has passed through the gate of death. Spiritual science does not speak in general terms that the human soul is eternal, but in such a way that it clearly points to what, after death, looks back on what lived in the body. Spiritual science describes this very specifically. And only today can it do so.

And true spiritual science, as we in Central Europe consider it to be, is aware that it owes the powers of research only to the connection of the German national soul with the German philosophers. If someone who professes spiritual science today wants to use a comparison in the truest sense of the word for something that has passed and must find its future, if someone who is a true believer in spiritual science wanted to say: I think something completely new must be introduced into humanity, something that is still met with many prejudices today; but to me, these prejudices seem like what the soul of the corpse feels when it looks back at the corpse after death.

One might think that only a spiritual researcher could make such a comparison, because only recently has spiritual research been able to confirm that the soul really does this after going through death. I will present such a comparison to you:

Time appears to me like a shadow that stands over its dead, from which an army of diseases has just driven it out, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed spirit has entered, have already taken her up and surround her with a warm breath of love; the secret voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within herself in all directions, to develop the more glorious form into which it is to grow; but it has as yet no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or, if it had, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with which it believes itself to have been lost at the same time.

Today, one really believes that only a spiritual researcher could speak in this way. It is Fichte who spoke in this way in his “Speeches to the German Nation”; addressing the corpse as he would a corpse in what he wants to replace the old German education with a new education.

Thus, whatever can be desired today is rooted in the germs that German idealism sought from the union with the German national soul, from these rejuvenating powers of the German national soul.

And if we want to have confidence that spiritual science can really unfold as a new fruit on the tree of German development, we need only look at what can be seen as the true essence of the German national soul, as the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. The true essence of the German national soul is precisely this ever-rejuvenating power.

And when we look at the fateful events of today, we feel them like a twilight. But we look into the future and want to understand that a horizon warmed and illuminated by the sun must arise from this twilight; that the German national soul will have the strength to rejuvenate German character and German striving. And whatever is undertaken against this German essence, against this German striving, will not be able to rob it of its breath of life, because that which is present as the highest life in the German essence is the ever-rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. If it has produced so many rungs in German culture, it must also produce new fruits. That is our hope, and that is not something vague, that is something well-founded! We look hopefully towards the horizon, which will show us precisely one of the fruits of German development: a spiritual-scientific worldview that will flow through all hearts and souls and will connect spirit and body. When people see the spiritual as a reality, when they know how the spiritual passes through the gate of death, when they look at the spiritual as science today looks at the external physical forces, when they know that nothing is lost, then they will know that the countless spiritual parts that now pass through the gate of death from young bodies cannot be lost. They, these soul-like human faculties, which could have continued to serve the body for decades to come, will not only be felt in the abstract sense as something eternal in the future, as was possible according to ancient knowledge, but they will be felt as something that lives on, that those who have followed the duties of the time through the gate of death or suffering have incorporated into the spiritual stream of existence.

And they will feel a concrete connection when times of peace come again out of this twilight of war. Those who have borne the best fruits of the German character will feel a special connection with all those who have gone through the gates of death.

So it can be said, summarizing what I have tried to express before you today: Yes, this German spirit has not yet fully accomplished what its mission in the world was. It is connected with the rejuvenating power of the German national soul. And if you look at the true nature of the German national soul, then you know: the driving forces are there, the invisible forces of German life are unchanged among us. And to all those who today speak of Germany's weakness or of a weakening or destruction of the German character, to them the one who objectively recognizes what the rejuvenating power of the German national soul whispers to individual Germans, to them he calls out into the world the meaning that he perceives from the work of the German national soul:

The German spirit has not completed

what it is to accomplish in the course of the world.

It lives in the future, hopeful,

It hopes for future deeds full of life;

In the depths of his being, he feels a mighty

secret that is still to take effect as it matures.

How can a mind, uncomprehending,

Wish for its end to come:

As long as life reveals itself to him,

Which holds him in the roots of creation?

Dear attendees! In the past, almost every year I have been able to give a lecture in this city in the field that I have recently taken to calling spiritual science. Since our friends have also requested such a reflection in these fateful times, it shall be given this evening. But you will understand that in our present time, when all our feelings, our emotions and our thoughts are focused on the great events, on those events that claim so many hopes, so much confidence, on the events that undoubtedly most significant events are now unfolding, events that are also causing so much pain and suffering. You will understand that at this time, such a reflection, especially if it is to be based on the spiritual scientific worldview, must also be made in view of the fateful events of our time. But it cannot be my task to add yet another of the numerous reflections that are being set forth today in lectures on the things that are so powerfully moving our time. Rather, it must be my task to say, from the point of view of spiritual science, from which I have always spoken here, what can be said in brief about our time from precisely this point of view.

It has been emphasized many times that the present struggle, the present mighty struggle, in which, in fact, apart from smaller tribal and linguistic differences, 35 different peoples of the earth are at war with each other; it has been said often that this mighty struggle is caused above all by the present-day commercial, economic, social and political antagonisms, and that it is of primary importance to look clearly and energetically at reality and the values in question and not to obscure these considerations with metaphysical speculations. From the standpoint of spiritual science, one can only agree with such a view and never oppose it.

But spiritual science also wants to stand on the standpoint of reality. This is one way in which this evening's meditation will differ from those that are so often practiced, in that it takes into account the realistic admonition of our contemporaries, while also considering that this mighty struggle is, after all, part of the whole course of human development, in which, above all, great impulses are at work that can only be achieved through spiritual contemplation. One could also say: At that time, when the Germanic tribes of Central Europe threatened the southern empires, the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Middle Ages, only the Roman spheres of interest with their social and political intentions were confronted with what was to come from Central Europe. Of course, at the time, one could justifiably speak in this way. But if we look at things today, and judge from a higher point of view, as we must today, because the world has advanced, we would see that if these struggles had not taken place back then, the reorganization of Europe through these struggles, which were initially caused by the Roman spheres of interest, of course, took place in a certain way —, then the whole Western development up to our time would have taken on a different face. That is one thing.

The other thing, however, is that anyone who follows the intellectual development of nations, the intellectual development in history, must really come to the conclusion, without indulging in any fantasies, without speculating, that what is now being fought out between thirty-five nations of the earth is, in fact, certainly the most significant thing imaginable for the present. It is not words that will fight it out, nor thoughts and human philosophies, but the bravery of the armies. But behind all this, one can see another struggle, a struggle of spiritual forces, a struggle of world views. And without going into what has often been said, I should perhaps emphasize that history will one day regard it as the most absurd of claims that Central Europe somehow provided the immediate cause of this world war. It will be seen more and more clearly, especially when viewed from a higher perspective, that Central Europe and particularly the German people are involved in a purely defensive struggle. But if we look at this defensive struggle, then from a certain point of view we can see how this struggle is one part of a great, mighty defensive struggle that German intellectual life, intellectual impulses, have already had to fight out in part, and in part have to fight out with ever-increasing strength, against that which is also a kind of intellectual encirclement of Central European intellectual life. What I mean by this, I would like to characterize it with a symptom that may not seem very meaningful to you. But one could cite many things and one would always find the same thing.

What we in many respects count among the greatest and most significant things that the spiritual life of modern times has taken up, is called the “idea of development,” the “worldview of development.” And no one tires of emphasizing how significant it was for the whole development of the spiritual life of humanity that people learned to see how not the individual entities of the world around us stand side by side, but that they have developed apart; how one can trace a developmental series from the lowest creatures up to humans.

The one who, out of the deepest impulses of the supporting forces of the German spirit, spoke of such a development in a deeply inward sense is none other than Goethe. And it may be said that, since Goethe, German culture has had a wonderful, to use a Goethean expression: a spiritual doctrine of development. This spiritual doctrine of development has not been taken up into the general world view, nor into the European world view. In contrast, it takes five to six decades for the general consciousness of modern cultural humanity to accept the doctrine of development - but in what form - in the form of Darwinism.

When something like this is said, it still seems to have a chauvinistic coloring for many today. But future times will see it in all the power that is inherent in it. Darwinism has given the idea of development a materialistic [utilitarian] slant; and in this slant, which has been forced upon it, the idea of development has been incorporated into modern cultural ideas by an entirely English thinker. And the deeper German developmental idea is definitely faced with the necessity of defending itself. In the future, the world will realize that it is not necessary to say that Darwinism is something wrong, something incorrect, but that it will be necessary to take the deeper foundations, the more vigorous knowledge from the sources of German intellectual life for the developmental idea as well. In other words, it will be necessary to forge weapons that can defend the spiritual goods of Central Europe against the attacks that are being waged in countless fields, as in the field just mentioned, against this Central European intellectual life. And just as it is not important, when one is in the midst of a struggle between nations such as that which exists today, to wage war with these or those words, so to speak, between individual nations, whether words of hatred or sympathy, but rather, as is much more natural, to take the position that one has to defend what one recognizes as one's fatherland, as one defend one's family without disparaging anything else, so in the field of spiritual struggles, which, as everything shows, we will face in the near future in a tremendous way, it is important to be fully imbued with what the forces of this Central European, especially German, intellectual life are. In these forces there will be weapons that will be needed in the future. I cannot go into more detail, but I would like to suggest that the current struggle of external weapons will only be the beginning of what is to come in terms of spiritual struggles, and that the ill-intentioned, malicious, defamatory views that are hurled at German culture from all sides already show us the beginning.

If we now want to talk about these things from the point of view of spiritual science, it is of course incumbent upon us to at least characterize this point of view of spiritual science with a few words. Even though today, as in other lectures that I have also given in this city, I cannot go into the details of this spiritual science, which is to enter the development of time and the world as something new, and even though I will not be able to say anything conclusive in favor of spiritual science, I would still like to indicate with a few words, with a few points of view, what spiritual science wants.

Spiritual science wants to be a real science of the spirit. Above all, it wants to show how the human soul life, that which we call our innermost human nature, is connected with the real and true spirit that flows and weaves through nature and humanity. And just as natural science renewed the world view of humanity a few centuries ago, so spiritual science today wants to enter into the spiritual development of humanity in a very similar way, albeit from a different point of view.

I would like to draw attention to the following: if you were to say to someone who knows nothing about chemistry, who has never heard of chemistry and only knows water – of course, we can only imagine such a person hypothetically – that in this water, which is liquid and extinguishes fire, extinguishes fire, there is a gas in it that can be separated out, that is hydrogen; this hydrogen burns, it is not liquid but gaseous, so the person who has never heard of chemistry may consider this to be a highly fantastic idea. Natural science has made this into a very ordinary, even trivial, idea today. There was certainly a time when those who claimed such things were thought of as fantasists.

Today, on the other hand, anyone who knows nothing of spiritual science is considered a fantasist who says: When we have the human body with its soul before us, it presents itself in such a way that we cannot recognize the essence of what is directly connected to it while this essence is inside the body itself. One must separate it by the spiritual-scientific method, the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, as one separates hydrogen from water by chemical methods, if one wants to recognize it. This spiritual-scientific method does not take place in an external laboratory, but in the intimate processes of the human soul itself.

But there are spiritual scientific methods by which man can truly become a spiritual scientist, by which he can come to separate his spiritual soul from the physical body so that it is outside, as hydrogen is outside of water. But then the spiritual researcher lives in this spiritual-soul realm. He learns to recognize the characteristics and nature of this spiritual-soul realm, that which goes through birth and death in man, that which passes through the gate of death into a spiritual world and then, after death, world with a higher consciousness, with a consciousness that the spiritual researcher learns to recognize when he applies the spiritual scientific method to his soul, just as the chemist learns the properties of water when he applies the chemical methods. A time will come when people will speak of these things as they speak today of the Copernican world view, which was also once regarded as fantasy, or of similar things.

Just as today the spiritual researcher has to present to humanity the truth that there is a spiritual core in us that passes through the gate of death to return to repeated lives on earth, to repeated and repeated lives on earth, so one day this will be a truth, as the idea of development in external natural science is considered true today. If today what the spiritual researcher has to say is quite naturally regarded as a dream, as a fantasy, from many sides, then those who have immersed themselves in these things may point out how, at a certain time, Copernicanism, which is generally recognized today, was regarded as contradicting the five senses. And so it is today. What spiritual science has to say about repeated lives on earth, about the independence of the soul, and so on, is said to contradict the five senses. And if you take a materialistic point of view, you say: the life of the soul is enclosed between birth and death.

One must compare such a view with another view that still existed in the Middle Ages: that the blue firmament arches over us, which is a conclusion, a boundary, a spatial boundary. Modern science shows us that this boundary is only formed by our ability to see, that space extends into an infinite world, that we are embedded in infinite space on the earth. When modern science dawned, the blue firmament was broken through and recognized as something that is evoked by human vision. Through spiritual science it will be recognized that the boundaries that seek to enclose life between birth and death are like the blue firmament in relation to space. Through spiritual science, people will learn to look beyond this temporal firmament, which is set by birth and death, and they will find human life embedded in a line of development from which it emerges again and again.

Between earthly lives lie realms of development of a purely spiritual nature. And so, by learning to experience himself in this way, the spiritual researcher has something to proclaim in spiritual science: in the spiritual and soul realm, the human being feels, not through philosophical speculation but through experience, a connection with the real spiritual world, which surrounds the physical, from which the spiritual-soul is released - spiritual science speaks of an experience of the spiritual world, a spiritual world in which spiritual beings are, as physical beings are around us here.

It is perhaps still somewhat unpopular today if one is obliged to present these basic concepts of spiritual science in this way. But we live in a time in which humanity is living in a time of transformation of all thinking. Just as a Copernicus or a Galilei had to be anticipated in the dawn of modern natural science, so one can see something in spiritual science that lies, as it were, in the bosom of our time.

If we now follow German spiritual life and really immerse ourselves in it, then from the point of view of spiritual science we will have to gain a very definite view of German spiritual life, of that which has constantly revealed itself in it. I cannot go into details now, only with regard to the last times of German spiritual life. Thus, I said, the peculiarity of spiritual science is that the spiritual researcher, through his special spiritual-scientific method, learns to experience himself in the spiritual-soul that has been freed from the physical body and now knows itself, not in time but in eternity.

Let us see, by visualizing this spiritual view, how the most German of philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I would say, lived out his belief in immortality and his belief in the soul. Fichte, like his contemporaries, was not yet able to have a real spiritual science. But how he drew from the spiritual life and knew this life in connection with the life of his national spirit is shown in the speeches he addressed to his people in one of Germany's most difficult times. But I don't want to talk about that today, but rather about how Fichte expressed himself, for example, where he wanted to give a “directions for a blessed life” philosophically, about his doctrine of immortality and soul. There he says:

I cannot admit that one seeks the main thing in the immortal human life only after death. That which is most important to me is that we become aware in this life of the body within us of that which passes through the gate of death and then goes into a spiritual world and lives on in it. For this invisible element living in us, I want to live through this earthly life.

This is not yet spiritual science, but it is the germ of spiritual science. And this germ of spiritual science can be found wherever we look at the fruits of German intellectual life. Everywhere we find the urge, the longing, not to satisfy ourselves with the abstractions of thought, with the external spirit of science, from which the science of the senses or the combination of the sensual is born. The German does not seek only for concepts and ideas, but also for their connection with the living spirit. The German feels moved when he can realize that science is not an external absorption of knowledge, but that it is the true life of knowledge, which he strives for so that the soul communes with the spirit that pervades and permeates the world. In the real connection with what spiritually permeates and permeates the world, the German wants to see the ideal of his knowledge, that he does not just want to absorb ideas, not just concepts, a science that is like an image of something external. He wants to have something in his soul that flows like a spiritual lifeblood in him, like the God himself who lives in him. And this is expressed more intensely and powerfully in a creation that no nation in the world has; which may not stand at the pinnacle of world creation in an artistic sense, but in the way it expresses itself, in that the German does not strive for a merely external visual connection with the spirit, but for a confrontation, spiritual eye in spiritual eye, with the spirit. You know that by this creation I mean the Goethean “Faust” poetry.

Do we not see in Faust how his consciousness turns away from all that is mere external knowledge, what is mere derivation from something external? Do we not see how he strives for the source of life, the manifestation of the spirit; how he strives to confront this spirit eye to eye? How he turns away from the external and strives to experience supersensible worlds? The German can never be satisfied with something he has achieved as knowledge. This is best seen by looking at the following: the beginning of Goethe's “Faust” has become almost trivial. It reflects the mood of Goethe in the 1770s. We see how Faust wants to get out of a knowledge that is not connected to the living spiritual world. When we grasp its full depth, we are shaken when Faust speaks the words:

Alas, I have now studied philosophy,
jurisprudence and medicine,
and unfortunately also theology
thoroughly, with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool,
and am as wise as before!

Now let us see how this German intellectual life unfolds. Let us see how Goethe, in the 1770s, longs for the appearance of the earth spirit, for the sources of intellectual life, for higher self-knowledge, which is achieved by the soul immersing itself in the living spiritual of the transcendental world.

Then we see how greatly the German philosophers strove in this respect after Goethe's time. We see that, after Goethe wrote his “Faust”, German thought, German poetry and German music all seek to look at things from the deepest sources. We see the emergence of thinkers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel; we see them connecting with Goethe; we see how they create something from a knowledge that is supposed to be more original than all that has gone before, that is also supposed to come from the very depths of the human soul; we see that they are creating a philosophy; and when we consider that Hegel created a “natural right” and that Schelling published a medical journal, that all these minds were searching for a renewal of science, despairing at Faust! They also sought to renew theology, for they all wanted to be theologians. We see how all this greatness, which has not yet been properly appreciated, springs from the fundamental forces of the German spirit, and we can perhaps say: Goethe could have stood there, after he had seen all this pass him by, and could have said: What I felt in despair back then in the 1770s has been brilliantly brought forth by the German spirit from the sources of life! And let us assume that Goethe had grown even older than he did; let us assume – and I believe that no one would dispute this hypothesis – that Goethe had begun in 1840 [or let us assume that he had been even younger ], to write “Faust” again after all that had happened in the meantime in German intellectual life, can we believe that the beginning of “Faust” around 1840 would have sounded like this:

Now, thank God, I have studied philosophy,
law and medicine, with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel
and, thank God, theology as well
with great zeal and assiduity,
and here I am, a wise man,
as wise as one can be.

Do you think the beginning of “Faust” would have sounded like that? Certainly not. It would have sounded exactly the same as in 1772. Exactly the same!

But what does that tell us? It testifies that it is in the essence of this quintessentially German, Goethean idea of Faust to regard everything that has already been achieved not as something that can satisfy the individual, but that a striving is rooted in this German spiritual life, where it is manifested precisely in its representatives, that every individual, in turn, has to go through, in every age, an eternal becoming, never being complete. This is the case because German intellectual life can only describe the grasping of the spiritual as a true one if the spirit is experienced. But it can never be experienced if one wants to grasp it in an established way. To experience the spirit, one must always approach the spirit in a renewed way. But this is a typically German trait, and at the same time it is what can be called the “supporting force of the German spirit”.

Not concepts, not ideas, not something acquired in reason is what the German strives for, but what is to be striven for is that which can be grasped again at any time in original power. Not the spirit in a coffin, but the ever-living spirit is striven for. So that we may say: Admittedly, we do not see an archetypally German striving in the older times in the same way that we see spiritual science today. But we see the seeds; in what lives in the best, we see the same striving for direct experience of the connection with the spirit. This is always being witnessed anew. That means: a real life of the spirit is presupposed, in which the individual stands. That means: the supporting power of the spirit lives in him in such a way that they hold secret dialogue, that he is touched by what the German spirit wants from him. And this we see continuing to have an effect even where German intellectual life has been pushed back on itself by attacks from left and right, from above and below; we see the original German being carried by the real spirit continuing to have an effect. I would like to mention just one of the many phenomena that could be cited from the second half of the nineteenth century.

One of the most important representatives of the German spirit in the second half of the nineteenth century, who has not yet been fully recognized today, is Herman Grimm, the son of one, the nephew of the other of the Brothers Grimm, the great researchers of myths and legends, the researcher of the German language. Herman Grimm is first known as a German cultural historian, as an art historian. If you now delve into Herman Grimm's art history, you come across something peculiar. There is nothing in Herman Grimm's writings of what could be called pedantic erudition, of external systematics, but there is something that originally springs from the spiritual. The most important thing that one can gain from the works of Herman Grimm must be read between the lines, it must be sensed from what is said. Why? Because in Herman Grimm lives the sustaining power of the German spirit, which is brought to life by him, and through which he lets himself be whispered in each individual case through an inspiration as to what he has to say about an artistic phenomenon. So that one cannot but feel the affinity between the one who writes and the one who inspires him, one feels like a living conversation of the German national spirit with the one who speaks to us through his books in terms of art history. This Herman Grimm, he prepared himself in a peculiar way for his art historical profession. In his youth, he wrote novellas and also a significant novel. The recognition of these things also belongs to the living German intellectual heritage. For it is not because of their German nature that they have been forgotten, but because attacks have been made on German intellectual property from outside.

I will briefly outline one of Herman Grimm's novellas. We will see shortly what the purpose of this is. The novella is called “The Songstress”. We are presented with a very beautiful characterization of a woman. We see a man in the woman's surroundings. The man is deeply in love with the woman; the woman cloaks herself more in a nobly flirtatious being. He suffers terribly. Herman Grimm wrote a so-called first-person novella with this novella. What he writes is as if the story were being told by a person who lives next door to the couple and experiences everything that happens. And so, in the novella, the author – but in reality, of course, his friend – describes the events that transpire. The singer's coquettish behavior finally drives the lover completely mad. He distances himself from her. He cannot bear the situation. Later, his friend meets him again and sees that he has completely fallen apart. He takes him into his house and sees that this person has come to the edge of the grave because of his love. He sees that he is on the verge of suicide at any moment. So he takes him into his house. But he sees that it is necessary to get the singer over there. He fetches her. And lo and behold, as he approaches the house with the singer, who is to come as the unfortunate man's last hope, so to speak, they hear a shot. The unhappy lover has shot himself, he is dead. The content of the novella is wonderfully beautiful in its characteristics; but that is not what matters to me now. What matters to me is what happens to the singer now that she has found only the dead, suicidal lover. The singer stays in the friend's house for some time. She explains to her friend that she cannot remain in this house, that she is experiencing terrible things in this house. The friend to whom she relates her experiences does not believe this, of course; he is a rationalist. He thinks as rationalists of the present day think. So she asks him to watch with her for one night. And there he is convinced of what is happening to this woman as a result of the death of her lover. He sees for himself how the woman straightens up. He sees a figure enter through the door; that is, he only recognizes it from the words, he does not see the figure, but through what the woman sees, he is convinced that this is indeed a subjective but true experience, that the woman is really in contact with the dead, that this is a matter of the working out of destiny, which throws its rays over death.

Not because I want to use a work of fiction to prove spiritual science, but because the spiritual scientist has to say: Herman Grimm describes like a spiritual science expert, Herman Grimm wants to describe that a person's destiny is not only understood between birth and death. This novella is wonderfully moving, deeply moving, because it describes a person's life beyond death.

Now this is not a temporary phenomenon in writing. In his great cultural-historical novel, Herman Grimm again describes a female character who also has to experience the death of her lover. He describes how real the death is, how the death of the hero occurs, how the spiritual figure rises out of the physical figure. Now Herman Grimm describes how - appropriately - this figure enters into the spiritual world and how a connection remains between the dead and what rises out of the physical body of the heroine. I describe these things because they show how, in German literature, where one is confronted with representatives of the Germanic spirit, the supporting power of the German spirit works in such a way that the novellist, the novelist, too, can do so if he wants to rise into the world of real, supersensible reality. We are shown how the best minds do not stop at outward, visible reality, but how they follow the human soul into the spiritual world. These representatives of the German character did not yet have spiritual science, but their souls were so directed that they sensed the supporting power of the German spirit, which wants to lead the German character to the experience of the spiritual. Therefore, one can have the strongest confidence in the development of spiritual science when one looks at what is there as a germ for this spiritual science in German idealism, in the German longing, not for the abstract but to the living spirit that lives in the supersensible world, just as the mineral world, the plant world, and the animal world live in the sensory world around us. This testifies to the fact that to be German means to be connected in a very specific way as an individual human being with a totality of spiritual life. And in this respect, German experience is not only easily misunderstood, but is attacked and will be attacked again and again. It is not easy for German experience, which is more profound than anything that has developed around it, to take up the weapons with which German intellectual life, which has been pushed into a corner, will have to defend itself over the course of millennia against the hostile forces that come from all sides through the conditions of life.

What then springs from these original German spiritual impulses? They can perhaps be best characterized by pointing to an older time. This German spiritual life did not first appear with this character in modern times, but already in the Middle Ages. If we go back to the mystic Angelus Silesius, he has left many sayings. One particularly meaningful saying is where he says: “Not I as a human soul experience death, in the depths of my human soul dwells God, and God experiences death in me.” The depth of such a saying is not immediately apparent. It proves the primal German thinking and feeling and sensing, which experiences in itself a being with the world spirit that permeates and interweaves everything. Let us only think of the words of Faust:

[Ehrlicher Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,
Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst
Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.
Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Königreich,
Kraft, sie zu fühlen, zu genießen. Nicht
You only allow cold, astonished visitors,
Allow me to look into their deep chests,
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
Before me, and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm in the forest roars and creaks, The giant spruce topples, crushing neighboring branches, And neighboring trunks, sweeping down, And the hill thunders hollowly with its fall;Then you lead me to the safe cave, show Then myself, and my own chest secret, deep wonders open up.)

That is what the German has always sought in his best representatives. That is what he has sought: to truly find in his soul, to find in his deepest inner being the living spirit, to live together with this living spirit. So that Angelus Silesius, in all his peculiarity, already expounds great ideas of immortality when he speaks of the experience of death. For God can only be felt as alive. But he who experiences God in this way within himself knows that he is immortal. For God must be immortal, therefore death can only be an appearance. From this feeling of the German soul, even the grasp of the immortal life for this German soul emerges. But that is what has given this German soul this certainty, this firm footing in its development. That is what has always brought this German soul, of all national souls, closest to what we today call spiritual science. I would like to bring this home to your souls from a certain point of view.

Let us compare this German spiritual life with Eastern spiritual life, not in its lower regions, but let us go up to the highest regions of Russian spiritual life. Let us try to visualize one of Russia's most outstanding minds, Soloviev. Soloviev, who really took everything that was in Russian intellectual life into his soul and gave it back as a world view – not just as what is called a “philosophical world view”, but in such a way that one feels the Russian life vibrating – gave something that lived in this deep soul. I can only refer here to his works, only a small part of which have been translated, I cannot go into all of them. But I would like to point out that this philosopher, who retained his faith throughout his life – the faith that lives in many Russians, that Western European life, and Central European life as well, is a dying life, the renewal of which can only come from Russia. He lives according to this error. But this error gives his philosophy its special character. And again and again, in rousing speeches, Solowjow assures his people of the creative and sustaining forces within them. Then came the end of his life. Solowjow ended his life by increasingly arriving at a meager worldview, which I will characterize by comparing it to what lives in a similar field in the German worldview.

Let us see what lives in the German world view: it is the certainty that the human soul can live together with the spirit of the world, that it can hold its dialogue with the spirit of the world. We have seen this in the representative figure of Faust. Solowjow does not speak of the certainty of spiritual experience in the way that a human soul speaks out of the Germanic nature. Rather, he speaks thus: Yes, the Russian people have a great mission, but it is fulfilled by a divine being from the other world, who, through grace, takes hold of the Russian people and gives them their mission. God must work in the Russian people. And the Russians are waiting for the miracle, for a god, a kind of manifestation of the light of Christ, to appear and call the Russian people to their task.

In Central European spiritual culture, people know that they can experience their soul, they can experience God in their soul. Soloviev is waiting for that which pushes and drives and urges him from outside; he is waiting for the miracle. But now, in the year of Solowjow's death, the remarkable thing is that Solowjow appeared before the Petersburg public with a speech that must have been wonderfully moving, because something deeply emotional spoke from his words, which so convinced the audience that this power of persuasion passed over to people like a magic breath. He said: “Everything that has ever been believed about humanity being able to find something within itself that would redeem it, that would lead it to a divine state, is a vain deception and illusion. All that is deception, what believes that humanity will ever find the strength within itself to experience the divine through what it is now. No, Solowjow emphasizes, everything that humanity has of strength now, everything that it has of seemingly highest culture, that must perish. “The whole world lies in ruins” - such are his words - for there is nothing in present-day humanity that could lead this humanity to a spiritual goal. Only when everything has perished will the God who redeems souls step in from outside the dissolved earth, the perished earth. We cannot find anything in our souls that points us to something we could seek ourselves.

And he also describes in detail what he expects. As in a powerful vision, he sees the Asian peoples approaching, he sees them waging war on Europe, he sees how, in the twentieth, twenty-first century, Christianity will have declined to such an extent that only one-tenth of those who are on earth will still be Christians, while the whole world will be flooded with a harsh, materialistic worldview, which is pouring over the world, because “the whole world is in a state of decay.” He who listened to what the greatest philosophical mind of the Russian people spoke out of a deep faith shortly before his death, just weeks before his death, might ask: What could have inspired the one who has passed away to say: My soul, through its own power, has lost all eternity.

Let us instead consider the will and testament of a German. There are still people today who scoff at Lessing's momentous will and testament, 'The Education of the Human Race', in which he describes how development continues through all times, how souls keep coming back. For Lessing was the first to incorporate the doctrine of repeated earthly lives into German spiritual life. People often say: Well, yes, Lessing was a great man, but when he wrote this 'Education of the Human Race', he was already an old man. Well, people always arrange what they want to acknowledge as they want. But Lessing did not weaken, rather he had ascended to a deep sense of this direct communion, this speaking of the human soul with the living spirit, which pours out its sustaining strength over the soul of the individual, so that the individual soul can live with it in the sustaining strength of the German spirit. Lessing said something like the following as the closing words of his will: Is it not clear to my soul, from what it experiences within itself, that it must keep coming back to a new life on earth in order to keep learning new things and developing ever higher? That would take a lot of time, well, isn't eternity mine? - That is what Lessing extracts from the depths of the human soul itself, that is what he lays down in his testament. This is a spiritual culture that comes to different words than the one that says: We will never find the strength from the human soul itself.

From such a juxtaposition of different moods, one will understand that in the East, the Russian spiritual mood is asserting itself, which stands without understanding in relation to what is taking place in Central Europe, and which does not overlook everything that is emerging here as a living spiritual life, but always speaks of the decaying culture of the West. Thus, the so-called intellectuals justify, from a spiritual point of view, what they had always intended to do against the West, including politically. The terrible war in which we are engaged was caused as much by the moods of the East as by external interests. But these moods will not disappear with this war. In order to bring German intellectual life to bear, it will be necessary to forge weapons from the spirit, from which the greatest minds of Central Europe have taken their weapons, for this confrontation with the spirit must always be renewed.

And how, by a completely natural process, the enemies of this German intellectual life must be encircled – we can see this if we take a look at how German intellectual life is understood, the German intellectual life that I was able to sketch out in a charcoal drawing, the subject of much discussion. In defense of and in an effort to understand this German intellectual life, I would like to call to mind a Western spirit that truly belongs to the best [Western spirits] of the nineteenth century, an American who wrote in English, Emerson. He is truly not someone to invoke when one wants to describe the contrast between the West and German intellectual life based on prejudice. Emerson portrays the English people as the first world people; but strangely, he places the Germans higher. Despite Emerson's description of the English as the first world people, he says:

The English do not appreciate the depth of German intellectual life.
The German thinks for Europe.

But now I would like to mention something else that is very characteristic from the point of view on which I have based this reflection today. Emerson wrote two wonderful essays, one about Shakespeare and one about Goethe. Unfortunately, people today only read with half a mind, but it could be interesting if a number of people really did what I am about to suggest. It would be interesting to get involved in the essays that Emerson wrote and that bear the title “Representatives of the Human Race,” reading the two essays, one about “Shakespeare, or the Poet,” the other about “Goethe, or the Writer.” You will not believe that I am so brutal, or, one could also say, so “barbaric”, that I want to denigrate Shakespeare in any way, or that I do not revere him to the highest degree as one of the greatest poets of humanity. That is what he is, for Emerson too. And Emerson states that if you want to characterize the poet, you have to name Shakespeare as the representative poet. By comparison, you have to call Goethe the representative writer. Now, one should not just read what is there, but one should feel from the words what passed through the whole soul of the presenter when he gave the characteristics. Emerson tries to present Shakespeare as the representative of the poet in general, based on the characteristics of the English national soul, and then Goethe as the representative of the writer in general. And Emerson seeks to draw out the traits that one must consider if one wants to truly characterize Shakespeare inwardly. And with Emerson it is the case that when he is confronted with an appearance, he characterizes the one appearance with all the power of the word, as if there were nothing else, he immerses himself in the individual appearance. In Shakespeare, when he discusses Shakespeare, in Goethe, when he discusses Goethe. [It is a special gift.] And what is it that he seeks to express when he contemplates Shakespeare, Shakespeare the poet, [whom he regards as the most exquisite poet and this as the most exquisite of the English, and this as the most exquisite of the peoples]? He feels compelled to say, while characterizing Shakespeare: An original mind is not, as is usually thought, one that creates everything out of itself, but one that works as Shakespeare did, who goes everywhere and takes the intellectual property he can find. And now he shows how the whole of England thought like Shakespeare, how he was only the echo of his people. On the other hand, he tries to show how Shakespeare used French and Italian sources, how he gathered everything together to become Shakespeare, how he became the great man by organizing the great intellectual goods from other worlds and other peoples. That is what Emerson comes to through Shakespeare. And I would like to read you a few characteristic words:

Great men are distinguished more by their comprehensive minds [and] by the height of the vantage point from which they look down than by their originality. If we demand that originality which, like a spider, draws its own web from its own entrails, which itself finds the clay, forms stones from it and erects the house, then great men are by no means original. The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.

Thus Emerson characterizes Shakespeare in such a way as to show: I must show why Shakespeare is so unoriginal. “The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.”

And one saying, to which particularly much value must be attached in Emerson's characteristics of Shakespeare, is the following, which is not said by me, but Emerson speaks thus about Shakespeare:

It has become a kind of practical rule among writers that once someone has shown themselves capable of creating something original, they may then also discreetly steal the works of others.

So Emerson, when characterizing one of the greatest minds of the world order, needs nothing less than to excuse Shakespeare for being original, even by stealing from others and combining what has been stolen. You have to look a little deeper into what the impulses of human development are when you are standing in such a momentous world period as today.

And then we turn the page, especially in the beautiful translation by Herman Grimm, which he made of Emerson's essays on Shakespeare and Goethe. Let us now turn to Goethe. Again, Emerson delves into Goethe, absorbed in the essence of Goethe, as if nothing else existed. And what comes to Emerson's mind now to characterize Goethe as the representative of writing? He comes up with the following words: All of nature, every stone, everything that is and will be strives to be expressed. The whole world strives for expression. And favored human souls, whom other souls cannot emulate, who therefore stand alone, they find the words to express, in wrestling with the world spirit, what is wrestling with the world spirit.

With Shakespeare, Emerson describes how he [makes references everywhere].

With Goethe, he describes how Goethe himself is connected to the world spirit, which works in the individual realms of nature. Compare the one with the other. About Goethe, Emerson says:

In my eyes, the writer stands as a man whose position was foreseen in the construction of the world.

In direct contrast to the beginning of the world, he brings Goethe. Shakespeare he believes he has to excuse. And further he says of Goethe:

The position he took, he owes nothing, but he entered the world from his birth as a free, [supervising] genius.

About Shakespeare, he says:

It is easy to see that all the best that has ever been written and done in the world was not the work of one man, but the product of a vast, collaborative effort in which a thousand like one, all driven by a single impulse, lent a hand.

Shakespeare is explained entirely out of the environment, out of the world that surrounds him. Regarding Goethe, Emerson says:

He is all eye and instinctively turns to where the truth lies. Say something, and he will immediately know whether it is true or false. It is hateful to him to repeat the old wives' tales, even if they have had the good faith of humanity for a thousand years, and to be made a fool of by them. No one else needs to strain their eyes for him to show them whether something is true or a lie.

I believe, my dear audience, that one can feel something deep and meaningful by comparing Emerson's essay on Shakespeare with his essay on Goethe; one will feel everywhere that this American had a certain right to say: “The English [do not appreciate the depth of German intellectual life. The German thinks for Europe.] He tried to fathom it, but in fathoming it, he sensed something of what I wanted to characterize today as the living forces of the German spirit, which penetrate into every single soul; not that power that flows from the commonality of human beings, but from the direct intercourse of the individual soul with the spirit. And one can feel how Emerson is imbued with this sustaining power of the German spirit when, at the end of his meditation on Goethe, he speaks words that must be taken with feeling, not just with the mind. At the end of his meditation on Shakespeare, Emerson says:

It must be admitted that these were only imperfect histories of imperfect men. The world is still waiting for the poet-priest, the reconciler, who, unlike Shakespeare, does not play, who, unlike the body-burial Swedenborg, does not search in graves, but who will see and speak and act with equal enthusiasm. For knowledge will give splendor to sunshine; justice is more beautiful than secret preference, and love is compatible with all-embracing wisdom.

What feelings does Shakespeare inspire in Emerson? The feeling that we must wait for the coming of the one who will bring reconciliation.

What does the contemplation of Goethe inspire in him? He says at the end of the contemplation:

The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth; in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in [the] books and in people, to awaken faith , certainty and trust, and to honor each truth, as we begin and as we end, as we go along and as we go forward, by not only knowing it but by making it a rule of action.

Thus, it was not only Goethe but also Shakespeare who inspired Emerson not to wait for anyone. And the words I have just read are preceded by the following:

We too must write sacred writings to reunite heaven and earth.

We would say today: We have to immerse ourselves in spiritual science, in what human science can be. But Emerson does not grasp the depth of German intellectual life, and is fundamentally hostile to it.

This, however, is precisely why German intellectual life will be in a kind of defensive position for a long time to come. For it experiences strange things even with those of whom it is said that they are trying to penetrate into this German intellectual life. I would also like to give you a sample of this.

Those who are reasonably familiar with the intellectual life of the recent past may have been surprised that such high hopes were placed in some German minds before this war taught people, let's say, about someone like Romain Rolland, a different lesson. The people who admired him represent, to a certain extent, a break in the intellectual life of the present. Those who admired him could not really understand how he could speak so contemptuously of the Germans after the outbreak of the war. One has indeed been able to read strange articles in Germany about Romain Rolland. I will only refer to one work by Romain Rolland, “Jean-Christophe”. In this novel, Romain Rolland portrays a German, but you will see in a moment how. Even this description of Jean-Christophe is to be said: it is given by a person who has never been touched by the real inner strength of the spiritual life. What is Jean-Christophe in the two-volume novel? It is a German musician and how he develops in his Germanness. Romain Rolland wants to describe that. And he really does describe something, yes, you can't say otherwise, than a chaotic mixture of the destinies of various Germans such as Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Gustav Mahler and so on. All of this is mixed up in the most impossible way, and that gives the completely impossible character of Jean-Christophe, who has been so much admired, but who shows himself to be nothing more than the result of an artist's inability to face reality, which not only records external nature but also penetrates into the depths of existence, and can see the impossibility of mixing up such chaos.

I am well aware that there may be many people who will interpret what I am about to say about Romain Rolland as “barbaric”. But I believe that I can take on what these people defend from their apparent aesthetic high ground when it comes to judging the particular aesthetic and artistic nature of people like Romain Rolland. [It has nothing to do with what Schiller said to Goethe. “People say that there is something immoral in Wilhelm Meister. No, the characters are as they have to be.”] For with Romain Rolland, you never know what the author says and what his characters say. Therefore, what his characters say can be seen as the attitude of Romain Rolland himself. This attitude comes across to us wherever he talks about Germanness. For example, he describes the father of Jean-Christoph.

I will now only quote a few significant things that we can say are a Frenchman's recent judgment of the German character. And I will cite evidence because there were people who said: This novel is the first great act since 1870 that will bring about the reconciliation of Germans and French. No political act is as important for this reconciliation as Romain Rolland's novel, so people said. Well, anyone who reads the novel will agree with me if I disagree. You can't say that Romain Rolland didn't want to say what his characters say, you just have to look at it from an artistic point of view. Because what we are hearing from this Romain Rolland, this “reconciler between Germanness and Frenchness”, has recently been presented to us in the most defamatory way as German “barbarism” from the West. So it is said of the father:

He was a fine speaker, well built, if a little heavy, and the type of what is considered classical beauty in Germany: a broad, expressionless forehead, strong regular features and a curly beard: a Jupiter from the banks of the Rhine.

Then he characterizes a number of chamber musicians, whom he considers typical of German chamber music, in the following way:

They played neither very accurately nor very in time; but they never went off the rails and faithfully followed the indicated expressive markings. They possessed that musical ease that requires little, and that perfection in mediocrity that is abundant in the race that is called the most musical in the world.

Romain Rolland characterizes Uncle Theodor, the stepson of Jean-Christophe's grandfather, as follows:

He was a partner in a large trading house that had business connections with Africa and the Far East. He was a typical example of the new type of German, who mockingly spurn the old idealism of the race and, drunk with victory, practice a cult that proves that they are not accustomed to living under that sign. But since it is impossible to suddenly change the centuries-old nature of a people, the suppressed idealism kept resurfacing in language, behavior, moral views, and Goethe quotes on the occasion of the slightest domestic events; and so, through the bizarre effort to reconcile the honorable principles of the old German bourgeoisie with the cynicism of these new shop-keepers, a strange mixture of conscientiousness and self-interest, a mixture that has a rather nauseating smell of hypocrisy, which amounts to making a symbol of all that is right, of all justice and truth, out of German strength, greed and the pursuit of personal interest.

That is Romain Rolland's description of certain Germans. We have heard it again through Romain Rolland. But then we are told about Jean-Christophe himself:

He lacked that compliant Germanic idealism that refuses to see and does not see what it would find embarrassing to discover, for fear of destroying the comfortable serenity of its judgment and the comfort of its life.

Of course, Romain Rolland sees German idealism, but he wants to show it in the light that, in his opinion, is the true light. He wants to characterize this German idealism somewhat, and there he says about this German idealism – since Romain Rolland is a good musician, his friends claim that he understands German music particularly well, he may refer to it –; Romain Rolland seeks to characterize German idealism as what the Germans delude themselves about as a blue haze that the Germans fear to see and therefore idealize. He sees in it something with which the Germans mask all kinds of things so as not to see reality. Then he says:

The Germans are not idealists for the reason that they falsify feelings.

– he speaks, I beg to be heard, he speaks as if it were a characteristic of Schumann and Wagner – that is not the problematic thing in music, that idealism fakes feelings, but that feelings are fake, that is shown in Schumann. The German feels fake. These are Romain Rolland's own words:

But it was precisely his example that led Christof to the realization that the worst falsity of German art did not lie where artists wanted to express feelings that they did not feel, but rather where they expressed feelings that they felt but that were false in themselves. Music is a relentless mirror of the soul. The more naive and trusting a German musician is, the more he reveals the weaknesses of the German soul, its insecure foundation, its [soft] sensitivity, its lack of candor, its somewhat devious idealism, its inability to see itself, to dare to look itself in the face.

He wants to get to the very heart of this German idealism. That is why he refers to Mrs. von Stael, who once characterized the Germans, as Romain Rolland reports. She said:

They are well-behaved. They use philosophical reason to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear that transforms respect into admiration.

Romain Rolland refers to these words of Mrs. von Stael.

Christof found this feeling in the greatest and the smallest [in Germany]

— he says. And then, to say something quite characteristic of the Germans, he adds:

from Wilhelm Tell, the deliberate, small-minded bourgeois with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says, “to reconcile honor and fear, walks with downcast eyes before the post of ‘dear Lord’ Gessler, so that he can invoke the fact that he who disobeyed who did not see the hat,” up to the portly, seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the most respected scholars in the city, who, when a lieutenant passed him, hastily gave way to him on the footpath and went down to the road.

[He hated the brutal militarism that he felt weighing on him, all those sabers clanking on the pavement, those pyramids of rifles and cannons set up in front of the barracks, ready to fire with their muzzles pointed towards the city.

We are hearing all of this again now. The novel already contains the same words that we are hearing again now, with the only difference being that later on, the French no longer thought that the muzzles were only pointed at their own German cities, but sensed that they could be pointed elsewhere.

But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is entirely unjust towards the Germans, whom he characterizes in this way. He does find that these Germans have nothing of the true esthete. In music, he grants them some talent. He calls thinking “clear but cloudy,” and so on. But in the opinion of this Frenchman, who is considered one of the best minds in France today, the Germans do not have much of a sense of beauty. He describes a German girl: “The nose [gap in the text] up one side, down the other.” That, according to him, is the typical German girl. I also ask you to consider the following words:

The Germans are fortunate in their tolerance when it comes to physical imperfections: they manage not to see them; they can even come to embellish them with benevolent imagination, finding unexpected relationships between the [face] they want to see and the most magnificent examples of human beauty.

This refers to the face with the nose that I just described. It would not have taken too much persuasion to get old Euler to declare that [his] granddaughter had the nose of Juno Ludovisi.

But it cannot be said that Romain Rolland is or wants to be completely unjust. He also praises where he wants to praise and recognizes in the German character what he believes he can acknowledge. For example, after he has shown how this Jean-Christophe, who is such a talented fellow that he cannot stand it in the German world, that he strives outwards, because such a genius cannot flourish in the German world. After showing this, he finally invites him to be a guest of a professor, whom he wants to depict as a typical German. And what unfolds in the presence of this German professor is where Romain Rolland does praise the Germans, finding something praiseworthy in them. You see, the professor takes great pains to have his housekeeper prepare the best meal possible. And she, so convinced that she has achieved great art, leaves the door ajar to see how the gentlemen are enjoying their meal.

It was an exhibition of unforgettable, honest, unadulterated German cuisine, with the aromas of all the herbs, the thick sauces, the nourishing soups, the exemplary meat dishes, the monumental carp, the sauerkraut, the geese, the homemade cakes, the aniseed and caraway breads.

You can see that he also has something good to say about the Germans! And he particularly benefits from the meal that has now been taken and a real German, a singing German, is to be described. He describes him in such a way that you can see; he is actually wondering why this particular specimen can sing, and even sing well. He says that the German actually has no idea how to sing:

They are seized by the power of the song, and the song works through them as through an instrument. The spirit of the songs takes hold of them, and they obey it. For the soul of the German must do so. This soul obeys the song as the soldier obeys the general.

The so-called German militarism has grown deep into the soul of those who speak of it today with voluptuous expressions. He now describes a real singer by saying: He was a fat man who always sweated when walking, but especially when he made sounds. - He describes his nature, his figure. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular variety of German. He says that there are many of these Bavarians, because they have “the secret of this human race, which came about through a system of pasta-eating similar to how poultry is fattened.”

He wants to find out what the people who are actually able to practice this German art of singing, which he also admires, look like.

Now, it is no wonder that this mixture of Beethoven, Strauss, Wagner and Mahler, who has the peculiarity of not having a spark of any of the four in his soul, cannot endure this artificial construct in Germany. He must get out of Germanness! It is said that although he did not know it, he is driven by German confusion to “Golden Paris”.

But instinctively his eyes looked towards the Latin South. And first of all to France. To France, the eternal [refuge] from German confusion.

Now it is described how the one who has to leave Germanness has to find his way in Latin culture. There he becomes a great mystic. I hope you will excuse me from pursuing the further paths. But we would find many a characteristic there of what must be called the misunderstanding of that which sustains and carries the individual German from the supporting power of the living spirit, with which the German essence feels connected.

Therefore, it may be said that it must be clear to all those who believe that humanity's future lies in the strong and vigorous representation of intellectual life through a world culture how the German spirit has not yet completed its mission in the world, but how this German spirit has laid the seeds from which it can be seen that they must continue to flourish ever more abundantly.

And that appears to us as the fundamental strength of the German spirit, that we know: we can only hope for the blossoms and fruits of the future. We stand confidently in the midst of it, in the living experience of the German spirit. This must also give us the strength for the necessary defense, for the defense of German intellectual life as well, which, as perhaps few today already suspect, is in a fundamental struggle, just as much as the external life of the immediate present.

It would be out of place to present a reflection that was only meant as a consolation. Who needed weak consolation or who needed words of strength or the like, when a nation that knows how to defend its goods with such strength has shown and has already held out for almost a year with strength and courage and a willingness to make sacrifices?

But we must be aware that the German spirit must be on guard just as much as external German life had to be on guard. And when we look more deeply into this spiritual life of the German, we find something of which we can say: This is the core and the root of Germanness: its yearning for the living spirit, its living together with the living spirit.

Those who revile the Germans today and say: We do not mean this German spirit when we revile them, must be told: You seem to us like someone who says: I know there is a person with strong hands, but when he uses these hands, we do not like it!

The French philosopher Bergson said in a Christmas speech that the German mind today shows that it can no longer grasp the living, it can only grasp the mechanistic. Today, only cannons stand against the French; only mechanisms are seen coming from Germany, and armies.

There is not much logic in what he says, as logic is generally missing today when the world situation is discussed so beautifully. You would have to ask this philosopher Bergson whether he expected the French soldiers to be confronted with recitations of Schiller's poems or with Novalis' works.

But a glance, which I could only hint at with weak words – a glance into the essence and life, into the roots of the German spirit, shows us that, looking at this spirit, we can say:

It has not only not completed; it shows that it is taking its ascending path to a fully blossoming and fruitful spiritual life. And anyone who can trust in inner strength can have the utmost confidence in what the German spirit is willing to accomplish. And anyone who has such an insight into the inner effectiveness of the German spirit also knows what great and powerful things must be defended with external weapons today; he knows that the soul of the German nation still has much, much more to bear.

Therefore, let me express what I wanted to express to you today in a few words, and what I ask you to take more from what underlies my words as feelings and emotions. Finally, let me summarize it in a few words that are based on my feelings, which should be words of confidence for the soul, from what can be known about the sustaining power of the German spirit, in the past and into the future. I would like to say: If you follow through in your thoughts what I have only been able to sketch with a few lines of charcoal, you will increasingly come to the feeling that I would like to express at the end with the words:

The German spirit has not fulfilled
What it should bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in worries about the future,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerfully
Hidden things that must still mature. —
How can a wish for his end arise in the power of the enemy without understanding, so long as life reveals itself to him, which holds him in the roots of his being?

Handwritten summary of contents for the censors.

During the war, public events were subject to the supervision of the censorship authorities. For this purpose, Rudoif Steiner wrote the following table of contents for his lecture scheduled for June 16, 1915 in Düsseldorf (NZ 1564-1566).

Contents of the lecture to be given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Düsseldorf. The lecture has already been given in Berlin, Leipzig and in a similar form in Munich.

The lecture begins with the introduction of personalities who, in fateful times within the development of German culture, placed the security, the confidence, the true invincibility of the German being before the soul of the people by evoking the soul's deep permeation with the effective power of the ruling spirit. For them, this “spirit” was not a “concept” or an “idea,” as it is for the naturalistically thinking consciousness; for them, the spirit was a real being with which the soul maintains contact in its deepest interior, from which it draws spiritual life-force, just as the body draws physical life-force from the air through the lungs.

Thus Fichte stood in the midst of his people when they had to work their way up to freedom, supported only by their own strength, by showing how the German people, in contrast to the Romance peoples, already prove through their language that they are connected in their very essence to the innermost roots of the vital impulse of spiritual existence. The German does not feel spiritual life as something that is only recognized in the individual human soul, but as something that reigns over this individual soul as an independent being and that carries the individual soul.

From this consciousness, a creation within German culture has emerged that is only possible within the German people: Goethe's “Faust”. Faust strives out of dead knowledge towards an inner living contact with the essence of the spirit. In Faust, the most ancient German consciousness of nature and the world comes to life again in a newer way. One does not need to deny the great significance of Shakespeare; but one must still say that in Faust, everything human rises to a nobler height than in Hamlet. Consider how, when confronted with the truly spiritual, the latter can only fall back on doubt and uncertainty, on the hopeless question, “To be or not to be?” By contrast, when confronted with the power of evil, of material things, Faust asserts the inner certainty of victory of his connection with the spirit: “In thy nothing I hope to find the All.”

Those who belong to the nations that today do not want to revile German deeds enough, must have come to the same conclusion that Ernest Renan expressed in 1870, when they sensed the nature of this in the development of German culture. 70, that Germany has added something to the development of humanity in terms of “depth and extent” that “for those who have experienced it, it is as if they only know elementary mathematics compared to those who are proficient in differential calculus”.

This connection of the German soul with the sustaining power of the world-ruling spirit has, in minds like Herder's, evoked the consciousness of the world-significant task of German culture, of the fact that this culture has a contribution to make to the overall education of the human race, insofar as this illuminates the lofty goal of working “until everything has happened, until the genius of enlightenment has traversed the earth.”

This consciousness warmed Lessing's soul as he wrote his incomparable testament to the “education of the human race,” which elevated all contemplation of history to an experience of the eternal spiritual activity of the world through the human soul.

And this consciousness lives on to the present day in the most exquisite minds of the German people. It will now be shown how this fundamental strength of the German spirit has led to a deep world view and outlook on life in individual personalities of the nineteenth century. Herman Grimm's genuine German character is characterized; lesser-known personalities are also mentioned to show what particular German character is in thinking, feeling and experiencing.

Finally, it is suggested how, in the present day, the consciousness that comes from the sources, in which the German essence is intimately connected with the power of the spirit, may live in the German mind, and how this consciousness may trust in its power within the world of enemies, in the face of which it has to assert itself in our fateful days.

Dear Attendees!

For many years, I have had the privilege of speaking in other German cities, as well as here in Hamburg, about subjects related to the humanities, the science that is aware of being a true continuation of the scientific way of thinking for the knowledge of the spiritual life of man, which has developed within humanity for three to four centuries. Now it is not out of short-sighted feelings, but, as I believe, precisely out of the knowledge of this spiritual science itself, that the power to recognize the human being in a spiritual way, to recognize that in man which extends beyond birth and death, that the power for this must be sought for humanity from that which one is justified in calling the spiritual idealism of the German people, that idealism which has developed in the most profound and also in the sharpest way in the greatest period of German intellectual life from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, but which continues to have an effect into our own days. And I believe – just as this belief already underlay the reflection that I was allowed to make last year here in this city – I believe that it is well suited to the great facts and developmental impulses that we face in our time when the members of the German people immerse themselves in can bring in the deepest sense of the word knowledge of their own nature, which can then lead to an evaluation of this own nature in relation to the insults and slander that are without precedent - like these world events in the entire history of the development of mankind. I believe that it is more appropriate in the face of these insults and slander to pursue an objective course of thought that is more in keeping with the nature of the German people, to objectively clarify the significance that the German people could assume through their achievements in the overall development of humanity. Above all, attention must be drawn to a prejudice, one might say, if the word were not strongly taken out against the feelings in the present, above all attention must be drawn to a prejudice that repeatedly and repeatedly arises within the circles of our people, the prejudice that the newer intellectual life must, for the very reason that it wants to appear on scientific ground, have an international character from the outset. How often have we heard it said, and how matter-of-factly we accept it: science must be international. Certainly, to a certain limited degree that is absolutely true. But the question is whether it is really one of the fruitful perceptions and feelings that we should keep building on this saying over and over again when we want to express our thoughts about the relationship between individual nations. The sun is certainly international, and so is the moon. But how different are the ideas, the perceptions, the feelings that the various peoples are able to express about the moon and the sun. International is certainly the science; but is the way in which the individual peoples approach science international, and why do some approach it perhaps more superficially, while others delve into it? And is it not especially important for Germans to reflect on a word spoken by one of the greatest Germans, Goethe, when he had completed a great part of his journey to the south and had occupied himself not only with the contemplation of various art treasures, but had also occupied himself with the contemplation of the most diverse natural objects and natural facts, when he said: He would most like to make a journey to India, not to discover anything new, but to contemplate what has been discovered in his own way, that is, to see it again. viewing the most diverse natural objects and natural facts, he said: He would most like to make a journey to India, not to discover something new, but to view what has been discovered in his own way, that is, to see again in the external phenomena that which is alive in his soul.

It is not that which is internationally abstract that acts as a motivating and sustaining element in the forces of nations, but rather that which the individual souls of the individual nations are able to see in the [gap in the transcript]

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to approach the consideration from the point of view of spiritual scientific knowledge. And I firmly believe that the German may approach this observation of his relationship to other nations in this objective way. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, dear honored attendees, is still very young, even if, as we shall see, this spiritual science can develop in a very organic way out of German idealism. But regardless of this, it is all too easy to understand that this spiritual science still finds opponents everywhere today, and that what it has to say – has to say from a consideration that is just as thorough and profound as that [for science] – is still sometimes ridiculed and mocked as something paradoxical, perhaps even insane. But it is precisely such a question, as that about the souls of different peoples, that spiritual science attempts to grasp objectively in a certain sense.

If you look at the human soul in a spiritual scientific sense, it does not appear to you from this point of view as today's conventional soul science or psychology often believes. I would say that everything in the soul is mixed up.

Spiritual science must observe the soul as natural science observes any phenomenon. Just as the natural scientist must seek to recognize the essence of sunlight by observing its manifestation in the world of colors, so the soul researcher must seek the soul essence in its manifestations if he is to strive for an understanding of this essence. Sunlight reveals itself in reddish, greenish and blue-violet color shades. Just as the natural scientist distinguishes the reddish-yellow shade on the one side of the color spectrum of light, so the spiritual scientist distinguishes on the one side of the soul that which can be called the sentient soul. And just as the natural scientist distinguishes the greenish center as a phenomenon in sunlight, so it appears to the spiritual scientist, as it were, in the center of the soul being, that which can be called the intellectual soul; viewed from another side, this intellectual soul can appear as the soul of feeling. And as the other end of the soul rainbow, so to speak, appears that which can be addressed as the consciousness soul.

When one looks at the human soul in this way, from a spiritual science perspective, one comes to the conclusion that in the sentient soul, everything lives that emerges more from the subconscious depths of the soul, that lives out more in sensations, in will impulses, in a semi-unconscious, instinctive way. But at the same time it contains that which is first lived out in an indeterminate way within the soul, that which is the soul's share in the spiritual, in eternal life. The mind soul is that through which man comprehends the surrounding world in such a way that he brings concepts and ideas into everything, that he, so to speak, builds the world for himself like an external structure of natural laws. The consciousness soul contains that which is most closely related to what man recognizes as his position in the physical world, whereby he places himself most in the finite, in the interwoven nature of death.

This is how it is initially with the three – I would say rainbow – shades of the soul. And just as the light, the common light, lives in all colors, lives in the three color shades, so the I, the actual self, the eternal being of the human being that passes through births and deaths, lives in these three soul shades. And just as these three soul nuances are found in the individual human soul, so they show themselves in the different nations. So that in the soul life of nations - I now say explicitly: of nations, not of individuals within nations, not of individuals, but of nations as a whole - the soul of the different nations is expressed in the one national soul, especially the sentient soul, while the other aspects of the soul are more in the background: in the case of the other people, the intellectual soul is more in the background, in the case of a third people, the consciousness soul is more in the background, and in the case of a fourth people, what permeates and imbues the individual soul aspects: the I, the self. And, however paradoxical it may still appear to many today, one understands a part of European humanity only when one knows how these individual shades of soul are distributed among the souls of the individual nations.

Thus, when we consider the Italian national soul, we find that the soul of feeling predominates in this Italian national soul. In the French national soul, what must be called the soul of reason predominates in the most eminent sense. In the British national soul, what must be called the consciousness soul predominates. In the German national soul – and this is not spoken out of some particular feeling, but out of knowledge – what must be called the ego, the self, that which seeks to harmonize and unify the various soul nuances, that which radiates through the various soul nuances, predominates. And all the individual phenomena of life within the individual nations, even the way in which the different nations do not understand each other, all this follows from this knowledge of the national souls. If the German people in particular seems to me to be called upon to gain an understanding of what actually prevails between nations, based on an awareness of the nature of the soul, while the one-sidedness of other nations prevents them from truly gaining an understanding of the nature of each different nation. Can it not be grasped with one's hands – if I may use the image, ladies and gentlemen – that in the Italian national soul, unconscious, instinctive impulses live everywhere? Even when we go to the greatest, whose greatness should certainly not be belittled, we find the life of feeling prevailing everywhere. If you immerse yourself in the works of thinkers such as Giordano Bruno or Dante, you will find that it is the life of feeling that wells up from the unconscious and is given visual form, that which is not first sought after in a thought that justifies it, but which one simply wants to bring up from the soul and, I would say, let it speak.

And if you take the French national soul – not the individual Frenchman – if you take the national soul, then you have to say to yourself – and this is something that, for example, in an external relationship, not out of the knowledge with which we are dealing here, is recognized by many who think objectively, for example in neutral countries, for example, if you look at the French national soul, you will find wit everywhere; you will find what the intellect can crystallize; but you will especially find a certain constructive spirit, that understanding spirit that seeks to build the world in the way that the intellect can build the world.

And there is nothing clearer, dear attendees, than the way in which – I would say – one of the greatest minds, especially in the French world view, shows how reason works in the soul in particular.

The French are now calling one of their greatest philosophers – yes, I don't know, should we say 'fils de montagne'? He was called 'Bergson' until the war, and that's what I call him after the war, but they don't want us to call him that across the border. He is the one who, in the most incredible way, I would say, imagines his French world view into the German people, because, yes, he seems to have believed that when the French advance with cannons and rifles, the Germans will confront them with recitations of Novalis or Goethe or Schiller. And since they didn't do that, since they also have cannons, and bigger cannons than the French have, and have set them against the French, he talks about how all of German culture is mechanized, how everything is just like one big machine. And at a certain hour – you can read about it in foreign newspapers – he entertained his audience at a French academy by showing them how the Germans have degenerated in modern times from the heights they occupied under Goethe, Schiller, under Fichte, under Schelling, under Hegel and Kant and Schopenhauer, how they cling to everything, everything hang on to superficialities, how they are, in a hypocritical way, something like [gap in the transcript], how, in a hypocritical way, especially in the present, they refer again to Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, but how they understand them today in a very mechanical way and unite them with their soul in a very mechanical way. Admittedly, these Germans are unpleasant – but the French will perhaps only realize this when the borders are open again – [the Germans] are unpleasant, because they could prove that they have indeed recently been dealing more intensively with the aforementioned spirits, who drew their world view deeply from their essence, and thus sought to deepen the German essence. But something else could be proven. They could, for example, prove that Henri Bergson copied entire long pages almost word for word from Schelling, Schopenhauer and so on, and that basically his entire philosophy, which is certainly a sign of our time, is largely German plagiarism. That is non-mechanical appropriation!

And, esteemed attendees, if we now look, say, for example, across to the British national soul: just as the Italian national soul bears the main nuance of the sentient soul, and the French national soul bears the intellectual soul, so the British national soul bears the consciousness soul for our present time. The Italian feels, the Frenchman thinks, the Briton asserts himself in the physical world, that is, he seeks to develop his relationship to the physical world in some way. I am not speaking out of some national sentiment, but out of what can be proven down to the details. One might say: How Kant had to strive to deepen this view, which was only directed towards the physical world, in a conceptual sense. Kant's entire striving is, from a certain point of view, a working out of what he has become, for example through Hume, through Locke and other British minds. And it is fitting to take a good look at this aspect of the development of more recent spiritual life. Hume – let us single him out. What did he achieve?

He managed to say: Yes, when we look at the world, we actually find everywhere not the truth, not even cause and effect, no connections, but only that one phenomenon follows on from another. The most superficial of world views!

With regard to everything else, he arrives at what is called skepticism, a doubting of everything. Kant had to work his way out of this. But now, if we look at where this world view – insofar as it is now the expression of the soul of the people – has led, what has it led to? We see a remarkable world view developing in modern times, in the present, which has emerged precisely from the British national spirit, which is supported in this by the American national spirit. We have seen that out of this consciousness soul, which above all wants to assert the I in the world, in the physical world, what is called pragmatism has developed. We cannot speak about this objectively, because a number of Germans have also fallen for it – if I may use the trivial word – because they are philosophers, have fallen for this pragmatism. What is this pragmatism? Well, this pragmatism actually does no more or no less than say: Oh, truth, as it is supposed to develop out of the soul as truth, does not actually exist. What we summarize in individual judgments, in ideas that we then regard as truth, is only thought up by the human mind in order to prove useful out in the world. When you speak of the soul, soul is only a pragmatic concept. We see how there are individual phenomena in human life that fall apart and we cannot hold them together properly if we do not presuppose a unity. We only have it to grasp what is an external phenomenon. The truth must be something, an advantage that can be used in the external physical world. That is pragmatism. One must not believe that this is just a philosophical hair-splitting. It is deeply connected with the national spirit and with what creates out of this national spirit. In the 1880s and 1890s, [Robert Seeley], a professor of history, looked at English history – the relevant work was published in 1883 – and pointed out that it is actually a kind of prejudice – because that is the meaning of the history book – that in the nineteenth century, in Englishness, one has always regarded the struggle of Englishness for freedom and democracy as running through English history. He goes back a little further and tries to look at this English history and finds that what has happened can be summarized under the name “British expansion”; first Great Britain, then Greater Britain. The Italians were just parroting them, talking about “greater Italy.” And then the professor says, “But history is not just there to be learned from, to gain some truth that you now carry with you, so that you know something from history. Rather, history must be shaped, must be introduced into life.” And how is it shaped? It is characterized by the fact that one sees: Britain has expanded more and more over the last few centuries. So one must learn from it how to expand further. – The truth, as one can use it, as one can put it at the service of outer physical life!

I do not believe, esteemed readers, that I am presenting a one-sided view of these things, but rather that people have always been one-sided in their consideration of these matters because they have not been willing to consider the things in their real essence. In this context, it should always be emphasized how we Germans actually fared in the course of the nineteenth century in the spiritual realm with regard to the formation of a world view.

Goethe – I am in a position to speak about this because I have spent the whole of my life, thirty-five years, studying Goethe – Goethe tried to build a world view from the observation of external facts, which considers the relationship of external nature in detail. He tried to find the spirit in the development of beings. But basically, he made very little impression on the time. Then Darwin came along. He approached the task in an English way, truly in an English way, that is, he approached it in such a way that it is not particularly difficult to delve into his train of thought. And he gave everything that can be followed externally in the physical world, that can be seen with the eyes and grasped with the hands. That made an impression. And when it comes to Goethe, the world is still indebted to recognize – even if it is of course more difficult to find one's way into Goethe's theory of evolution – to recognize how much higher Goethe's theory of evolution is than that which arose in the nineteenth century on the basis of Darwinian research.

However, a Frenchman, a French philosopher, yes, I would almost say, of course, one who not so long ago before the war traveled around in Germany, even spoke at a German university about the deep friendship between the French and German mind, a Frenchman, he has tried to highlight the differences in recent weeks between the scientific world view that the German is seeking and that which the Frenchman and the Englishman are seeking. He told the French audience in Paris that if they want to get to know animals, want to have knowledge of animals, want to integrate their concepts of things into their world view, then they go to a menagerie and look at the animals. That's one way, certainly. The Englishman, said this French philosopher to his Parisian audience, the Englishman goes on a journey around the world, sees the animals in the various parts of the world and then describes what he has seen. And the German – he would go neither to the menagerie nor to the different parts of the world, but he would go into his room and delve into his own inner being to bring the essence of the lion, the essence of the hyena, and so on, to the surface from his own inner being. If you want to characterize the three peoples with a certain wit, which is certainly not to be denied the French, and perhaps also want to characterize them according to the proportion of thought and ideas present in their world view, then you can do that. Yes, but there is a catch to this story. The wit that the French professor has made out of his thoroughness is not his own, but Heinrich Heine's.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is clear to a certain extent that German intellectual life has always tried to avoid one-sidedness and to find something that can shine through the whole of the individual shades of the soul. To do this, however, German intellectual life had to penetrate again and again into the innermost part of the human soul. And in order to show – I would like to say – by the facts how the German tried to get to the essence of the world, to the essence of what the world springs from and wells up from, I would like to present three German figures today. Not because, dear attendees, I believe that one could somehow dogmatically accept what these three figures have created as a world view within German idealism, but because I believe that there are indeed three figures that have emerged from the innermost essence of German nationality, the German national soul. I would like to say: Today we can go far beyond regarding a figure that appears in the world history of the spirit in such a way that we accept what he has expressed as individual sentences, as individual ideas, as individual opinions, as if it were a dogma. We can look at people as they have striven, as they stand in their search for a world view. Here we encounter a German figure whom I tried to point out from a different point of view here in this city last winter, and who is much talked about now. First of all, we encounter the figure who was aware that what he had to say about a world view had been created entirely, as it were, through a dialogue with the German national soul itself: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I would like to give just a few traits of this Johann Gottlieb Fichte, to show that he is indeed a figure that could only have emerged from the wholeness of German intellectual life; for such a figure as Fichte really did arise out of German intellectual life. When we see Fichte in the blue peasant's coat, we can meet him as a seven-year-old boy standing on the bank of a stream, the stream that flows past his father's house, throwing a book into the stream, the Siegfried saga. His father comes along. The father is angry about it because he gave Fichte the Siegfried saga as a present last Christmas. But it turned out that Fichte, who had been a good student until then, became completely absorbed in the Siegfried saga and was now less inclined to study. He only needed to be made aware of his duty, and he would immediately say: “Duty must give way to everything.” And we can find the seven-year-old boy throwing the Siegfried saga, which has kept him from his duty, into the stream. The soul felt and sensed everything in the deepest, most intimate connection with this soul.

On a Sunday, a neighboring landowner came to the simple farming village where Fichte grew up. At that time, Fichte was a nine-year-old boy. The neighboring landowner had come to hear the sermon, but he was too late. The sermon was no longer being heard by the landowner. So they called for nine-year-old Fichte, because they knew how Fichte, even as a nine-year-old boy, knew how to connect what he heard with his soul. He came in his blue farmer's coat and repeated word for word the sermon he had just heard, with such inner fire that it was clear that every word he said had grown together with the innermost part of his soul. It was not just the soul of feeling or the soul of mind or consciousness that was at work, but the soul as a whole. In this sense, Fichte is – I would say – one of the most quintessentially German minds, but one that was also intimately connected with the whole mission, or rather, with the whole essence of German nationality.

I would say that one has to let one's gaze wander far and wide if one wants to characterize this essence of German nationality in just a few words.

Let us look across to Asia, where the Germans' relatives, their Aryan relatives, are to be found. There we find in these Aryan relatives the urge to find the divine and spiritual in the world. But everywhere we find this urge coupled with another: to tone down the self, to dampen it so that it feels extinguished in order to merge into the universe. The other pole has found expression in the German nature, in the German being's search for a world view. Do the Aryan relatives in Asia seek to pour themselves out into the universe and thus find a world picture by muting the ego, as they do in India, for example? The German, on the other hand, seeks to find within this ego that which pours the divine into this ego by elevating and strengthening, ensoulings and spiritualizing this ego within himself. So that it is not by being subdued, but by being elevated, by the elevated striving of the ego, that this ego is led up into that which, as the divine-spiritual, pulsates through, permeates and interweaves the world.

And so Fichte again confronted the human ego, the human self, with his whole being, in order to discover in the self the forces that give a world view. I would say that he does this not only by attempting to express through abstract theories and through all kinds of mere abstract ideas what a world view can constitute, but rather that it is his entire being, the totality of this being, through which he presents himself, whether to his students or to his people in general.

Someone who listened to him once said: When Fichte speaks publicly or even to his students, his speech rolls like a thunderstorm that breaks into individual fires. His imagination is not lush, but energetic; his images are not magnificent, but strong and powerful. And he reigns in the realm of ideas, so that it becomes apparent that he not only dwells in this invisible world of ideas, but can rule in it. But in this way of speaking, there was something in Fichte by which he tried to let his whole soul overwhelm his listeners. Therefore, a friend who knew him well could say: He sought not only to educate good people, but to educate great people. And he did not just seek to tell his listeners something, but he sought to make a living whole out of what he and his listeners together were.

Those people who prefer to just listen passively and accept what does not demand any thought of their own while listening would not have been particularly fond of Fichte, the quintessentially German mind. For example, he repeatedly did the following with his audience. He said: “Think about the wall!” And so the audience thought about the wall, tried to think about the wall. Of course they managed it quite well. — “So,” he said, “now try to think of the one who thinks the wall!” — Then you could see how many were stunned, how many were quite strangely affected. But by such an imposition, Fichte tried to reject the human being to that which wells up and overflows within himself. For he could not say like Cartesius: “I think, therefore I am,” but he regarded this I in its perpetual liveliness, in its perpetual arising. And only such an I did he allow, which continually generates itself, which has the power to arise anew in each moment, in each following moment. The will, the will prevailing in the I, became for him the fundamental power of the I. And in that the I grasps itself in the highest sense in its fundamental powers, it grasps the highest divine power, which weaves and undulates into the I.

For Descartes, the world view was such that he did not even admit souls in animals, but rather, to him, they were mechanisms, machines - the whole world a mechanism. Of course, Fichte also saw how the mechanical is present in the external physical world; but for him, this mechanical was not dismissed when it was observed. Rather, one could only find one's way into this mechanical if one found the divine-spiritual source of things, which, however, could only be found in the will nature of man.

And so for Fichte, the spiritual that permeates and flows through the world became, for Fichte, the moral order of the world - above a mechanical order of the world. The divine-spiritual appeared to him in the effect of duty, which pulsates into the human soul. And the mechanisms, the external products of nature, appeared to him in this way in relation to the whole of creation in his world view, as if the human being, who first and foremost wants to be morally active, makes individual machines for himself, in which he cannot ask to what extent they are moral, but which nevertheless serve the moral, the moral order of the human being. Thus, for Fichte, mechanical nature was only, as he says, the expression of the realization of duty, of the moral order of the world, that it was the sensitized material of duty. For Fichte, the mechanical nature is everywhere the world-moral world order, and everything that is not moral is there so that duty has tools to realize itself in the world. That is the power of the mind that prevailed in Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Today, you don't have to take Fichte's point of view. You don't have to accept what he expressed as his opinion. But that is not the point at issue. The point is what can be gained by allowing oneself to be inspired, as it were, by the way that a thinker like Fichte approached the spiritual world and formed one of the worldviews of German idealism on that basis. Strengthening of the soul, but also development of the soul, can be gained by not engaging dogmatically, but humanly, with the kind of striving that appears in Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Now we turn to his successor, the much-misunderstood Schelling. For him, external nature was not something soulless either. He could not stop at considering external nature only a sensualized material of the moral world order, but for him, external nature was a strengthened spirit. And the spirit was a nature endowed with soul. And in his world view, the two combined to form a whole. And the divine-spiritual that rules the world was for him the great artist who creates by bringing forth the world out of the divine-benevolent, because it is meant to stand as beauty in the face of the invisible spiritual. In this much-misunderstood Schelling, contemplation of spirit and contemplation of nature grow together in an intimate way. But in fact this man was a reflection of his whole personality, who in his old age still stood before his audience with sparkling eyes, from which, as if through the gaze of man, a deep contemplation of nature spoke naturally, a contemplation of nature that glowed with beauty. This man was such that we can say: he only represented the other side of German intellectual life, of the German national soul, so to speak. Fichte, too, could be said to represent something like the consciousness soul of the human being, but this consciousness soul is illuminated by the I. Schelling, too, represents something like the intellectual soul of the human being; but this intellectual soul is illuminated by the I, so that it has an effect on the human mind. Again, it is the exaltation, the strengthening of that which is always in the human soul that Schelling seeks. He goes so far as to make the following statement, which certainly cannot be substantiated: To know nature is to create nature. But this saying is still so fruitful that it should not be accepted as a dogma, but rather be recognized as coming from the soul of a man who wants to plunge with his whole soul into nature and seek the spirit in nature.

The third aspect of German national character is portrayed by the much-misunderstood Hegel. Only he presents this German folk-spirit with the greatest power. For him, that which reigns through the world as the Divine-Spiritual is thought everywhere. Man seeks thought. But man not only imagines thought, he draws thought out of all phenomena, because thought lives in everything. One may, of course, unreservedly acknowledge the one-sidedness. The spiritual-divine appears as a mere logician. The world recognizes Hegel as if it were only thought. Of course, one will never come to a different understanding of the world than to an understanding of the world as thought. But that is not the point; rather, the point is that one should be able to reflect, I would say, to reflect, in order to develop thought in such a fine way as Hegel developed it. And that is how he came to see, in terms of his world view, that we only know the world to the extent that we can recognize it as reasonable in all its aspects. Everything real is reasonable, and everything reasonable is real. You can scoff, but the sneer is cheap. You can even scoff at such passion and write it off, as Bergson does! But the sneer is cheap. That is not the point. The point is that this one-sidedness was bound to emerge from the very depths of German national character, because, by immersing himself in this pure, crystal-clear thought, which emerged through Hegel in the development of the spiritual being of humanity, because man thereby grows together in this pure thought with what, in turn, pulses and weaves through the world as pure thought. What matters is not the thoughts that Hegel produced, but the feeling that he associated with his thought life, this feeling: to know oneself as one with the divine thinking that permeates the world and that is reflected in the individual human soul. Everywhere it is the exaltation, the strengthening, the energizing of the self that is sought, in order to find, through this exaltation, energizing, strengthening of the self, that which can open up in the innermost part of the soul, can reveal itself as the most divine, which in the life of human beings, in the life of all beings, in the life of all nature, reveals itself.

These thoughts were too great, these aspirations were too comprehensive, which emerged from the three – I would say – most powerful world view personalities of the German people, to immediately gain a complete foothold. But they are there. And they should be considered not in so far as they said this or that, but in so far as the German essence can be recognized by the fact that such thoughts and feelings and possibilities of knowledge lay within it. Our intention cannot be to get to know Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, but to get to know the German essence in its revelations, in so far as they express this German essence. That is what matters.

Certainly, this world view of German Idealism, this tripartite world view, as I would call it, has passed its peak, the justified peak of the scientific world view. And so far, no one has been able to combine both, this scientific world view and this world view of German Idealism, in a living way. But they will become one. And it is my conviction that it is precisely through spiritual science that this becoming one can be made possible.

What does the Italian ask today — I mean, insofar as he grows out of his nationality, not as an individual — what does he ask, how does what he creates as a world view relate to religious feelings? What does the Frenchman ask about when he wants to develop a scientific world view? The Englishman asks more about it. But he asks about it in a peculiar way. We can study this with Darwin, but also with many others. This Darwin seeks a world view purely from the facts of the physical world. But he draws no conclusions from it. He allows to exist alongside the world view that is based only on convention, on external origin. And so we find that Darwin does not feel the need to somehow modify his convictions about spiritual matters by creating an external world view about the physical world - although, by immersing himself in German development, this does become a big, all-encompassing question. The German cannot see a mere mental image based on tradition alongside a natural image, because that would seem like a lie to him. And he would rather accept Haeckel's materialism than a British world view, which can place the most pious sentiments next to naturalism without motivation and without seeking a connection.

Therefore, we are witnessing such a tragic phenomenon, one that I would go so far as to call heartbreaking. Ernst Haeckel, who today, out of his German sensibilities, is vigorously turning against Britain, has become completely Germanized, and with stronger words than some others, because basically his entire world view is based on Huxley and Darwin. Anyone who can sense what can live in the human soul from the heights of a world view will see the tragedy in Haeckel's soul, the tragedy that is based purely on the fact that the German - Haeckel - could not, like Darwin, let a spiritual world view exist alongside a purely natural world because he strove for wholeness and did not have the strength, like Fichte, like Schelling, like Hegel, to get into the spirit, and therefore constructed a world view that was directed towards Darwinism, towards the contemplation of external nature.

But one should not think that what is now beginning to assert itself, where spiritual science begins, that what this spiritual science itself has to say, could basically be based on anything other than - I would say - the world view of German idealism. That is, so to speak, the root. And spiritual science will have to be its blossoms and fruits. In spiritual science, we speak of the fact that the human soul can be shaped in a certain way – and those of you who have listened to me here in the past year will know what these various methods there are for slowly freeing the soul, as it were, from the physical, from the bodily, so that it may, as it were, enter the spiritual world outside the body and truly see the spiritual world. We know that we really see the spiritual world when we undergo certain spiritual exercises in the soul. The spiritual researcher cannot conduct external experiments, but he conducts research in a higher, spiritual realm just as the natural scientist does. He brings his soul to the point where this soul can truly free itself from the tools of the body, and also from the thinking apparatus, and can face the spiritual phenomena of the world as a soul. Once these things are considered in a deeper sense, it will be found that what we call meditation and concentration of thought today, through which the soul attains liberation from physical existence, through which it recognizes within itself the eternal powers that pass through birth and death and remain present when man lays aside his physical body. It will be recognized that these exercises had their strongest beginning in the days when Fichte wanted to strengthen the will, Schelling the mind, and Hegel the thought; for it is essentially the strengthening of thinking, feeling, and willing that brings the soul to contemplate the eternal, whereby we also bring the soul to that objectivism by which it recognizes that it carries within itself an eternal essence, which has united with the physical body through birth, and which re-enters the spiritual world for other experiences of existence when the outer, physical body is discarded.

The world view of German idealism has not yet been able to lead to actual spiritual science, just as the root is not yet the flower and the fruit. But if one does not want to use materialism in its most real form to contemplate the spirit, where, for example, one uses external events, which can only exist in the sensual-physical world, to recognize the spirit, when one physical nature to recognize the spirit, but when one wants to recognize the spirit through the spirit, then one will find that one has the best guidance in what Fichte, Schelling, Hegel tried to do.

And when we speak today of the fact that man, completely absorbed in himself, is searching for the foundations of his soul, by having to live what we call meditation, and when we now turn our gaze again to the whole German national spirit, we cannot do so in that dreamy way, like the Asian-minded spirit, but in a lively way. Through the elevation and invigoration of the self, what Fichte, Schelling and Hegel sought has come about: a meditation of the whole German people, a striving for knowledge of the real spirit. And in this striving for knowledge of the real spirit, there really was a release of the soul from the body. And to prove this to you, I would like to read a few words from Schelling, where Schelling says:

“The soul in man is therefore not merely the principle of individuality, but that by which he rises above all selfhood, by which he becomes capable of the sacrifice of self, disinterested love, and, what is the highest, of the contemplation and knowledge of the essence of things.”

This liberation of the soul from the body is the goal of German idealism's world view. This world view is not a one-sided scientific one, it is not something that can be gained through an international science, but it is something by which the soul of man in all its powers, in its totality, makes itself inclined and suited to face the divine-spiritual of the world directly.

The depth of feeling cannot be conceived from this world view. And basically, something always weaves and lives in the deepest striving of the German for a world view of what Jakob Böhme expresses so beautifully:

"When you see the depth

he means the blue depth of the sky

“heaven and the stars and look at the earth,”

says Jakob Böhme

“See your God, and in the same you live and are also. And the same God reigns through you and also reigns you.” “You are created from this God and live in the same. Also, all your knowledge stands in this God, and when you die, you will be buried in this God.”

This is the depth that is inseparable from German thought, and that can be sought within the West on the paths that are indispensable for the further development of humanity, that which the Aryan Indian seeks on paths that can no longer be the paths of the present, that must be abandoned must be abandoned for the sake of the present, what is sought as an experience of the Divine-Spiritual permeating the world in a world picture that does not exclude sensuality, but which also encompasses the spirit and includes sensuality, indeed, which recognizes sensuality itself as a spiritual one.

Such is the world view, dear attendees, such is the world view of German Idealism, sought on new paths of life in the Divine-Spiritual, but not by a damping down of the I, of the self, but by an upward forcing, so that the I and that which, as Divine-Spiritual, pulsates through the world, can become one, that is, can experience each other in each other. And so this striving for a world view in German Idealism actually places itself in the context of the entire more recent historical development, insofar as it is spiritual, and knows: because it is about a world view that has been experienced, that is why the German is so difficult to understand. For one would have to be able to identify with his experience, one would have to seek in his totality that which he seeks as a totality, and which the others can only see as one-sidedness.

And if we now turn our gaze away from Western and Central Europe and look towards Eastern Europe, we find a people living there in large areas who, above all, are characterized by the fact that the soul has not yet emerged at all , neither to the sentient soul nor to the consciousness soul nor to the mind soul, that it also does not grasp what can be experienced in the I, but that it still longs and wants to see, quite like an external being, what pulses through the world as its essence. The Russian people are a very peculiar people. They are a very peculiar people because, unlike the peoples of the West, they do not have within themselves the source from which a world view can arise. The longing to receive a world view from outside lives in this Russian people, but at the same time there is an unwillingness to receive this world view from the West. That is why in modern Russian literature we repeatedly encounter the view that all Western and Central European culture is rotten and dead, and that only from the young Russian spiritual life can arise that world view which can redeem humanity. Again and again it comes to us. I would like to say: It comes to us in such a way that one sees the enormous arrogance that lies in regarding everything Western as something decrepit and wanting to start the world over, but with the awareness that one is starting with something better.

And so we see in Russian minds, for example in Herzen, as in his - one only has to read his writing “From the Other Bank” - as in his, to be sure, a precise knowledge - let us say, for example, of Hegel, also of the other German achievements in relation to an idealistic world view - as he explicitly says: With that, nothing is done. All of this is in the world. What he finds particularly unappealing about Hegel is that he claims that reality is reasonable. He claims that reality is fundamentally unreasonable and foolish; and that the Russian must first come to bring something reasonable to the world. For the other thing that is considered reasonable in Europe, he says, is decrepit and ripe for extinction. “From the other bank” is the title of his book, because, he says, all these minds: Hegel and the rest, have all stood on the other side of the river in a hustle and bustle that must disappear, that only deserves to be viewed from the other bank.

But on the other hand, one must say that at least this Russian national soul understood something at the end of the nineteenth century, understood it while at the same time connecting it with a tremendous arrogance. As it were, the Russian national soul looked out over the vast expanse of Asia and saw that something there was also ripe for destruction and needed to be fertilized by the West. But what was to fertilize was seen as the Russian element. And this is expressed very particularly in a book by Yushakov published in 1885. It is an interesting book, a very interesting book. Let us first consider the positive part, for it is interesting to let the world picture of German idealism take full effect on us. If you take it all in, you can say that through the way in which the German, in this idealism, seeks a world view, he creates in modern times that which Pan-Asianism created in primeval times, which found expression in Asia, but at an earlier stage of human development.

How does the Russian Yushakov see the matter? Well, of course, he first finds a Russian mission, Russianizing all over Asia. Then he says: Well, in Asia one has seen how, over the course of long periods of time, two spiritual forces have confronted each other, so to speak. And the ancient Iranians – he says, Yushakov – saw quite correctly these two opposing spiritual forces as Ahriman and Ormuzd, in the Iranians, Persians, Indians and so on – Ahriman and Ormuzd. In the Iranians, Ormuzd was the predominant influence. Ormuzd worked in such a way that man sought to bring forth from nature everything that could be turned to his benefit. Work with nature could have made man rich, if the earlier Asiatic spirit had not been condemned from the start, by its suppression of the ego, to a kind of dream existence, and not to a certain degree of elevation. But in a way these Iranians, under the leadership of Ormuzd, were happy. Then came the Turanian spirit under the leadership of Ahriman, which devastated everything. Yushakov says that the Russians are destined to restore the balance between Ormuzd and Ahriman in Asia, in the whole of Asia, because the whole of Asia must be flooded and churned up by the way in which order and harmony can be created between Ormuzd and Ahriman from Russian spiritual life. After all, what have the Europeans done in Asia so far? What have they done that must arouse the disgust of the Russians in particular, that must show the Russians how they must be different in everything they accomplish? What have these Europeans done? They have discovered over the centuries that under the stimulus of the Ormuzd force, the Asians produce many, many material goods. They set out to snatch from the Asians what they had acquired under the beneficent influence of Ormuzd – so the Russian says; the Russians must come and join forces with the Asians in Asia, not out of selfishness but out of love, and they must help the Asians to defeat Ahriman. And now he goes on to explain how Russia has the task of liberating the Asians from Ahriman through selfless devotion to and coexistence with the Asian peoples; while the Europeans have so far only taken from them what they had acquired under the beneficent Ormuzd.

And it is quite characteristic of the Russian Yushakov to find in which European nation he can identify the one that has primarily stolen the Ormuzd goods from the Asians, and in which European nation he believes that it must be thoroughly and energetically opposed by the Russians. Yushakov calls the thieves of the Ormuzd culture of Asia the English, namely! I think that this is particularly interesting today, in our time, because we will find a remarkable connection in this alliance between Russianness and Englishness. In 1885, as I said, Yushakov wrote in his book “The Anglo-Russian Conflict”: “Ah, these poor Asian peoples, what they have become through the English!” These English have treated these poor Asian peoples as if these Asian peoples were there for no

“to clothe themselves in English cloth, fight with English weapons, work with English tools, eat out of English vessels, and play with English baubles.”

And further he says:

"England exploits millions of Hindus, but its very existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula; I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland - I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this state of affairs, which is as glorious as it is sad.

Now, esteemed attendees, I would like to say that the Russian world view is still in the future, and that this has a truly irrepressible nature alongside, I would say, absolute passivity. This is where all the grotesque contradictions that confront us when we engage with this Russian world view come from. And yet, again and again in the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, we are confronted with the fact that what we have been able to characterize, and what we needed to characterize, of the outstanding Russian minds, really by stating the facts - and I have actually only tried to present facts in order to characterize the idealistic world view of the Germans - that this idealistic world view is presented as something decrepit, as something that must be overgrown by that which emanates from Russia. And especially at the end of the nineteenth century, it is not only the legacy of Peter the Great in the political sphere - anyone who takes my writing in hand, “Thoughts During the Time of War,” will see how this conviction lived in the most outstanding Russian minds, that Russianism must expand towards the West.

They soon abandoned the Pan-Asian dream and the European dream arose from the belief that the aging Western and Central European culture would have to experience salvation after the Russians conquered Constantinople, destroyed Austria, destroyed Germany and so on. Only deeply insightful Russians themselves were able to see through what this was actually about. And I cannot refrain from quoting what a reasonable Russian, Solowjow, said about this arrogance of the Russians from his Russian point of view. Solowjow wants to refute such a spirit, the Danilewski, who has so rightly pointed out how Europeanism must be eradicated root and branch and replaced by the Russian. And Solowjow replies. Danilewski has in fact brought to light the saying

“Why does Europe not love us?”

And Solowjow answers.

“Europe,”

says Danilewski,

“is afraid of us as the new and higher type of civilization, which is called upon to replace the decrepitude of the Romance-Germanic civilization.”

“Nevertheless,”

writes Solowjow,

“both the content of Danilevsky's book and his later admissions, as well as those of his like-minded friend,”

Soloviev means Strakhov,

“point to a different answer.”

And now Solowjow gives his answer from what he calls the Russian soul:

“Europe looks at us with hostility,”

says Solowjow,

"and with apprehension, because dark and unclear elemental forces live in the Russian people, because its spiritual and cultural forces are poor and insufficient, but its demands are clearly and sharply defined. The calls for what the Russian people want as a nation resound powerfully out into Europe: that it wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, conquer Germany, conquer Constantinople and, if possible, also India. And when we are asked how we intend to make humanity happy after all the destruction and ruin we have wrought, what spiritual and cultural rejuvenation we will bring to world development, then 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 a different, more important question that is closer to us: “Why and how did we get sick?”

And now Solowjow answers the question of why Russia is sick. And from the answer he gives, I think you can see, dear attendees, that he thinks differently about how to cure this disease than those who are now leading Russia against Europe, who believe that sick Russia should be cured by stamping the corroded culture of Central Europe into the ground. But Solowjow says:

"Physically, Russia is still quite strong, as it showed in the last Russian war.

That was the war in the 1870s.

"So our suffering is a moral one. According to the words of an old writer, we are burdened by the sins hidden in the national character and not conscious of them - and so it is above all necessary to bring these into the light of clear consciousness. As long as we are spiritually bound and paralyzed, all our elementary instincts can only harm us. The essential, indeed the only essential question for true patriotism is not the question of power and vocation, but of Russia's sins.

And Solowjow himself tried to absorb as much as possible of Western European and especially Central European culture into his thinking. And to combine it with what the Russian people have as a result of their Orthodox faith. That is precisely what makes Solowjow great.

But he also became important for another reason. We have seen the revival – I would like to say, already in Central Europe, of the great period of German Idealism, which initially fell into a kind of dream but did not live on any less because of it. We have also seen a revival of intellectual Slavophilism there, which has now become a kind of intellectual Pan-Slavism. They tried to justify, almost with scientific ideological arguments, that the Russian spirit must come over Europe. Solowjow took a look at that, really immersed himself in the works of those who wanted to be completely original by showing the essence of the Russian world view, how it must come over Europe. And what did Solowjow find? Very strangely, he found only Western European ideas everywhere, and not exactly the best ones, those Western European ideas that are derived from the great ideas of the world view of German idealism as minor ideas. These have become interwoven, and from them they have justified their spiritual Slavophilism.

It is a very characteristic phenomenon, very characteristic in that what must happen in reality does happen, that the forces that come from the world-historical mission of the German people must work, that they are needed within the world views of the other nations.

That is what I have tried to put before you today, ladies and gentlemen, that this world view of German idealism, which lives within the German nation and which is destined to bring forth greater and greater things for the whole of humanity from the German nation in the development of the world Germanic people. One need only look at this world view of German idealism objectively, and not, as our enemies are doing, try to justify their actions and hatred of what the Germans have achieved in the intellectual field. Of course, the German could never help but look objectively at how the intellectual achievements of other nations compare with those of the Germans. The German always has that which he calls his Germanness more in mind as a duty, while the other nations really do not understand what the German actually means by his national principle.

Carneri, an important or perhaps even the most important Austrian philosopher of the nineteenth century, Carneri – the wonderful man who, from an ailing body, also tried to grasp world-view ideas on the basis of Darwinism but built pure, noble, ethical thoughts on the basis of this Darwinism, the German deepened this Darwinism – Carneri now also delves into a consideration of the different national souls of the European peoples. And with such a mind, which speaks not out of passion but out of knowledge, one can already see that what spiritual science creates out of its knowledge about the different national souls has already been instinctively recognized.

What has emerged in English pragmatism as a concept of truth is that one should actually only use the truth in order to find one's way in the world. Carneri says, not yet using the word “pragmatism”, which was only coined very recently: the English are certainly very often ahead: they are practical, practical. They can apply their practicality to anything they can think of, create and invent. But they are so practical that their practicality has even led them – Carneri says this, as I said, from a deep insight – to the fact that the insight that they produced the greatest playwright of all time, Shakespeare, had to be taught to them by the Germans. That is absolutely the case. For whoever has to write the history of the recognition of Shakespeare will have to write a chapter of the history of German intellectual life, not English intellectual life. Shakespeare was only recognized from the depths of the idealistic German world view. And Shakespeare is actually homeless in today's England.

We do not need to talk in the way that French philosophers or Englishmen talk about German nature today. We can simply point to that which is. But in pointing to it, we are aware that it is the force that must work, must work when the great world conflict has been decided, which now presents humanity with the greatest task that has ever been set. Ladies and gentlemen, the weapons, the circumstances, will decide what happens next, not the word. But there is also something to be decided that will only be decided slowly and gradually: that is the full penetration of the German spirit into the overall development of humanity. And certainly, it is not for me in this reflection to point out the more detailed cause of the war or the like. But the consciousness that must live in us in this time is certainly connected with what we can call: a sinking into the own essence of the German people and that which must continue to live and work in the German people, and in which we must trust.

What is the external situation like? Yes, actually in a most peculiar way. It is remarkable that this thought is so rarely expressed – not by us, but by our enemies. Do these enemies really need to hate the German character so much? If one may put the question in this way, does the German character take up so much of the earth's surface? The figures also answer this question: the Entente Powers possess 68 million square kilometers of the earth; the Central European Powers, on the other hand, possess 6 million square kilometers! 68 million square kilometers against 6 million square kilometers. The Central European powers have 150 million inhabitants; the Entente powers 777 million! One should also reflect on this outside the borders of Central Europe, and consider what it means in the face of this fact that 777 million people are standing against 150 million people and do not want to defeat them in open battle, but want to starve them out by surrounding them. That is the better part of valor! But to draw attention to such things so readily - it is understandable that one does not love that, and that one can love in contrast the suspicions and slanders of what the Germans have not only achieved intellectually, but are, because what has been achieved can show it to anyone who wants to see it.

Admittedly, it is easier to become discouraged when considering the German character as a Frenchman, for example, who finds – and has also told his Parisians – that a Frenchman, the same Frenchman, incidentally, who first spoke of the deep friendship between the German character and the Frenchman, who was the first to speak of the deep friendship between the German and the French character here in Germany when he traveled around: “He says that you can see from some phenomena of the German language, for example, how the Germans cannot have the nobler side of the human ideal in their world view because they do not have words for it. For example, the Germans have no word for 'generosity'; so they don't have this beautiful quality at all. The French, on the other hand, have no word for 'gloating', which the Germans often use: 'Schadenfreude haben'. So the Germans have gloating in their world view, the French have generosity!

One day, esteemed attendees, it will be recognized that there is much to whitewash and dream away, because one cannot place oneself in relation to this Central European intellectual culture today, that if one places oneself as one should place oneself, one could still appear to some extent as a person justified before himself. If you want to characterize the Germans from abroad today, you need something other than objectivity and truth. Another Frenchman, Ernest Renan, did indeed once manage –- even during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 –- to say: when he became acquainted with German literature and German intellectual life in the time of Herder and Goethe, it was as if he had entered a temple. And what he had known before seemed to him to be no more than worn scraps of paper compared to the inner gold value, compared to what German intellectual life has produced as a world view at the time of its highest idealism. But the same Frenchman, he now decides, his Frenchmen at the same time to establish such a relationship in Europe that it corresponds to the value of the German essence that he himself has acknowledged? No, says Ernest Renan, who says that what the rest of European humanity has achieved in comparison to German intellectual life is like elementary mathematics in comparison to the differential calculus. He says:

"This is a solemn hour. In France, there are two schools of thought. The first judges thus: “Let us put an end to this hateful trade as quickly as possible; let us give up everything, Alsace, Lorraine; let us sign the peace; but then, hatred to the death, preparations without rest, alliance with whomever it suits, unlimited concessions to all Russian pretensions; a single goal, a single driving force for life: extermination against the Germanic race.

This trend has triumphed in France. Nothing else can be said, except that this trend has triumphed in France. But if one has an idea of what one actually wants to destroy, if one swears destruction on the Germanic race - one actually means only the German people - then one must not admit it to oneself. And these individual nations must not admit it to themselves at all. They dare not even think about what might live in the German national character as the soul of this national character, out of which, for example, the high point of the German world view of idealism arose. They dare not admit it to themselves. Therefore, they have to whitewash it with something else. And with what? For example, Russia has to whitewash it with a mission - of course with the mission of rejuvenating Europe. One of their newer poets once characterized the French, his own French, by pointing out how the cockerel that crows in the morning when the sun rises becomes aware that there is a connection between his crowing and the rising of the sun. He imagines: if I don't crow, the sun cannot rise.

Of course, dear attendees, the tragedy of the present French people should not be in the slightest diminished by this; because it is not about the misled people at all. For those who have in fact led this “led people astray”, who can already be compared to the crowing cock, who believe that if they do not crow the sun will not rise - for there are leading French minds who hold this view: that nothing can happen in the world unless they crow to it – for this, Frenchness needs a new fantasy image from time to time. And it is from such a fantasy image that those who, in such a desolate way, especially in Paris, such as Bergson or Boutroux, want to so disparage the German essence in what is its soul.

The English – yes, these English, one does not want to do them wrong. Do the Russians need a new mission, the French a new fantasy image of their own greatness in the world – they have always needed that, and they have only ever forgotten that they had to be pushed back so that the others would also have some space – yes, what do the English need? One would not want to be harsh; one would want to be fair to the enemy. But when you hear the enlightened minds over there saying that the English only went to war because they, with their fine sense of morality, could not reconcile the fact that the unfortunate Belgian people had been invaded – because they are enthusiastic about the fact that small nations can live out freedom and independence – when you look at how strangely these Englishmen have taken on the freedom of these small nations, yes, and then hear how the enlightened minds over there keep declaiming: “For freedom” and against “unfreedom” England had to go to war, because the Germans, they are completely imbued with the saying - an outstanding English politician said that recently — the Germans are completely imbued with the saying: “might is right”; he forgot, the poor — clever man, I mean to say — that this saying was first made by Thomas Hobbes, the Englishman, yes, even advocated as an entire philosophy, that this saying is deeply anchored in the whole world view of English naturalism. Yes, if one wants to be objective, dear attendees, one cannot say otherwise: the English need a new lie to conceal the truth and justify themselves to the world. There is simply no other way than to say that this must be the verdict of history, at least with regard to the behavior of the speaking people during the war.

The Italians – they need something to whitewash what is really there. They are the people of the sentient soul. Before the war, before the world war, an outstanding Italian politician confessed to me – because one did not need to be naive before the world war, believing that when the world war came, Italy would be on the side of the medium-sized powers, right? – an outstanding Italian politician confessed to me at the time: When the world war comes, Italy will have to take part. Yes, but why? “It simply has to take part,” he said, “because the Italian people are lazy, they are depraved. If they are allowed to continue living like this for much longer,” he said, “they will become completely depraved. They need to feel something properly again” - that's where we have the sentient soul - “they need to have a feeling, a sensation.” I am not saying that this is the only cause of war. The Russian needs a new mission, since the Pan-Asian one has been extinguished; the Englishman needs a new lie; the Frenchman needs a new fantasy; the Italian needs a new sensation in – yes, in the form of a new saint, because it must first be possible to grasp it with the sentient soul: holy egoism was invented in Italy, holy egoism. In the name of holy egoism, we have been told over and over again, Italy went to war. A new saint, a new saint who is fully worthy of his great representative d'Annunzio. D'Annunzio, the priest of holy egoism – a sensation, as if made for the inner pages of the sentimental soul character!

I do not think we need to fall back on the mistakes of our enemies when we think about what is at the heart of the German people and their tendency towards a particular world view. We only need to look at what we have found to be great, significant and effective in this German people, in the folklore of Central Europe. In this respect, the Germans of Austria and the Germans of Germany are one and the same. Today they feel completely at one. The concept of Mitteleuropa must not only become a reality in an economic sense, but also in a spiritual sense. This can be said in particular by someone who, like me, lived in Austria for thirty years.

And when we look, esteemed attendees, at what appears to us as the innermost – I may say – spiritual essence, as the spiritual essence of German nationality, we must say: this essence is not directly something that can only be grasped in terms of concepts and ideas. It is something that is experienced at the center, at the core of the German soul. The German soul must remain, which can only flourish if the German soul can carry it alive from the present into the future. History will be able to show this, the actual course of the history of the Germans and Germanness, of all humanity on earth, that there is something in this German nation that has only just taken root and put forth leaves, and that carries within itself the strength to become blossoms and fruit.

But we Germans can doubt the arrogance of other peoples without being unjust to other peoples. Especially in the present difficult times, but also in the great and promising times to come, we can realize how we can feel German precisely when we also permeate ourselves with its highest development, with its spiritual life, how we can then believe: Yes, this spiritual life shows itself to us in its roots and in its leaves in such a way that we can have the deepest faith and trust in the blossoms and fruits to be borne. And so, precisely from this point of view, by keeping in mind the numbers 777 million people against 150 million people, 68 million square kilometers against 6 million square kilometers, we should never allow ourselves to be distracted from the fact that our German past presents itself to us in such a way that it guarantees our German future by its own strength, precisely by its spiritual strength, and we should never never allow ourselves to be dissuaded from the fact that our German past presents itself to us as being guaranteed by its own strength, and especially by its intellectual strength, for our German future, to which we want to fully embrace not only out of mere instinct and feeling, but also out of bright insight.

Dear Attendees!

Once again, as in my previous attendances during this fateful time, it seems appropriate to me to begin with a consideration that is related to the development of German intellectual life, and then tomorrow to come to a subject that more strictly belongs to spiritual science.

And if today's reflection is to be linked to the development of German thought, then I would like to emphasize, first and foremost, that this reflection should not fall into the trap of establishing an external connection between all kinds of intellectual changes and the fateful historical facts of our time, a trap into which so many reflections today fall. At a time when the fate of nations is decided by the force of arms, the word cannot possibly intervene, meaningfully intervene, for example, in that which is to be decided by the force of arms. But this is the age in which self-reflection - including national self-reflection - seems to be entirely appropriate.

Now, when it is said, from the point of view of science, including spiritual science, that certain developmental forces of such a spiritual science are rooted in popular forces, as is to happen today, one will immediately encounter, dear attendees, all kinds of objections, objections that are extremely reasonable because they are so self-evident, from a certain point of view, that they seem extraordinarily plausible precisely because of their self-evidence to those who do not want to rise to certain higher points of view. In such a consideration, one will repeatedly encounter the objection that science as such, and everything that somehow wants to claim that it is so, is said to be “international,” and that one is not entitled to claim any rootedness in popular culture.

This objection can be appropriately countered only by means of a comparison. “International”, dear attendees, is also the moon, for example. It is the same for everyone; but what different things the various peoples have to say about the moon! Of course someone may object: Yes, that is in the realm of poetry. Yes, of course; but anyone who delves a little deeper into the spiritual life of humanity will notice that – even if the observations and insights relating to the external, actual things are all the same in the science of the moon – that which comes from the innermost drives of the human soul, on the basis of what man can recognize, that this is different for each individual people, and that each people penetrates more or less deeply into the secrets of existence, depending on their different dispositions and drives. And the overall progress of humanity does not depend on what is the same everywhere, but on what is incorporated from the driving forces of the overall development of humanity, which are peculiar to the innermost individual nature of each people.

From this point of view, it should be pointed out today how German nationality is intimately connected with the endeavour not only to found an external science of the senses, but also to penetrate deeply into the spiritual secrets of existence – how the very search for a way to arrive at the spiritual secrets of existence is peculiar to much of what can be called German nationality.

And there is another reason, esteemed attendees, for such a consideration here, because it is my conviction – not arising from a narrow-minded, parochial sentiment, but from what I believe is the appropriate consideration of the German essence that what has been advocated here for years as spiritual science is strongly rooted in the general spiritual life of the German people, that all the seeds of a genuine spiritual science are present in the spiritual development of the German people.

Dear attendees, I will take as my starting point three personalities about whom I had the honor of speaking here in this city a few months ago, when I tried to sketch out the world view of German idealism. Even at the risk of repeating certain details, I will take as my starting point the three great figures who appear within the development of thought and spirit of the German people and who create a world view that provides the foundation, the background, one might say, for what was then artistically and poetically achieved by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Lessing and so on within German intellectual life, as a flowering of the newer intellectual life in general, which can only be compared with the tremendous flowering of human intellectual life in ancient Greece: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were the starting point once again.

Fichte stands before us – and I already remarked this in the lecture a few months ago – as he has something like the feeling that he has given his people everything that he has to give as the best, in terms of a world view and insights into the nature of his people, and that he has gained this through a dialogue with the German national spirit itself. Carried inwardly by the consciousness that the most German essence speaks out of his soul, Johann Gottlieb Fichte is.

It is also he who, not only in one of the most difficult times of German intellectual development, found tones that were highly suited to inspiring the entire nation to rise up from oppression, but he was also [the one] who, in the way he wants to receive a world view for his knowledge, so clearly shows that he seeks this world view from the qualities of the human soul, from the powers of the human soul, which are essentially German qualities of spiritual life, German powers. He emphasized that. And that is certainly the truth with regard to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

And what is it that is so distinctly German about Johann Gottlieb Fichte's endeavors? It consists in the fact that, out of his Germanness, as he himself calls it, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was led to seek in a living way to deepen and at the same time strengthen his own soul-being, his own ego, and was convinced from the living inner that what permeates the world as divine-spiritual, illuminates and warms, can flow into this I, if it experiences itself in the right way, if it becomes fully aware of itself. So that, in Fichte's view, what speaks outside in all natural phenomena, what speaks in the course of history, but also what speaks behind natural phenomena and behind history as spiritual forces, flows into human will.

The human will that asserts itself in the self is only the innermost, secret expression of the soul for that which permeates and warms all beings in the world, from the most materialistic to the most spiritual. This intimate interconnection of the experiences of the soul with the great mystery of the universe, as far as man can fathom it, that is the very German in Johann Gottlieb Fichte's striving.

And if you observe Fichte as he presents himself, you can see how this is to be judged, how it is not something invented, something acquired, but how it arises from the most secret depths of his soul as his natural disposition. To substantiate this, a few details from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's life will be given. As I said, even at the risk of repeating details that I have already taken the liberty of mentioning.

For example, we see this Johann Gottlieb as a small, seven-year-old boy in front of his father's house, who was a poor master weaver. We see Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seven years old, standing in front of the small stream that flows past his father's house; and he has thrown a book into this stream. His father comes along and is amazed at what has happened. What had happened? Well, Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a six- to seven-year-old boy and a diligent student. That which is called a sense of duty lived in his soul with the greatest strength; and because he was so diligent, his father gave him a book for the last Christmas: “Gehörnte Siegfried” (Siegfried Horned). The seven-year-old boy, who could already read fluently, was so extremely interested in the book of the “Horned Siegfried” and he was always absorbed in the great figure of the horned Siegfried; so that one could have noticed that he had become a little less diligent at school, and it was held against him. Now, within the life of the will, even in the seven-year-old boy, the soul's duty stirred: he no longer wanted to read on, nor be tempted to read on in the book of horned Siegfried. And to be quite sure, he throws the book into the stream, crying! Such was the nature of the one who, according to his own consciousness, was to create the German worldview for his time!

And again, let us look at nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. One Sunday morning, the estate neighbor had come to hear the sermon. But he had arrived too late, and so was unable to hear the sermon. Some of the squire's acquaintances had hit on the expedient of sending for little Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was so good at listening to sermons that he could repeat them word for word. So they fetched nine-year-old Johann Gottlieb Fichte. After he had appeared awkwardly at first in his blue peasant's coat, he then stood and repeated the sermon, but now not in a way that was only an external adherence to the words, but with the most inner participation, not only in terms of memory, but with the most inner participation, so that one saw: everything that had been spoken lived a very own life in his soul.

These are the small traits that show how intimately entwined Johann Gottlieb Fichte's soul was with what he called duty on the one hand, and on the other hand with what was in him the urge to elevate his own human ego so powerfully that what willfully permeates and warms the world as primal laws could live and reveal itself in him. And how he later aimed to work when he was appointed professor in Jena is told to us by people who heard him speak and who assure us that when he spoke, his words were serious and strict, but at the same time forceful, as if interwoven with the language that spoke the secrets of the world from the nature of things themselves. His language was like the rolling of thunder, and the words discharged themselves – so someone who heard him speak and was friends with him tells us – the words discharged themselves like lightning. His imagination was not lavish – we are told – but it was majestic and grand. And so we are told that he lived in the realm of supersensible ideas, not like one who merely dwells within it, but like one who essentially mastered this realm of ideas.

And it was also peculiar, for example, how he perceived his teaching profession: there was not much of what one is accustomed to from a speaker or teacher. He was in constant inner work. His preparation for any lecture or speech consisted not so much in working out the content as in trying to place himself, with his soul, in that spiritual inwardness that he wanted to infuse not only through the content of the words, but through the way in which he , he strove to work in such a way that it was not so much the content of his words that mattered as the fact that the souls of his listeners were moved by the whole way in which the spiritual was expressed in the flow of his speech. Thus, again, someone who knew him well could say: He strove not only to educate good people, but great souls.

We should like to draw attention to a little-known trait that must be mentioned again and again if we want to bring to life the direct and lively way in which Fichte related to his audience. For example, the deep thinker Steffens told us that in Jena Fichte said to his listeners: “Think the wall!” – The people found that easy, of course: they thought the wall. After he had let them think the wall for a while, he said: So, and now think the one who has just thought the wall! – Some were amazed!

This was an indication of one's own soul, in which that which flows through and warms the world at its deepest core should be ignited. However much he may have amazed people with this, at the same time it is also a testimony to how Fichte actually did not just want to convey spiritual ideas to his listeners with clever words. He wanted to work through words, not just in words. That is why it could happen that this man also sought to actively grasp the historical aspect of the creative national spirit. And in that he wanted to connect vividly, as with the workings of the world in general, he also wanted to connect vividly with that which is part of this world-working and lives close to him as a member of his nationality; he wanted to connect with the essence of the German national spirit. And no one can understand the meaning and the significance of the wonderful words which Johann Gottlieb Fichte addressed to the German people in his 'Discourses to the German Nation' during such a difficult period in the history of the German nation. No one can understand this unless he sees the connection between the way in which Fichte wanted to grasp the world-will in himself in his own ego, and then to carry the power that arose in his soul into action, into events, into the social and other forms of human coexistence, and into the conception of life.

There he stands before us – albeit in our way – this Johann Gottlieb Fichte! And – as I said – it is not out of narrow-minded patriotism, but rather out of actual observation that these things are to be said, which must now be discussed. We need not fall into the error that the enemies of the German spirit are now falling into, who not only accuse this German spirit, but even slander it in the truest sense of the word; we can take an objective point of view within the considerations of the German spirit and will be able, precisely through this objective point of view, to recognize in the right way what the essence of German nationality is.

Fichte wanted to grasp the will of the world in itself. And this will of the world was for him the bearer of what he called the duty of the world, which in turn separates into individual human duties. Thus, that which lives outside becomes for him a living being everywhere. But this also puts him in opposition to everything, as he himself emphasized in his “Discourses to the German Nation.” You can read about this in my essay in my little booklet “Thoughts During the Time of War,” which is now out of print , but will soon be reissued, [how] he, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, seeks the living everywhere and is aware that he is thus in opposition to much of what he calls a dead science. And this dead science, Fichte also finds it among the Western European peoples, among the French and the British. Only, as I said, for the sake of actual characterization, not to impose anything on any people, may that be said; but it must be recognized in which relation the German spirit stands to the other national spirits in this fateful time!

In my earlier essay on the world picture of German Idealism, I pointed out that Descartes, Cartesius, is a typical example of the development of the French world-view at the beginning of the seventeenth century. I pointed out how he characteristically expresses that which lives in his worldview from his nationality, in that not only the mineral and plant world, but even the animal world is nothing more to him than a sum of living — not souled, but only moving — machines! That is the peculiarity of this Western mind, that it can only grasp a dead science at bottom.

In this respect, Fichte, with his living approach in all his works, stands in essential contrast to the path of knowledge and the striving of the West, [where] animals are like machines. This has continued. And not long before Johann Gottlieb Fichte worked in Germany to show life in all the facts and beings of the world from the living grasp of the secrets of the world, a descendant, I might say, of that Descartes - Cartesius - worked in France: de La Mettrie.

And while Cartesius at least conceded to man a special soul from inner experience, from inner experience, de La Mettrie, in an exaggeration of this western dead science, expressed himself in his book “Man a Machine” that even that which stands before us as a human being is itself part of the world in the same way as a mere machine; that we can understand the whole person by regarding him as the result of purely material processes and forces. According to de La Mettrie, everything about a person, including all soul qualities and activities, should be understood in such a way that the person is only recognized as a machine.

Of course, to a certain extent, man is a machine. This is not the essence of spiritual science, that it contradicts what such assertions have right about it; but that it can show other ways - we will talk about this tomorrow - that it can show other [supplementary] ways to this, that it knows other ways that also lead beyond the justified claims of materialism. De La Mettrie is basically, from the French folklore, one of the most significant minds of this view that the whole world of man is only a kind of mechanism. And it is interesting to consider the contrast between the Frenchman de La Mettrie and the German Johann Gottlieb Fichte. For de La Mettrie, everything about man is mechanism; for Fichte, everything is spirit. He received into his soul what he calls the will of the world, and for him, the external material world is only an internalized field for the performance of duties arising from the spirit. Hence that beautiful, that wonderful striving of Fichte to derive everything that appears to man in the world of the senses from the spirit; whereas, in de La Mettrie, everything is imbued with the goal of regarding the external physical as an immediately decisive impulse for the spiritual as well.

De La Mettrie is sometimes quite witty in such matters, for he is just as deeply immersed in his mechanistic worldview as Johann Gottlieb Fichte is in his spiritual worldview. For example, when de La Mettrie says in his book The Machine Stops Here: Can't you see how the body shapes the soul? Take a famous poet, for example, whose soul can be seen to consist of one half rascal and the other half Promethean fire. de La Mettrie was a little clever in not saying which poet he meant, but Voltaire flew into a rage at this remark. When he was told this, de La Mettrie said: Well, okay, I withdraw the one half of the claim – he meant half of Prometheus! – but I maintain the “filou.” He just expressed it in his own way; there's no need to press it. But if you take the individual statements, that man is a machine – and in this he is tireless in showing how the machine-like, the heating-up [gap in the transcript] in man, as it were, how that characterizes the whole man, causes satisfaction – that is where he sometimes becomes quite remarkable. And I don't know, and I don't know with what feelings a passage from 'Man a Machine' will be read in France today! I certainly don't want to quote it as something that a German, for example, needs to share; but I would like to quote it because it is quite characteristic and because – you will see in a moment why I would like to quote it – one could perhaps ask precisely from the point of view of spiritual science: how such a soul – he did deny that this was possible – but how such a soul, more than a hundred years after its death, looks down on the praise that has been exchanged between France and England, when he, de La Mettrie, the Frenchman, in his book “Man a Machine” proves how people's characters are dependent on the way the materialistic affects them, when he says the following:

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.

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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).