The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. On Foreign Policy in Light of Spiritual Science and the Threefold Social Order

At the beginning of the study evening, Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz gives a lecture titled “On Foreign Policy in the Light of the Spiritual Science and the Threefold Social Order.” Rudolf Steiner then takes the floor.

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to say a few things—perhaps in the form of aphorisms—about some of the points Count Polzer touched on today, since there have been repeated allusions to matters I have addressed here and there over the years.

[ 2 ] One can see quite clearly from various phenomena how, in the political developments of the 19th century, the fact that Count Polzer sought to highlight emerged—this rupture, I would say, which ultimately led to catastrophe. He spoke of those years of transition and utter bewilderment, particularly among the Central European peoples—the 1870s and 1880s—when struggles took place in Austria over the occupation of Bosnia, the Slavic question, and so on. This was preceded by the 1860s, during which a certain aftereffect of those European political sentiments dating back to 1848 was still present. One can actually trace these sentiments throughout all of Central Europe, both in the Austrian lands and in what later became the German Empire: it is what one might call the emergence of a certain abstract liberalism, an abstract-theoretical liberalism.

[ 3 ] In Austria, it was in the late 1960s that the first so-called “Citizens’ Ministry”—led by Carlos Auersperg—emerged from the ministries of Schmerling and Belcredi; this ministry had a distinctly liberal, though theoretically and abstractly liberal, character. Then, after a very brief interim government—during which the Slavic question was brought to a certain head under Taaffe, Potocki, and Hohenwart—the so-called second “civilian ministry,” the ministry of Adolf Auersperg, emerged in Austria in the 1870s, again representing a sort of bourgeois-liberal orientation. Parallel to these movements were the struggles waged by the liberal parties of Prussia and the individual German states against the emerging imperialism of Bismarck and so on. These liberal currents that emerged are extraordinarily instructive, and it is actually a pity that today’s generation remembers so little of what was said in Germany, in Prussia, in the 1870s and 1880s by men like Lasker and others, and what was said in Austria by Giskra—mentioned today by Count Polzer—and other similarly liberal-minded statesmen. One would see how a certain liberal-minded goodwill emerged there, which, however, was fundamentally devoid of any positive political insight. This is the defining feature: an abstract liberalism is taking hold in Central Europe—one that espouses many fine, liberal principles but fails to reckon with historical facts; one that speaks of all manner of human rights but knows little about history and, above all, knows little how to draw lessons from it. And it may have been the downfall of all of Central Europe—after all, the World War began in Austria, or at least it originated there—it was the downfall that this liberalizing movement in Austria took such a terribly apolitical stance toward the major problems that were coming to the fore precisely in Austria, and to which Count Polzer has pointed out the most important aspects.

[ 4 ] Now we must examine a little more closely what this liberalism in Austria actually entails. One can examine it by listening today to the speeches of the elder and younger Plener. One can study it by listening to the speeches of Herbst—that Herbst who wanted to be a great Austrian statesman of the liberal persuasion. Bismarck, the realist politician, called Herbst’s followers “the Herbst anemones,” one of those witticisms that are devastating in public life. And one can study this liberalism in yet another place, in Hungary, where Koloman Tisza appeared time and again in the Hungarian Parliament with an extraordinarily strong sense of power; in his outward demeanor, I might say, he was the very embodiment of that otherworldly, unworldly liberalism which—disregarding historical facts—reli[es] solely on what follows from abstract, general principles. Tisza the elder—that is, the father of the man who played a role in the World War—already displayed this in his outward demeanor. He could never appear without a pencil in his hand, as if he were reciting his principles, which were recorded in pencil notes, to those who constituted a faithful audience. In a certain sense, one can study a somewhat lesser example in the Bismarck opponent Eugen Richter, who, however, belonged to a later period in Prussian-Germany. In these people, one can analyze what has emerged as such a fruitless form of politics. Notably, all of these people learned politics in the English political school. And the most important fact, the essential point, was this: that everything put forward by Plener, Giskra, Hausner, Berger, Lasker, and Lasser—and what Tisza put forward in Hungary—is something positive and concrete for the English; that it carries weight with the English because it is based on facts, because what is actually being pursued there as liberalizing principles, when applied, can gradually lead to imperialism in the world. Yes, I would say that imperialism is deeply ingrained in these matters among the English proponents of these principles. When the same principles were advocated by the aforementioned figures in their respective parliaments, they were like squeezed-out lemons; there, those same principles referred to nothing; there, they were abstractions. It is precisely there that one can best study the difference between reality and empty rhetoric. The difference does not lie in the wording, but in whether one is actually immersed in reality or not. If one says the same things in the Vienna or Berlin parliament as in the London parliament, it is something entirely different. And that is why what came from England as a liberalizing movement—and was positive, concrete policy in England—was mere rhetoric, rhetorical politics, in Berlin and Vienna.

[ 5 ] I can’t really go into all of these things here today—only offer a few aphorisms, or perhaps just present some images. But if one wants to see what kinds of contrasts exist there, it is interesting to hear—or to remind oneself—how speakers such as Suess, Sturm, or Plener addressed the Austrian Parliament or the delegations at that time, particularly during the debate that followed the planned and subsequently carried out occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And then there was a man who spoke from the perspective of the Slavic people. I still vividly recall a speech that made quite an impression at the time; it is the speech that Otto Hausner delivered in the Austrian Parliament back then, which he later published as *Deutschtum und Deutsches Reich*—unfortunately, I haven’t been able to obtain a copy again; I would very much like to have it, but I don’t know if it is completely out of print. If one reads this speech in conjunction with another he delivered when the Arlberg Tunnel was being built—if one reads what he said there from the perspective of higher politics and what he threw from the political podium into the Austrian Parliament while Andrássy was working to bring about the occupation of Bosnia—then one sees that he was speaking the truth. Outwardly, Hausner was a sort of dandy—a sort of washed-up, snobbish, and pretentious dandy who was constantly seen wearing a monocle at the Vienna Herrenhaus, whom one always encountered at Café Central at a certain hour—an old dandy, yet witty through and through and speaking from a place of reality. If one considers all these speeches together, then [the catastrophe of] 1914 to 1918 was, in essence, foretold back then—even what we are now experiencing: the spiritual slumber that is spreading over Central Europe. And there you see how anyone who looks at reality—and I could cite many, many more examples like this—had to arrive at the second thesis, which was discussed with you this evening, based on reality itself.

[ 6 ] These ideas related to the threefold social order are certainly not some kind of theoretical construct; they are not the product of academic speculation, but are drawn entirely from reality. And anyone who experienced how, back then in Austria, this Austrian German identity—for that was essentially the vehicle of Austrian liberalism—clashed with the emerging Austrian Slavic identity, which was asserting its claims, could not help but come to the realization: Pan-Slavism is a positive force. — This Pan-Slavism has truly established itself as a positive force. And perhaps more important than what came from the Czech movement—from Palacký to Rieger—is what came from the Polish movement. The Poles played an extraordinarily significant role in Austria as a kind of vanguard, as the advance guard for Slavic culture, and they represented a wide range of political perspectives. Hausner, who was, after all, Polonized, once said in a speech that “Rhaetian-Alemannic blood cells”—a strange chemical mixture—flowed through his veins; yet he considered himself a true Pole. But other Poles also spoke in the Vienna Parliament during these very important times: Grocholski, Goluchowski, Dzieduszycki, and so on, and it must be said that significant political perspectives emerged from their words, whereas the liberalizing German movement, unfortunately, degenerated into empty rhetoric. It could not sustain itself, so that it eventually merged into the very party that Polzer-Hoditz also mentioned—the Christian Social Party—the party that, among the young people in Vienna who were involved in politics at the time (and with which I, too, was involved back then), was called the “Party of the Stupid Guys of Vienna”; it later became the Lueger Party.

[ 7 ] This contrast between a declining trend and a rising one is very interesting. And in a certain sense, the Poles were unscrupulous, so that all sorts of things came to light, for example the following: In Austria, there was a desire to return to the old school law, the old, clerical school law—I say “Austria,” but to be precise, in the Austrian Parliament [the Imperial Council], they did not speak of “Austria” or anything of the sort, but rather of the “kingdoms and provinces represented in the Imperial Council”; Austria-Hungary, after all, had a dualistic form of government; one part was called “the kingdoms and provinces represented in the Imperial Council,” the other “the representation of the provinces of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen.” So when there was a move in Austria to revert to a clerical school law, a majority could not be formed by the Germans alone; instead, either the Poles or the Ruthenians had to join forces with them. Whenever opinion leaned in a certain direction, a coalition was formed between Germans and Ruthenians, and when it leaned in another direction, between Germans and Poles. At that time, the issue at hand was the enactment of a clerical school law. The Poles tipped the balance, but what did they do? They said: “Yes, fine, we agree to this school law, but we’ll exclude Galicia.” — So they excluded their own country. That is how an education law came into being at that time through a majority that included Polish delegates, but these Polish delegates excluded their own country; they imposed an education law on the other Austrian provinces. This ultimately meant that one region ruled over another and decreed something that it did not want applied in its own territory. That was the state of affairs. How could one possibly be politically prepared to face the enormous challenges that lay ahead!

[ 8 ] It so happened that, following this second bourgeois cabinet, the government eventually passed to Taaffe’s cabinet, which essentially issued its own verdict: In Austria, if one wants to govern properly, one can only muddle through—that is, navigate by juggling from one difficulty to the next, saving one situation through another, and so on. The cabinet, headed by Taaffe as prime minister, was then led in a “witty” manner. Taaffe owed his position less to his intellectual abilities than to the fact that at the Viennese court at that time —the Viennese court was, after all, already in a state that would eventually lead to the horrific drama of Mayerling—there was a great receptiveness to Count Taaffe’s special art, which consisted of his ability to make little bunnies and shadow figures with a handkerchief and his fingers. These were particularly popular with the Viennese courtiers at the time, and this solidified Taaffe’s position. For a decade, he was able to keep this Austrian chaos moving in a certain direction. It was actually quite disheartening to witness the whole affair. I truly spoke with some very sensible people back then. People knew that Taaffe was keeping his head above water thanks to the bunnies. But people like the poet Rollett, for example, told me: “Yes, but this Taaffe—he’s still the smartest among us, after all.” — It really was a bleak situation. And one must not overlook how, little by little over the course of that half-century to which Count Polzer referred, the groundwork was laid for the highly witty but thoroughly frivolous Czernin to assume a leading role at the most crucial moment during the World War. How could one hope, then, that anything like the idea of the threefold social order—which, born of the inner forces of history, was presented to the Central European powers in 1917—would be grasped by any means other than through necessity? People simply did not understand any of this, and that is hardly surprising, for after all, the threefold social order cannot be understood by playing around. Other arts will be necessary to penetrate these matters.

[ 9 ] Well, you see, I’ve presented all of this as a kind of series of images. One could use many similar images to show how this entire catastrophe has been a long time in the making, stemming from many, many factors, and how [in Central Europe] what was and is a reality in the West has become nothing more than a cliché. And that essentially formed the framework I always used [back then in conversations] when speaking to people [such as Kühlmann]—after all, with Kühlmann, one needed such a framework—namely, the fact that English politics is rooted in the reality of the grand historical perspectives. This English politics has, for centuries, been laying the groundwork for what subsequently happened, based on historical developments. I believe that, of course, in order to understand the whole matter, it is indeed necessary to delve deeply into what underlies the external development and presentation of history.

[ 10 ] But, ladies and gentlemen, read people’s memoirs. You will see how, in fact, where people present themselves in a certain way—as they are—we are confronted with what one might call: Central Europe is gradually declining in terms of the grandeur of its ideas, and the ideas that are particularly fruitful for Central Europe are flourishing over in England. It is interesting—take, for example, the figure of Andrássy’s predecessor, Count Beust, that remarkable minister who could champion any form of patriotism and serve everyone. I’d also like to paint a picture of Count Beust for you—there are various accounts in memoirs of how he interacted with Western European figures: He bends at the knees, very politely, but he does bend at the knees. Such, then, is the Central European statesman who, in truth, cannot keep up. I must mention all this because Count Polzer asked me directly about it: How does this manifest itself—what has been at work from the West for centuries, namely as a deliberate English policy working in concert with the historical powers?

[ 11 ] The actual outward agent [of this English policy] is King James I, and I would say that the Gunpowder Plot is something quite different from how it is portrayed in history. It is, in fact, the outward sign, the outward symptom of the significance of what is spreading through Europe as an impulse originating in England. This is precisely a policy of great historical significance. You can certainly see the thesis that Count Polzer mentioned today and that I put forward on the occasion of the first presentation of the threefold social order: One cannot, through any measures—which are today foolishly called the League of Nations—eliminate what objectively exists and must objectively continue to operate, namely the Central European-English-American economic struggle. This struggle exists, just as the struggle for existence exists within the animal kingdom. It must exist; it cannot be eliminated, but must be accepted because it is a fact. The proponents of this Anglo-American policy understand this very well. And here we encounter something clearly verifiable—I am not presenting hypotheses, but recounting things you could have heard in speeches in England during the second half of the 19th century. It was stated quite clearly there: A great world war must break out in Europe—as I said, I am merely quoting from speeches from the second half of the 19th century—and this world war will lead to Russia becoming the great *testing ground for socialism. There, [in Russia], experiments will be carried out for socialism that we in the Western countries would not even think of attempting, because conditions there do not permit it. Here you see grand perspectives, the magnitude of which you can recognize by the fact that they have largely come to pass, and—you can be certain—will continue to come to pass. But these perspectives are not new; the “minds” of today’s people are of yesterday, but not these perspectives—they are centuries old.

[ 12 ] And what Count Polzer will present to you in eight days as the true spirit of Peter the Great’s will was simply that which [from the East] was to be set against Western imperialism as an imperialist counterforce. Western imperialism—the Anglo-American mindset—sought, so to speak, to establish the Anglo-American world empire from the standpoint of the universal producer. In the East, indeed, for a long, long time, actions and thoughts have been guided by the principles of Peter the Great’s testament—you will yet hear to what extent the testament is true or false; but these are matters of very secondary importance. And what exists in the West should, in a sense, have been countered [in the East] by a universal empire of consumption—the latter has already taken on dire forms today. But these two empires stand opposed to one another. One could say that, fundamentally, both are equally a pernicious one-sidedness. And in between them lies what appears as a Western advance in the liberalizing policies of Beust, Andrässy, Tisza, Berger, Lasker, Lasser, and so on. What appears there as an offshoot of Western culture clashes with what comes over from the East—in Prussia, indeed, only in the form of undifferentiated Polishness; in Austria, in the distinctive personalities found there. For in fact, all these distinctive figures are represented within this Slavic movement: the short, stocky, broad-shouldered Rieger with his broad, almost square face and his immensely powerful gaze—I would say his gaze was power itself—; in Rieger lived something like an echo of Palacký, who had championed Pan-Slavism from Prague in 1848; the old dandy Hausner, very witty, but with him another nuance of what is at work in the East comes to the fore; and then people such as Dzieduszycki, who spoke as if he had dumplings in his mouth, yet was thoroughly witty and had a complete command of the subject matter. There one could observe how a great, marvelous character was preserved, particularly by the Austrian German community. When I was in Sibiu in 1889 and had to give a lecture, I was able to study the fading German culture among the Transylvanian Saxons—Schröer has written a grammar of the German language of the Spiš region and that of the Gottschee region. I have highlighted many aspects of the greatness of this fading German culture in my book *Vom Menschenrätsel*. There stand these remarkable figures who still possessed something of the elemental grandeur of German culture within them, such as Hamerling and Fercher von Steinwand. But Fercher von Steinwand, for example, gave a speech in the 1850s that encapsulates the entire tragedy of Central Europe. He said: “What should one actually think of when one thinks of the future of German culture?” There he describes—the Gypsies, the rootlessness of the Gypsies. It is remarkable how some things became prophetically clear to the finest people of Central Europe. And the fact is, the finest people were actually the ones who were oppressed, while those at the top were terrible people. And so this suffering was brought about—a suffering that should really be our greatest teacher.

[ 13 ] In this country, Austria—where there were thirteen official languages before the war—it really became clear just how impossible this old form of government actually is in modern society, how impossible it is to maintain what we used to call a unitary state. These thirteen different ethnic groups—there were actually even more, but officially there were thirteen—demanded with all their might what eventually had to be articulated as the threefold social order. And Austria could truly serve as a great school for this world-historical politics. Especially if one studied it in Austria in the 1880s—I had taken over as editor of the *Deutsche Wochenschrift* at that time—in the 1880s, when Taaffe was nominally in power and Lueger was being groomed, one truly had the opportunity to see the driving forces at work. At that time, the entire character of Vienna changed. Vienna transformed from a city with a German character into a city of an international, almost cosmopolitan character due to the encroaching Slavic influence. One could observe how things were unfolding. That’s when one realized there was a sense of powerlessness in what had emerged from liberalism. It was like a sense of powerlessness whenever Herbst spoke. Then it finally came to the point where people concluded: This policy is no good anymore! But they didn’t come to that conclusion because they inwardly recognized the empty rhetoric of a policy like Herbst’s—which dealt only in abstractions—but because the Viennese government strove to preserve its prestige and pursue imperialism, using the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a means to that end. When someone like Herbst opposed this, people did not see the emptiness of his statements; rather, they saw only that he could not bring himself to go along with imperialist policy. [In contrast], Plener, who essentially spouted just as many empty phrases, but who did go along with it and converted to the side of those who supported the occupation—because he was a greater opportunist. It was back then, under the impression of this Bosnian occupation, that Hausner delivered his grand speeches, in which he prophetically foretold what essentially came to pass. Even in what was said there—and where the will of Peter the Great played a role—there was already a glimpse of the lightning that would later descend in such a terrible manner. Precisely in the speeches that Count Polzer mentioned today—and in which Peter the Great’s will, as well as the broad principles of Slavic policy, were so often touched upon—one can see a certain opportunity to recognize what, had one been reasonable, one should have done in response to British policy and its grand historical principles.

[ 14 ] Politics, my esteemed audience, must be studied as a reality and experienced as a reality. And time and again I must say that it is actually extremely painful for me when people who get their hands on the “Key Points” fail to recognize that they are drawn from faithful observation of European and other conditions of modern civilized life, taking into account all relevant details. But, my esteemed audience, one truly cannot write about all these things in detail in a book that has been published as a kind of programmatic treatise. Today I have only hinted at a few things in broad strokes; but if one were to write about them, one would have to write fifty volumes. Of course, one cannot write these fifty volumes, but their content has been incorporated into the “Key Points.” And that is the great—or small—it is the small hallmark of our time: that people do not sense that there is a difference between the statements spoken and written from reality and all the utter nonsense that is circulating in the world today—nonsense that is actually treated as equivalent to what is drawn from positive reality and what has been experienced. One should sense that this is contained within the “Key Points” and not need the evidence of the fifty volumes to prove it. This inability to sense whether a sentence—perhaps only two lines long—contains life or is merely journalistic rhetoric is a testament to humanity’s poverty.

[ 15 ] This is what is necessary, what we must—and can—achieve: the ability to distinguish journalism and empty rhetoric from content that has been lived through and earned through struggle. Without this, we will not make any progress. And precisely when an attempt is made to establish a direction for major foreign policy, it becomes clear just how necessary it is today for humanity to make such a distinction.

[ 16 ] That is what I was just trying to imply with a few rather inadequate sentences regarding Count Polzer's remarks.

Following Rudolf Steiner’s remarks, there will be an opportunity for discussion.