The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Why does one call the people of Schiller and Fichte a “barbarian people”?

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! For a number of years now, I have had the privilege of giving lectures here in this city on the subject of spiritual science. Since the friends of our spiritual science movement have requested such lectures here even during these fateful times, I shall present to you today a reflection that takes its starting point more from the spirit of spiritual science; and tomorrow we shall delve more deeply into questions of spiritual knowledge that stir the heart and soul. It will seem understandable that today’s lecture—which is, so to speak, an introductory one—is being given, since everything that can move us today, especially when it is close to our hearts and souls, must truly be shaped by the fateful events in the midst of which we find ourselves.

[ 2 ] One might say that the peoples of Central Europe are enclosed, as it were, within a fortress—a large, mighty fortress. And in both the East and the West, the very existence of this Central Europe—as we may well say today—is being called into question. And what a sum of courage, sacrifice, and devotion we have witnessed in the months that have passed since the war began; and how much suffering and pain we have had to share! How these days of suffering and pain, with all their events, loom over families—how closely fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are bound up with them!

[ 3 ] It therefore stands to reason that we should begin our reflections on humanity’s spiritual development and spiritual hopes with some thoughts and feelings directed toward the difficult situation of our time. After all, we hear this Central European culture being denigrated and reviled from all sides. We hear all sorts of things today—from East and West and from every direction—about this Central European culture. Undoubtedly, my esteemed audience, we may regard the significant deeds we see our people accomplishing as being connected to the very essence of our people’s organism. I would like to say: What is happening today is happening through the arms of this organism. But it is precisely the nature of the German people to consider, alongside what the arms are doing, the essence of the spirit, the essence of the soul of this organism. And what better way to do this than by commemorating, precisely at such a fateful, decisive moment, those significant and weighty deeds of the very soul and spirit of the German people that extend into our present—and by drawing strength from them for the hopes and goals we may cherish for the future.

[ 4 ] And I would like to take as my starting point what two outstanding geniuses of the German people—Schiller and Fichte—can help us visualize regarding the essence of the German people. After all, it has always been a tradition within the German spirit to draw strength in difficult times from those who, as our great ancestors, can impart that strength. And I would like to draw on this today—truly not to stir up emotional feelings in you, but because I believe that such a connection can be meaningful in our day—specifically, the connection to the days of the deaths of these two geniuses. It is indeed possible for us—as I said, not to stir up emotional feelings, though this particular example has been chosen precisely for that reason, but because I believe that this perspective is particularly close to our hearts and souls these days—it is indeed possible for us to contemplate the final days, indeed, the final hours of Schiller’s and Fichte’s deaths in a very intimate, very personal way.

[ 5 ] Schiller’s final days were described to us by his then-young friend, the son of Johann Heinrich Voß, Heinrich Voß, known as the “younger Voß.” And we can follow him—our Schiller—in the final days of his life, as he, already dying, is sustained solely by the power of the spirit that reigns within him. Indeed, in Schiller’s case, we can say that, in essence, the body had long been doomed to death, while the vigorous, energetic spirit still reigned and was, in fact, still dragging the body along. For Heinrich Voß, as it were, shows us just how completely decrepit this body had become. He leads us into Schiller’s deathbed chamber, and we share in the final hours of this great hero of the spirit. We are told how, in those final hours—with a body already completely succumbing to death, a sallow face, and lifeless eyes—Schiller was still spiritually strong in those moments; how, in those final hours, he had his youngest child brought to him; how he gazed long into the child’s eyes and then, one might say, sent thoughts from those eyes—or rather, into the child’s eyes. The younger Voß sought to guess these thoughts, and we can say that, as he recounts them to us, they must be correctly guessed. It was as if Schiller wanted to say to the child—which he could only convey in these gasping words: “I should have been your father for much longer; I still have much work to do with you.” Then he handed the child back, turned away, and looked at the wall again.

[ 6 ] Do we not feel, my esteemed audience, as if, so to speak, the entire German people—the very soul of the entire German people—could recognize itself symbolically in this child? Schiller, who died so young, might also have said to our people: “I could have been so much more to you; I had to leave so much unsaid and undone.” — And so he passes away. But he passes away fully imbued with the inner energy of what he perceived as the German spirit—the spirit that carried him through life, inspired him to his creative works, sustained him as his body wasted away, and whose mission in world history he himself described in such moving words that we may well bring those words to mind today, in these times. These words only became known long after Schiller’s death, but they bear witness to how Schiller thought about the spirit of his people:

He who shapes and masters the spirit,
must ultimately reign, for
at the end of time, unless the
world has a plan, if human
life has any meaning at all, ultimately
morality and reason must triumph,
the brute force of form must yield
and the slowest people will catch up with all
the swift and fleeting ones.
[...]
To him

[ 7 ] — the German —

is destined for the highest,
and just as it is situated in the midst of
the peoples of Europe,
so it is the core of humanity,
while they are the blossoms and the leaves.

He has been chosen by the World Spirit, during
the struggle of time
to work on the eternal edifice of human culture,
to preserve what time brings,
Therefore, he has thus far assimilated
what is foreign and preserved it within himself.
Everything of value that arose in other eras
and among other peoples—which, over time
emerged and faded—he has preserved;
it remains his own: the treasures of
centuries.
Not to shine for a moment and
play a role, but to win the great
process of time. Every people
has its day in history, yet
the day of the Germans is the harvest of
all of time.

[ 8 ] And today, in these fateful days, we may well recall the spirit that Schiller believed must be the fruit of the entire era—the fruit of humanity’s cultural development.

[ 9 ] And when we turn from Schiller, the great poet, to his friend, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, we see no less of the German spirit’s resilience in the soul of a single man, especially when we look back on Fichte’s final hours on this earth. Schiller, in many ways, knew how to link what he had to say to his people in a work—which will be discussed shortly—precisely to Fichte’s strong, energetic philosophy. Indeed, Fichte’s philosophy is energetic and powerful. It is as if the philosopher Fichte, drawing from the full scope and universality of his genius, sought to extract all the strength inherent in the German spirit—to draw out everything that can reinforce the strongest will with the strongest thought. And just as Fichte spoke the beautiful words: “The kind of philosophy one has depends on the kind of person one is,” it may be said that we see this statement proven true especially in Fichte; because he felt connected to the German spirit, which was so dear to him, Fichte also felt linked to the workings and weaving of the entire world spirit, and in every word he spoke, he felt carried by the spirit that weaves through and surges through the world. But this philosopher did not live solely in the abstract realm of the spirit. When Germany was going through difficult times at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Fichte, the philosopher, often considered whether he should take part as a soldier in the fateful events of that time. He then concluded, however, that he could do more for his nation through his intellectual work. And so it came to pass that, at first, only his wife participated in the military hospital service in Berlin. But she brought the disease into their home by infecting him. She recovered, but he himself—the philosopher—was carried off by hospital fever.

[ 10 ] And now we see how Fichte—who had presented to humanity the diamond-bright, crystal-clear ideas of the most quintessentially German philosophy—lay on his sickbed during the last days of his life, waiting for news of Blücher’s crossing of the Rhine and all that the people in the West were about to undertake. We see how he—who had resolved not to be physically among the fighters because he wanted to serve his people and humanity with his spirit—we see how, in his final hours, he participated in the warlike events of his time in his feverish dreams. And we experience the wonderful interplay of a worldview with life—even in sickness and even in the death throes—when we see how Fichte allowed everything he had sought to give the German people through his powerful philosophy to flow into his feverish dreams. We see how, in his dreams, he feels himself to be right in the midst of the combatants, yet at the same time feels his soul resting securely in the spiritual world. Thus, without fear and filled with hope for his people, the dying philosopher Fichte said, when they tried to give him medicine: “I need no medicine, for I know I shall recover.” Shortly before, he had been told the news of Blücher’s crossing of the Rhine. Thus, in one who is fully immersed in German spiritual life, this spiritual life interacted with the immediate reality of his surroundings. For this German spiritual life is not an idealistic, dreamy one, but one that is constantly woven into every individual achievement of the German people. And even today we may rightly assert that what is achieved amid blood and death, amid pain and suffering, is sustained by the very force that permeates the thoughts of our spiritual experience.

[ 11 ] And how we see Fichte standing before us, imbued with the finest power of the German spirit! Of course, today we can only point out, with a few characteristic strokes, what lived in Fichte’s mind. During one of Germany’s darkest periods, when Germany had been subjugated by the Western conqueror, Fichte delivered his “Addresses to the German Nation.” Certainly, we cannot agree today, word for word, with everything Fichte said at that time. But the spirit that animated him must also be our own. Just as Fichte posited at the time that the German language is a primal language that developed like an organism from the starting point of German history in Europe, whereas the Romance languages of the West and the South suffered a rupture in their development—having originally stemmed from something Germanic but having adopted something foreign, which they superimposed over the national character in their Romance essence.

[ 12 ] If Fichte derives something from the character of this original language—which developed out of the essence of the German people and grew of its own accord like an organic force—this may be open to linguistic criticism today. But what inspired Fichte—what constitutes the fundamental character of his philosophy of will and thought—is that Fichte reflected on that which is most primordial in human beings, that which in human beings is connected to all the sources of life within the soul. Only there does Fichte see flourishing; only there does Fichte see truly assured hopes for the future—where the soul is capable of drawing forth from within itself that which lies in its depths. Fichte saw in the German language itself a symbol of the German spirit’s striving toward this very end. But even if we can no longer share Fichte’s viewpoint in every detail today, we must nevertheless consider how what he later expressed in accordance with his time took shape within him.

[ 13 ] What was Fichte’s aim in his philosophy? We need only recall what spiritual science actually aims to be. It aims to be a form of knowledge that does not merely passively surrender itself to the phenomena of the external world, that is not merely passively stimulated in relation to the intellect bound to the brain; rather, spiritual science aims to be—if we may use the term with all humility—a courageous science. It seeks to be a science that comes into being through the development of the higher human being within the human being—as Schiller said, the truly spiritual human being—through the development of that which, in the human being’s own essence, is connected to the great spiritual essence of the world, which lives within the human being in such a way that, when the human being recognizes it, he simultaneously knows himself to be actively weaving within the divine-spiritual essence of the world itself. But this is what Fichte sought unceasingly. And so he feels connected precisely to the most spiritual aspect of the world through the knowledge he sought to acquire from the human being’s own soul. Or how could one express more forcefully the spiritual certainty that a human being can attain than when Fichte uses the words:

There is no doubt whatsoever—it is, in fact, the surest thing there is, indeed, the foundation of all other certainties, the only absolutely valid objective truth—that there is a moral world order, that every rational individual has been assigned a specific place within this order and is expected to do their part.

[ 14 ] This is how Fichte’s most “German” philosophy came about: the awareness of the individual soul as part of the totality of the spiritual world; for Fichte, it was the most certain thing that there is such a world order into which the individual is woven.

[ 15 ] At that time, Fichte merely renewed—in a manner appropriate to the modern era—what has essentially always prevailed in the German spirit: the pursuit of knowledge that springs from powers of the human soul that cannot come to an end with death. And words such as those just quoted from Fichte bring to mind something expressed by the great German mystic Angelus Silesius: “It is not I who live and die within me; it is God Himself who lives and dies within me.”

[ 16 ] Such a quest for knowledge not only gives the soul an awareness of its security within the World Spirit, but also, at the same time, assurance regarding its immortality. For how could one, while experiencing and knowing God within the soul, simultaneously experience God in the soul without being aware of this immortality? For if God dies within the human soul, then death is precisely a new resurrection. In pursuit of such knowledge, which overcomes death, the German spirit strove unceasingly—for a knowledge of the soul, so that this soul might recognize itself not only through the instruments of its body but through purely spiritual instruments, so that it might, as it were, in a bodiless state, face its own body with courageous insight, just as one faces external objects and things while in the body. But from such knowledge emerged a word as wondrous as that of Jakob Böhme, in which is, as it were, summarized everything the German spirit has to say about the great mysteries of life in their connection with the destiny of the human soul: “Whoever does not die before he dies will perish when he dies.”

[ 17 ] This means nothing other than that Jakob Böhme is suggesting that one can attain, even during one’s lifetime, an understanding of the essence of the soul—the soul as it will be once it has passed through the gate of death and looks back upon its body. For, according to Jakob Böhme, whoever does not acquire such knowledge before dying will perish upon death.

[ 18 ] And so spiritual science today seeks not only knowledge of the spiritual realm—which is, so to speak, an elevation of ordinary knowledge within the body—but spiritual science seeks knowledge within the soul, insofar as this soul can already acquire, between birth and death, powers that it will also possess after death, when it will look back upon the body and bodily life, and when the body and bodily life will once again be not the subject but the object, as in everyday life. And if today the spiritual scientist wishes to use, so to speak, from what the German spirit can offer us today, an analogy for something Fichte intended to say in his time, he could draw this analogy from spiritual science for a specific case. I would like to elaborate on this specific case before you.

[ 19 ] When Fichte was reflecting on what he wanted to say to his people—how they might realize their hopes and find their goals in a time of great destiny—he pointed to a wholly new form of education that goes to the source of the soul’s vital impulses, to the higher human being within each person. Fichte knew at the time that what he wanted to present to his people through this form of education—we can no longer think that way today, but we can look to Fichte’s intentions, sensibilities, and feelings— it was presumably clear to Fichte’s soul as the healing force of the future; but when he compared it with what had been regarded as the essence of education up to his time, it must have seemed to him like something entirely new that had to extricate itself from the old, so that this new thing would bear no resemblance to the old. Then the more recent scholar of the spirit might say, drawing precisely on the science of the spirit that Fichte did not yet possess: “Well, I compare this new, this entirely new form of education to the soul that has torn itself away from the body in death and now looks back upon it.”

[ 20 ] And today, a researcher of the spirit could describe how the soul looks back on the body and bodily life after death. There is a passage in Fichte’s “Addresses to the German Nation” that is particularly significant in this regard. It is a passage that one might easily overlook, but it is worthwhile to reflect on it today. Fichte himself sought a metaphor for the relationship between his new concept of education and the old one. And he says: What I present as a new educational plan appears different from everything that has been considered correct, so that no one will understand me all that easily. And when Fichte seeks a metaphor for the relationship between this new and the old concept of education, he uses the following image:

Time seems to me like an empty shadow standing over its corpse—from which an army of diseases has just driven it out—wailing and unable to tear its gaze away from the shell it once loved so dearly, and desperately trying every means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. True, the life-giving breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with warm breaths of love; true, [joyful, secret] voices of her sisters are already greeting her and welcoming her; and although something is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions to develop the more glorious form into which she is to awaken, she still has no sense of these breezes or hearing for these voices; or, if she did, she is consumed by grief over her loss, through which she believes she has lost herself as well.

[ 21 ] We can see from this, my esteemed audience, that Fichte himself uses the image that we employ today from the perspective of spiritual science. Fichte draws upon it from what he feels woven within himself as the depth of the German spirit—and what he sought to present to his people at that time. How deeply is this awareness of the soul’s interweaving with the Universal Spirit connected to German spiritual life, when we see that what is sought today and achieved through spiritual science emerges like a powerful intuition from the great philosopher of the German people?

[ 22 ] And if we return from him to Schiller, we can see how the search for the most spiritual aspect of the soul permeates, in his case in particular, one of the most intimate, most beautiful, and most magnificent works of prose—one of those works of prose in which the human being perceives not only what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears, not merely in terms of external sensuality, but experiences the spiritual within them through the soul’s deep immersion, and this works within him so richly and vividly that he experiences it as reality—whether through figurative artistry or, as one would say today, through the humanities. There, the human being is free; there, the human being gives birth to his higher self from within himself.

[ 23 ] Schiller’s highest aspiration is to seek the higher human being within man. And it is here, my esteemed audience, that we can see how, fundamentally, everything the German spirit has achieved at its highest levels is connected to its universal striving toward spirituality, toward the intimate union of the soul with the spirit. In Schiller, in Fichte, in Goethe—everywhere the same aspiration. And for these minds—this is what is characteristic—German-ness, in the true sense, grows together with humanity in the pursuit of the highest human qualities. And it is precisely in a mind like Goethe’s that this confronts us most vividly, and its most beautiful expression is his *Faust*.

[ 24 ] It is precisely in these spirits that we see how being German is, after all, something different from being Italian, French, British, or Russian. Here one must use the word: one can be Italian, one can be French, one can be British, one can be Russian, but one becomes German. One is constantly becoming German. One is at one’s best as a German when German-ness hovers before one like a higher ideal—or, one might say, like a living spiritual goal in the distance that one must continually draw nearer to. Hence, the words spoken more recently by Lagarde: “Being German lies not in the blood, but in the spirit.” — This is especially true of these minds.

[ 25 ] It is therefore difficult to make this “German-ness” understandable to those who live in its midst and upon whom this “German-ness” must cast its influence from Central Europe. And from Fichte’s own lips we hear a significant, important statement specifically about what it means to be German, again in the “Addresses to the German Nation”:

[... whatever embodies spirituality and believes in the freedom of that spirituality, and desires the eternal development of that spirituality through freedom—no matter where it is born or in what language it speaks—is of our kind; it belongs to us and will come to us.]

[ 26 ] This is how universally the greatest Germans embraced what they perceived as German identity, as German-ness. This is how Germany’s great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke in his “Addresses to the German Nation,” which, as he stated in one of the first addresses, he intended to deliver from Germans par excellence to the German par excellence.

[ 27 ] I said: Everything that asserted itself as a striving for spirituality, as the essence of Germanness, is, as it were, concentrated in what Goethe was to his people. And now we might ask ourselves: Has the world ever attempted to form a proper understanding of this essence and this striving of the German people? There were, admittedly, times when one could hear, in turn, from one European nation or another, how they praised the German essence, how they particularly emphasized the German essence in one way or another. Yet in many cases one must say to oneself: It is precisely the experiences of the present day that show us how little basis, how little inner truth there was in what the world perceived as the German essence. There are, in fact, people today like the French philosopher Bergson—one doesn’t know if he will still call himself Bergson now that St. Petersburg is no longer called St. Petersburg but Petrograd—this French philosopher Bergson, he found—this Bergson, who has essentially borrowed everything of value he has to offer philosophy in our time entirely from the philosophy of German idealism—only that in German idealism it presents itself to us as rich and universal, whereas in Bergson it appears meager and flimsy. But he—who ought to know the German spirit—points out in a chauvinistic speech he gave last Christmas how the Germans have forgotten all the spirituality they once possessed. As if the Germans had ever possessed anything like spirituality, yet now they present themselves as purely mechanistic. One need only point to what the Germans are now producing—mechanistic cannons, shotguns, machines; everything has been transformed into mechanism.

[ 28 ] One really has to marvel at the logic that prevails in the world today. For is it logical to speak the way Bergson does? Even if one concedes that the Germans once had Goethe, Schiller, and Fichte—which, one might ask, is what Bergson expected with his French logic? Did he expect that when the Central European peoples are threatened from all sides—by a force two and a half times their own—they would then confront their enemies by reciting Goethe and Schiller or declaiming Fichte’s philosophy? Because they do not do this, the philosopher Bergson believes that the Germans have become a mechanistic people, since they confront their enemies with shotguns and cannons. Well, from this French philosopher to that Monsieur Richepin, there is a straight path through all the abuse and invective directed at the German people and the German character. Every nuance of abuse can be found there. Richepin could not help but say that the Germans were wild, frenzied, filthy beasts who, like mad pigs, must all be strangled. There is a spectrum stretching from the philosopher Bergson to such invectives against the German people, which today reverberate throughout all of Europe. We must then ask ourselves, however: Has the German character always been viewed in this light? That German character which, of course, under today’s circumstances can show nothing other than its armies—that German character which, however, certainly needs its armies only for defense, but whose foundation lies solely in spirit and soul. It is interesting, then, in contrast to what pulses through the world today, to consider this German character in terms of its place in the world and its mission. And it is certainly no pleasant task to engage in self-praise, as it were, regarding that with which one is oneself connected. Let us therefore choose another path—the path of taking a look around to see whether this German essence has always appeared “barbaric” to those who today call it “barbaric,” at least to those who have sought to understand it.

[ 29 ] There is a thinker, a great thinker of the nineteenth century, an American thinker who spoke and wrote in English: Emerson. Since we do not wish to pass judgment ourselves on the German essence, let us hear—not from a German, but from Emerson in America, speaking in English—what he had to say about the essence of the German and his mission. Emerson draws on Goethe, whom he regards as the embodiment of the German spirit—Goethe, in whom is encapsulated that which must also appear to us as the fundamental foundation in Fichte and Schiller.

One characteristic in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him an exceptional figure in the eyes of both French and English audiences: that everything he does is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, talent is respected, but people are satisfied only when it works for or against a party in accordance with their convictions. In France, people are delighted simply to see brilliant ideas, no matter where they lead. In all these countries, however, gifted men write to the extent of their abilities. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends good taste, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many hours spent pleasantly and usefully. The German mind possesses neither the French vivacity nor the English understanding, which is honed for practical matters, nor, finally, the American spirit of adventure. Yet what it does possess is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always returns to the central question: “Where is this leading?” The German public demands that a writer rise above things and simply speak his mind. Intellectual vivacity is present—very well: What does it stand for? What is the man’s opinion? Where does it come from? [- Where] does he get all these thoughts?

The English [...] see only the particular; they do not know how to conceive of humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

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

[ 30 ] Wouldn’t one be cautious if one had to coin such words oneself? But they were, after all, first uttered in English by an English-speaking American. He goes on to say, looking at what the German spirit has to offer to the development of the world:

For this reason, the terms of distinction commonly used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French—who are celebrated for their acumen and erudition—view their studies and their standpoint with a certain superficiality, and their personal character bears only a shallow connection to what they have grasped, and the way they express themselves—there is not a very deep connection; Goethe, the head and the essence of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but because truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines forth from it. He is wise to the highest degree, even if his wisdom is often veiled by his talent. As excellent as what he says is, he has something in mind that is even better. [...] He possesses that awe-inspiring independence that springs from communion with the truth.

[ 31 ] Well, one might say, those are old stories. Emerson has long since passed away, and the Germans—according to those who now judge them—have changed in their time-induced bewilderment. Perhaps we should also consider something else—not from decades ago, but from a few months before the outbreak of the war—spoken not by a German, not in Germany, but by an Englishman in Manchester. These words have also been translated into German and published under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century.”

[ 32 ] The preface tells us that the lectures were given to provide journalists and others with some insight into the German character. You can judge for yourselves just how “well” that went over, based on what you now read in English newspapers about the German character and the way it is viewed in England. But at the time, the following was said—not in German, but in English, and in Manchester, right here in the British Isles:

The highly privileged elite among Descartes’ and Newton’s compatriots

[ 33 ] — those are the English [and French] —

The spirit of science was undoubtedly well known; but the passionate drive for knowledge was taught to modern Europe—if at all—primarily by thousands of German researchers.

Imagination, emotion, and will asserted their right to be heard alongside reason—or even beyond it—and under their transformative pressure, the universe became deeper, broader, and more wondrous.

[ 34 ] It's strange what these Englishmen in Manchester have to say about the German character.

The irrational was recognized as a source of enlightenment; wisdom was drawn from children and flowers; science, philosophy, and poetry grew closer together. Here in England, this revival of the imagination gave rise to noble poetry, yet left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the entire period

[ 35 ] — please keep in mind that this is coming from an Englishman —

is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical, and scientific movements largely flowed along separate channels, in Germany they intersected or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; Hegel, however, ensnared the genius of poetry in the web of his logic; and the intellect that discovers and explains, and the imagination that brings forth the new, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In *Faust*, at the end of his eventful life, we see a foreshadowing of today’s 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 the state and national identity were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals—nevertheless asserts his unassailable position as the greatest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

[ 36 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, one can only ask: Why, then, do your compatriots now call the people of Schiller and Goethe a “barbarian people”? Since they should know better, history will set aside this question for a long, long time as it chronicles the development of these peoples. For I did not offer this reflection to answer the question: “Why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a ‘barbarian people’?” but rather to show that this question will be raised for a long, long time [in the histories written by Germany’s enemies], and they—these other peoples—will have to answer it.

[ 37 ] In these lectures, which these Englishmen delivered to an English audience, there is something that one would truly never say as a German in Germany; but it is not to be stated here, only quoted: “No German words are more deeply imbued with the essence of national ethics than those that denote these things: true, thorough, faithful.”

[ 38 ] Well, why do they call the German people a “barbarian people”? And the following was said about the German Empire in those same lectures:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Empire has been conducive to world peace. This statement 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 movie. But history ought to be something more than that. It is fitting for history to shed the light of the past upon the chaotic turmoil of the present, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find that our ancestors

[ 39 ] — by which he obviously means his English ancestors —,

that our ancestors viewed France with far greater fear than even the most vociferous agitators today fear Germany. And our ancestors’ fear was well-founded. [...]

To sum it all up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was a boon for Europe, and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of 1866–1871 put an end, once and for all, to the possibility of waging wars of plunder against the hitherto unprotected heart of Europe, thereby eliminating a temptation to war that had so often led France astray in earlier centuries, they enabled the German people to develop their political capabilities, which had hitherto been stunted, and they helped to establish, on a secure foundation, a new European system that has maintained peace for forty years. This blessing stemmed 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 accomplish: namely, securing the balance of power so decisively that a major war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

[ 40 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, if that is the case, why do they call the people of Central Europe a “barbarian people”? There is a curious introduction preceding the publication of the lectures from which I have quoted this passage for you. You will have heard the name of Lord Haldane ring in your ears in an unpleasant way during the early weeks of the war. But that very Lord Haldane—who, after all, also spoke of how the English, out of an abundance of morality, could do nothing else but join forces with Germany’s other enemies to attack the Germans—well, this Lord Haldane wrote a preface to the lectures, from which I would like to share an excerpt with you. In this preface, the lord—who now claims that England has no choice but to punish Germany—says:

The source of the stream of his

[ 41 ] — that is, Germany's —

intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a current—unique in world history—began to flow in a way that has been as uninterrupted as it has been characteristic ever since. Since the days of ancient [Greece], the world has not witnessed such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of today’s Germany is, to a high degree, concrete and practical.

[ 42 ] Yes, you almost blush with embarrassment when you say something like that. But I’m not the one saying it—I’m just quoting it. Then Lord Haldane says:

Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of having to defend ourselves against attacks that, in reality, none of us intends to launch.

[ 43 ] And a woman who spent eight years in Germany—an Englishwoman who, during those eight years, visited hospitals and lecture halls, studied the schools, and studied everything of that nature that was accessible to her—differs from other English people in terms of her knowledge in that she has truly come to know the Germans and their institutions. She published a book titled *Eight Years in Germany* by Miss Wylie. This book was published very recently, barely a few weeks before the outbreak of the war. Miss Wylie has described many aspects of the German character that she came to know here in Germany. I would like to share just a few words from her book with you, and you will see how the question that is the subject of our discussion today must be reframed.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its very existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is waging a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience were built up generations ago. [...]

At every border and across the water

[ 44 ] —that is, over the canal—

Germany’s commercial and political opponents are sitting in wait, eagerly anticipating the moment when Germany shows even the slightest sign of weakness so they can pounce and bring it down. Germany knows this [as well] all too well.

[ 45 ] We see that the German character was by no means entirely unknown to other peoples. Therefore, we must likely overlook the question of today’s perspective as the question that later history will pose to these peoples.

[ 46 ] But on the other hand, at the same time, there is a complete lack of understanding of precisely what is connected to the deepest, most spiritual aspects of the German spirit! Herman Grimm, the great art historian—it was he who uttered these wonderful words. He—this Herman Grimm, whom one can almost sense as Goethe’s representative in the second half of the nineteenth century—he, who was deeply immersed in the German spirit and was completely bound to it in mind and soul, spoke a very significant word about Goethe’s biography, written by the Englishman Lewes. This Lewes attempted to temper the old English prejudices regarding Goethe. For up until Lewes, every Englishman believed that the Germans revered a man named Goethe who was actually a thoroughly immoral fellow, even though he had produced some beautiful works. With regard to Goethe’s ethical character, this Mr. Lewes accomplished quite a bit. But it is true, as Herman Grimm says: When one reads through Lewes’s biography, which bears the title “Goethe Biography,” one gets the feeling that Lewes is writing about a figure born in Frankfurt in 1749—a figure to whom Goethe’s life story is attributed, to whom Goethe’s works are ascribed—who died in March 1832. Yet there is not even a hint in Mr. Lewes’s biography of what the German people see in their Goethe.

[ 47 ] This is precisely what is so deeply ingrained in the German soul: universality, the desire to merge into that flowing spirituality, and the transformation of the stream of spirituality into one’s own being. This is what the peoples living around Germany lack, and what, fundamentally speaking, they have still absorbed very little of to this day. And so one can say: It is true, it is right—as Herman Grimm once said with regard to the peoples of the East. There, he said, there was a Russian who also wrote a biography—Beethoven’s biography. Nothing of what Beethoven truly is lives within that biography.

[ 48 ] One need only compare this with the selfless, devoted manner in which the German spirit—which is always striving to become—seeks to immerse itself in what is spread throughout the world, and how, setting aside its own distinctive character, it knows how to find its way into foreign peculiarities. How has the German spirit united Shakespeare’s spirit with its own? When such a thing is experienced within a people, it is only natural that a man like Herman Grimm should speak of it in reference to Mr. Lewes’s alleged biography of Goethe. And when one sees how little heart and understanding were actually present in those who have often called themselves the leaders of other peoples, one comes to understand many things. One comes to understand much when one truly immerses oneself in what one can experience together with the German spirit; then one can say: There is truly something in this German spirit of that Faustian mood which, on the one hand, shrouds life’s great mysteries in the saying, “All that is transitory is but a parable,” but on the other hand declares: “Whoever strives with all their might, we can redeem them.” And within the German spirit lives something that must lead beyond all pessimism, something that establishes certainty and hope for the future on a true foundation. Yet how little of this has truly penetrated the hearts and souls of those who, with some sincerity, seek among other peoples that which liberates the spirit and can bring harmony into the liberated human soul.

[ 49 ] I would like to describe to you how one of the most significant Russians, Alexander Herzen, established a kind of “entente of souls” with the Englishman Stuart Mill; that one of the finest Russian minds, Herzen, immersed himself in the philosophy of the Englishman Stuart Mill—in that worldview, which is, at its core, entirely based on a materialist standpoint—and that, looking out over Europe, he concluded that, fundamentally, this European culture could offer no consolation, no hope for the future of humanity. It is this Russian’s characteristic words that truly illuminate, in a flash, what has long been at odds in Europe and what has now inevitably come to expression in the flames of this terrible war. Herzen says of Stuart Mill:

[He was by no means exaggerating when he spoke of the narrowing of the mind and of energy, of the blunting of personalities, of the constant dumbing down of life, of the constant exclusion of universal human interests from life, and of the reduction of those interests to the concerns of the commercial office and bourgeois prosperity. Mill speaks plainly of how, in this way, England will become like China—and we would add: and not just England.]

[ 50 ] And we might add: Not just England! For Stuart Mill believes that, along with England, all of Europe must become like China. We are left with only one answer to the question: How could such an opinion arise even in the heart of a man who strives for greatness? — an answer that becomes clear when we see how he overlooks that striving which Goethe has his “Faust” express: “Whoever strives with all his might, we can redeem him,” and also overlooks what Fichte, Goethe, and Schiller represent for the entire modern era. Whoever speaks this way does not know the German spirit—that German spirit of which we will say, in these fateful days: Within it lives the power that, though not, as the Russian believes, leading to the execution ground and the pyre, does lead to oppression and death, to endless pain and suffering, in order to defend what the German soul and its mission in the world are.

[ 51 ] However, while Emerson sees Goethe as the very embodiment of the German spirit, one of Russia’s contemporary intellectuals has this to say about Goethe: Merezhkovsky, who even pretends to revere Goethe—let us not be deceived, let us not be deceived by his *Leading Spirits*, which have now been translated into German, for anyone who truly understands Goethe would find it impossible to speak such words about Goethe, the representative of modern intellectual life, as the Russian Merezhkovsky has done. He says:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends down toward the ground, just as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrivel into a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and—may the shadow of the Olympian have mercy on me—a German philistine, “Mr. von Goethe,” Privy Councilor to the Duke of Weimar, and the respectable son of a respectable Frankfurt shopkeeper.

[ 52 ] Let us suppose that Goethe appeared to Mereschkowski in this way during certain periods of his life; but anyone who recognizes Goethe and what he means to humanity would not say such a thing. For it is not merely a matter of whether one considers something to be correct, but whether one possesses enough spiritual insight to say it or not. There is something in these words that the world still has to learn from the German spirit.

[ 53 ] But indeed, when we now see how that which constitutes German spiritual life is to be trampled underfoot from the East, how this German spiritual life—in alliance with the Western peoples—is to be crushed to the ground from the East, then we may ask: What, then, is the state of understanding—and the potential for understanding—on the part of those in the East with regard to the German essence?

[ 54 ] Well, my esteemed audience, once again it is not a German who is speaking; once again, I do not wish to speak myself, but rather I will let a member of the Russian people speak for himself—the philosopher Soloviev, who, in essence, is not merely a philosopher but a seer, regarded even by the most distinguished Russians themselves as a representative of the Russian spirit. Let us ask him. How must he assess that which has been reviled for decades by Russian intellectuals and other demagogues among the Russian people—how must he assess this idolization of the racial principle to the exclusion of the principle of education, how must he assess this brute force in relation to Europe? Let us listen to him, not to ourselves; let us hear the Russian speak about the Russians—not about the inner forces of the Russian people, but about the forces that have come into being through the conspiracies of mendacious Pan-Slavism and the mendacious Grand Duchy. Let us hear the Russian speak about all that has long been in the making; let us hear him speak. He says: “Why does Europe not love us?” And he answers:

Europe [...] looks upon us with fear and resentment, for the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and enigmatic, its intellectual and cultural powers are inferior, while its aspirations, on the other hand, are clear, resolute, and grand.

The clamour of our rationalism resounds loudly throughout Europe—a rationalism that seeks to destroy Turkey and Austria, to defeat the Germans, and to seize Constantinople and, if possible, India as well. But if one were to ask us how we intend to bring happiness to humanity after seizing and destroying all of this, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless platitudes. [...] Thus [...] the most essential—indeed, the only important—question that an honest and reasonable patriotism should address lies not in Russia’s power and mission, but in its sins.

[ 55 ] Because the very thing the Russian must now address himself was introduced by the powers I have just alluded to, what is now sweeping devastatingly across Europe amid such terrible storms has been brewing for decades, coming precisely from the East. For when the question is raised from so many quarters: “Who wanted the war?”, the question need only be rephrased as: “Who could have prevented the war?” And to this question there is a clear answer, which history must also provide: Russia, and Russia alone, could have prevented the war. Of course, the Western powers will also bear some responsibility, for without them Russia would have spared itself the war—at least for now. But only hints can be given on this point. For the German who allows what I have been able to sketch with charcoal strokes to take root in his soul, for him, what must now be fought against amid such unspeakable sacrifices in the East and West must be something that opens one’s eyes —an eye-opener—that points out to us how desperately we need to reflect on ourselves, to reflect on that which allows us to discover the strong forces of the German spirit. By the number of his enemies, the German can gauge the necessity of this search for his own, inherently unique strength, rooted in himself. In this regard, many things can be instructive for us.

[ 56 ] We believed that an understanding of the German character would begin to dawn, particularly among the French. Strangely enough, even very shortly before the war, there were people who believed that youthful France would show an understanding of the German character. In conclusion, I must shed some light on this matter after all. Some—one might even say some of our finest Germans—were surprised to find that a Frenchman, Romain Rolland, who was one of the first, along with Verhaeren and others, to level the bitterest invectives against German “barbarism,” was in fact a man who understood the German spirit and Germany well. Why was this the case? Well, the question is difficult to answer—very difficult indeed. For this Romain Rolland has, in fact, written a novel. In this novel, a German, Jean-Christophe, plays a role. I am well aware that I am making a judgment that can stand up to any aesthetic scrutiny, and I am prepared to face those who find the judgment I am making “barbaric.”

[ 57 ] So this Romain Rolland wrote his novel *Jean-Christophe*. The hero is a German, but he is cobbled together in such a way that the result is utter chaos. This character is cobbled together from the early lives of Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Gustav Mahler. All of this is jumbled together in this character. The result is a character who, from an artistic and aesthetic standpoint, is fundamentally repulsive to anyone who truly appreciates character portrayals. And this Jean-Christophe—in German, Johann Christof Kraft—is presented to us as he is thrust into the terrible conditions of German society. He spends his youth as a German among Germans, but he cannot bear these German conditions. So he must escape from them; he is not accepted in Germany. Although he finds a few admirers, he simply cannot tolerate the German spirit. He then goes to France. It is only in Paris that he finds what makes him a fully realized human being. This is described, along with other aspects that are, in essence, quite chaotic—just like Jean-Christophe himself.

[ 58 ] We have even been told by critics that this novel is one of the most significant contributions to the reconciliation of the German and French spirits after 1870. And someone has said the following about this novel:

I find myself at a loss as to how many times I should actually thank you. The human being, the connoisseur, the artist, the German, and the [worldly optimist] within me—each is jostling to the front, eager to say a word to you. But let the artist speak about this novel another time, and the connoisseur another time, and the human being will wait until he may shake your hand again. Today, let only the German express his gratitude; for I have the feeling that French youth has grown closer to us through this book, which has accomplished more than all the diplomats, banquets, and associations combined.

[ 59 ] Someone published this review as a letter to Romain Rolland.

[ 60 ] In this book—forgive me for highlighting this passage, but I may do so without violating any artistic principle, simply because in Romain Rolland, who is a poor novelist, one can hear Romain Rolland himself speaking through his characters. When he endows his characters with traits that are welcome to him, because he wants to expound on this German nature that he “knows so well.” It all depends on what nuances this young Frenchman has in mind, since he is supposed to understand the German nature so well. We then read the following, which comes up during a conversation with a visitor:

Ever since the German victories, the Germans have done everything in their power to strike compromises, creating a repulsive hodgepodge of new power and old principles. They did not want to renounce their old idealism: that would have been an act of boldness of which they were incapable; instead, in order to make [it] serve German interests, they had contented themselves with distorting it. They followed the example of Hegel, the cheerfully duplicitous Swabian who had waited for the outcomes of Leipzig and Waterloo in order to adapt the fundamental ideas of his philosophy to the Prussian state

[ 61 ] — In 1806, amid the thunder of cannon fire at the Battle of Jena, Hegel wrote his seminal work, which contained the fundamental principles of all his later works, in 1806. The Frenchman, who has not read Hegel either—or if he has, then without understanding—says that Hegel waited for “Leipzig and Waterloo.” And further—

and now, since interests had changed, it also changed its principles. When Germany was defeated, it was said that Germany’s ideal was humanity. Now that they were defeating others, they claimed that Germany was the ideal of humanity. As long as other countries were the more powerful ones, they said, echoing Lessing, that patriotism was a heroic weakness that one could very well do without, and they called themselves citizens of the world. Now that they had emerged victorious, they could not muster enough contempt for the “French” utopias—such as world peace, brotherhood, peaceful progress, human rights, and natural equality; they claimed that the strongest nation had an absolute right over the others, while the others, as the weaker ones, had no rights in relation to it. It seemed to be the living God and the Spirit made flesh, whose progress was achieved through war, violence, and oppression.

[ 62 ] That's how well the Frenchman understood the Germans!

Now that power was on their side, it had been sanctified. Power had now become the very embodiment of all idealism and all reason.

To be fair, one must say that Germany had suffered so greatly for centuries from possessing idealism without power that, after so many trials, it was quite excusable if it now made the sad confession that what it needed above all else was power, whatever form it might take. But how much hidden bitterness lay in such a confession by the people of Herder and Goethe! And what a renunciation, what a humiliation of the German ideal lay in this German victory! — And alas, this renunciation found all too much willingness in the lamentable tendency of all the best Germans to submit.

“What characterizes the Germans,” Möser said more than a century ago, “is obedience.”

And Madame de Staël: “You parry neatly. You resort to philosophical rationales to explain the most unphilosophical thing in the world: respect for power and the habituation to fear, which transforms respect into admiration.”

Christof found this sentiment reflected in both the greatest and the humblest in Germany

[ 63 ] — that's why he has to leave Germany —,

from Wilhelm Tell, the cautious, petty-bourgeois man with the muscles of a porter, who, as the free Jew Börne says: “To reconcile honor and fear, he walks past the stake of the thieving Lord Gessler with his eyes downcast, so that he may claim that he who did not see the hat is not disobedient,” all the way up to the honorable seventy-year-old Professor Weiße, one of the city’s most respected scholars, who, whenever a lieutenant passed him, would hastily yield the sidewalk to him and step down onto the road.

Germany

[ 64 ] — so this Frenchman, who understands the Germans so well, goes on to say elsewhere,

Germany truly bears the main burden of Europe’s sins. Once victory has been achieved, one is responsible for it: one has incurred a debt to the vanquished; one has assumed the silent responsibility to lead the way for them, to show them the path. The victorious Louis XIV brought the splendor of French reason to the world. What light has the Germany of Sedan brought to the world?

[ 65 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, you may not find it all that surprising, having heard this, that this Frenchman was among the first to join the others in *Le Matin* in wailing about German “barbarism.” But you will find it astonishing that people believed this book—this novel by Romain Rolland—to be one of the most significant acts since 1870 aimed at bringing about peace. It was translated into German very quickly. The first three volumes were published shortly before the war. But this Frenchman wants to understand the Germans; he also wants to portray them whenever he finds characteristic moments in their behavior. As I said, he follows the practice of poor novelists, who always make themselves audible when they have their characters speak. So this Frenchman—whom one finds particularly puzzling when he toots the horn for *Le Matin* and the like—describes something he truly admires about the Germans. He describes how Jean-Christophe found an admirer in a professor from Ulm. He pays him a visit. There, the Frenchman describes what he calls a “German meal.” It was so good, this German meal, that even the cook, Salomé, peeks through the door to see how the gentlemen sitting there with Jean-Christophe are enjoying their meal. It is then that the Frenchman discovers the “greatness” of Germany.

It was a showcase of unforgettable, authentic, unadulterated German cuisine—with its aromas of all kinds of herbs, its thick sauces, its hearty soups, its exemplary meat dishes, its monumental carp, its sauerkraut, its geese, its homemade cakes, and its anise and caraway breads.

[ 66 ] There he describes something he intends to portray as a positive trait of the Germans. But among those who came to visit the German professor at that time—a man who, incidentally, is not exactly portrayed in the most flattering light by this Frenchman who claims to understand the Germans so well—there is one who can sing well. And Romain Rolland certainly loves music. His critics have said that his novel is “the novel of modern music.” And he himself came to love Germany precisely through music. So here he describes someone who can sing. And he describes him in such a way that one sees that Jean-Christophe is asking himself why a German can sing.

[ 67 ] That is because the Germans do not know how to sing at all. They are gripped by the power of song, and the song works through them as if through a tool. The spirit of the songs took hold of them, and they obey it. For the German soul must do so. This soul obeys the song just as a soldier obeys his commander.

[ 68 ] This is roughly how the Frenchman, who understands the Germans so well, describes the [German] singing tradition.

[ 69 ] And then he also gives us some insights into what the man who sang like that looked like. And so that you, too, may gain something valuable from the Frenchman’s book in this regard, I’d also like to tell you that he describes this singer—whom he admits sings excellently, for the reasons I’ve cited—as a fat man who always sweats when he takes steps, but especially when he sings. He describes his nature, his entire appearance. Then he says: He looked like a Bavarian, a particular subtype of Germans. — He believes there are quite a few such people among the Bavarians, for they possess the secret to preserving this human race, which “has come about through a feeding regimen similar to that used for fattening poultry.”

[ 70 ] Well, my esteemed audience, I could tell you many more things about the spiritual nature of what lies behind what is now manifesting physically. Especially when one considers today the contrast between the French and the German, as it is so clearly expressed in the fact that—having lost their sense of judgment due to their eternal thirst for revenge—the French have done something they will only come to realize in the future: allowing themselves to be led in the wake of the East, about which we have even heard a Russian speak. When one considers this contrast between Central Europe and the immediate West, words like these might come to mind—truly, when one looks at everything that has been produced on the other side of the Rhine, when one sums it all up—words of this sort might come to mind:

To my knowledge, there is no law of nature and no divine parliamentary act on the basis of which France alone, among all earthly beings, would be exempt from returning part of its spoils if the robbed owner is able to reclaim them. No one except France itself at this moment can believe that such a law of nature exists. Neither Alsace nor Lorraine came into France’s possession in such a providential manner that they could not be taken back from it. Richelieu’s cunning, Louis XIV’s magnificent saber—these are France’s only legal claims to the German lands. Richelieu pried them loose. And General Turenne happened to be unscrewed along with them. For Turenne was a true German by blood and nature. But Francis I had set his ancestor, the little Duke of Bouillon, on the path we saw above, and he gradually turned him into a Frenchman.

[ 71 ] And so on. And further:

For me, the saddest symptom in France right now is the image that its geniuses are projecting—its greatest literary voices, who are supposed to be its prophets and seers, and who have in fact been projecting this image for a generation. They apparently believe that new heavenly wisdom radiates from France onto all other nations, which sit in deep shadow. France, they say, is the new Zion of the universe. And all that sad, filthy, half-mad, and for the most part downright hellish stuff that French literature has been preaching to us over the last fifty years is a true gospel from heaven, full of blessings for all the children of men. Ah, one understands that France has carried out its great revolution; that it has raised its terrible voice of destiny against a world of human illusions, proclaiming with the trumpet of the Last Judgment: There shall be no more illusions!

[ 72 ] These words were not written by Germans! Rather, the words I have just read aloud were translated by Rieger, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Würzburg, from a letter that had already appeared in *The Times* on November 18, 1870, and which was written at that time by Thomas Carlyle; It dealt with France and the French character, French greed, and the claims to Alsace-Lorraine. It is, in fact, quite a telling sign that a psychiatrist, of all people, found and translated this letter, for there will be many a psychiatric chapter in world history if everything that is now being put out into the world—from both the East and the West—regarding the German character is to be judged.

[ 73 ] But if, on the other hand, we allow this German essence to influence us—not in the manner of arrogance, but rather as humble self-knowledge has done—if we see what Germany’s greatest minds have recognized in the German spirit, if we see how the seeds of spiritual science and spiritual insights emerged in Schiller and Fichte, so that we must say to ourselves: In this German essence lie seeds that compel us to nurture them into blossoms and fruits, then we must fill our souls with the right certainties and possibilities for the future. And we will know that when our days, marked by fate and burdened by destiny, are once again replaced by days in which history speaks objectively, then one of the most terrible questions will hang over the enemy nations: Why do they call the people of Schiller and Fichte a “barbarian people”?

[ 74 ] And when one seeks to answer this question, one will sense how the German spirit has not yet fulfilled its mission within the whole of the world, within the ongoing development of humanity. One will sense how right Goethe was when, even in a time of great adversity, he said to Luden:

The destiny of the Germans has not yet been fulfilled. If they had had no other task than to shatter the Roman Empire and to create and organize a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have endured—and with such strength and capability—I believe they must still have a great destiny ahead of them.

[ 75 ] One will sense—when one comes to sense the German essence—that it must defend itself today as if enclosed within a great fortress—even against enemies who do not understand it and seek to trample it underfoot—and one will find that this German essence is not yet complete, that this German spirit must fight for its existence not only for its own sake but for the sake of the Earth’s development. And today we may summarize what this reflection could only hint at; we may put it into words that point to how, even though the German spirit has already accomplished great things, what it has accomplished must now appear as the seed of future blossoms and fruits. And to those over whom this question will hang as a historical fate—why do they call the people of Fichte and Schiller a “barbarian people”?—one must call out to them in response what we wish to conclude today’s reflection with:

The German spirit has not yet fulfilled
What it is meant to bring to the world.
It lives in hopeful concern for the future,
It hopes for future deeds] full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerfully
Something hidden that must still ripen.
How can the desire for its end be stirred,
without understanding, in the power of the enemy:
As long as life reveals itself to it,
which sustains it creatively at the roots of its being?