The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922

GA 251 — 18 June 1922, Dornach

40. Report on the Vienna West-East Congress

My dear friends!

Congresses, such as the first Stuttgart and then the second Vienna Congresses were, have actually become a necessity for the anthroposophical movement, as a result of external pressure. From the very beginning, the anthroposophical movement has worked from within the esoteric, and it is self-evident that an esoteric movement does not appear in an agitative way, but rather seeks its way in such a way that, although it gives everyone the opportunity to hear, it only addresses those people who feel a certain inclination towards it from their hearts and minds, and who then, it must be said, find their way to it in a fateful way. But now, from a certain point on, our literature in particular has spread very rapidly and has thus come into the hands of many people, especially those who have a certain scientific orientation in the sense of the current times. All kinds of scientific schools of thought then began to deal with anthroposophy in a polemical or other way.

This in turn inspired many to defend this anthroposophical worldview with the scientific tools that were their own, and so it came about that – one might say – challenged by the world, the anthroposophical movement had to be active in the most diverse branches of life. It is fair to say that this simply came to us from outside; at first we were not at all inclined to deviate from the old ways of spreading anthroposophy. We were forced to do so.

At the beginning, we were on the defensive on many different fronts. Anthroposophy was attacked, and usually in the most unobjective way. However, a number of extraordinarily capable people gradually grew into the role of defending it, and are indeed able to apply the basic anthroposophical principles and also anthroposophical research to the individual fields. Little by little, work could begin on developing a large number of important branches of life and science in the anthroposophical sense. The fact that publications were then also issued in these various fields meant that the anthroposophical movement was all the more exposed to the most diverse circles, and after a certain time it was simply necessary to go before the general public. From the anthroposophical point of view, too, there were the great issues of the day, at least from the standpoint of culture, to which one had to take a definite stand, for the reasons we have often discussed here. It was this that essentially provided the impetus for something like the first Stuttgart Congress and, now, the Vienna Congress.

Now our friends have set the Vienna Congress a special task. This task was obvious. It was obvious, I would say, from the nature of Vienna – the nature of Vienna within the Austrian nature. And recently there has been a lot of talk among us about the special cultural characteristics of the East and those of the West. From this, one tried to recognize the foundations from which, in the face of the forces of decline that are so active today, forces of the rising will arise. This led to the fact that in this particularly suitable place, in Vienna, this approach was moved to the center of the congress negotiations. The congress was named the “West-East Congress”. This was based on the conviction that we are now at a point in the history of Western civilization where we need to come to an understanding of the entire cultural world of the earth, and this must come primarily from intellectual and spiritual sources.

I have also pointed out here, as was rightly said by an English colonial minister, that the point of consideration for world affairs is actually shifting from the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. One can say – and this is an extremely significant statement – that in the past, Europe and the connection between Europe and America were what mattered, and what has actually mattered since the fifteenth century, since Asia was more or less cut off from Europe by the Turkish incursion. At that time, a great cultural upheaval took place, and what then essentially became the cultural life of modern times was a Western-oriented cultural life. Now, with the shift in the focus of external cultural life across the Pacific Ocean, the beginning has been made that the whole earth must become one large area to be treated uniformly in terms of all cultural issues. But since understanding and trust are necessary between people who want to have anything to do with each other at all, this must first be preceded by an understanding in the spiritual realm.

If we look across to Asia today, we see everywhere that people are living in the last remnants of an ancient and magnificent spiritual culture, a spiritual culture that has driven out everything else, both in terms of state and legal life and in terms of economic life. We, like these people in Asia, cannot understand the people of the West, how they look at the machine-like nature of the West's external culture, how they find that something machine-like also appears in the external social order, how they look down with a certain contempt on the externalized view of life in the West. On the other hand, we know how the West has produced those cultural forces that must now develop in the future, and how the West also carries a spirituality within it, but which has not yet fully emerged today.

But everything depends on the West learning to look again with a greater understanding at what the East contains, even if today it is definitely producing and even feeling a sense of decline, and on the East learning to look at the West in such a way that it affirms it, not just negates it, as has been the case so far. Of course, a great deal remains to be done in order to create the spiritual foundations necessary for such an understanding. Today, when economic conditions are so extraordinarily pressing for cooperation, we cannot hope that the order of these economic conditions, even if it sometimes appears so, can achieve anything other than a surrogate, which will wait for a definitive solution for so long that it will have to wait until an understanding of the spiritual conditions has been reached that extends to the very core of human nature. Our Congress of Vienna should serve this understanding in a certain way, and I would say in the central intellectual field.

And in this respect, one could indeed indulge in certain hopes. One must take into account the whole Austrian essence in order to find such hopes justified. You see, my dear friends, for many decades people have been predicting the dissolution of Austria, and it has not happened. It took a world war for it to come to this dissolution. At present, the situation is such that the German part of Austria is actually in a terrible position. This German part of Austria cannot, in principle, survive on its own. For however much could be objected to the old Austria, the individual areas that now form the successor states could only advance together for certain reasons within Europe, especially in Central Europe. And this is particularly evident in those parts of the old Austria that are inhabited by Germans, where the purely nationalistic idea will be impossible to implement in the long term.

It is, after all, a purely abstract idea and essentially arose from the fact that, in the absence of a real intellectual life, the national question in the nineteenth century increasingly came to be seen as a surrogate for intellectual life.

What exists today as German Austria has no economic means of surviving independently, and in particular it has no means of having Vienna as its capital. The fact of the matter is that Vienna, in the size to which it has gradually developed, could only survive as the capital of old Austria; now it is much too big for what remains of German Austria, and therefore does not internally provide the conditions for a viable existence everywhere.

But again, it must be said that this Austria, also “German-Austria”, has absorbed cultural enzymes in the course of its development, which nevertheless offer the possibility that precisely this Austria, especially in intellectual terms, could create a bridge between the West and the East, between which it is stuck precisely because of its peoples and its geographical location.

One must only realize the following: In Austria, the “fact exists that the German element forms a kind of cultural basis everywhere. Start from the east of Austria. You will find a pure German people, the Transylvanian Saxons, mixed with Romanian and Serbian ethnic elements in old Transylvania, who had retained their German identity until well into my youth. But the Transylvanian Saxons were an ethnic element that contained a thoroughly German core and a very specific type of German individuality, which was, I would say, a cultural colony.

Then go further up, south of the Carpathians. Hungary did indeed extend as far as these Carpathians. Today, north of the Danube, lies the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia. It used to belong to Hungary. Of course, there is a Slovak population there, and there has been extensive Magyarization, especially through schools, since the 1860s. But the Spiš Germans and the other Germans lived there like a cultural ferment, scattered everywhere as far as Pressburg. And everywhere in Slovak-Magyar culture, the German element lives on the bottom, although in the second half of the nineteenth century it was on the verge of disappearing. From the western part of this German element, as you know, we borrowed our Christmas plays, which were transplanted there from more western German areas centuries ago.

If you go back down to the area between the Theiss and the Danube, that is, to central and southern Central Hungary, you will find a Swabian population, a Swabian-German population. Go to the west of Hungary, where Hungary bordered on present-day Burgenland, and you will find the so-called “WasserKroaten”, a thoroughly German population. So in this eastern part, you will find the formerly immigrated Germans at the bottom of the population speaking other languages. They often adopted the other element in later times, but they were very effective; blood does not deny itself there. And above all, it does not deny itself in the thought forms. Anyone who is well versed in such thought forms knows how to distinguish between them, even if they are still present in Magyar or Romanian, or even if they appear in another language, such as the Germanic elements that migrated there in earlier centuries and were gradually dying out, but which nevertheless continue to have an effect.

If you go over to the present-day western part, to Czechoslovakia, to the former Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, you will again find a German population everywhere at the bottom. Not only that there is such a closed population south of the Erzgebirge, but you will find everywhere - in Prague, for example, about a third or a quarter of the population was German - everywhere, as in the other areas, too, Germans were scattered. The process was definitely such that although German culture gradually disappeared, German culture asserted itself everywhere, even in areas where other languages were spoken.

If you go to the south, for example, in southern Slovenia, in a Serbian area, you will find a district – the Gottschee region – with a small German cultural colony interspersed among it. And you will find a compact German community in northern Styria, in Salzburg, in northern Tyrol, where it meets other populations to the south, but where Germans were scattered everywhere down to the German national borders in Austria. You will then find the compact German population in Upper and Lower Austria. That was the old Austria.

More and more, the individual nationalities came to the fore. More and more, the individual nationalities asserted themselves. But basically, there was no area in which the German element – I would say – had not somehow found its way in, as a force, and was not somehow effective.

But still, Austria was changing more and more. And then it came to the point that more and more of the other nationalities asserted themselves: the Romanian, the Ukrainian, the Ruthenian, the Polish, the Hungarian, the South Slav, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian and the Slavonic, the Italian, the Bohemian, that is, the Czech. Today we see the process taking hold in the interior of Austria as well. It is hardly possible to say that Vienna is a German city in the other sense, that at least German is still spoken there. But even if it should come to pass that the Slovenian element from the south and the Czech element from the north spread further and further, and that the German character of Austria would disappear altogether, the German forces would still be present throughout Austria as effective forces. But the essential thing is that precisely within that which originated in the German element in Austria, a certain independence asserted itself against all other Germans on the European continent. The Austrian element, however intimately it interacted with the rest of the German character, was always something thoroughly independent. And that came about because Catholicism in Austria retained a certain form.

Now, it is of course very easy to misunderstand me in my present arguments, but since I cannot be sufficiently explicit, I must expose myself to these misunderstandings. It is true that one can, of course, object to much of what was present in the domination of Catholicism in Austria – and this was done within Austria itself. But this Catholicism in Austria always gave Austria and especially Vienna a very specific character. One could see how a liberal wave of cultural life was sweeping over Austria in the 1860s and 1870s, a liberal wave that only looked at – I would say – external forms of thought. But even within these external forms of thought, what was contained in Catholicism continued to have an effect.

You only have to consider how long it actually was that in Austria, with the exception of very specific areas of educational life, no one could actually become an educated person, a truly scientifically leading person, without somehow joining the leading forces of Catholicism. One studied at grammar schools, which were essentially run by monks. The monks were everywhere grammar school professors, for the most part exemplary grammar school professors. The strict scholastic thinking in its further development into the nineteenth century was something that was imposed on the whole of Austrian educational life, and on Austrian scientific life, and which has remained to this day.

We must not forget such phenomena as, for example, that in my youth the textbooks – up to those of descriptive geometry – were written by Benedictine monks or other monks. The individual grammar schools were looked after by the clergy, who certainly had to pass their state exams, but who brought a very specific spirit, a very specific way of thinking, into Austrian grammar schools. The Austrian grammar schools, which one could say only brought down the liberal era, had been liberalized by an excellent man, who, however, made them into excellent grammar schools: by Leo Thun in the 1850s. So that if you really want to understand much of what Austrian educational life is, you have to go to the monasteries, not exactly to the archpriests, not to the archbishops and bishops, but to the monasteries. Throughout the entire 19th century, there was still an incredible amount of learning in the monasteries. The learning that was then expressed by the most important researchers at the university was in the monasteries. The most important researchers had emerged from the monasteries, or if they had not emerged from the monastery, they were still part of an educational tradition that was deeply influenced by the monasteries. Only Austrian Catholicism, until it experienced its reaction at the end of the nineteenth century, was actually a development trend that moved towards an extraordinarily liberal element. You could see everywhere in the monks in the various branches of science how the sharply trained thinking that the monk had acquired from the old scholastic science had an effect on science, and especially on the pedagogy of science, and how only the Catholic, theocratic essence should remain untouched, so to speak. So that actually everything that did not reach the level of a world view developed within Austria, and thus the concept of the sciences in their specialties developed something extraordinarily significant.

You see, one of the most important researchers in the field of modern science, who is now mentioned everywhere, is Gregor Mendel. He was an Austrian religious in Moravia. While we were holding our Congress of Vienna, anniversary articles about Gregor Mendel appeared everywhere. It was perhaps the most interesting side event of our congress that the newspapers everywhere were full of tributes to Gregor Mendel. It was the case that this Gregor Mendel had actually emerged from the monastic education, that he had become a natural scientist who is now recognized everywhere, and whose theory of heredity is regarded as something extraordinary throughout the world. And Gregor Mendel is truly the type of person who, growing out of the Austrian essence, is active in individual fields of knowledge.

But there were many others like Gregor Mendel, people of action – not all of them made epoch-making discoveries – in nineteenth-century Austrian education, so that one can say that it was precisely in the field of science that Catholicism bore its most significant fruit. In addition, there was something else that is often overlooked.

A German who outgrows the Austrian way of life also outgrows a dialect. In addition to this dialect, there is a kind of general Austrian language that is not really spoken from the heart by anyone, but which is all the more suitable for being a language that goes beyond the needs of the day and which has then become the language of science. Because it is elevated above the dialects, it has also found its way into Latin logic in an extraordinary way. In the Austrian form of expression there is something on the one hand that is extraordinarily pliable, but on the other hand there is also something lively. All of this is just there.

If you take that as a basic feature of the Austrian character, then again you also have to take into account the external Austrian character. You see, my dear friends, certainly one could come to Austria in the 1970s, in the 1980s, in the 1990s, one could come to Austria in the twentieth century, one can come now, one finds, of course, in Austria everywhere in a certain sense also that which is otherwise also in the world. The inventions and discoveries, even the scientific achievements come everywhere, of course. Of course, Vienna and Austria have not been spared cinemas and so on. But in all this, there is still this very peculiar essence of Austria. And one would like to say: throughout the entire nineteenth century, perhaps precisely because of its close ties to Catholicism, there was no particular inclination in Austria to become more intimately connected with what was flowing in from outside. The Austrian retained himself when he began to dress in the French or English fashion for my sake, but always something specifically Austrian up to the aristocratic classes.

Now, my dear friends, you know that I don't really want to become a psychoanalyst – you know I have no particular inclination for it – but when it comes to the Austrian character, I feel like saying: external circumstances force you to develop something like psychoanalysis, because when you get to the Austrian character, there is something everywhere that is not fully realized in consciousness.

The Austrians readily absorb everything foreign; in many respects they are even extraordinarily proud of this foreignness. But then, inwardly, in their consciousness, they have no full connection with it. And just as when one psychoanalyzes an individual person, one searches for hidden “soul provinces,” so one is always tempted, when one comes upon the Austrian character, to search for such hidden soul provinces, even in the individual Austrian. If one approaches him with a psychoanalytic eye, one finds everywhere: He carries something with him from earlier. It is buried deep in his unconscious being; it sometimes comes to the surface. But it must first be brought to his attention, or he must do it himself. And if you go about it thoroughly, if you just analyze enough, you will discover in almost everyone, especially in the educated Austrian – in the uneducated, it can be seen from the outside – something that Emperor Joseph, Emperor Franz and everything that came later in the nineteenth century, actually has little to do with it; you go back to Empress Maria Theresa and even further back than Maria Theresa. Something from the eighteenth century comes to light everywhere. Every Austrian has something from the eighteenth century at the bottom of his soul, a hidden province of the soul; just as a psychoanalyst seeks out this repressed region of the soul and then detaches it from the soul, because people have not processed the eighteenth century at all, it is as if the whole of Austria has not fully processed the eighteenth century, as if at some point in time of Empress Maria Theresia this had settled in the soul and then it was brought up again. So that one really has to reckon with an extraordinary amount of instinct, but, I would say, historical instinct. You come across a lot of things that existed earlier, hidden in the heart, when you get to know the Austrian completely, as they say in Austria, inside and out. And in Austria, people try to get to know each other inside and out. All this predestines the Austrian to build a kind of bridge between West and East. Much of what has led to the tearing down of this bridge, what especially the present time in the West and in the East and also in the center just outside of Austria carries within itself, that comes to light when one looks at Austria so superficially , but if you look at the deeper level, you will find that there are hidden soul provinces everywhere, from which much can be brought up to build this bridge between West and East.

You see, with the West-East Congress we were now placed in this life, we were really placed differently than in Stuttgart with the first anthroposophical congress! We were placed quite differently, I would say, by the whole outward nuance in Stuttgart! Yes, in Stuttgart, right, there spoke for my sake = let's say - Hahn next to Kolisko, Blümel next to Fräulein von Heydebrand, Leinhas next to Baravalle. That makes no difference for Stuttgart.

Yes, for Vienna it made a very considerable difference, of course, and you could notice this difference everywhere you listened. You were simply placed in a very special element at this West-East Congress. And our Austrians made no effort at all at this West-East Congress to somehow deny their Austrian identity. For example, I paid particular attention when an Austrian came, and I always thought to myself: now I am curious to see if he will start his speech with “if”. He put a conditional sentence at the beginning! This is something that is deeply rooted in the character. It announces something that works quite differently in the Austrian. On the one hand, there is something in the Austrian that wants to look very thoroughly at the conditions of his own behavior, but on the other hand, there is also something in him that always wants to apologize a little. And all of this can be done better through the conditional sentences than if you thunder out a position.

Yes, these are the things that must be considered if one wants to understand the full significance of this West-East Congress. Isn't it true that everything was geared towards building a bridge between the West and the East? Scientific results, scientific methods, the artistic, everything was considered in this sense.

It is extremely difficult for me to express what I would like to say as impressions; but it seems to me that if I summarize this in a few images, these images could indeed convey some of the impressions that one can have.

You see, in our Austrian speakers at the Congress of Vienna, Austrianness was not completely denied. You could still psychoanalyze the speeches. I hope you won't take offense at this, because it's meant well, and after all, it doesn't do any harm if we can reach a general understanding. You see, there is our extraordinarily capable Kolisko. But if you want to grasp his individuality, if you want to grasp what he presents himself as when he speaks in Vienna, then you have to say: you are actually quite involuntarily led to the question: what kind of monk would he have become if he had sought his path of education in the pre-Deserian era? Well, our dear Kolisko would undoubtedly have become a Dominican, just as Baravalle and Blümel would undoubtedly have become Benedictines, Doctor Schubert would have become a Piarist and Doctor Stein would have become a Cistercian.

So, you see, today we can see – I would even say with our own hands – what was there at the bottom of their souls. I would like to say: someone who has an ear can still hear today from Baravalle and Doctor Blümel the fine spirit that once only the Benedictines had within Austrian education; from Doctor Schubert one can hear what the Piarists had, from Doctor Stein what the Cistercians achieved, and likewise the trained dialectic and sharply contoured concepts sharp-contoured concepts, the scientific method of searching thoroughly, all this, when viewed from this perspective – which is only possible if one takes a cultural-historical approach, as Dr. Kolisko did at the Congress of Vienna – is reminiscent of what was brought into Austrian education by the Dominican element.

I would remind you that Austrian university professors used to be Dominicans. They no longer know this, but in their soul province it is present, they were in an old Dominican monastery! And one must only be aware of the fact that a very old element is present there. The Austrians, and the other numerous foreigners – the congress was extremely well attended from all over the world – also hear this specific coloration, which is then incorporated into the entire congress proceedings. It is certainly the case that because there are so many Austrians among us, our lecturers, especially the Viennese, undoubtedly felt a sense of home in Vienna.

Now, one must just be clear about one thing: the other gentlemen, let's say, our dear Uehli, Hahn, Schwebsch, Dr. Heydebrand, Rittelmeyer, Leinhas, Husemann, Unger, Heyer - yes, in Austria these are the very clever foreign gentlemen who come as guests. And that is how they are perceived: the very clever foreign gentlemen who come to visit, who are only allowed in at the border, if you notice that they are clever, because there are enough of the other kind in the country. You see, I'm not saying this on my own initiative, but only what the mood is: these are the clever guests – just as one has always appointed strangers to the universities, right, who then actually have the task of being clever! That is something that is taken for granted. One becomes more objective. One becomes more objective in Vienna in particular. Then something as magnificent as the first lecture by our dear friend Dr. Hahn was this time seems tremendously incisive. And then, in turn, a certain impartiality that has remained comes into play.

For example, there was something extraordinarily beneficial that came out of the whole event, in that Dr. Schwebsch treated Bruckner with North German thought-forms; and then there was also the Bruckner performance, and something - I would say - not only Austrian, but generally cultural played into the matter. But because it was like that, the congress took on an extraordinarily pleasant character – I am really saying this now, whether someone I am talking about is there or not: I speak in the same way. For my sake, everyone I am talking about could be there.

The congress was given a particularly pleasant touch by the fine lecture given by our dear friend Steffen. In Vienna, we have a particularly fine sense for this nuance. On the one hand, we clearly felt the connection – the Swiss connection. In a sense, there is something Swiss about it, but the Austrian has a small reservation. He feels uncomfortable when he is in Vienna, and the Swiss – he comes by train. He actually expects the Swiss to come on foot and to have stayed in Innsbruck, Salzburg and Linz beforehand, and that people there had already heard of him and that he had written letters to people there. Otherwise, people are too surprised by the one who killed Gessler, aren't they, because that's the Swiss in Vienna after all. And so, at first, what brings the Swiss to Vienna is something amazing, and people are then angry. And that was certainly the case with our dear friend Steffen, that he did not give further lectures. And I am convinced that people would have wanted Steffen to have given at least three lectures of the exquisite subtlety that he gave in Vienna. The only reason I might not have wanted it was because he would have been so well understood that they would not have let him leave. He is needed here in Dornach.

So you see, there were various nuances. Yes, I am not just saying this out of theory, I have already received voices in the last few days that have told me: We could make good use of Steffen in Vienna, can't we have him? But I declined. So not out of theory — as I generally speak out of experience more than it might initially appear.

Well, it's true that I myself have been away from Vienna and Austria for so long that all these things are less relevant to me; but of course, when you enter Austria, you feel all that I have said. And that is why you feel compelled to place your own things in what is there in such a nuanced way that it takes into account what it is all about. For example, I have been away from Austria for so long that people have naturally forgotten that I was ever there and no longer give any credence to the fact that I was there. But Dr. Kolisko, you see, a mishap occurred that was quite fatal at this congress. Dr. Kolisko was invited by the Viennese medical association to give a lecture to this association as early as May 26. Now, this has its downsides; it is always unpleasant to give a lecture on a completely new field, on a completely new treatment method, only to experts, and as they say in Austria, there was a huge fuss, a terrible row, which of course was a bad start to our congress. The commotion did not continue into our congress, which was extraordinarily harmonious in all respects, but the doctors actually stayed away from the congress in their entirety. And since important medical matters were to be discussed in the seminars, this was of course a significant failure of the whole congress. We wanted to engage with the people. But that didn't happen at all. The medical profession wasn't there. And that is something that will probably trouble us for a long time to come, and it will make it extremely difficult to assert the medical side in Austria. And that would have been extremely important for the very reason that medicine in Austria has always had an extraordinarily respected representation.

Just think, if we had succeeded in making even a small initial breakthrough with the medical profession in Austria, it would have been a tremendous step forward for our medical cause. That is something we missed out on. It would not have led to anything if I had advised Dr. Kolisko against attending the conference, because it was not possible, since he had already been invited. On the other hand, we could not say that we would or wanted to withdraw from this invitation. That could not be said either. So there was a certain difficulty. That was the general difficulty, that Dr. Kolisko's excellent discussion was mocked and laughed at, and that it led to the medical profession sabotaging the congress.

But in the case of Dr. Kolisko, something specific was added. Otherwise I would not have said that I had been away for so long. But Dr. Kolisko wanted to come up with something really drastic. So people said to themselves: Dr. Kolisko, the son of a pathologist at the University of Vienna who was still famous in his nineties, who studied with us, who is a true member of the Viennese medical school, who also worked as an assistant in Vienna, yes, can he really do that? He still has the pencil that he bought in Vienna, that was used in Vienna at the time to copy the lecture notes, which he has now sharpened so often that it is now a tiny stump. He is using our pencil to write down the Anthroposophical matter, that is of course not allowed, we cannot allow that!

Yes, you see, that was of course also effective. Such things must certainly be taken into account. And so of course we had this somewhat unpleasant start. But despite that, our congress went really extremely well. It can be said that the individual contributors expressed themselves in the very best way there, and it can be said that the Viennese audience really went along with it in a very unique way.

Now, we must not forget in all of this: the congress was extremely well prepared in a certain direction, and our friends van Leer, Polzer, Breitenstein, Zeissig, Eichenberger and many others went to great lengths, really worked for months in the most intensive way because preparing for the congress requires an extraordinary amount of work to do everything that was necessary to administer it, so that the congress was prepared in a truly extraordinary diligent and dedicated manner. At the same time, it was the case that, for the first time, we were working in full public view, so to speak. Of course, this was also the case with our other endeavors. But it was not the case in the way it was in Vienna, where we worked in full public view and the Congress was taken as something that the whole Viennese public took for granted as being their concern. The whole of Vienna's public was involved with this congress, and of course all kinds of phenomena arose from that; for it is natural that people could not immediately digest everything we had to give them, everything we had to present to them.

But it must be said that, both in the way the lectures were received and in the way the eurythmy presentations were received, which were never actually as warmly received as in Vienna, and also in the way, for example, the declamatory was received, everywhere it has been shown that with a certain artistic feeling, apart from listening only to the dogmatic, in an artistic grasp lay only that which actually came towards one.

And so it is precisely at this congress, with its artistic aspects – with the Bruckner performance, with the performance of the Thomastik Quartet, with the very beautiful evening that was organized by Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström, ärdström, who has supported this congress with her art in a truly devoted way. In all that we have been able to offer artistically, and in the artistic reception of the lectures, there has been a very special atmosphere. And at least the feeling will have remained there that one would have to deal with the problems that were at issue, that the question of East-West in such a way, which goes back to the spiritual, must actually be tackled.

And in this respect, Vienna was a well-chosen place, that is, the given place, because in no other city would one have been able to feel just as much the need to grasp the matter spiritually today. The fact is that this Austria, which is so terribly afflicted today, is not really paying much attention to the other areas of life; they go on as usual – or rather, they do not go away. But precisely because everything else is already so far in decline in this rump of Austria, in this “German-Austria” with the much too large city of Vienna, that is why people there turn to the spiritual. And that is precisely the advantage of Austrian Catholicism, that it has never sworn by dogma like any other Catholicism. Austrian Catholicism is actually much more based on looking, on feeling. Even within the clergy, the dogmatic is something that is respected and cultivated, but it is not what actually has an effect. In Austria, people do not think that they have to swear by a dogma or be as strongly opposed to a dogma as they do in Switzerland or Germany. A dogma is something that is also regarded more like a work of art.

And so this very ancient Viennese culture, with its strong artistic influence, has indeed been extraordinarily receptive to what we were able to bring from our side, especially from an East-West point of view, so that it really must be said: everything went as each individual event increased more and more.

And when the conference was over, it became clear from talking to people in Vienna that the conference was seen as a strong stimulus everywhere, quite apart from the fact that it was possible to see how strongly what had emerged from anthroposophy in recent years had taken effect in Vienna, particularly in certain sections of the population. It is the case that, for example, the threefold social order is very much on people's minds there, without it being mentioned, without anything being said about its origin. They are thinking in this sense, in this style. So, looking at the course of the congress itself, one must say: I know, of course, that there has been a lot of grumbling and there will be a lot more, the worst is yet to come in this regard, that is not the question now. But one must say: there is a growing interest, a participation of all sections of the population.

On the last evening, a number of workers who had attended the entire congress appeared before me and expressed their great interest. Other groups, including some that used to belong to the upper classes, also showed great interest. This congress has already had such an impact that one has to say: It means something within the outer element of our anthroposophical movement. And of course we will have an extraordinary amount to learn from what happened there, because now, for once, complete outsiders were present who, even though they emphasized that they disagree with much or even everything, at least see the matter as something that needs to be addressed.

This is something that, if understood in the right way, can be pursued very specifically in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, so that the world will judge: this is something that a person who cares about something must take into account and deal with today, not only with the forces of decline but also with the forces of the rising.

It can certainly be said that apart from the external success, which was indisputably there in the benevolent reception of all our speakers, the approval that our speakers received, the approval that our artistic performances received, there was also undoubtedly a certain internal success. And from this, in turn, new duties arise for us, duties that are actually of a very profound nature. For we will again have to become a little more broad-minded if the congress is to be what it can be. It is precisely under the effects of this congress that we will have to become more broad-minded again. It is absolutely necessary that we do not close ourselves off within the Anthroposophical Society, but that we draw the threads to everything that confronts us today, even if it often has a very unclear striving within itself; that we also not avoid coming into contact with our opponents in those relationships that can at least open up the possibility – even if one has to be a fierce opponent – of somehow engaging with each other in certain forms. This is something that is at least imposed on us as a duty.

Another duty is that we must try to work out ever more clearly the fact that anthroposophy can truly work fruitfully in all areas of life. So that one can say overall: the Congress of Vienna is a kind of turning point in relation to what the anthroposophical movement should be.

I do not believe that I have left anything to be said about the details of the Vienna Congress unconsidered, although I have spoken in seemingly general terms. But I believe that one can only understand the Vienna Congress if one understands it in terms of the whole will of the anthroposophical movement and if one understands it in the way it was able to work into the specific Austrian being. And there it has worked in a characteristic way. Those of our friends who were present from all countries will have felt this, and I believe that on the one hand the anthroposophical movement has every reason to welcome with deep satisfaction the fact that so many friends were really there from all over the world, and that on the other hand these friends will not regret having taken part in this event in Vienna.

I do not want to fail to explicitly mention in this reflection that it gave me great satisfaction that this call to come to Vienna found an echo in so many of our friends in different countries, that so many came. It was important that a great many of our friends were there to take away what was said, sung, played and so on. But it was also important that a great many of our friends take with them the feeling that created a special atmosphere there. That is how I wanted to describe this congress.