The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Weimar at the Center of German Intellectual Life

Article in the “Weimarische Zeitung” dated February 26, 1892

[ 1 ] In a series of lectures focusing on the major trends in the development of German intellectual life, the lecture that characterizes the culmination of this development naturally commands the greatest interest. This was the task of the fifth lecture in the aforementioned series:

[ 2 ] “Weimar at the Center of German Intellectual Life,” and the speaker, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, addressed it brilliantly. In a speech that was as profound and rich in content as it was clear and vivid, he painted a picture of that pivotal period in German culture that unfolded in the small town of Weimar.

[ 3 ] Goethe’s arrival in Weimar, seemingly a coincidence in his life, has become a pivotal factor in cultural history. Goethe and Karl August understood one another, and from the very beginning, each appreciated the other’s great human worth. When Goethe came to Weimar, he had already passed through a major phase of his development. Works such as Götz and Werther demonstrate his gift—honed to perfection—for bringing to light the deepest wellspring of life. In this, he had found a mentor in Shakespeare, the poet of pure humanity, whose characters are not influenced in their course by a fate that reigns over them, but who create their own destinies from within themselves. In the Prometheus fragment, this sky-shattering excess of vitality and sense of individuality finds its most powerful expression.

[ 4 ] The first ten years in Weimar were, artistically speaking, the least productive of Goethe’s life; yet they were significant for his personal development, to which the circle in which he lived contributed greatly: Wieland, the highly gifted Duchess Anna Amalia, the venerable Duchess Luise, and the clear-headed, sensible Knebel. Charlotte von Stein replaced for him on earth what his Promethean faith had taken from him for the afterlife: the need for adoration. In light of this, the dispute over the limits of this relationship is simply ridiculous. Herder, too, was of the utmost value to his self-education. At that time, the two differed in their view of the development of earthly things, each of which is a link in the great harmony of the world. For Goethe, this idea was the starting point of his scientific work. The exclusively subjective worldview of the young Goethe was now replaced by a more objective one, which places humanity within the universe and its eternal laws. This worldview and the corresponding artistic ideal reached their maturity in Italy.

[ 5 ] This transformation is already evident in Iphigenia, specifically in the character of Orestes. Goethe is Orestes; Frau von Stein is Iphigenia. Pursued by the Furies, he does not find redemption within himself; rather, it is bestowed upon him from outside. The warning that we are dependent on the iron laws of the outside world, and that our innate urge for freedom must contend with the forces of life, is also preached in Tasso, whose central theme is the deep conflict between talent and life. Through this objectivism, Goethe had distanced himself from all subjective partisan positions.

[ 6 ] Consequently, upon his return from Italy, he viewed Schiller with detachment; and it was not until the moment when Schiller, too—deeply immersed in the study of philosophy—began to gravitate toward the exclusive subjectivism of Goethe’s enlightened, nonpartisan worldview that the friendship between the two men began. Together they developed an idealistic worldview; different in form but springing from the same core principles, it is set forth in Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of the Human Race” and in Goethe’s “Fairy Tales.” Here, there is a move away from Kant’s rigorous moral law toward a free morality that creates goodness of its own accord, not compelled to do so by a categorical imperative. Schiller sought to lead humanity to freedom through beauty. Many scholars searching for hidden wisdom have already worn their teeth down trying to decipher Goethe’s “Fairy Tales.” Dr. Steiner was the first to uncover and explain the profound symbolism of this difficult-to-understand work in such a way that its great human and ethical content is fully revealed. The “Fairy Tale” proclaims in symbolic form the same thing that Schiller’s letters proclaim in abstract form: Only through the sacrifice of a limited ego does a person attain that higher self, where he no longer has to obey the command of an external moral law, but can act of his own accord according to what his personal judgment dictates.

[ 7 ] The educational ideal of the classical era was a universal one: Goethe and Schiller were also active in the sciences. Goethe’s view of the natural sciences is a highly idealistic one, the value of which can only be fully realized again within an idealistic orientation of science. At the same time, science—especially philosophy—reached unprecedented heights in Jena: Fichte and Schelling, first and foremost, also had a stimulating influence on Schiller and Goethe. The correspondence between Goethe and Schiller is the consummate expression of this universality. This universality found its productive expression, on the one hand, in the “Xenienkampf,” and, on the other, in Schiller’s dramas and Goethe’s epic and dramatic works of the subsequent period.

[ 8 ] The lecturer then discussed, in broad strokes but always skillfully highlighting the essentials, the structure and the consummate poetic form of “Hermann and Dorothea,” in which the demand of classical aesthetics—that the subject matter must be entirely subsumed within the form—is fulfilled in the most perfect manner. The same is true of The Natural Daughter. The accusation that the characters here are types rather than individuals is rejected. The essence of this work of art is that the individual is present here only to the extent that it simultaneously represents a necessity within the framework of the work. Schiller’s method of characterization is quite the opposite: it presents the individual as such, for his own sake, but—in contrast to his youth—now without any particular tendency. Schiller’s approach to Goethe’s poetic style in The Bride of Messina is only apparent; for the idea of fate stands in contrast to Goethe’s moral world order—indeed, fundamentally to the modern view and thus also to Schiller’s own conception of the moral demand for human freedom. Schiller’s dramas also gave the stage an inner momentum; a new idealistic art of drama took shape through them. Schiller was the link between Goethe and the audience; when he died, Goethe was left alone. No one could follow him to the heights he had reached through a self-education unlike any that had ever been seen before. This self-education is most strongly reflected in Faust, which accompanied him from his wildest youth to the serene maturity of old age.

[ 9 ] The Faust narrative is based on the conflict within the human soul between what it possesses and what it can only glimpse but longs to attain. The ascent to the realm beyond does not occur here, as in the Theophilus legend, through the grace of higher powers; rather, Faust wants to fight for everything through his own strength. From the very beginning, Goethe had in mind the glorification of the victory of this lofty aspiration. And what mattered to him was not a unified external plot, but the poetic transformation of his own experiences. But just as in the earlier works of Goethe the subjective, individual experience disappears into a clear, objective, general view of the world, so too in the second part of Faust does experience rise far above the visible and the real, transforming itself into images, symbols, and allegories; and it is from this perspective that the second part must be viewed. The speaker also touched on this same phenomenon in Wilhelm Meister.

[ 10 ] Goethe’s mission was to rejuvenate humanity in an age that had grown old. Such a transformation is also taking place in our own day; for the age has grown old once more. The aspiration through whose fulfillment Goethe rejuvenated his age—the aspiration for reality—also fills our youth. But what a difference! Goethe understood reality to be the inner, the necessary, the divine in the earthly, whereas our present age perceives it in the external and the accidental. But a people with such a past can never forget it without at the same time descending from the heights of its culture. And how unworthy is the generation that cannot say of itself: “And Goethe’s sun—behold, it smiles upon us too!” With this heartfelt appeal to the present, the speaker concluded his interesting and thoroughly original remarks, through which he provided all his listeners with an hour rich in both learning and enjoyment.