The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. What Weimar’s Goethe Archive Means to Us, Based on Personal Experience

Article in the “Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins” dated January 20, 1890

On Friday, November 22, 1889, Mr. Rudolf Steiner opened the series of Goethe Evenings with a highly interesting lecture on the “Goethe Archive in Weimar.”

[ 2 ] Mr. Steiner has been entrusted with the publication of Goethe’s scientific writings and had the opportunity this summer to study the Goethe Archive in depth. He described in detail the natural history collection on display at the Goethe House and emphatically highlighted the great value of the scientific estate. From it, it will become clear how the poet ascended to the heights of enlightenment, and that the master was a tireless researcher in every field and was regarded as the intellectual center of his era.

[ 3 ] The speaker began with the idea that we have a twofold task to fulfill with regard to Goethe. The first consists in comprehending and honoring the poet’s magnificent persona from every angle, understanding how his writings emerged from his inner life, and placing the relationships between his works in their proper context. However, this purely historical aspect of the matter constitutes only a minor part of what we must achieve in relation to Goethe. The far more important task lies in our participation—to the extent that it is the responsibility of each and every one of us—in the further development of our culture in the sense that Goethe has opened up to us. The cultural perspective that he has opened up for the future must be our own. We must follow the trains of thought that find a magnificent beginning in him; we must approach the questions of science, art, and the state from his standpoint to find solutions. We must work our way up to that kind of vision through which he gained such penetrating insights, but through which he also found, in the face of all life’s disharmonies, the blissful peace of the truly wise. In this endeavor, however, the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar must serve as our guide. Anyone who enters this classical site is overcome by a whiff of that mighty ethos that emanates from Goethe and permeates all his works. Whoever gazes into the workshop of Goethe’s poetry and thought, whoever is able to trace, guided by the treasures he left behind, the paths that his spirit traversed to reach the heights of his creative work—such a person’s inner being will be powerfully uplifted under the influence of the idealistic seriousness and the high moral character of Goethe’s way of life and worldview. Let them see how every idea of this genius stems from intellectual struggles he underwent within himself, how every conviction he expressed is the culmination of a mental process that we can trace precisely in very many cases. From the jotted notes, we can often see quite precisely the moment when an idea flashes through his mind, an idea that then had a fruitful influence on his work. In particular, Goethe’s scholarly significance will stand out more clearly before our eyes through the Weimar publications than has been the case until now. The sheer shallowness that has hitherto dared to be directed at Goethe will be contemptuously rejected by all educated people, for whom new insights will dawn from Weimar’s handwritten treasures.

[ 4 ] We can also expect important insights from the diaries. They will provide us with precise insights not only into the poet’s external life but also into the development of his inner world; they will show how he progresses step by step toward that “spiritual Montserrat,” where he feels misunderstood and lonely, yet enlightened by the deepest ideas. Goethe kept a record not only of his external life, but above all of his inner life.

[ 5 ] The correspondence, however, is also of particular significance. Intellectual life in Germany from 1790 to 1832 appears like a vast organism, the soul of which is Goethe. He exerts a direct, personal influence on his most significant contemporaries, and they, in turn, influence him. It is the correspondence that brings this magnificent network of intellectual interests into clear focus.

[ 6 ] The publication of Goethe’s scholarly writings, diaries, and correspondence will, above all, serve as an immortal monument erected by Weimar’s noble-minded princess. This proves that Weimar knows how to promote the legacy of this great German with just as much understanding as it once understood how to lay the foundation upon which he could build his edifice to the heights of humanity.

[ 7 ] It is to the credit of Professor Suphans, the kind and gracious director of the archive, and of Schiller’s noble descendants that Schiller’s estate has also been incorporated into the archive for just over a year now. Schiller belongs with Goethe. Indeed, it was through Schiller that the path to Goethe was truly opened to the nation. The way he viewed his great friend represents the ideal of all Goethe scholarship.