Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 4 July 1909, Kassel

21. The Novalis Matinee

following a Novalis lecture by Rudolf Steiner

Music (harmonium)

Where does the wealth of worldly wisdom of the being who only began to write in 1797 and died in 1801, not yet three years old, come from? One must not pass by such phenomena.

Recitation: Novalis' “The Spiritual Songs” performed by Miss von Sivers.

Novalis was born in 1772 in Oberwiederstedt in a noble house, a noble house in central Germany. Not yet thirty years old, he took his morning snack one morning as usual. He sat there, enraptured in higher worlds, demanding music at eight o'clock; his soul floated in the sounds of music, then fell asleep. He slept for four hours, and after twelve o'clock the death of our Novalis occurred and passed before his soul like other events of life. .

A life like that of Novalis is like a memory of earlier lives and experiences.

Oetinger, a Swabian pastor, was a theosophist in a small circle. He was approached by a psychic who rejected all ideals. Oetinger, however, recognized that a time would come when everything that radiated spiritually would be recognized.

(During his studies in Jena, Novalis also attended lectures by Fichte.)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte gave evening lectures in Jena. The room was lit with just two candles. He entered the hall with a strong stride. The students sat in front of him. Fichte solemnly extinguished the two candles and said - and repeatedly reminded his audience: “The physical light is now extinguished; now only the spiritual light should prevail.” - The dry Fichte had a sense for the spiritual.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, there lived a man who understood Schiller. He wrote a fine little book about Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters”. It was not recognized, not understood by those around him. He broke [his] leg, but he was not well enough nourished to survive a broken leg. He died. So little recognition and attention was given to a person who understood Schiller in this way. (Dr. Steiner said, "I have known a man close and so on when he began to speak of this man.)

Mathematics became a great poem to Novalis. Matter flowed along the great mathematical lines and became the expression of divine thought.

Novalis handled everything in his mountain subject with a practical hand, more practical than his superiors. (Unjust softness is not divine love; one should not be uncritical.)

Recitation: Novalis' “Marienlieder”, performed by Fräulein von Sivers. Music (harmonium)