The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Times of Anticipation

[ 1 ] My dear friends! We will begin this evening with a reading of some posthumous—that is, as yet unpublished—poems by our dear friend Christian Morgenstern, followed by a few poems from his most recently published volume. Then there will be a musical performance, after which we will watch images of our building unfold before our eyes; this will be followed by another musical number. And for those friends who wish to stay a while longer, I will conclude with a few reflections, into which I will include a brief reference to the nature of our eurythmy, because some friends, particularly from Switzerland, have expressed a desire to hear something about the nature of eurythmy.

[ 2 ] My dear friends! To seize the opportunity again and again to bring Christian Morgenstern’s poetry—especially those works that were so dear to his own heart in the final days of his physical life, when he was so intimately connected with us—before our souls seems to us, on the one hand, a sacred duty, and on the other, something that is truly and intimately connected with the entire essence and nature of our Spiritual Science movement in the present. For one may certainly say that Christian Morgenstern’s way of immersing himself in what Spiritual Science seeks to proclaim to the world has truly become a blessing in a spiritual sense for our movement, which is, after all, still only at the beginning of its development.

[ 3 ] Most of the friends gathered here know, from various lecture cycles and individual talks I have given here and there over the past few months, that one of my most significant occult experiences of recent times has been my time spent with Christian Morgenstern after his death. And I have not held back, particularly regarding that experience which, in connection with Christian Morgenstern, is so significant for the blessing that flows to our movement from the spiritual worlds: that our movement was able to find a poet who connected his soul so intimately with this movement that, in a sense, that cosmic tableau belongs to the elements of his present being in the spiritual worlds—a tableau which, through the means of the spiritual world itself and at the same time as an integral part of Christian Morgenstern, reveals the truth of what we are to recognize and teach. Yes, my dear friends, this is something extraordinarily significant; it is something that can instill immense confidence in the inner truth, but also in the inner driving force of our movement. We know that something like the confluence of the spiritual cosmic universe is now connected to Christian Morgenstern’s own being. Just as one beholds in a large tableau by a painter—a true painter on the physical plane—much of the mysteries of the physical world flowing together, so in the spiritual world—because there the human being must surrender not only his abilities to what it offers, but his entire being—so the entire being of Christian Morgenstern is connected to this, I might say, cosmic painting in which he now lives. And it is one of the most deeply moving experiences one can have to see that he now lives in the spiritual world with his true, authentic being. It is one of the most moving experiences to see how this human being lived here in the physical world, confined within the most manifold obstacles, and how he can now—as can be sensed and experienced by those who love him—unfold freely in the spiritual world. It is deeply moving that we can only come to fully know such a being when we grasp its significance after death.

[ 4 ] Today, after his death, Christian Morgenstern appears to me as the spiritual guide of many people who, in the brief periods of humanity’s spiritual development that have now passed, ascended into the spiritual worlds—worlds that receive immense benefit from the fact that these people were, in a certain sense, endowed in the physical world with an inner longing for the spiritual worlds, yet were unable to find them. They brought this longing with them. We spoke of these longings on the day of the laying of the foundation stone, referring to a specific personality: Herman Grimm. I have shown how close he had come to grasping the spiritual world, and yet had been unable to find it. For him and many others, it is an immense blessing that—to put it in human terms—they can now be convinced of what they sought and could not find: that they can be convinced of having it before them in the soul of Christian Morgenstern. Not that they could not otherwise find it in the spiritual world; but it is something else to have it before them in this way. This is the immense blessing of Christian Morgenstern having connected himself with the spirit of our movement and thus having had the opportunity to carry it upward, so that those beings in the spiritual world who longed to know such a thing can now see anthroposophy there.

[ 5 ] In my correspondence with Christian Morgenstern after his death, I was often reminded of two facts. One of them relates to one of the greatest representatives of modern intellectual life, Goethe. Well, we all know Goethe as the author of *Faust*, as one of the truest poets of all time, because he fought through and suffered through in his own soul what he portrayed in *Faust*. You all know, of course, that the second part of “Faust” concludes with Faust’s ascent into the spiritual worlds. That is what Goethe had to portray, but in Goethe’s time it was not possible to find the images that correspond to the truth as it must be seen today. And in a certain sense, it makes a tragic impression when we read a conversation between Goethe and Eckermann in which he speaks of the difficulties he faced when he set out to complete the second part of *Faust* and to bring Faust’s ascent into the higher worlds to life. There he says:

[ 6 ] “By the way, you will admit that the conclusion, where the saved soul ascends, was very difficult to write, and that, with such supernatural, almost unimaginable things, I could very easily have lost myself in vagueness had I not given my poetic intentions a beneficially restrictive form and firmness through the sharply defined Christian-ecclesiastical figures and mental images.”

[ 7 ] We know that Goethe had to resort to these traditional Christian-ecclesiastical forms, that he had to clothe the soul’s transition into the supersensible world in these forms. But we also know that within him lived a longing for what we are now attempting to express in new forms, in forms appropriate to our time.

[ 8 ] It is of infinite importance that our movement found, right from the very beginning, a poet like Christian Morgenstern, who was able to translate everything this movement could offer him directly into personal feelings, which resonate with us so warmly and so wonderfully lovingly, especially in his posthumously published poems. The fact that he was able, right from the very beginning of our movement, to absorb what it had to offer into the personal realm so directly, so fundamentally, is of immense significance, because Christian Morgenstern elevated everything personal into a transpersonal sphere that is connected to the starting points of our movement. That such a thing is possible is truly connected to the trust one can have in our movement.

[ 9 ] The other fact I cannot help but think of these days is the following: I once pointed out in a lecture in Berlin that I had a conversation with Herman Grimm, who was so attuned to all the longings that lead to an understanding of the supersensible worlds in our own way. In that conversation, I tried to touch upon these matters. He merely made a defensive gesture; he did not want to let that come near him. There was something deeply unsettling about seeing this peculiar behavior, especially from Herman Grimm, toward the form of spiritual life so characteristic of our time—Herman Grimm, whom I would like to call Goethe’s accredited representative for the second half of the 19th century. All the efforts of our movement are directed toward pointing out to precisely such spirits, who are now in the spiritual world, what Christian Morgenstern can say to them.

[ 10 ] So you see how we seek to elevate what we perceive as our connection, our relationship, and our love for Christian Morgenstern to a transcendent realm. I have tried to convey this to you in a few words.

[ 11 ] If you listen with your heart to what is about to be recited to you, Christian Morgenstern’s words will help you feel, in a different way, what he means to our entire movement and what he will come to mean. There is one passage in particular that will touch your heart deeply in light of the events of these days. Even though Christian Morgenstern, of course, had a very different war in mind when he wrote this little poem than the one we are forced to endure today, the message contained in this very short poem still strikes a deep chord in light of current events.

[ 12 ] So, before I continue with these reflections, let us first listen to a few of the posthumous poems by our dear friend Christian Morgenstern.

[ 13 ] Recitation by Marie Steiner-von Sivers from *Aus den nachgelassenen Gedichten von Christian Morgenstern* (From the Posthumous Poems of Christian Morgenstern). It is not recorded which poems were recited, but the following two were certainly among them:

Anthroposophy

O world, — you poor human being,
who do not know,
what is taking place here
in the midst of you.

The true greatness of these turbulent times
is brought to life here in a truly human way,
a chapter of the most sublime history unfolds
here before us—and we are part of it!

O great world, you poor mother-human
who (once again—O you dreamer!)
knows not, suspects not,
what is being born within you.

(1911)

I

I watch as the old world
rises within me and struggles again and again,
and as the new one glides gently over it,
alternately darkening and illuminating it.

I watch. How will the war end?
Will the gloomy smoke settle to the ground
and morning clarity dawn over it?
I watch myself. Perhaps this heralds victory.

(1909)

[ 14 ] Music. Presentation of images of the Goetheanum building. Music

[ 15 ] My dear friends! Perhaps you have already gathered from various things that have been said here and elsewhere in the field of Spiritual Science—including the introductory remarks about our dear friend Christian Morgenstern—that it is important to me to view all our endeavors, and thus also that which is connected to our endeavors, as a whole, as something unified, and that it is particularly important to me that this whole, which is to be incorporated into human evolution as an impulse toward a new spiritual culture, truly connects with the longings, the hopes, and the expectations of the spiritual culture of the immediately preceding era. I have, in fact, sought to emphasize this especially here at the ceremony commemorating the laying of the foundation stone of our building. One should therefore regard our Spiritual Science and its endeavors—including, among other things, what has just unfolded before your eyes in the form of images of our building, and finally what is to take root in our cultural context as eurythmy—as a unified whole, but also as something that is not merely a whole in itself, but connects to something that has been anticipated. And when I tried earlier to draw a line in a few words from Goethe to Christian Morgenstern via Herman Grimm, this was intended merely as a twofold example of how, on the one hand, human development truly provides grounds for believing with a deeper optimism in the progress of human development, but on the other hand also demonstrates that spiritual factors and spiritual impulses continually intervene in human development. I have tried to bring before your souls how, at the end of his *Faust*, Goethe had to depict Faust’s ascent into the spiritual worlds using old Christian-Catholic forms, and I have pointed out how, in the poet Christian Morgenstern, we have found someone who has begun to shape spiritual life and the supersensible worlds into new forms, as is necessary for people of the present day. From some of the posthumous poems, from some of these words, you will have heard once again how poetry can unite, can unite most intimately, with what the spiritual life we have in mind desires: that a new relationship be found between human life on the physical plane and its connection to the spiritual worlds, and how spiritual factors intervene in the further development of humanity. I attempted to make this clear by daring to say what may be said among true anthroposophists: that Herman Grimm, who may be called Goethe’s accredited representative in the second half of the 19th century, may now, in a sense, find what he could not find on earth in the physical body, in the vision of what Christian Morgenstern was already able to carry up into the spiritual worlds. There we see the interplay of the spiritual with the physical progress of humanity.

[ 16 ] And are we not, my dear friends, seeking—through everything that finds expression in our building—a new form of the old beauty? For beauty means much more than what is usually associated with this idea, with this concept. One need only realize how manifold the nature of human progress is if one wishes to grasp what it means that in any age, such as ours, new forms of beauty, new forms of the entire human mood, are to emerge. It must come to pass that, from the impulses of Spiritual Science as we understand it, something develops that represents progress over what came before, something that goes even beyond what even Goethe could have intended in *Faust*. We must hope for something like this. After all, when Goethe felt the longing to immerse himself in beauty, he could do nothing else but go to Rome to relive Greek beauty in his soul. After all, the entire 19th century could do nothing else but go to Rome to relive Greek beauty. But the age has come when one must not merely go to Rome, not merely immerse oneself in classical Greek forms of beauty, but when one must enter into spiritual worlds in order to find new forms of beauty emerging from those spiritual worlds. And it must be emphasized that the past age, so to speak, thirsted for such an approach of an epoch of spiritual experience. More than the present realizes, this is expressed precisely in a spirit such as that of Herman Grimm, this standard-bearer of Goetheanism in the second half of the 19th century. Not to say anything about Herman Grimm, but to show by his example what is expected of the spiritual life of our present, I would like to insert this link, Herman Grimm, into the development of humanity as it has unfolded from Goethe down to us, who may consider ourselves truly living and striving within what, in the deepest sense, Goethe himself desired in the innermost part of his heart and soul. The manner in which spiritual life progresses in the evolution of humanity is manifold and accessible only to deeper contemplation.

[ 17 ] You know that I only mention personal matters when there is a factual reason to do so. Now, whenever I turn my thoughts to the evolution of humanity, I am sometimes reminded of a feeble attempt I made as a very young man. That essay was the second thing of mine ever to be published. At that time—childishly, of course, for I was only 23 or 24 years old—I tried to make clear to myself the progress from what Shakespeare’s characters are to what Goethe’s Faust is. Through Shakespeare, something was created that had to be created precisely in his age, in which human beings could only be portrayed as human types, in such a way that the manner of their portrayal directly reveals an unfolding of their inner soul forces. The progress in Goethe’s *Faust* lies in the fact that Goethe did not present the individual characters as individual types—as in Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and so on in Shakespeare—but rather presented Faust as the human being of our age. Faust can be placed in a work of poetry only once; what Shakespeare had to offer could be presented to people through many human types. One must thus view the diversity of human spiritual life in evolution in such a way that in every age, precisely what must happen is what expresses itself as the characteristic of that age.

[ 18 ] And when we seek today to find a true spiritual mood, a truly deep feeling of the human soul’s connection to the higher hierarchies, this is truly—as it appears to us in Spiritual Science—in a certain sense the fulfillment of expectations, of expectations that have been present in human development to such an extent that one can say: It was precisely such representative figures as Herman Grimm who, in their own way, expressed the deepest longing for something they were waiting for—and which must be given in the way we describe today the higher hierarchies and their relationship to humanity. You see, at the deepest level, in the most soulful way—one might say with the greatest power of the soul’s core—a spirit like Herman Grimm was able to express this. And it is precisely in him that we see, time and again, wherever we open his books, how the expectation of Spiritual Science is linked to his personality—an expectation that he, however, could not understand when it fleetingly met him. Something like what occurred after Christian Morgenstern’s death simply had to happen first.

[ 19 ] I once met with Herman Grimm during his visit to the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. There he spoke of his mental image of the evolution of humanity, explaining that history was not, for him, a mere enumeration of what is usually recorded as history; rather, history was, for him, an evolution of spiritual forces. But he could only bring himself to call it a history of humanity’s imaginative work. He could not grasp that there are imaginations in human development that flow unconsciously into humanity and are translated into human activity, that there are inspirations and intuitions in history. “The imaginative work of peoples” was what it was to him. He could not bring himself to replace the purely external, factual aspect of maya—which he called “the imaginative work of peoples”—with that which must present itself in the human spirit if it is to find the ascent from the physical world into the spiritual. One will truly understand only later what it meant for the 19th century when Herman Grimm said: What can particularly interest us in the way history has portrayed Julius Caesar? Julius Caesar—says Herman Grimm—interests me far more as he is portrayed by Shakespeare. That is truer, more historical than anything presented in historiography. — Time and again he pointed out how much he enjoyed reading Tacitus, for the reason that Tacitus was a man who knew how to bring to life from the depths of his soul and transform into the spiritual realm whatever he had to describe. From such mental images arose a thought as wonderful as the one Herman Grimm wrote down in the 1890s, which appears in his book on Homer—a thought that truly stands as an anticipation of what is to come as a message from the hierarchies: “Human beings, as a totality, recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court of judgment enthroned as if in the clouds; they regard it as a misfortune not to be permitted to stand before it, and they seek to align their inner conflicts with its judicial proceedings.”

[ 20 ] What a wonderful image of the Court of Justice enthroned in the clouds, beneath which the peoples know they stand! Does this not embody all longing for hierarchies, for an understanding of what hierarchies mean for humanity?

[ 21 ] Thus, in the recent development of the spirit, minds have emerged whose historical perspective possesses a kind of adaptability, so that even here such minds stand at the threshold of what Spiritual Science seeks. Humanity will only learn through Spiritual Science a true mental image of the fact that something has truly been added to the development of the world through the way Herman Grimm spoke about Michelangelo, Raphael, Tacitus, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Homer, and will also feel this idea of the essential development in the world in their hearts. And if you recall what Herman Grimm said about Christ, you have there again something like an anticipation of what Spiritual Science says about Christ. Thus you have another example of what is truly very important to me when we consider the entry of Spiritual Science into contemporary life: to show how Spiritual Science comes as the fulfillment of much that has been anticipated. In 1895 the book was published in which the “court of judgment enthroned in the clouds” is spoken of. There one truly feels a deep connection to what was there, when one may then speak of a succession of hierarchical levels; there the image is translated into the spiritual, reflecting the inner truth of the matter.

[ 22 ] And even the first signs of this inner capacity for transformation were already evident. For just as Herman Grimm, for example, spoke of Michelangelo, Raphael, Homer, and Tacitus, Shakespeare, and Voltaire—especially during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870—and the way he was able to bring Emerson’s writings to life in the 1850s, all show us something of the capacity for transformation toward which the serious part of humanity strives, and which can now find its fulfillment in Spiritual Science. And Spiritual Science must provide precisely that which can become the most personal thing for every human being, so that human feeling becomes the broadest, the broadest of all, but in return also the most intense of all.

[ 23 ] One really feels like saying: It is precisely in a figure as representative as Herman Grimm—whom I increasingly believe I can connect to our friend Christian Morgenstern’s work for the spiritual world—that the striving for the spiritual is evident, and it is important not to overlook these facts. Herman Grimm was a four-year-old child when Goethe died; he himself died in Berlin on June 16, 1901, at the age of seventy-three. He lived through the second half of the 19th century in such a way that his personality, as it were, had to unite with all the impulses of beauty that flowed from Goethe into humanity.

[ 24 ] In a wonderful way, one sees in Herman Grimm this human tendency toward the spiritual, this development of an organ for understanding the spiritual. And time and again, especially when I consider the cultural value of our eurythmy—yes, perhaps I may put it that way—think of the outward gestures in Herman Grimm’s life. I must look again and again at how, in Herman Grimm’s outward gestures, everything was one, and there was none of that disharmony that arises especially within materialistic life, where one cannot see at all where the spiritual merges into the physical. It is enough to drive one mad when one sees all these modern sports, such as soccer and so on, how they mechanize people and fail to instill in them anything of what is spiritual within them, no matter how much one imagines otherwise. Everything one strives for there is, after all, a mockery of the spiritual, however well-intentioned it may be. In contrast, a figure like Herman Grimm, in whom everything external is in harmony with the soul, appears as a unified whole: the way he walked, even the fact that he always wore a top hat, is part of the whole of his personality—the way he moved his hands, the way he spoke, the way he spent his time in Bolzano while writing his book on Homer, how he could only write that book on Homer while awaiting spring in Bolzano. It all fits together so beautifully; how he writes on the Homer book, how he goes out as the day wanes and gazes at the wonderful statue of Walther von der Vogelweide in the gardens of Bolzano, how he knows how to describe it right down to its gestures, how he knows how to describe the wonderful marble that comes from the quarries near Bolzano, and how he knows how to connect everything he creates, everything he does, to the intellectual life in which he is immersed.

[ 25 ] There are some things I feel confident judging for myself, since I myself spent some time close to a center of German intellectual life. From 1889 to 1897, I was in Weimar at Goethe’s center of activity, with which Herman Grimm was also associated. It was precisely there that one could sense how Goethe was the king of intellectual life and Herman Grimm his governor, accredited by the spiritual powers. One could sense in Herman Grimm how he sought to frame everything connected to Goethe within a spiritual harmony of gestures. It was his endeavor to grasp Goethe spiritually. It was, so to speak, his endeavor to acknowledge the deceased Goethe—who lived on through his impulses—as weaving and living within the spiritual life in which one felt oneself to be immersed. It was the beginning of what we feel today: that the departed are intimately connected with us, and that they live with us, as it were, only in a different form than before they passed through the gate of death. There was an endeavor to synthesize all the individual phases, all the individual moments of life, into a single gesture—a spiritual gesture.

[ 26 ] I am quite certain, my dear friends, that certain things might have already guided me back then toward what needs to be accomplished in Spiritual Science, but not to what our eurythmy offers, had I not been so close to that spiritual life at the time, had I not witnessed that—in the way things were back then—there was an aspiration to bring forth something that is spiritual and at the same time truly manifests itself in the outer world, truly exists in the outer world. Of course, all of this is part of a great karmic connection, not a coincidence. It is something like an inner eurythmy in the way Herman Grimm sought to embrace life: just as he possessed the wonderful ability to adapt, enabling him, as a very young man, to introduce Emerson into German culture in a way that no other country had ever done, just as he drew attention to the fact that Emerson should be read more because he represented the best side of Americanism, just as he brought Voltaire, Michelangelo, and Raphael to life, and also Goethe, on whom he gave his wonderful lectures in the early 1870s at the University of Berlin. The scholars found much to object to in these lectures. But in every thought, in every word, in every sentence of these lectures, Goethe lives; there he is again within them, present with his own spirit. And Herman Grimm truly wanted to give something to the life around him with his book *Goethe*. It was a unique event that Goethe, who had been physically dead since 1832 and had been almost forgotten, was revived in the 1870s precisely through Herman Grimm.

[ 27 ] But now, since I spoke of the unified gesture, I would like to point out how Herman Grimm always strove to see all things in a larger context, how in this regard he is truly capable of becoming a teacher for all those who seek the transition from the spiritual life of the 19th century to the spiritual life of anthroposophy. Goethe is something universal for humanity; in his “Beiträge zur Culturgeschichte,” Herman Grimm draws attention to how Goethe became universally earthly immediately after he had entered the spiritual world through the gate of death. Herman Grimm quotes a beautiful passage from a lecture by Carlyle from the year 1838: “When a man like Goethe appears in an epoch, whatever that epoch may be: his appearance is the greatest thing that can happen in its course. He is the center. All spiritual influence emanates from him. Of him, as of Shakespeare, it must be said: There was no one like him before he came. He was not like Shakespeare, but the same clarity, the same spirit of tolerance, the same depth of human nature reigned in both.”

[ 28 ] Such a word simultaneously points to the universal—to that which permeates all human relationships, which does not allow us to view the poet or the intellectual hero as merely enthroned in the clouds, but rather as one who truly intervenes in intellectual life. Thus, in Herman Grimm’s entire consciousness regarding Goethe, there was something that was truly capable of grasping Goethe’s spirit so universally that Goethe could appear to him as the spiritual emperor, the emperor of spiritual life. And in a way, my dear friends, that is different from what one is otherwise accustomed to in the world, the free personality, the full free exercise of personality, and self-assurance find expression in someone like Herman Grimm. One may truly say: In Herman Grimm lives something that allowed him to take external circumstances as they must be taken, yet on the other hand always kept him grounded in what he held within himself as his spiritual life; and he judged all worldly circumstances according to the security of this spiritual life.

[ 29 ] Thus comes the moment when, one might say, in his dignified, quiet manner, Herman Grimm was able to perceive a supreme moment in the act of a monarch of the outer world paying homage to the spiritual emperor. This, too, is a gesture of this world, of ineffable significance. I know that many have taken offense at this, but one must consider things in their deeper context. Many have taken issue with the fact that Herman Grimm mentions an incident that happened to him on Christmas Eve 1876. But this incident is significant because it points to a point in modern times where a person stands who finds it natural for a monarch of the outer world to pay homage to the spiritual emperor. Thus, it strikes me as tremendously characteristic of modern spiritual life when Herman Grimm recounts in his *Beiträge zur Deutschen Culturgeschichte* how, on Christmas Eve 1876, the following letter from the German Emperor Wilhelm I was delivered to him:

“My review of your book *Goethe*, a copy of which you presented to me on the 20th of last month, has left me with very pleasant impressions. You have succeeded in sensitively adding many warm, lifelike touches to the luminous portrait of the great poet and in gaining new perspectives for understanding the connections between the external events of his life and his works. As I am convinced that this thoughtful gift, presented to the poet’s admirers just before Christmas, will be recognized as a valuable addition to Goethe scholarship, I thank you most sincerely for the pleasure I personally derived from the book.

Berlin, December 24, 1876.
Wilhelm.»

[ 30 ] Herman Grimm speaks beautifully in response to receiving this letter; for a mind like Herman Grimm’s took great delight in the relationship between the spiritual and the secular life. And it was in this light that he also viewed Goethe and his era, striving to rise to what many people fail to grasp. And so it came to pass that, following this letter, Herman Grimm offered a beautiful, remarkable description of the convergence of intellectual life with the life of the external world in the 19th century. He says: “From Weimar”—for Weimar was, for Herman Grimm, the first capital of German intellectual life; I know this and have often rejoiced in it—“From Weimar, the basic lines of Germany’s intellectual development had been so firmly drawn that Goethe’s views remained the natural standard. And when, in the wake of national political needs, Shakespeare rose anew alongside him, the latter was like a mere appended province of the Goethean empire. For Schlegel had, as it were, translated Shakespeare into Goethe’s German on Goethe’s behalf, and Goethe and Shakespeare united as if into a single, jointly acting power,” etc., etc.

[ 31 ] And now come the beautiful words: “And so the Emperor embraced Goethe. Goethe was not only the great poet and thinker of his era, but the splendor of historical princely grandeur was also associated with his person. I recall the conclusion of the above letter, where the Emperor reflects on the personal pleasure he derived from the book. What did this consist of? Hardly anything that would enhance its literary value. I am not aware that the Emperor ever mentioned Goethe in conversation, but, as I was told, he had passages from the book read to him. I see in this the expression of a feeling on his part that should not be described merely as an interest in Goethe. Goethe was a departed power who had a claim to the German Emperor’s attention. Something like the holders of the highest Italian order, the “Cousins du Roi.”

[ 32 ] Herman Grimm masterfully demonstrates how intellectual life permeates everything, and he himself is such a representative spirit. He goes on to say: “It was not his victories or his political successes that were first remembered, but rather the peaceful qualities inherent in the emperor. His gentleness. His balanced justice. It is wonderful how, in the judgment of peoples, even in the case of warlike princes and rulers, what they did for peaceful development ultimately receives the most attention. As with Frederick the Great and Napoleon, the admiring view of their organizational activities already outweighs that of their military deeds.”

[ 33 ] Thus we see the spiritual life of modern times aligning itself in a unified gesture with that which constitutes the other, the external life. Herman Grimm knew that he was living in times of anticipation. He expresses this beautifully in the following words:

[ 34 ] “Goethe’s age is in decline, along with the century to which it gives its name. We no longer take delight in the past simply because it is past. No matter how much we dig and search today, no matter how emphatically the reports of archaeologists speak of the importance of the latest discoveries: the Goethean gaze no longer rests upon them, under which the selected marble was once transformed into spirit. And the audience is also missing, the audience that once believed in the mysterious value of the thoughts slumbering within these artifacts.” — “The Goethean age is over! But what of Goethe himself? Did the century named after him truly grasp all of Goethe’s ideas? Here we are faced with a new historical experience.” — “The rays of Goethe, who was still alive, had illuminated the German land when the war against Napoleon I was over and the liberated people began to settle into their own homes, in good faith, believing that the victorious spirit must suffice for this as well. As long as those who had participated in those days were still alive, an unshakable trust in the power of higher intellectual work prevailed. The years of humiliation that followed the wars of liberation could not shake it. This spirit was still alive in the influential circles when I gave my lectures on Goethe twenty years ago. Yet even then, those who no longer expected anything from science in the traditional sense were already in the majority. “Science, as we older people understand the term, was based on the unlimited recognition of what had been handed down in the Greek and Latin languages.” And so on.

[ 35 ] Now we are seeing more and more clearly how the age of expectation is approaching, an age that finds its ultimate representative spirit in Herman Grimm.

[ 36 ] “The twentieth century may discover that Goethe had foreseen what it would one day achieve on its own, and even what it still strives for. People will point to the passages in his works where this is expressed. The time periods separating successive generations from Goethe will grow ever wider. But what difference does a century or so make to the relationship of an ever-evolving humanity to Homer or Shakespeare? Their power to penetrate the soul grows ever stronger. Alongside them, Goethe will one day accompany humanity as a star in his own right.”

[ 37 ] One might say that everything in this man strives toward the spirit, toward spiritualization. This is his expectation, and this is how he instills in us that genuine trust, that true trust—that we are not offering something born of external caprice, but rather what humanity needs, what it has been waiting for. This is something immensely important. And it is also the universality of Spiritual Science that already lives within this expectation. That is why I must once again point to what Herman Grimm says in his book on Homer:

[ 38 ] “Human beings, as a whole, recognize themselves as subject to an invisible court of justice enthroned as if in the clouds; they regard it as a misfortune not to be permitted to stand before it, and they seek to align their disputes with its judicial proceedings. With anxious effort, they seek justice here. How hard the French of today strive to present the war against Germany they are planning as a moral imperative, the recognition of which they demand from other nations, indeed from the Germans themselves. I have the feeling that Homer’s aim was to portray the struggle of the peoples before Troy as though this movement, lying in the most distant past, had once encompassed a multitude of nations whose moral consciousness was a common one and within which a struggle for the leading position was waged. In this they resemble our own era. It is not external, fortuitous force or the fortuitous protection of divine powers, but the justification granted by character that determines the outcome in the Iliad.”

[ 39 ] — What a lovely spot, a truly beautiful spot!

[ 40 ] “The solidarity of all people’s moral convictions is today the Church that unites us all. We are searching more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community.

[ 41 ] All truly serious endeavors of the masses have but this one goal. The division between nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction prevails when it comes to the ethical worldview. We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. The assurance that maintaining peace is our most sacred wish is no lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill toward men” permeates us.” So says Herman Grimm in the heart of Europe in 1895.

[ 42 ] My dear friends! Humanity has long sought to bring life into harmony with the spiritual worlds; it has sought to find a community like ours. And there were endeavors that knew how to position themselves correctly toward all the peoples of the earth and toward the peace of humanity, endeavors that knew how to give expression to the sentiment that, in Herman Grimm’s view, Homer also sought to express for the Greek peoples: that they prefer peace to war. And so humanity was to come to know how deeply the sentiment I have described in Herman Grimm was connected to the soul of so many, how there was an aspiration to maintain life as a unified whole, and how surprising, therefore, was the outbreak of this war, which was truly not desired by such a sentiment.

[ 43 ] And it should also be a fulfillment of the expectation that—as I would like to say—the offshoots of our spiritual movement should indeed be drawn entirely from the whole of our spiritual life. Such is the case with our eurythmy, which must not be confused with any of the physical, athletic, gymnastic, or dance endeavors that have emerged from the materialistic age, but which is rather drawn from our spiritual endeavors so that people may experience, especially in this sphere, in the most direct and intimate way, how the spirit works. I have already shown from various angles how this eurythmy came about. The aim was to give humanity something that, I would say, even in an outward sense reveals the spirit of evolution. This was only possible if one was clear about the fact that in our immediate life we also live in a world of forms, and that moving forward is a penetration into the world of movement. The world of forms governs our physical body; the world of movement governs our etheric body. Now the movements that are inherent to the etheric body must be discovered. Human beings must be guided to express in gestures and movements of the physical body that which is natural to the etheric body.

[ 44 ] You will have seen in the recent lectures on “Occult Reading and Occult Hearing” that there is a certain regularity of movement in the universe, in cosmic becoming. This carries over into the human etheric body. Our present-day materialistic culture, from which spirits like Herman Grimm yearned to escape, has led to a complete lack of understanding that a person can only move properly in external forms when they do not “strut about” — forgive the trivial expression — as in sports, modern gymnastics, or soccer, but when they follow within themselves the movements that are naturally inherent in their etheric body, when one begins to carry the movements of the etheric body into the movements of the physical body, when the etheric body lives on in the movements of the physical body. This is what is attempted in eurythmy. It will become apparent that, in his movements, the human being is truly a link between the cosmic letters, the cosmic sounds, and what we ourselves use in the human sounds and letters of our poetry.

[ 45 ] There is no doubt that a new art will emerge from this eurythmy. This art is for everyone. And one would like humanity to be moved by an understanding of this art, so that it might truly be practiced even among children—beginning with the very youngest, in whom such deep joy in it has already been revealed, all the way up to the oldest children, and even those aged seventy, eighty, and ninety. It is always good when people learn to translate into physical movements what is natural and innate to the etheric body. It is only natural in spiritual life that what can be expressed poetically can find its interpretation in the movements that our eurythmy brings.

[ 46 ] Eurythmy embodies an educational, an artistic, and a hygienic principle all at once. It is a pedagogical principle insofar as, when a person grows up with eurythmy—when they have performed movements in the spirit of eurythmy from the earliest years of childhood—they have carried out movements with their body that have such an effect that, I might say, the gods feel truly connected to the earth. That is why it is truly a means of establishing a connection between the divine-spiritual hierarchies and the growing child.

[ 47 ] To the occultist, it is immediately clear that a materialistic culture creates a terrible discrepancy between what is innate in human beings and what the mind and heart often have to learn. I do not mean to offer a criticism here, but merely to point out a fact. In fact, there is nothing more unnatural in the world today than the fact that children, as they grow up, must learn from about the age of six or seven what they simply have to learn. I am not saying that they should not learn it, for of course they must learn it; external social necessity demands it. But for the soul, it is often as if one were trying to bring about the natural development of the human body by breaking the hands and legs of children at the age of six or seven. That is roughly what happens when children are forced to learn letters, for learning to read and write are the most unnatural activities there are for human beings. One must force them to do so, even though there is the greatest disharmony between the art of reading and writing and where the soul wants to go. It is pitiful to behold, but it is a necessity; it does no good to shut oneself off from it. But just about anything else would be wiser at this age than teaching children to read and write. Even if they were instructed to make figures out of simple street dirt, that would be much wiser. There is only one thing we can do: we can try to allow the atrophied etheric body—for it atrophies under today’s necessities—to move through the eurythmic movements of the physical body that the gods desire. This is what eurythmy is meant to offer in an educational context.

[ 48 ] It is hardly surprising that so many people today complain of aches and pains here and there, even though they are not really lacking anything; for people today no longer attempt, as the Greeks did, to establish harmony between the external movements of the physical body and those of the etheric body. And even if they do try, they end up doing something very strange. If they say to themselves: “What the Greeks did in the Olympic Games was very clever, so let’s do that too,” then that is truly very strange; for it means nothing other than, for example, if a twenty-five-year-old person did not like to study at a university and would rather do what a five- or ten-year-old boy does. Simply carrying over the Greek model into our time is the most ridiculous thing one can do; it is a betrayal of trust in human development. If we are to seek today what the Greeks sought in their own way in the Olympic Games, then eurythmy must take root in humanity; then people must try to bring about the health of their bodies from the soul by not allowing the etheric body to atrophy, but rather by allowing the physical body to perform the movements demanded by the etheric body. That is the hygienic aspect of eurythmy.

[ 49 ] The artistic significance of eurythmy will become clear to people when they realize how a person must immerse their entire being in the artistic process, how a person is not merely the creator of this or that, but how a person must themselves become an artistic medium; they do so by expressing the artistic through their own body. And they do this through eurythmy.

[ 50 ] Eurythmy is not something arbitrary that arose from the same mindset as other contemporary endeavors. It asks: Which movements are best for modern people in relation to the etheric body from an educational and hygienic standpoint? Which movements best lead to an understanding of true artistry and best place people within full, true life? Therefore, I believe that this eurythmy will become popular in our circles, that it will be accepted as something that can help a great deal. You certainly cannot teach your children anthroposophy directly, but they can practice eurythmy, and they will be better equipped to face the life that lies ahead of them than if they did not practice eurythmy.

[ 51 ] My dear friends! I have already spoken in many ways about the relationship between the large rotunda outside and the small one, and about the relationship between what is in the large space of the building and what is in the small space inside. Now someone might ask: How do the forms of the small space emerge from those of the large space? The answer is: Let someone try to make the forms of the building’s large space dance according to the laws of eurythmy; then the forms of the building’s small space will emerge from them. Try to create a mental image of a person uniting in their eurythmic movements everything that is expressed in the large rotunda, dancing it into the small space, and radiating from there what they are dancing; then the twelve columns and the dome of the small space would emerge of their own accord.

[ 52 ] And then I hope that something else will dance eurythmically within the building: the Word! That will have good acoustics. In short, eurythmy can be defined as the fulfillment of what the human etheric body demands of the human being according to its natural laws. Therefore, there is truly something in this eurythmy that belongs to our spiritual life and that is conceived out of its wholeness.

[ 53 ] Perhaps you will accept what I have tried to convey here and consider it an answer to a question that many Swiss friends have recently asked us. You can, in fact, come to understand what I have defined in this way through the courses you have requested. How does one bring being into the world of ideas?