Our Dead

GA 261 — 10 May 1914, Kassel

Memorial Service for Christian Morgenstern

Today we would like to share some information with you about our friend Christian Morgenstern, who passed away recently. First, I will speak about Christian Morgenstern's career as it developed before he joined our society as a member; then Ms. von Sivers will recite some of his poems from this pre-Theosophical period. After the recital of these poems, I will then take the liberty of speaking to you, so to speak, about Christian Morgenstern's time as a member of the Anthroposophical Society, and Ms. von Sivers will essentially recite poems by Christian Morgenstern from his Anthroposophical period, which will be presented to the public in a forthcoming collection of poems by our friend.

Not only can we talk about Christian Morgenstern as a loyal, dear and energetic member of our society and our intellectual movement, we can also talk about Christian Morgenstern in this branch for the simple reason that he was connected to it in the sense that the chairman and leader of this branch, Dr. Ludwig Noll, was a friend and doctor to him in a loyal, friendly, devoted manner for many years.

In 1909, I received an objectively amiable and modest letter from Christian Morgenstern, in which he applied for membership of our society, the society in which he then expressed that he hoped to find that which had been working in his soul throughout his life in terms of feeling and emotion, and which had always formed the basic tone and nuance of a large part of his poetic work. And it is fair to say that when we consider the overall mood of Christian Morgenstern's soul, we see that hardly any other member of our world in 1909 could have connected with us more fully, more wholeheartedly, than Christian Morgenstern.

Christian Morgenstern has found his way into this incarnation on Earth so that one can literally see from the way he found his way how this soul strove from spiritual heights to find the kind of embodiment that was appropriate for this particular individuality. One would like to recognize in Christian Morgenstern a soul that could not fully decide to find its way into the directly materialistic life of the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, a soul of which one would like to say that it imposed a certain reserve on itself at the time of embodiment, as it were, to remain behind in the spiritual world with certain powers and to look at the world of the earth, always imbued with that point of view that arises when one is half rooted in the spiritual world. So Christian Morgenstern could hardly find a more suitable succession of generations here on this earth than that of his painting ancestors. His father was a painter and came, in turn, from a family of painters. The family was accustomed to viewing what the Earth's orbit offers from the standpoint of the spiritualized artist, and they loved all the beauties of nature and everything that human life produces as its blossoms, even if the foundations are materialistic. And so Christian Morgenstern was placed, as it were, in a hereditary substance, through which a certain relationship to nature developed in him, since he came from a family of landscape painters. Thus, what I would call the relationship to nature was placed in him, which was particularly strengthened by the fact that he was allowed to travel with his parents as a small child. And so we see Christian Morgenstern growing up, and the poetic urge awakening in him early on. We see him developing this poetic urge to such an extent that he, I would say, withdraws with his soul life to a lonely island and looks at everything around him from the perspective of this lonely island. Then verses flow from this poetic soul, tender verses that seem to be born out of the soul itself, which still rests half in the spiritual, and other verses that easily show, when one looks into such a soul, that they must also flow from the same soul; other verses that have absorbed all the disharmony that one encounters when one looks at the external life of our present time. Thus, in addition to the poems that rise up in the mood of prayer, there have also arisen poems that the outer world knows almost only from Christian Morgenstern: those sarcastic, ironic, humoristic poems that such a soul must breathe out, just as the physical lungs must breathe out carbonated air in addition to inhaling pure air. Thus, in this twofold breathing process of the spiritual life, such a soul had to rise, as it were, in prayer to the most sublime wisdoms and beauties of existence in the world, while on the other hand it had to look at the unnaturalness, the discrepancies, the disharmony in the world around it, which struck such a spiritual soul so powerfully that she can do nothing but rise above this discrepancy with a light, fleeting humor.

Christian Morgenstern will be one of those artists by whom it will be recognized how intimately connected the prayerful moment on the one hand and the slightly humorous on the other are, especially in the spiritually attuned soul. Indeed, through this prayer-like quality, which elevates his poetry to the point of being prayer-like in mood, Christian Morgenstern was predestined to ultimately connect his life's journey with the life's journey of our spiritual movement. This prayer-like mood in all its scope and meaning is already evident in the poems from his earliest youth. Christian Morgenstern's prayer-like mood is threefold in its structure towards the world.

What soul can pray? One might be inclined to ask, and this is often the case with Christian Morgenstern's soul. And so he feels the answer to this question of the soul: that soul can pray which is capable of letting the greatness, the sublimity, the divine spirituality of the universe have such an effect on it that the mood of saying yes to this greatness, this sublimity, this fullness of wisdom escapes it. And that then, from this saying yes to the lofty phenomena of the world, the second link is added in the soul, which can be called: to merge with one's own soul in the universe, to submerge oneself in the greatness and beauty and wisdom of existence. — The third link is added, which Christian Morgenstern felt when he brought the idea before his soul: to be blessed by the greatness, sublimity and wisdom and the love content of the universe! - To be able to say yes, to be able to merge into the universe, to feel blessed as an individual soul by the wisdom, beauty and love content of the universe: that is the mood that Christian Morgenstern as a poet already knew how to breathe into many of his earlier poems.

He was sixteen years old when his contemplative mind was confronted with the question that has occupied us so thoroughly in our spiritual movement: the great question of the repeated lives of the human soul. He relentlessly struggled for clarity in this area.

When he was twenty-one years old, all that emerged from Nietzsche, the great questioner, from the personality that so tragically and yet fruitlessly wrestled with all the riddles that confronted man in the last third of the nineteenth century if he really took life and time seriously. Christian Morgenstern himself says that he felt a passionate love for Nietzsche's struggle for many years. Then he came across another mind, a mind of which he speaks the beautiful words: “The year 1901 saw me through the ‘German Writings’ of Paul de Lagarde. He appeared to me... as the second most influential German of the last decades, which was also true in that his entire nation had gone its way without him.” Now Christian Morgenstern immersed himself in Lagarde's ‘German Writings,’ those writings that are not written in Nietzschean style. One would like to say that they are not written in the manner that turns away from life in order to somehow gain a standpoint outside of life and to observe life from there, but Christian Morgenstern also found the other side, which is embodied in Paul de Lagarde: the side that directly engages with life. Lagarde is a mind that, with a keenly penetrating soul, comprehended everything that struggles in the present for reform, for transformation, in order to restore health to this life. And the thoughts that Lagarde, out of his erudition and deep experience of life, tried to shape in order to help the life of the German spirit are endlessly ramified. This has an effect on minds like Christian Morgenstern's, who in their loneliness feel alone with minds like Nietzsche and Lagarde. Nietzsche has since become popular, Lagarde has not yet become popular, but Christian Morgenstern felt a shared loneliness with this mind. So we can understand that when yet another mood was added to his loneliness, Christian Morgenstern found strange words for what he longed for in his future and the future of those with whom his soul felt a kinship in this incarnation.

The uniqueness of his soul then led Christian Morgenstern to immerse himself in the great Nordic mystery-seekers. He became acquainted with Ibsen, the mystery-seeker; he translated “Peer Gynt” and “Brand” and felt so intimately connected in his soul to the great mystery-seeker of the North.

But he also felt elevated above what directly surrounded him in German culture. It is truly permissible to discuss such things on anthroposophical ground and to assume that the dear listeners will set aside all one-sided political or patriotic sentiment and feel transported into a higher sphere when one points to words in which Christian Morgenstern foresaw what he foresaw for his future and the future of those he loved, even though he felt isolated from them. That is why the words that Christian Morgenstern wrote six years later, in 1907, after he had met Paul de Lagarde and a few years after he had immersed himself in Ibsen and translated some of his works, in 1907, have such a profound effect:

I want to be buried in Niblum,
on the edge between marsh and geest.

I want to rest in Niblum
“from all of the present.
And there, on my stone house, write for me
only the name and: “Lest Lagarde!”
Yes, just the two things small and large:
This request and then just my name.
Only the name and: “Lest Lagarde!”

The islet of the motherland there, no,
I will not disdain that.
Why not let the North Sea take me home there soon
with steep, tumbling seas
the mother sea, the mother flood...
oh how good it will be to rest down there,
far away from German events!

That was the soul, which then gradually grew, grew into that mood that overcame him at the time, when he was thirty-five years old, where he felt within himself: man and nature are of the same spirit.

Then came an evening, as though arranged by karma, one would say, when the Gospel of St. John lay before this soul. A new mood came over Christian Morgenstern, for only now, after this preparation, did he believe he really understood the Gospel of St. John. Now this soul was in a mood that it could say of itself: I feel incorporated into the broad, wide stream of the spiritual universe; I feel that which has gone through all times as a symbol of this feeling and must touch us quite particularly in modern times, since we feel something of the deepest basis of the world and of man. Contemplating the world around, the soul can break out, if it is prepared, into the deeply significant words: That art Thou! From the Gospel of St. John the wisdom of “That art Thou” flowed for the soul of Christian Morgenstern. He could say of himself, sitting in a kaflehouse: “So, from his marble table, his cup in front of him, to contemplate those who come and go, sit down and talk, and to see through the mighty window those outside drifting back and forth, like a school of fish behind the glass wall of a large container, - and then and when to indulge in the idea: That's you! And to see them all, not knowing who they are, who is talking to himself there, as she, and who recognizes her as herself from my eyes and only as her from her own eyes! “

Then another mood arose, a mood that many would wish would spread throughout the world. By then, Christian Morgenstern was already known as a poet in his late thirties. He lived as a person who had learned to empathize with the “That's you” and then felt a mood come over his soul, which he expressed in the words: “And yet such knowledge was only a surface knowledge and therefore ultimately still doomed to infertility.”

Do you feel, my dear friends, the humility, the inner, true humility of the soul, which only this soul really prepared to penetrate into the secrets of life!

Christian Morgenstern felt he had become two people. He stood at the gates of spiritual science. He stood at the gates of spiritual science and called everything that had gone before a “superficial knowledge” that was therefore “doomed to be ultimately fruitless”.

First listen to the sounds that that Christian Morgenstern's soul wrested from itself in his pre-anthroposophical period, then I will say a few words about his anthroposophical period, about what he spoke of in the very last days of his life on earth, that he had the only thing in him that never failed him in life, and of which he knew that he could never fail.

Recitation by Marie von Sivers:

Mittagsstille - Eins und alles - An die Wolken
Sommernacht im Hochwald - Präludium - Mondenstimmung
Morgenandacht - Inmitten der großen Stadt

On April 4 of this year, we had to hand over Christian Morgenstern's earthly remains for cremation near our Dornach building in Basel. As I spoke the words on that occasion before Christian Morgenstern's cremation, many conversations came vividly to mind that had taken place after Christian Morgenstern had found himself in our society in 1909, under the aforementioned conditions, of which I spoke earlier. In those conversations, there were often words that passed from him to me and vice versa that touched on profound questions of existence, as far as they can touch people. At the same time, these questions – and this was connected with Christian Morgenstern's recent entry into our movement – pointed to the great problems of existence, but which, on the other hand, through the struggles through the struggles and the struggles that Christian Morgenstern's soul had gone through, had a directly individual character. There again emerged all the feelings that Christian Morgenstern had gone through, for example, in his present earthly career, when for years he wanted to orient himself on Nietzsche, I may say, for the great questions of life.

From many a word he spoke in intimate conversation, one could see how the understanding of a human spirit like Christian Morgenstern, who himself had to struggle so titanically, differs from that of a soul that passes over the struggles of other souls on earth more superficially. And I may well say, without committing any kind of immodesty: I was allowed to believe that I could talk to Christian Morgenstern about Nietzsche in the way that Christian Morgenstern's soul might have desired, despite the fact that his thoughts, which he had also expressed about Nietzsche, had emerged from the depths of his soul. After all, it had taken me fourteen years, from 1888 to 1902, to gain some clarity in my own soul through Nietzsche. I knew myself what struggles and conquests it takes to gain orientation about all that a mind like Nietzsche has thrown into our time. I knew the tones that the soul struck, from the mockery and scorn itself, to much of what Nietzsche expressed, to loving admiration – I knew all the struggles and overcoming that one has to go through. And again, when Christian Morgenstern spoke about his beloved Paul de Lagarde, I was allowed to have my say there too. I had a soul before me that had found support in Lagarde in many ways. I may say that almost twenty years before, indeed even more than twenty years before, I had been able to see how Lagarde's “German Writings” affected at least a small group of people, so that these people received inner soul substance through Lagarde. I had, however, seen how Paul de Lagarde was drawn into a kind of national politics in this circle, but I had also been able to see the strength of Lagarde's thoughts, how the power of his thoughts could find its way into human souls when these souls needed direction and purpose in life. That had long since passed for me, when the lonely soul, the soul that Paul de Lagarde shared with me, encountered Christian Morgenstern.

And so I was able to get to know Christian Morgenstern's soul really, really well at that moment, when it stood at the gates of anthroposophy. It was at that time that Christian Morgenstern, after having enthusiastically participated in various of our anthroposophical events, also joined us on a trip up to his beloved North Country. I could then see how the severe collapse of his health and body approached. Often he had to think again and again, and he did so reluctantly, about how he could help his body to survive for a few more years on earth. Then came the time when he had to be withdrawn from us, when he lived for some time in the high mountains of Switzerland to find relief from his suffering in the fresh, free mountain air. He had previously found a wife who was also deeply involved in our movement and who now accompanied him into his involuntary solitude – for now he would have liked to have been sociable, would have liked to have been with our movement. Then came the time when one was allowed to think – while we were trying to communicate what had been allotted to us to the human souls – that up there in the Swiss high mountains lived one who ceaselessly sought to marry his poetic power to that which was to come to light in our spiritual current, that up there lived one in whom, in an individually unique way, what we are trying to experience in our spiritual-scientific movement, was reborn from the power of poetry. A connecting link was the wife, who in the end was the only link on the physical plane between his lonely soul life in the Swiss high mountains and our society. He could see how his wife brought messages from him down and carried up what she had taken in when he repeatedly asked her to stop by at this or that event so that he too could participate in what is to be conveyed through spiritual science to the culture of our time and to human spiritual life in general. He had indeed found the direct refreshment for his soul in the soul of his faithful and devoted friend and wife, who so deeply understood him. Through her, he saw the world of the physical plane. And it was strengthening for those who were allowed to participate in his soul life that especially in this soul found such an artistic-poetic response to what moves through our souls and what we believe is so important to humanity.

Then, after we had arranged this, I met him in Zurich when I returned from a lecture tour in Italy. The destruction of his body was so advanced that he could only speak softly. But in Christian Morgenstern's soul lived something that, I would like to say, almost made the physical plane dispensable, even for external speech. That was what was so very much before one's mind, even at the moment when one saw the transfigured soul of Christian Morgenstern escape from earthly existence in April of this year. That soul, which has been set free, set free in the development of its spiritual powers precisely through death, has truly not been lost to itself and to us: it has been truly ours ever since. But one thing could stand before us painfully, for that we had indeed lost: that peculiar language that spoke from those eyes that bore witness to such intimacy, which so wonderfully expressed in mute language the intimacy with which one would so like to see the spiritual scientific world view imbued. And the other was the sweet, intimate smile of Christian Morgenstern, which beamed out to you as if from a spiritual world, and which bore witness in every feature to the deep intimacy with which he was connected with all that is spiritual, especially where the spiritual expresses itself intimately and deeply.

When I met him in Zurich, he was able to give me those of his poems that arose, so to speak, from the marriage within him of his poetic power with the anthroposophical spiritual current. And again one saw, again one heard from Christian Morgenstern's poetry the great insights into world evolution, into past embodiments of the earth, into the revival of the forces and entities of past world bodies on our earth body, - brought into poetic form that which is striven for within our spiritual current. He himself had attained that which appears to us as the pinnacle of our anthroposophical research, speaking from his tender, intimate and yet so strong soul: the being imbued with Christ, of whom an idea is gained through the spiritual-scientific tradition. Truly, there lived, embodied in this frail earthly body, our world view, strong and powerful, inspired and spiritualized. And truly, deeply true, the words that Christian Morgenstern spoke about his relationship to this world view appear, after he first remembers the legacy of suffering that was inherited from his mother, that made him physically weak in life, that made him weaker and weaker in the end. After he has remembered all this, he speaks the words: “Perhaps it was the same power that, after leaving him on the physical plane, accompanied him spiritually from then on and, what she could not give him in the physical world, she now gave him from the spiritual world with a loyalty that did not rest until she had seen him not only high up in life, but also up to the heights of life, on the path where death had lost its sting and the world had regained its divine meaning.

So he was with us, and so he was ours. And so he wrote those poems that we will hear about later, which are to be introduced by a poem from his earlier period, in which his predestination for the world view that was then revealed to him is atmospherically expressed, when he had so intimately connected with us in terms of his views and spirit.

And then he appeared again, somewhat strengthened, at our anthroposophical events. We were able to experience the joy that at the end of last year in Stuttgart, his poems, which were closest to his heart, could be spoken by Fräulein von Sivers in his presence, and we were able to witness what was going on in his soul, which, I may say, made such a moving impression on me when we were still able to talk about him and recite his poetry in his presence. It was then that he found the moving words in a letter he addressed to Miss von Sivers:

“It was about four weeks ago, when I was selecting appropriate pieces from my various earlier collections, that I was overcome by a feeling that was very close to me at the moment. I said to myself – in view of the loss of my voice and in view of the fact that right now invitation after invitation is approaching me to read publicly – that these little songs and rhythms would probably never reach human ears as I had felt them. For I relived the wondrous bliss with which each truly vital stanza had been allowed to come into existence, and I said to myself: this state of mind will never again be conjured up by me, or by anyone else. At that time, as so often, I forgot the loving understanding of kindred souls, who are able to create a similar state within themselves, simply out of warmth for the work of art in question and the intuitive perception that they have for the impulses from which and under which it may have formed. On that unforgettable November 24, 1913, you punished me for my terrible forgetfulness in the most beautiful and tender way. For someone had entered that isolated circle of which our dear doctor spoke, had willingly followed the 'lonely one' to his 'island' and could now, as it were, with his own voice, reproduce the artless melodies that were found there and presented themselves. From now on, I can be confident that one or another of my modest productions may also come to people as living sound – since I received it from you for the second time and thus a greeting from my youth and, on the other hand, a reminder to always serve you pure and high people and the ideals, which want to become truth under the constant sacrificial help of our beloved teacher through you, better and stronger. With heartfelt veneration and gratitude! Christian Morgenstern.

After all that we have since experienced, you will understand, my dear friends, that we would very much like to become faithful executors of his intentions with regard to the point that Christian Morgenstern touches on in this letter.

Then it was again in Leipzig, when we were able to give him a New Year's greeting, three months before his death. I spoke then, after once again letting the poems of his last period take effect on my soul, some of which you will hear about later – I spoke then a word that arose in me directly as an actual feeling from the poems. I spoke a word that I would like to repeat as follows: I could see how Christian Morgenstern, with his whole spirit, one might say, lived full of content in our world view, which had taken on a very individual form in him, so that what he gave was a gift for us, and we would never have had to think that he received it from us: we felt so happy in the mood that he gave us back from within himself what our world view had inspired in him. But not only that, something else also radiated from his poems. And I could not express it any differently than by saying: his poems have an aura! One feels the anthroposophical life and anthroposophical way of thinking directly flowing out of them like an aura. One also experiences something that lies not in the words but between the words, between the lines, and is directly auric life. — I was able to express it at the time as a feeling that actually arose for me: these poems have an aura!

I now know why, only now, why I said this word back then. And some of you, or perhaps all of you, my dear friends, who listened to the words of my lecture yesterday, will know why I only now know the “why”. These poems, yes, they have an aura – that is what I had to say when I was allowed to speak about him for the second time on the occasion of the reading of his poems in our circle in Leipzig in his presence. At that time, just at the beginning of this year, it was a happy time for Christian Morgenstern, I may say so. When I saw him in his room in Leipzig, it was strange to see how - yes, how healthy, how inwardly strong this soul was in this rotten body, and how this soul felt so healthy, so healthy in the spiritual life at that very time, as never before. Then it was that the words came to me that I had to speak before his cremation: “This soul truly testifies to the victory of the spirit over all corporeality!”

He worked towards achieving this victory throughout the years in which he was so closely connected with us through our spiritual movement. He achieved this victory not in arrogance, but in all modesty. Looking up to him, as his soul was released from earthly life, I was allowed to speak the words in Basel: “He was ours, he is ours, and he will be ours!” At that time, when I spoke of him for the third time, karma, I may say, brought about in a remarkable way that I was precisely at the place where he was laid to rest, in the vicinity of our building at Dornach, when his earthly remains were committed to the elements.

And so, after he had written those words, he had passed away from his lonely grave, still in his earthly life, through our spiritual current. And truly, one can perhaps feel it if, with a small change, reference may be made to the words that were shared earlier, which were spoken by him years ago, before he united with our spiritual current. We can now rightly say: we seek him in the spiritual realm, to which we

are seeking the path. 'We found a path' is also the title of his last

collection of poems, which will be published soon. In the spirit land we see him safe. We look up to him. We want to learn gradually, we want to learn to recognize what an important individuality was embodied in him. But that is not to be spoken of today. But what we feel deeply, as if it were written on his spiritual tombstone, which we want to set for him in our hearts, that will be the name we have come to love, with which we want to associate many, many things. It may stand as the only emblem on his spiritual gravestone. We will associate much with this name after he has become ours, after we have recognized him. Therefore, my dear friends, you will feel that I am being sincere when I say, building on the previous words:

In the spiritual realm we find him embedded,
at the edge, between the earthly and the spiritual.
There he works, there he does not rest,
there he continues to work as a spirit among spirits,
for all the present.

But we write on his spiritual house his name, which has become dear to us, and the words that we want to feel deeply:

Read Christian Morgenstern!

I myself would like to express this request in connection with the name Christian Morgenstern:

Read Christian Morgenstern!

He found his motherland there in spiritual heights, the spiritual world, the mother flood, brought him home. He has returned to his homeland, but to the homeland in which our soul is rooted with its strongest powers, rooted even in the moments, in the celebratory moments of life, when it must feel distant from all mere sensual events.

This is what I would like to say here, in words that arise from my own spiritual contemplation of Christian Morgenstern, before I present the lecture of the poems that he left us as a beautiful emblem of the effectiveness of our world view in a human soul that has wrestled and fought a great deal, that has fought as a spirit for victory over the body, that has experienced many people and has experienced many people and many world views, and who, even in the last days of her life here on earth, was able to speak the words:

“Actually, there is only one thing in which I have not, not even in the slightest, gone astray...”

Christian Morgenstern meant the world view to which we also profess ourselves.

But we want to be convinced, my dear friends, that this view remains with him for the life in the spirit that he leads and to which we want to look up.

Recitation by Marie von Sivers:

Sunrise Prayer · To a doubter · Moon at noon · Of two roses · Waterfall at night · Light is love · How do I break free from YOUR spell · There, take this · I lift up my heart for you · I am born of God like all being.