The Fateful Year of 1923

GA 259 — 1 January 1923, Dornach

Words Spoken Prior to Lecture VI on “The Origins of Natural Science”

My dear friends! This afternoon I took the liberty of saying here how yes the deepest pain cannot seek words to express itself. But in particular, it is perhaps not necessary to seek words when this pain, as is the case here, is deeply experienced. I need only repeat what I said this afternoon on a different occasion: that out of this pain comes heartfelt gratitude for the ten years of work that our dear friends have done here in harmonious collaboration on an ideal work, a work whose purpose has been discussed here many times. And when we think of the devoted way in which our friends worked yesterday to achieve the, unfortunately, impossible salvaging of it, then what is connected with the now departed Goetheanum may well be expressed in the words: Our friends gave birth to it in love, saw it grow up in love, but now they have also had to watch it die in love. Of course, heartfelt thanks must be expressed to all those friends who worked so devotedly yesterday.

But perhaps I may say something about this in the introduction to my lecture today. Perhaps I may retell how, in a lecture I gave here on January 23, 1921, I had to point out the forms that hatred and defamation had taken on in opposition to the Goetheanum and all that could be expected from this opposition. See GA 203.

Now, my dear friends, it is certainly not my intention at this hour to somehow go back to what was said then or otherwise and go over it again. But perhaps we can combine two things together today: one is that yesterday around ten o'clock, half an hour after the end of my last lecture in the former Goetheanum, it was reported there was smoke in the White Hall!—Thereupon our friends, among them Mr. Aisenpreis and Mr. Schleutermann, rushed up the stairs of the south wing, and Mr. Schleutermann was so affected by it that he was found unconscious when I arrived at the scene of the fire. Mr. Schleutermann was the one who entered the smoking room and thereby suffered a choking attack. Mr. Aisenpreis then went downstairs and looked in the rooms two floors down, where he was able to see how the fire had started: when the wall leading to the outside terrace was smashed, flames came out of the construction, that is from inside the wall. Since there was no fire in the rooms that could have been involved, and there was no possibility of a fire starting there, it was clear, or is clear, that the fire could not have come from the rooms on whose outer wall it flared up towards the terrace—that is, from these rooms and in fact from inside the Goetheanum. Therefore, all the evidence points to the fire coming from outside. So, based on the evidence, we must assume arson.

Now, I would like to reiterate what I said in that lecture on January 23, 1921, where I referred to the brochure of an astrologer —I believe her name is Elsbeth Ebertin—who, based on all kinds of stellar influences dreamt up by her, prophesied all kinds of terrible things to me. At the time, I said in all seriousness: ‘The influence of the stars will be enough to make one have to take up the fight.’ But in this brochure, which was not even written unkindly, even if not particularly wisely, there was a report from a publication that was directed against the Goetheanum, which had been noted by the astrologer. And I was able to extract the following words from this message in the astrological brochure at the time. You see, an opponent is mentioned here who is particularly full of hatred, who says: “There are enough spiritual sparks of fire that hiss like lightning after the wooden mouse trap, and it will take some cleverness on Steiner's part to work in a conciliatory way so that one day a real spark of fire does not put an inglorious end to the Dornach glory.”

Perhaps in this context we may also mention once more the assembly held here in the neighbourhood, at which a speaker used the words he addressed to “Jung-Solothurn”: “Rally round. Storm the Goetheanum!” This ties in with what I had to report at the time, namely that the opponents were actually talking about how, if some kind of clever agreement were not reached that would have a reconciling effect, one day a real spark from the Dornach glory would put an inglorious end to it.

I would just like to put these two facts, the one that happened yesterday and the one that I had experienced at the time, together again today as historical facts, without wanting to claim any connection at this moment, of course. But perhaps this strange coincidence may be pointed out—so that in the end there is nothing else to be said but: The fire came from outside—and the call or foresight that slipped out at that time: that the spark of fire from the Dornach glory could come to an inglorious end. In any case, at that time attention had to be drawn to the possibility that might, one had to assume, become reality.

My dear friends! I said this afternoon that the lectures and other events, other demonstrations and the like that have been announced for our friends, some of whom have come from very far away to experience something other than the destruction of the Goetheanum, should take place in the part of our premises in Dornach that we still have. In order to offer them to our friends, we must remember, especially in these days, that we must find the strength out of our pain to work all the more intensely and energetically on our goal, on what we find so deeply rooted in the history of human development.