The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Whoever ¹ is coming forward at the present time with an examination of Goethe's Faust poem, encounters difficult circumstances. Scholars and writers have looked at this national drama of the Germans from the most diverse points of view imaginable and have created an immense body of literature about it. You only need to know a part of this literature to know that some of the difficulties that are supposed to stand in the way of understanding the poem have been artificially created by aesthetes, philosophers and philologists, that some of the riddles that one believes to find in the work are not really there, but only imagined. One must courageously get rid of a large part of the questions that have been attached to "Faust" if one wants to view and enjoy it in an unbiased way as a work of art. Only those who keep this fact in mind will be able to judge the book to which these lines are dedicated correctly and then read it with true pleasure.

With regard to the ways in which works of poetry are viewed, the historical approach currently has the upper hand. It traces the gradual creation of a work and seeks to show how the parts have been assembled by the artist over time. One need not be an enemy of this approach to realize that it can easily deprive us of the enjoyment and understanding of a work as an artistic whole. This understanding is not achieved by dissecting scholarship, but by the recreative imagination of the connoisseur and viewer, who is able to grasp the artistic unity of a work and to judge and feel the relationship of the parts to this unity. Among our contemporaries, Herman Grimm is exemplary for this approach based on the re-creative imagination; he provided a model of it in his book on Goethe.²

Veit Valentin takes this approach in his book on "Faust". He refers to Goethe himself, who claims to have understood his work in this way. In "Vorspiel auf dem Theater", Goethe allows the various moods that confront a work of art to find expression. The theater director, who pursues practical goals and knows the onlooking crowd, demands effective details from the poet and is then happy to dispense with the unity of the whole. "If you give a play, give it in pieces! ... What good is it if you present a whole? The audience will tear it to pieces." The poet rejects this with indignation: "Is it not unison that comes out of the bosom and swallows the world back into its heart?" "Who calls the individual to general consecration, where it beats in glorious chords? ... The power of man, revealed in the poet!"

Valentin is quite right to claim that at the time Goethe was writing the "Vorspiel auf dem Theater" (1797), he set himself the task of making "the ingeniously thrown scenes of the "Urfausv, which do not yet reveal any plan beyond the deeply moving, immediately gripping poetic effect of the individual fates, into elements of such a plan". "The wavering figures, rising again from the haze and mist of early youthful days, now gain solidity and clarity as members of a far-reaching plan in which they must attain heightened significance." Valentin's book is now intended to provide detailed proof that the poet has succeeded in achieving this goal. The author does not, however, fall into the mistake that many philosophical Faustians make. They have presented the matter as if poetry were merely the embodiment of an abstract concept, an idea of reason. Such explainers do not realize that instead of focusing on the vivid images and characters that are important in art, they direct our attention to dead skeletons of ideas that support the work of art but never exhaust its content. Valentin's method of explanation shows why a particular event, a particular expression of a character is found at a particular point in Faust. He proceeds in the same way as the aesthetician [explains] the strict unity and inner harmony of a Raphael composition. And it must be said that from this point of view, the inner regularity and consistent symmetry of the poetry appears in a completely new light.

In an ingenious way, Valentin shows why the actual dramatic-human development is followed at the beginning and end by a preparatory and concluding action in heaven; then the author explains how, within the drama taking place on earth, the poet first allows Mephistopheles' influence on Faust to grow in a logical development, and then allows Faust's independence to emerge more and more, until finally Mephistopheles only comes into consideration as a servant for Faust's very own plans. It is not possible to go into individual details here, but I would like to point out that some parts of the first part, which have so far seemed like arbitrary insertions, appear from Valentin's point of view as a necessary link in the development of the whole. Of fundamental importance, however, is the conception of the "Classical Walpurgis Night" and the appearance of Helen and the homunculus that confronts us here. Until the events at the imperial court, Faust has only experienced the pleasures that the present can offer. His higher nature is demonstrated by the fact that he is not lost in this life of pleasure. But isn't this present purely coincidental for Faust? Doesn't the question remain open? What would it be like if Faust had lived in a different time? Could he not have found conditions there that would have corresponded to his longing for pleasure? It must be shown that finite life can in no way satisfy Faust's aspirations, because he wants to penetrate the secrets of the infinite. Therefore, he must also be introduced to the conditions of past times. Goethe regarded ancient Greece as a type of the past. The shadows of the Greek world must be reawakened in order to be able to enter into a living relationship with Faust. The classical Walpurgis Night serves this purpose. The elemental forces of nature that create reality must be unleashed in order to revive the vanished figures of the previous world, which live on only in the idea, to a new presence. This is why the material forces of creation appear in the classical Walpurgis Night. In order to bring the archetype of feminine beauty, Helen herself, back to real life, however, not only physical and geological forces are required, but also an organic seed of life that must mingle with the purely material events. This is the homunculus that shatters on the shell throne of Galatea in order to animate the material elements so that they become ripe to lend corporeality to the idea of Helena.

It may be that Valentin has not yet hit the nail on the head with some of his remarks. But his approach seems to me to be one that is capable of correcting the errors it entails at the first attempt over time.

• 1. wants . Goethe's Faust poem in its artistic unity, illustrated by Veit Valentin, Berlin. Verlag von Emil Felber
• 2. NoteText

There is much ¹ today about "new art", about the "spirit of modernism", in view of the next recital by the court actor Mr. Neuffer, who will also be reciting poems by M. E. delle Grazie.. One sometimes has the impression that the whole younger generation is already filled with this spirit. Sometimes, however, there is something that casts serious doubt on the truth of this impression. An epic "Robespierre" by M.E. delle Grazie was published a year ago. More than in any other contemporary work of poetry, one should have seen in this epic the dawn of a new age. But the harsh critics of "modernism" seem to want to pass it by carelessly. They don't do much better than the much-maligned professors of aesthetics and literary history, who rarely have a feeling for the truly great of their own time. One of the most lauded literary judges of the present day, Hermann Bahr, found it not beneath his dignity to begin a short review of "Robespierre" with the words: "Otherwise blameless and nice people, who have nothing at all of the artist, are often suddenly compelled to ape the gestures of the poets." Anyone who speaks like this knows the airs and graces of "modernism", but not its deeper forces. M. E. delle Grazie's poetry is the reflection of the modern world view from a deep, strongly feeling, clear-sighted soul endowed with great artistic creative power. Just as the image of the French Revolution presents itself to a deep and proud nature, so has delle Grazie portrayed it. Just as Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses and the other heroes of the Trojan War appear before our imagination in vivid figures when we allow Homer's Iliad to take effect on us, so do Danton, Marat, Robespierre when we read delle Grazie's epic. Only those who are blind to the spirit of our time, or only understand its pose, can fail to recognize the significance of this poetry. There is nothing petty in the painful tones struck here. When delle Grazie describes suffering and pain, she does not do so because she wants to point to the misery of everyday life, but because she sees disharmony in the great development of mankind. Robespierre is the hero in whose soul lives everything that humanity has always called idealism. He ends tragically because the great dream of the ideals of humanity that he dreams must necessarily ally itself with the mean aspirations of lower natures. Rarely has a poet looked so deeply into a human soul as delle Grazie did into Robespierre's. The poet devoted ten years, the best of her life, to her work. During this time, her immersion in the history of the great French liberation movement went hand in hand with the study of modern science. She rose to the heights of human existence, where one sees through the deep irony that lies in every human life; where one can smile even at the nothingness of existence, because one has ceased to have any desire for it. We can trace the path that led her to this height in the poems she published before "Robespierre". Fifteen years ago, she published her first volume of poems, quickly followed by the epic "Hermann", the drama "Saul" and the novella "Die Zigeunerin". The captivating rhetorical verve, the creative power and the depth of thought, which reached their temporary climax in "Robespierre", already enliven these first products. Poems from which we believe we can hear the sound of nature itself are contained in the first volume mentioned above. While the poet was working on "Robespierre", she sent another collection of poems, "Italian Vignettes", and two stories, "The Rebel" and "Bozi", out into the world. The "Italian Vignettes" grew out of the mood that overcame her when she saw, during a trip to Rome, how human greatness can go hand in hand with human nothingness, Caesar power with ethical rot, a sense of mastery with a sense of slavery. With her clairvoyant eye, she saw this in the stony remains of a great age and expressed it in her "vignettes". In "Rebel" she portrays a gypsy from the Hungarian Tisza region who, despite his gypsy life, has risen to the heights of humanity, who sees through life in its depths so that he lives as a wise man among fools and recognizes truth where others only worship hypocritical masks. To shape this character in such a way that he stands before us in convincing truth, as delle Grazie has done, requires a deep insight into the world and a consummate artistic creative power. And in the story "Bozi", she proves that she can strike a note of true humor as well as sublime seriousness. "Bozi" is a buffalo, but not an ordinary herd buffalo, but a master buffalo, a superior buffalo. He does not conform to the rules laid down for buffaloes in the "eternal world order" and thus apes the entire high society of his place of residence.

Much is to be expected from a mind that begins like this. It should be the task of those who speak of "modern education" to follow the work of this genius.

• 1. talk

A tragedy in five acts by Goethe

Introduction

The drama fragment "Das Mädchen von Oberkirch" is printed for the first time in the Weimar Goethe edition. Only the first act, which we present here, has been performed. The second breaks off in the middle of a sentence. The two characters in the first act are joined by the clergyman Manner. We learn that both the Baron and Manner had previously joined the revolutionary movement, but were put off by the horrors of the terrorists. In the course of the conversation, it becomes clear that Manner also loves Marie. The baron explains that he had already wanted to make the girl his "under certain conditions" in the "times of prosperous happiness". Now he is relying primarily on the advantage that a union with one of the noblest daughters of the people would bring him and his family. He believes that this rationale will get through to the countess more easily than if he simply lets his love, the real motive, speak for itself. Manner believes that the mob will by no means be won over by the union, just as little as by the behavior of the prince, who gave himself the name of "Equality". "The terrible Jacobins are not to be deceived, they scent the trail of every legal man and thirst for the blood of everyone." When Manner sees that his rival cannot be swayed by these ideas, he asks him whether he is in agreement with Marie. The Baron has to confess that he had not even thought to make sure of this consent. The fragment breaks off at the moment when the Countess declares herself inclined to discuss with the Baron what would be most useful in the dangerous situation in which the family finds itself.

There is only a very poor outline for the sequel.

A. 1st Baroness (as the Countess is called in the scheme), Baron. 2. baroness, baron. 3. baroness, baron, man. 4. baroness, baron, the sansculottes. B. 1. baroness, Marie. 2nd Baroness, Marie, Manner. 3rd Municipality. C. 1. baroness, baron. 2nd Baroness, Marie. 3rd Marie. 4. Marie, Manner. 5. Marie. D. 1. Marie (with the leaf). 2. the Municipality. 3. the cathedral. 4. crowd, train. 5. address as reason. 6. adoration. 7. offers, consort. 8. turn. 9. capture. 5. Marie, Baron, Manner (consulting to save her), Sansculottes in addition.

Gustav Roethe, the editor of the drama fragment in the Weimar edition, published an essay in the "Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften in Göttingen" (Philologisch-historische Klasse 1895, Heft 4) in which he published his views on the time of composition and the content of the "Mädchen von Oberkirch" as Goethe had envisioned it. Roethe has undoubtedly correctly determined the time of origin. The play speaks of the unfortunate Prince Philipp Egalit&, who was executed on November 6, 1793, and of the cult of reason, which was celebrated for the first time in Paris on November 10, 1793, and was imitated in Strasbourg that same month. The idea for the drama therefore originated after this time. The other time limit results from the consideration that the "Mädchen von Oberkirch" must have been written before the "Natürliche Tochter". Both poems are reflections of the revolutionary events in Goethe's mind. But the "Natural Daughter" represents a more mature stage. Goethe no longer deals with the manifestations of the revolutionary movement in a region outside the place of origin of the revolution; he seeks out the social currents underlying the great upheaval in Paris itself. Goethe began work on the "Natural Daughter" in December 1799. The plan for the "Girl of Oberkirch" was therefore created between 1794 and 1799. Roethe is certainly right up to this point. Goethe's diaries provide no information about the genesis of the fragment. Roethe goes even further and would like to conclude from studies of Goethe's prose style, from the comparison of the characters in the "Aufgeregten" (1793 or 94) and in the "Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderter" (1794-95) with those in the "Mädchen von Oberkirch", that the fragment is close to the first-mentioned dramas and was written soon after them. He also believes that the conception of the revolution is clearer in "Hermann und Dorothea" than in "Mädchen von Oberkirch". "Hermann and Dorothea" was conceived before September 9, 1796. The drama fragment is therefore thought to have been written in 1795 or 96. However, considerations as to whether a poet uses certain stylistic turns or not, whether a character in a work appears more mature or not, stem from an overly mechanical view of the course of development when we are only talking about a period of 7 years.

For the hypothetical determination of the progression of the plot, Roethe draws on the story of Strasbourg, without arriving at a result in this way. The fact that the plot of Heyse's "Goddess of Reason" is essentially the same as that of Goethe's play also yields nothing. For Heyse replied to a question from Roethe (see the above-mentioned treatise p. 510) that his source studies were "more concerned with the mood of the time than with more precise historical facts" and that his drama was based on free invention. Roethe therefore feels compelled to construct the alleged plot by interpreting the scheme. But such an interpretation always has something dubious about it. There is nothing to suggest that Goethe would not have overturned important points of the thought-scheme when working it out. Anyone who reconstructs it runs the risk of constructing something that would never have come into existence in its supposed form. And if he wanted to say: but for the moment of writing, the construction is correct, then the answer must be: no one can know how many possibilities for shaping one of the points thrown out have more or less clearly crossed the poet's mind. Whoever wants to try to think or write the drama fragment to the end according to the plan may do so. He must only be aware that he is not dealing with Goethe's work, but with his own.

Peter Altenberg

A few weeks ago in Vienna, I came across the then recently published book "Ashantee" by Peter Altenberg. I knew this poet's first work, "Wie ich es sche". When it was published, there was jubilation among the young Viennese literati, as if a new land had been conquered for poetry. As if sounds had risen from the depths of the soul that had never been heard before. I could not quite understand the jubilation. I have often felt this way in recent years when I have heard that a mighty genius has arisen here or there. I often found old familiar tunes where the most unconditional originality was proclaimed. It was no different with Peter Altenberg. I found real poetry in "As I see it". About four-fifths of the book was indigestible for me; but the rest led me into depths of the soul that were not new to me, but into which I followed the artist with yearning love. He spoke of many common things, but he knew how to lend them a rare brilliance; the common becomes noble when it comes from his mouth. I thought I recognized a true poet in Peter Altenberg, but not one of the great ones. Peter Altenberg does not know how to sing about the depths of nature, the abysses, the great sufferings and joys of the human soul. What interests man most, who immerses himself in the eternal harmony of the world, seems to be alien to him. He poetically transfigures the petty, the insignificant that lives on the surface of things. He is unpalatable to philosophical natures. He has nothing to say to them. For them, what he is talking about does not even exist. For them it is the accidental, the worthless, which is none of their business. No light from the "eternal ideas" penetrates Altenberg's eyes. But the non-eternal, the accidental, shines in his hand like the "eternal ideas" in Plato's. You have to be in a good mood to enjoy Altenberg. You have to be in the mood to dally, to revel voluptuously in the pettiest, the most insignificant things. If you don't know what to do with your time, it's best to turn to his books. In such a mood, I also picked up his latest work "Ashantee". And once again found the little poet I had found in "As I see it". I indulged again in the voluptuous sensations that excite the insignificant, the surface of things. But these feelings did not seem to me to be entirely sincere. Altenberg sometimes deludes himself. When a very small thing fails to arouse any emotion in him, he becomes a comedian of the soul. He pretends to have feelings that he doesn't have. Because Altenberg is very flirtatious. And it is not only his coquetry that reminds us of the emotional world of the degenerate female nature. He has a decidedly feminine streak. Yes, I find an even greater flaw in him. He lacks the skeleton of the mind. He looks to me like a child born with crippled bones. He seems to believe that even the slightest thought disgraces the poet. Soon after reading Altenberg's book, I found an interesting essay by Hermann Bahr on poetry in the Viennese weekly Die Zeit. I can't help it, but I find everything Bahr writes interesting. He is not a critic like others. He doesn't go around the creations he talks about. He can crawl inside them with an enviable agility. And when he is inside, he often says things that are as enlightening about the works of art as Kepler's laws about the nature of the planets. I thought to myself that Hermann Bahr would also have something enlightening to say about Peter Altenberg. When I started reading his essay, I was quite ashamed. Bahr would like to be as successful as Peter Altenberg. "To be the darling of connoisseurs and so hated by people of mere intellect. Blessedly he walks along, much loved, and laughs at the stupid crowd of the "clever", who must not understand him, who must hate him; for he is the pure artist, who nowhere touches the region of mere intellect; the latter lacks the organs for him ..." Now I knew where I stood. I don't hate Peter Altenberg. But I did get the feeling that his critic would count me among the stupid crowd of "clever people" who "are not allowed to understand" Altenberg. In his essay, Hermann Bahr now wants to speak to the stupid "clever ones" or the "barbarians, as Barres called them, about Mr. Peter". And what does the critic tell the barbarians? That everyone in their youth raved about Posa and Max and later found in life that in reality, on the street, in the coffee house, there is no Posa and no Max. And that a drama whose characters are portrayed in a true-to-life way does not satisfy us. That we are not satisfied when we meet the laundress and the waiter we know from life on the stage. Reality needs to be idealized if it is to have an artistic effect, Hermann Bahr teaches us. But what do we have to do, he asks, since we don't find ideal figures like Götz or Posa in reality? Hermann Bahr said in a few words what the "stupid clever ones" should do to discover art: "Well, I know a teacher for them. All they have to do is go to our Mr. Peter. He has the good fortune to love people. He looks at every commis with his love, and so he can find Max and Posa in every coffee house. He has the great eye of eternal love. I could have told them that more briefly, I should have just said: he is a poet."

When I read that, I didn't feel quite like a barbarian again. On the contrary. Hermann Bahr has to say the most elementary truths, the most trivial things, in order to lift the "barbarians" up to Mr. Peter. One could speak of the most insignificant poets as Bahr does of Mr. Peter. But at the end of the essay, Bahr's true feelings come to the fore. "But he is not the naïve poet who cannot say mean things because under his gaze they are always immediately transformed into noble things. No, our Peter has often seen the common. Then the poet seems to sleep in him, he listens to people's vain speeches and looks at their earthly afflictions. There are pauses in his love. When it finally awakens, he cries out so blissfully, as if all mesquine things were suddenly transfigured under the ray of his goodness, and in their transfiguration he must always remember with wonder how poor they were just a moment ago. He has the peculiarity of never forgetting to Gretchen that she was a silly little washerwoman before his love awoke. He is a poet who constantly marvels at the fact that he is a poet. This endears him to us like a good child." That is the same opinion I have formed about Mr. Peter. The poet awakens in him when he sees the mesquine things shimmering in a beautiful light that emanates from their surface. But this beauty is accidental. One goes a step further, and the same thing that first shone like a crystal appears in its dull baseness. If Mr. Peter could see the truly eternal in the stupid little washerwoman and if she then appeared to him as Gretchen, he would have to forget the stupid little washerwoman completely. What distinguishes me from Hermann Bahr, then, is only that I cannot overlook the fact that in the "pure artist", Mr. Peter, he has no sense of the eternal in things, of the backbone of life. For once, I cannot give up the belief that one can be completely "clever" and still feel artistically, even create artistically. Why then does the "stupid crowd of clever people" sit devoutly in the theater while Gerhart Hauptmann's "Sunken Bell" is being played?

Franz Wörther

Karl Weiß-Schrattenthal, who succeeded in discovering Johanna Ambrosius three years ago, has just brought another "poet and thinker from the people" into the public eye. This time the discovered person is a Bavarian shoemaker, Franz Wörther. Anyone who had a sincere interest in the poetry of Ambrosius should also feel the same for this shoemaker. I have occasionally formed my opinion about the causes of such an interest. At the time, the poet and literary historian Karl Busse lashed out like a bull at those who had warm words for the East Prussian poet. I believe the reason for his behavior is that Busse was unable to find the right point of view from which the Lober of Ambrosius judged. Busse took a naïve standpoint and allowed the poems as such to have an immediate effect on him. The Lober did not do this. They looked at these creations as one looks at happy memories from childhood alongside the experiences of the day.

Whoever is involved in the spiritual life of the present can only take such an interest in the poetry of the simple woman. No one who naively enjoys Dehmel's or Hartleben's poems can be captivated by Ambrosius with the same immediacy. But just as the serious man likes to remember his childhood, the modern educated or over-educated also enjoys the natural tones of the folk poet. We enjoy the memories of childhood, even if they tell of incomprehensible and stupid things. We do not question their reasonableness. In the same way, we do not ask about the aesthetic form in which we encounter such true natural sensations as those of Ambrosius.

For the same reason, poets such as Rosegger, for example, have a far more significant effect on the educated than on the people. The people live in the feelings that such poets portray to them from morning to night; the educated have outgrown them; but they like to put themselves in their place, because the memory of them is sacred to them.

When the thirteen-year-old Franz Wörther lost his father in 1843, he was alone in the world, without a friend or patron. He could now not think of becoming a master builder, as his father had wanted; with his idealism in mind, he had to learn shoemaking. After his apprenticeship, he traveled through northern and central Germany. He then spent five years as a soldier. After completing his service, he returned to the shoemaking trade. Wörther went through struggles with his soul. Sometimes the thinker and poet wanted to despair when the shoemaker had to provide bread for himself and his seven children. But the "man of the people" accepted his fate with true philosophical composure. He said to himself: "I regard the poetic gift I have been given as a gift from heaven for the happiness I have been robbed of. The dark defiance of former times no longer took hold of me; I dallied, as it were, serenely and calmly through the cliffs of life on the muses' rosebands." In his own way, this nature poet drew strength and courage to live from his own soul. And even if his poetry is often just a stammer, he stammers sounds that come from the chest of a whole man. Wörther does not speak in the perfect forms of the artist; what he speaks is as appealing and captivating as the products of nature. The fact that he seeks forms of art that he has not mastered is disturbing, indeed often tempts him to express a true sentiment untruthfully: but the genuine original source can always be discovered.

But the poems are not the most important part of the little booklet that Schrattenthal has published. The wisdom sayings are of far greater interest. A true nature Nietzsche comes to us in Wörther. It is true that the natural thinker did not go as far as to revaluate the concepts of value he inherited; nor did he harbor any anti-Christian sentiments, but remained "pious" to this day. But he coined the ancestral concepts anew for himself; he gave them an individual form. A man who wrote the following thoughts on "freedom" deserves our greatest attention.

"Freedom is the alarm clock of passion and the moving force of execution, it is the cauldron of all freedom and exuberance. - It is the dream of the imprisoned and the terror of the prison guards. - Freedom is the highest bliss for corner-cutters and drifters and the political glue rod for social robins and bloodthirsty finches." Wörther gives a clear, understandable verdict in a transparent, simple form on the concept of "equality": "Equality is the longing of the ugly and the horror of the beautiful. It is the colorful, iridescent soap bubble of all social democratic phrases and the necessary embellishment of agitation speeches. - Equality is the dissolution of civilization and the return of humanity to its original state of the Stone Age and the pile dwellings with the uniform fashion of Adam and Eve. It is therefore the beginning of the end of all tailoring. - Equality is the tablecloth for the Cinderellas of destiny." A subtle sentiment is reflected in the sentence: "Envy even puts dirt in the hands of the child who secretly wants to throw at his playmate the colorful rag that his parents hang around his shoulders in monkey-like love."

And the saying: "A heart without gratitude is like a faded rose bush that holds only thorns for the wanderer" reveals that a noble disposition can also thrive on the cobbler's chair. The pride of an independent personality built on its own strength and dignity is also characteristic of our shoemaker. He finds that "the cowardly sycophancy of the rich man is called pride of status, his avarice is called economic calculation, while the profligacy of a man's lower mind is called worldly noblesse, and the lack of character of a rich man is called miserable sycophancy diplomatic statesmanship".

Franz Wörther currently lives in his birthplace of Kleinheubach am Main. He provided for his seven sons with his shoemaking skills. He was a valiant craftsman. Schrattenthal has shown that he was even more through the commendable publication of his intellectual products. Those who can only enjoy the book aesthetically will soon put it down; those who have a sense for the contemplation of a self-contained personality, perfect in its own way, will read it through from beginning to end. The coarse naturalness will refresh such a connoisseur, and the clumsiness in the artistic will not bother him much.

Presentation on a lecture by Georg Fuchs on "New Style"

The first lecture evening of the Berlin "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft" was dedicated to an energetic, subtle defense of the "New Style" given by the art writer Georg Fuchs. He found beautiful, meaningful words to characterize the recently emerging striving to get away from the "professor's bakel", which until recently imposed a foreign style on German art that was unsuited to its own needs and sensibilities. "Until now, when people in the German Empire asked about the style of the noble house, the palace and the temple, a mighty atlas was opened up. In the styles of Empire, Rococo, Baroque, German and Italian Renaissance; Gothic, Romanesque, Norwegian, Byzantine, Moorish, Egyptian, Persian, Indian and Assyrian - this is how the wealthy German built from the end of the nineteenth century. With great erudition, he researched the architecture and applied arts of all times and peoples, imitating them with unwavering conscientiousness." It was of no use that the Germans occupied a high rank among the cultural nations in painting, that the greatest visual artist Arnold Böcklin was a German. The works of our masters did not find their way into German homes. They were collected in galleries and exhibitions. They were therefore unable to provide works that would decorate the German home in such a way that the decoration would be an expression of the needs and feelings of those who live in the decorated room. Only the harmony between the purpose associated with a room and the artistic decoration of the same can lead to an individual style. "The most artistic should also be the most practical, so that we use beauty to a certain extent, need it." Outstanding art connoisseurs advocate such demands with powerful words: Bode, Lessing, Lichtwark, Jessen, Brinckmann. And artists began to fulfill such demands. What H. E. v. Berlepsch, Eckmann, Obrist, Schwindrazheim, Werle, Köpping, Melchior Lechter and others created in this direction was described by Fuchs in an attractive manner. He emphasized the importance of the magazine "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration", published by Alexander Koch in Darmstadt. It has placed itself at the service of the "New Style". Fuchs does not see salvation in artistic individualism, which consists of the artist living out his individuality in his work. "Our painters had no purpose, they were not commissioned to create here or there within a given whole, so the artists saw nothing more in their art than a means of expressing their individuality. Each did this in his own way, as uniquely as possible, indeed uniquely to the point of impossibility." But it is not this expression of individuality that is the ideal of art, but the creation of a national style. "The purpose of the object determines its construction, the construction determines its form, and the decoration is nothing more than a kind of 'final feeling' of the constructive form. ... All the great, still incalculable forces of the people, which for a long, long time have been kept away from living art, from the art of feeling, are stirring and want to enter the great stream of development that leads to what we need: the new style!" It is not for me to pass judgment on the justification of individualism and nationalism in art here, where I only have to report.

A series of interesting lecture and recitation evenings are planned for the coming winter. In addition, the board has decided to create a meeting place for the exchange of opinions in the field of literature and intellectual life in the "Freie Literarische Gesellschaft". To this end, cycles of lectures followed by discussions are to be organized. Initially, the undersigned and Dr. Flaischlen will give such lectures. The undersigned will begin with a series of six lectures on "The main currents in German literature from the middle of the century to the present". The lectures will be held at fortnightly intervals, always on a Tuesday. The first will take place on December 7.

Presentation of a lecture held on December 19, 1897 in the "Literary Society" in Leipzig

Dr. Rudolf Steiner spoke about "Goethe's world view and the present" at the "Literary Society". The topic is not new. Numerous philosophers and literary historians have dealt with it. But you can see how inexhaustible Goethe is, because there are always new sides to this topic, and Dr. Steiner's lecture in the large hall of the "Hötel de Pologne" offered an interesting picture of the intellectual life of the Weimar prince of poets. The speaker referred to Goethe's position on the dispute between the conservative Cuvier and the revolutionary Geoffroy de St.-Hilaire. Goethe suspected that this dispute would result in a whole revolution in people's views. The old way of thinking, according to which man was a being dependent on God and nature, fell, and he became the master of creation, who was alone with everything that lives and weaves around him. Goethe had already adopted this world view early on, but only a few people understood it. Our world view goes back to Parmenides. He was followed by Plato, whose doctrine of this world and the hereafter was further developed by Christianity. This doctrine still dominates contemporary philosophy, even revolutionary minds such as Baco of Verulam, Descartes and Kant, who are convinced of the necessity of faith. Goethe stands alone against them all. He emphasizes the unity of the spiritual and the sensual world. The path of nature leads from the plant through the animal world to man. Man is not gifted with anything supernatural, he is only the most highly organized product of nature. He is indeed the master of creation. In old age, however, Goethe returned to the old world view, as Part II of "Faust" shows us. Goethe's view, however, was taken up and expanded. Ludwig Feuerbach, who destroyed everything that had been valid until then, was followed by Max Stirner. It was then the great natural scientists of the modern age, namely Darwin, who rebuilt something new from the ruins and created the world view of the present. In his magnificent lecture, Redner followed on from a book he had published on the same subject.

In my lecture "On the Literary Revolution in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century", which took place on December 8 [1897] in the Berlin "Freie Litterarische Gesellschaft", I said the following: "In this century, a radical change in the view of the world and of life has taken place; the whole religious emotional life of a part of European humanity has become different from that of the past centuries. Such an intensive change of views has not occurred for a long time in the development of world history. The world view of humility, which is filled with the feeling of dependence on higher, supernatural powers, has been replaced by the world view of pride, which is based on the awareness that man is a free, independent being, that he should be the master of his own destiny. Ludwig Feuerbach expressed it with clear, sharp words that all ideas of higher powers are products of human thought, that the revelation of God is nothing other than the revelation, the self-development of the human being. Self-conscious man thus places himself at the head of creation; he now knows that he can only direct himself and that in earlier epochs of world history he placed the thoughts of his own soul, according to which he directs himself, above himself as higher powers. Those people into whose emotional life such thoughts have passed are alien to the people of the first half of the century, even those who are among the greatest. The tone of feeling in the writings of such great men is like the sound of a foreign language to them. But even today there are only a few who are imbued with the new sentiments. They are opposed by the great masses and also by a multitude of important spirits whose souls are still dominated by the old feelings. We contemporary people - I said - can hardly communicate with these people of the "old feelings. The words from their mouths have a completely different meaning than ours."

The next day, a report in the "Frankfurter Zeitung" about the trial of Bruno Wille, the well-known representative of a modern liberal world view, who gave speeches in Vienna and Graz about the "religion of joy" and was therefore charged with disturbing existing religions, provided me with confirmation of my assertions. Wille contrasted the "religion of affliction" with the "religion of joy" in his own way, which I do not want to make mine exactly. The religion of tribulation makes this world an inferior world, a vale of tears. The religion of joy offers people the opportunity to draw happiness and salvation from this world and to do without the prospect of an afterlife. It is the contrast in feelings that matters when we speak of the old and new worldviews. How one comes to terms with the dogmas is only a consequence of the contrast in feelings.

Only those who feel in the sense of the old dogma can recognize the old dogma. The dogma is only there to put the content of feeling into thoughts, into words.

Two people faced each other in the Graz trial against Bruno Wille. A man with the old feelings, the judge, and a young man, a student, the witness Schmauz, who had grown up in the new feelings.

The following dialog took place:

Chairman: Did Wille negate the concept of God?

Witness: That has been repeatedly criticized by Catholic theologians. Even St. Thomas, whom Pope Leo XIII presented as a great philosopher of the Catholic Church, did extensive research on this matter.

Chairman: And when ten thousand people have done research, the dogma must not be shaken.

Witness: The dogma is fixed, but it is subject to constant further development and research. Nothing can be prescribed that contradicts reason ...

Chairman: Anything can be prescribed! Do you consider the teachings of Wille to be unbelief?

Witness: Every Catholic must adhere to science!

Chairman (to the clerk): I ask that this statement be recorded. (To the Court): I state that I and the witness do not understand each other, and I therefore abandon the interrogation.

This statement by the president of the Graz court is symptomatic of our times. There are two opposing worlds of feeling that cannot understand each other. Arrogant as I am, I don't want to play with these ideas after all. The lack of understanding is not based on mutuality. We already understand others. We can think our way into them, just as we can think our way into Plato's and Aristotle's contemporaries. We understand the reactionaries. But they don't understand us. And we are even arrogant enough to believe that progress is based on them gradually learning to understand us. We are even much more tolerant than they are. Just try if we have so little respect for personal opinions that we would think of putting someone in prison for being Catholic or Protestant Orthodox. We do not count prison among the tools of logic.

But we can be forgiven for one thing. Sometimes the clash between the old and new worldviews makes us smile. Sometimes that's the only way we can express ourselves. That's why the "laughing lady" in the Graz trial is a personality I want to take seriously.

I quote sentences from the Frankfurter Zeitung: "The presiding judge then explained that it was clear from Will's statements that he did not believe in hell at all, but also that he did not believe in a God who could punish. The defense counsel then asked the main witness for the prosecution, police commissioner Papez, how he imagined hell.

President: The witness does not need to answer that, because that is in any case a completely subjective view.

Police Commissioner Papez points out what the Catechism and the Bible teach about hell. Here the president interrupts him with the following words:

"I notice a lady in the audience who likes to laugh all the time; in any case, this is disturbing and inappropriate; I must ask you to refrain from this; we have a very serious hearing here and not at all the purpose of entertaining ourselves."

The theory of the comic is not yet complete. We don't really know what the opposites must be that make the human laugh muscles twitch. The lady's laughter can be judged either way. Perhaps it was trivialities that aroused the lady's laughter muscles. Or was the lady supposed to have a symbolic meaning? Nietzsche says: Truth is a woman. The "laughing philosophy" in the gallery. That wouldn't be a bad title for a book that a serious joker could write. World history could have the quirk of wanting to express itself through a lady just when it wants to laugh. After all, world history is still supposed to be the world court. But world history is clever. It knows that it can't use us, serious men, when it wants to laugh. We are too pathetic for it. That's where the ladies come in. It's easier for them to laugh. One lady said to me after my lecture: "Why get so excited about things that every sensible person today thinks like you?" Yes, ladies like that live on the "blissful islands", where you don't know how difficult the battle for the new world view will be for us.

Stuttgart 1898, Fromanns Verlag

Anyone writing a book about Goethe today must be careful not to do anything unnecessary. We know far too much about Goethe. But we know little about the depths of his being. For Goethe was a man whose feelings and passions were intimately connected to his world view. Goethe could only be happy insofar as the deepest secrets of the world were revealed to him. Anyone who does not understand this should never pick up a pen to write a word about Goethe. Robert Saitschick has done so, without even having the slightest idea of the connection between Goethe's world view and his nature. That is why his book “Goethe's Character” is the most miserable, wretched piece of work in the whole of Goethe literature. Such Goethe admirers must be told: “Hands off” an object that is as foreign to you as anything can be. I was outraged by this book because of its great phraseology and the [pretentiousness] with which it appears.

Max Stirner. His Life and Work. By John Henry Mackay

Berlin 1898, Schuster u. Löffler

“The Germans have forgotten their most daring and consistent thinker for so long and so completely that they have lost all right to the gift of his life.” The brave poet of the world view that is imbued with the spirit of this daring thinker, John Henry Mackay, utters these words on the first page of the book in which he describes Max Stirner's life. I believe that there are not many people today who would feel the bitterness of these words to be justified. But there are some people in the present day who must have the same feeling of pain when they think that Max Stirner's main work, “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum” (The Ego and Its Own), which was published in 1845, was completely forgotten in Germany for decades until it fell into the hands of Mackay, who was a kindred spirit of Stirner, in the British Museum in London in 1888 and experienced a revival through his tireless work. This feeling of pain must be present in those who spent their youth during the time when Stirner's book was forgotten. For it is not the same at what age one lets a book work on oneself. The effect that a work has on us in the mid-twenties cannot be aroused in us at a later age. And so many of us will feel it a great loss that the so-called Zeitgeist has deprived them of the “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum” at the right time. One of the greats of the present day would have felt this way if a malicious illness had not put an abrupt end to his work at the very moment when he was about to accomplish a spiritual act that would have joined Stirner's life's work in the most dignified way. I am referring to Friedrich Nietzsche. He would have written his “re-evaluation of all values” from the same way of thinking that flowed from Stirner's “Der Einzige”. And Friedrich Nietzsche probably never read a line of Stirner. In my opinion, Nietzsche would have felt at home in Stirner's world of ideas, as if in an element that needed his intellectual organization to bring it to joyful, fresh life. Instead, he had to move through Schopenhauer's way of looking at things, which only after painful disappointments allowed him to come to those ideas in which he could live alone. This was the fault of the spirit of the time in which he spent his youth, the spirit that greedily absorbed Schopenhauer's undignified doctrine of killing the will to live, and which had no inkling of the proud thinker who taught the joy of living because he had recognized that the life of the “unique” is the most valuable in the world and that it is a vain superstition if a person does not want to live for his own sake but for the sake of another. But how many such other entities has man created over the centuries, for which he wants to sacrifice himself! The individual wants to “sacrifice” himself for God, for the people, for all of humanity, and he sees the highest moral perfection in “selflessly” killing off all self-will and devotedly placing his life in the service of a higher being, a collective or an idea. Stirner counters these self-sacrificing people: “What should not all be my concern! Above all, the good cause, then the cause of God, the cause of humanity, truth, freedom, humanity, justice; furthermore, the cause of my people, my prince, my country; finally, the cause of the spirit and a thousand other causes. Only my cause shall never be my cause... Let us see how those who are working for the cause we are supposed to work for, devote ourselves to and get enthusiastic about...» Let us take just one example: the cause of humanity. “What is the situation,” says Stirner, “with the cause of humanity, which we are supposed to make our own? Is its cause that of someone else, and does humanity serve a higher cause? No, humanity only looks to itself, humanity only wants to promote humanity, humanity is its own cause. In order to develop, it lets peoples and individuals toil in its service, and when they have done what humanity needs, it throws them on the dung heap of history out of gratitude. Is the cause of humanity not a purely selfish cause?” From this insight, Stirner draws the lesson: ”... instead of serving another egoist whom I place above myself, I would rather be the egoist myself. I want to live like those whom people in their humble delusion strive to serve,” says Stirner. ‘Why should it be evil if I do what those do whom I make my masters?’

The most valuable idea that man could form for himself is certainly that of a being that has enough content within itself to be everything in itself, that can set itself a goal from within itself and follow only this goal of its own in complete self-sufficiency. This idea is an old one. People have always had it. But they have not thought that if they bring out everything that is in them, they themselves are beings that correspond to this idea. They have considered themselves unworthy, too weak to be such beings. That is why they have invented other beings that are more worthy of bearing a character that corresponds to this idea. Stirner calls on people, each and every one of them, to look at themselves to see that the essence that they imagine is above them lies within themselves. “If God, if humanity, as you assure us, has enough content within itself to be everything in everything, then I feel that I will lack even less of it, and that I will have no complaints about my 'emptiness'. I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but the creative nothing, the nothing from which I myself create everything as a creator.“ Stirner wants people to recognize that they are themselves that and represent that in life, which they only believe they have to worship and adore.”

Stirner represents the worldview of the proud, self-sufficient individual. Mackay summarizes it in the following sentences: “Stirner proclaims nothing more and nothing less than the declaration of the sovereignty of the individual, his incomparability and uniqueness. So far, we have only spoken of his rights and duties, and where they begin and end; but he speaks of being free from the former and powerful in the latter. We have to decide. And since we cannot return to the night, we must enter the day.“ And Mackay looks into the future of this day and says: ‘In place of our tired, tormented, self-tormenting race, there will be that proud, free race of the ’unique ones” to whom the future belongs."

What was the life of the man who wrote the gospel of the proud, self-aware human being? Mackay answers this question in his book “Max Stirner”. It was not easy to describe this life. For just as his work has been forgotten, so too has the story of Max Stirner been completely neglected by posterity. With infinite effort, Mackay had to piece together the details of this valuable life, which had been shrouded in darkness. The biographer questioned everyone he could think of who might know something about the missing person. Everything that had been preserved from the time in which Stirner lived had to be carefully examined. Mackay devoted ten years of hard work to the biography, a work that can only arise from the most intense desire for knowledge.

Max Stirner lived, as the herald of the sovereignty of the individual, at a time when all institutions were based on views that were opposed to his own. He went his own way, away from the hustle and bustle of his contemporaries. He was only able to maintain his independence by refraining from utilizing his labor and his mind in any official position. He lived as a true cultural gypsy; and he could only buy his freedom by foregoing what he could have earned in abundance if he had put his abilities to the service of his time. He could not integrate into any whole.

Everything we learn about Stirner shows him to be a man for whom any restriction of his freedom is like a terrible poison. Mackay was right to describe in detail the circle that Stirner counted among its members in the 1840s. It consisted of men who, each in his own way, were convinced that human views and institutions needed to be thoroughly improved, and who criticized the existing order in a ruthless manner. They called themselves the “Freien” (Free Men) and held their informal gatherings in Hippel's wine bar on Friedrichstraße. Bruno Bauer and his brothers, Ludwig Buhl and a large number of others who were actively involved in the intellectual movement of the time, could be found at Hippel's every evening. Mackay says of this circle: “Hardly ever in the history of a people - except at the time of the French Encyclopedists - has a circle of men come together that was so significant, so unique, so interesting, so radical and so unconcerned about any judgment as the ‘Freien’ (Free Men) at Hippel's in Berlin in the fourth decade of the century. It was a circle, perhaps not worthy, but also not unworthy of the man who was one of its most loyal members and its greatest adornment, a man through whom it has gained for posterity a significance and an interest that will carry the name of the “Free” with him into the memory of the future.” However, Stirner seems to have had little to say here. These “free people” had not yet penetrated to the idea of the free individual as it had developed in Stirner; but at least he found opponents here whose views were worth the most radical thinker of his time to deal with them.

It was in this circle that Stirner also found the woman with whom he was able to lead a marriage that corresponded to his views for several years: Marie Dähnhardt. This marriage was the cohabitation of two people who supported each other as far as each was able, and who otherwise went their own ways. And when, after two years, the cohabitation no longer suited the feelings of the spouses, they separated without rancor. The only work that Stirner gave us, “The Ego and Its Own,” was written during the years of this marriage. In it he laid down his entire world of thought. What he otherwise published are smaller essays that preceded his main work, and responses to the attacks that it has received. Mackay has just compiled these works in a small volume, “Max Stirner's Smaller Writings” (Berlin 1898, Schuster & Loeffler). I will speak of them in this journal soon. This will also provide an opportunity to say what needs to be said about the development of the man. The “History of Reaction” and the work “The National Economists of the French and English” are only a small part of Stirner's own work and do not enrich our understanding of his nature.

After the publication of his main work, Stirner led a life of complete seclusion, constantly struggling with the bitterest poverty; but a life that he bore with dignity and contentment, for he knew that anyone who does not want to be a citizen of his time must live like that.