Anthroposophy and its Opponents

GA 255b — 8 June 1920, Stuttgart

Academic and Nationalistic Opponents II

Closing Remarks After the Public Lecture

Dear attendees! With that, I have basically, if only briefly, expressed what I wanted to say today as an introduction to what I will say in more detail and in more specific terms the day after tomorrow. And now that my task is complete, perhaps I may today briefly return to some of what I said here last time, because otherwise the wrong conclusions are always drawn if one remains completely silent about certain things.

At the time, I had to point out the dishonesty and mendacity of those who, in many parts of the present-day educated world, are asserting themselves against the struggle for a realistic world view, even here in this place. From all possible angles, things are sought that do not aim to honestly discuss what is presented here, but that aim and do - to denigrate in the personal, which only have the personal to present.

So that I am not misunderstood again, as I was misunderstood last time on subordinate points, I would like to say once more: From my point of view, it makes no difference to me whether someone thinks I am a Jew or a Christian or a Catholic or whatever. I consider this question to be irrelevant. But the way it is raised, it is not considered irrelevant. And here I am not dealing with the question of Judaism or non-Judaism, but simply with truth and dishonesty, with truth and a very dirty lie.

My dear audience, what appears as untruth and unfair slander is coupled with a very special kind of dullness and ignorance. I have repeatedly responded to what has been said about my biography from this or that side. I only have to go back to it briefly. For example, I said that I was born in Kraljevec in Hungary, the son of an Austrian railway official. Now someone has objected that they have discovered that Kraljevec is in Croatia-Slavonia. Well, look up where Croatia-Slavonia actually was geographically in the times I spoke of, that my birthplace was in Austria-Hungary. Croatia-Slavonia belonged to the countries of the so-called Holy Crown of Stephen and was Hungarian territory. Only ignorance and dullness can say: “Someone claims to have been born in Württemberg, but was actually born in Stuttgart.” Because that is what it is when I say I was born in Kraljevec in Hungary and the other person does not realize that Croatia and Slavonia were an integral part of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen and belonged to Hungary, and then says: So he wants to be born in Kraljevec and in Hungary at the same time - that means as much as: in Württemberg and in Stuttgart. This is utter ignorance and stupidity, supported by mendacity. But the same man who opened the meeting here today presented my baptismal certificate to these unfair attacks, which showed that I was baptized as the child of Christian, good Catholic parents on February 27, 1861 in Kraljevec. The baptismal certificate was therefore presented before our eyes.

But the side that proceeds in this way is not satisfied with that, but writes all sorts of letters to my home town. Now it is simply based on the Austro-Hungarian state laws that children are entitled to their parents' place of origin, so I remain entitled to the Lower Austrian farming region where my father and mother were entitled, even after they had both moved away. My father was transferred to Kraljevec in Hungary because the Austrian Southern Railway had a line in Hungary at the time, and my birth coincided with this stay in Kraljevec. So my father was transferred to Kraljevec in Hungary when he was employed by the Austrian Southern Railway, which was and still is a private railway. Both parents grew out of the Lower Austrian farming community. My father was a servant at the Premonstratensian monastery for a long time, where he is still remembered, as I found out a few years ago when I was there. My mother is from Horn, and many of her relatives still live there. She moved with my father to Kraljevec, and they are both from the same immediate neighborhood. They were both well known there. The man who doesn't know, and the people who don't know that Croatia-Slavonia belonged to the Hungarian crown, like Stuttgart to Württemberg, also felt compelled to write to my hometown to inquire. But then he received the message, even from the priest, that I was “Aryan and Catholic.”

What do you do now? You see, you have to look at all the nonsense. What do you do now, after you haven't received the information that I'm Jewish from all sides? They say that you have to assume the following: I am the oldest son and an illegitimate child. My mother had committed an act of indecency before she married my father. So despite my baptismal certificate and inquiries, I would be descended from Jews despite my mother's dalliance with some Jew before or after her marriage.

You see, it is into such quagmires that hypocrisy comes, which, because it is not able to deal with the facts, only dares to resort to personal vilification. I am sorry to have to trouble you with these things after I have given my lecture, but what would one say if there were complete silence on the subject? There are also people who say: Why don't you complain? Yes, my dear audience, there are things that, when you have to deal with them, you actually limit yourself to washing your hands afterwards. Complain when things are like that?

Forgive me, I would now like to move on from the actual specifics of the matter to just one comparison: I was still very young when I once came to a farm. The first thing that came towards me, besides the fact that I was otherwise very well received, was a wild boar. The wild boar came at me and – forgive me, in England they don't say the word, but in Germany you can say it – dirtied my trousers, tore my trousers too. My dear audience, I did not accuse the pig.

Loud applause.

But despite all this, my dear attendees, I still believe, as has often been said: The truth - and the one who devotes himself to its investigation, even if he errs, must be convinced of the truth of the person he is pursuing; the truth must find its way through the development of humanity; and it will not be beaten out of the world, not even by ignorance and not even by malevolence. But it has always been the case that ignorance and malevolence have marched against the truth.

I do not want to speak in any way of an absoluteness of what is presented here as knowledge; rather, in the face of various attacks, including from the so-called Christian side, I would like to point out that I am on the side of those who say: What you have to advocate - you have to advocate it. For if it is an error, then it will be done away with by the opposing truth, and it will certainly not remain. But if it is the truth, then it cannot and must not be overpowered, not by ignorance, not by malevolence.