Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 28 March 1915, Dornach

72. The Victory of Life over Death

Address in memory of Christian Morgenstern, Palm Sunday

[My dear friends!

This coming Easter week marks the anniversary of the time when our dear friend Christian Morgenstern departed from us here on the physical plane into the spiritual worlds, into those worlds which we strive to know through our spiritual science. On other occasions I have tried to describe what Christian Morgenstern was to us at the time when we had him in the midst of our spiritual-scientific current with his significant poetic talent, in which he, working out of the rich fullness of his spirit and soul, fertilized our spiritual movement. And I have already spoken of what Christian Morgenstern's visionary faculty has become since the time when his soul took on a different existence: How he belongs precisely to those individualities to whom we look as to our helpers dwelling in the spirit land, with whom we can bring to our consciousness in particular what we have to thank dead friends for. I have a lot to say about all this today, but there will be another context for this in the near future. But what I would like to point out in particular today, even if only in a few words, is the meaning and significance of the coming feast. It is, after all, the feast which symbolizes for us in the highest conceivable sense the victory of the eternal spiritual life over the sensual parables, over the material shells which the spirit assumes in order to present itself temporarily in these parables, in these shells, and to complete its special task in them. After all, what is to come is the feast that should always remind us that life is victorious, unceasingly and eternally victorious over death.

Christian Morgenstern is for us the victory of life over death, Christian Morgenstern is for us the representative of that essence that should stand before us especially in this festive season: that all that is dead is resurrected and comes to life. And it is of this living life of the soul, which was embodied in Christian Morgenstern, that a few words are spoken today by way of introduction.

You can say, my dear friends, that the entry of the soul that was embodied in Christian Morgenstern into the spiritual worlds was an event for these spiritual worlds, that in a certain sense, if I may use the prosaic expression, it made an epoch in these spiritual worlds. Characteristic personalities have left the earth plan with their souls in the course of the last centuries. The most characteristic personalities among those who have left this earth plan have left it with a soul that was well versed in all that can be observed around the earth's horizon, in all that can be thought outstanding around the earth. Great spirits have walked the earth, and human earthly thinking has developed intensively. This human earthly thinking has illuminated the intimate material processes of life. That is precisely the characteristic of the last centuries, that the human earthly mind could only shine intensively into the material secrets of life. And souls have passed through the gate of death with distinctly intense earthly knowledge; they have carried up into the spiritual worlds infinitely much of what one can knowingly attain on earth. But probably never has so much of what the earthly intellect can conquer and what has no meaning for the spiritual worlds, what is there to explain the sensual worlds, what reveals deep spiritual secrets of the sensual worlds, been carried up through the gate of death into the spiritual worlds, especially by outstanding souls, insofar as these sensual worlds also have their origin in the spiritual. For the most outstanding spirits in particular, the environment into which they entered through the gate of death was a land in which strange phenomena shone towards their spiritual senses, their spiritual powers of comprehension. And they had to turn their inner gaze down to earth in order to realize that they were something at all. One could say aphoristically: We see in the spirit land an assembly of souls who have passed through the gate of death, who have carried earthly existence, the most outstanding cycles of earthly existence, up into the spiritual worlds. Into their circle entered Christian Morgenstern's soul, that soul which, equipped with the innermost urge for the spiritual-scientific or, let us say directly, spirit-language, already strove to experience in the earthly that which is supernatural to the senses, that which is supersensible -, to experience that which in the power of the soul at the same time animates and fires the earthly man, that which makes this soul receptive in the most eminent sense to that which shines towards the soul in the spirit land when it has passed through the gate of death. And like a bright star that rises, equipped with the life that is to be appropriated on earth for the spirit lands, Christian Morgenstern's soul stepped into the midst of those whose vision for such stars had already become dull. And many a one could be named of the most outstanding spirits of the past centuries - Fichte, Schelling, Hegel - who climbed up through the gate of death and said: “With our earthly understanding of the earth we have measured and explored secrets, but our understanding of that which now surrounds us remained empty; barren and empty remained that which gives an answer to the great meaningful question: ”What is man, the living man in the spirit land?" - And the spirit, which was embodied here on earth in Christian Morgenstern, brought up into their circle what man actually is through his intimate connection with the spirit language. And Hegel and Fichte could say: "We have tried to fathom on earth that which explains the secrets of the earth. But in all the extent of the concepts that we brought out of the earthly mind, out of the deep shafts of earthly knowledge, the question was not answered that is posed before us here: "What is man? What is man in truth in the whole cosmic context? - Come up here and explain it to us through what he is, through what he brings us, through what he has already prepared on earth for heaven, a man, a human star!"

What he is, how he lives for the spirit lands, that should be placed before the soul here at the beginning of the week, which is to symbolize the resurrection of life for us in a festive way. What kind of spirit lands the soul of our dear friend Christian Morgenstern is, let it enter our hearts this week, that our hearts may celebrate a grateful feast in contemplation of him who for years was in the midst of our spiritual-scientific current for its fertilization, for its enlivenment, and of whom we may know that his entry into spirit lands has become meaningful, deeply effective precisely through that which he had developed in his soul in recent years. I would just like to present the image, the image of what the soul embodied in Christian Morgenstern is for Geisterlande - and therefore also for us. May this image then live in your heart through the coming Easter week, and may what Christian Morgenstern was celebrate resurrection in your heart.

To fuel our feelings and emotions, which we want to unfold in grateful, holy contemplation of Christian Morgenstern, especially in this week of his death, in this our Easter week, may he himself speak to us with some of what he created here on earth.