Our Dead
GA 261 — 29 November 1915, Munich
Eulogy for Sophie Stinde
A place has become empty for the physical world among us, which was filled by a personality who filled this place with the warmest striving for knowledge and most understanding loyalty. Our love flows to this place, it looks to this place and seeks to revive the intimate bond that has connected us for many years with this personality who has passed away from the physical plane. Our pain looks for her place. This pain will remain alive, as is the thought that carries us back to all the invigorating, blissful loyalty and love with which we were connected to dear Sophie Stinde. And the deep esteem that we had to have for her, seeking to understand her very unique nature, must transform itself in us into the most faithful memory, so that, now that she no longer walks with us in the physical world, her spirit may reign among us, work with us, that spirit that shone so wonderfully for us over the years in its significance, in its value within our work, has shone so wonderfully for years. The esteem in which we held Sophie Stinde will be sorely missed, and this loss can only be compensated by our faithful adherence to the spiritual realm, through which we will always be connected to her, to Sophie Stinde. Let us try to unite ourselves today in the image she created of us through her love, her work, strong influence she created in us through her sympathetic work within our work – in this image we seek to unite, remembering how her soul's eye looks down on this image and can unite with us when we, with the right mind, with the right love, with deep understanding, recreate the image that she herself created in us in this moment in our soul.
So, my dear friends, as the dear soul of Sophie Stinde floated away from us, in the heights of the ether, this image of her formed before my soul:
You lead us out of earthly existence
To the spiritual sun-land
The beings whose reflection we Were allowed to feel in Your work;
They lived for us as the fruits of existence
In everything you created on the paths of the earth
In power and love. You look from the heights of the spirit
Into the hearts of your friends;
Your soul's gaze meets
The blossoms of your works of love;
They shine through the pain
In that bright light
That there around their souls you created. The certain faith in what was rightly recognized:
It was the first spiritual being
That inspired all your doing; —
He who sensed this in you
Gained boundless trust
In his own work, which he Was allowed to unite with your work. The sense of truth, which unerringly
Worked from your clear soul,
He was the second being
To whom everything was always allowed to approach,
What on the paths of human life
Related feeling must strive for. The third spirit who lived through you,
Felt its warmth of soul,
Those connected to you for life's work;
He steeled your noble love power
Through a sense of duty that was firm;
He could
Conceal the strictest duty deed in pure heartedness. So you stood in our midst,
In your being you fully embodied
The meaning of the work to which we live;
The place in the world of ideas that you
Invigorated with your strength:
In your way, no other will ever be able to invigorate itIt will appear empty to friends in the sense of being;
But
the spiritual lambs will shine brightly from it,
which you
have ignited with your being.
They will shine in the mirror of your friends' souls
in a powerful reflection.
The eternal human spirit,Whose earthly cover
Lovingly revealed to us,
Hear him from yonder etheral height,
Who now unites with himself,
The soul's ear as a word of comfort proclaims
To the friends, who are filled with deep sorrow:"I will unite with your earthly work
with what in the spiritual world
My dear friends! Thus, Sophie Stinde's soul stands before our own. We sense how she is guided in the heights of the spiritual ether by the three genii, by the three spiritual beings, by whom her work, her activity, by whom her character, by whom all her being here, as it manifested itself in the physical, was accompanied.
The unwavering loyalty with which she was connected to our spiritual striving, built on an infinite firmness, is truly the one essence that we could feel at Sophie Stinde's side, and that she so confidently and so deeply understandingly put on the path of our work. When we let our eyes drift thoughtfully into life and try to feel which people we must seek out in the most serious, important, and meaningful moments of life for our shared journey through life and work, then it is those people with whom we not only connect with what can always consciously live in our soul when we are with the souls of friends, the souls connected in love: those are the souls we must seek in such moments of life, those who are connected with us in the deepest part of our soul, in that part of the soul that constitutes our being and carries our being over into the friend soul and from the friend soul over into ours, so that we can be sure even then, when we must be united with it through ties that cannot be consciously revealed under all circumstances. We approach our life's work, we are often unsure how we should proceed at the beginning of one or the other; we take our friend's hand; we know how to tell him: In this or that way, we expect you to help us, to do with us what we intend to do. There are those strong souls of friends to whom we do not need to say such things, with whom we are so deeply connected that we need only tell them what we ourselves know from the beginning of our endeavors, but who feel so intimately related to us in our striving that they work with us even when the fruit and essence of the work can only unfold in the joint effort itself. There, below the threshold of consciousness, the soul-connecting loyalty develops, that loyalty that must truly be there on the ground of a spiritual striving, as ours should be, that loyalty that holds souls together firmly, even in what is revealed and lived out by the souls not only here on the physical plane, which holds the souls together to the deepest depths of the spiritual being. Those who were truly allowed to get to know Sophie Stinde felt this way here on the physical plane, connected to her, and so they came to recognize the one of the three companions who guided them through life and who now guide their soul up into the realms of eternity.
And what we may call the direct sense of truth, which unerringly awakens in the soul as a self-evident light, so that this soul finds the strength to follow the sincerely meant realization through its own nature, this sense of truth, it was the second genius who stood by Sophie Stinde's side, that genius who made those who were close to her so secure in her presence, that genius who caused the atmosphere of truth, the atmosphere of the most earnest, most dignified search for truth, to spread between her and her friends.
And the third of the spirits who were with her, who will remain with her, was the one who kindled in the human soul that deep, deep love for humanity that knows how to find those depths in the soul of one's neighbor that are in need of love. And Sophie Stinde's soul – one may say – her love always knew how to find the places in the soul where love is needed, and she was aware that love must work where it is needed, if it is allowed to work. But radiating into this love, into this warm love, was a sacred sense of duty, duty in the guise of the body, that was the third spiritual being at Sophie Stinde's side. The one who understood Sophie Stinde knew how sacred the sacrificial service of duty was to her; but he also knew how intimately she could connect with the hearts and souls towards which her fulfillment of duty had to be directed.
So she really stood among us, so she stood among us in faithful work, in serious, deep work of knowledge and love, so she made the work of our spiritual science her own work, so she devotedly combined the best forces of life with what is needed for our work, so she also took upon herself as a matter of course all the sacrifices that are to be made for our work. Someone who is so closely connected with our work, as Sophie Stinde is and was, works, ignoring everything personal, purely objectively, always keeping only the objective in mind, for the goals that our striving must set. Many misunderstandings arise. It is only natural in life that we encounter many misunderstandings when we try to speak as human beings purely for the sake of the matter at hand in the other person. Our dear Sophie Stinde was not spared misunderstandings, which come precisely from the background, which are connected with the objective work, because she was a model in terms of objective work, so objectively suppressing her personality that she could not help but surrender to faith when she was so absorbed in objectivity that everyone else could also accept what she wanted in full objectivity.
Those who saw her work among us will keep her image within them as a power upon which the soul's eye, the spiritual gaze of the being that lived in Sophie Stinde, can look down, can force itself down into the souls of her friends, upon whom this being can draw with the power and strength from the spiritual realms and work into the souls of her friends. For the soul that has worked among us will continue to work when we know how to accept its work in our hearts, in our innermost being.
And Sophie Stinde was connected with our work not only from one side or the other, she was connected with our work in the most comprehensive way. She came into our midst by, in order to fully grasp what she recognized as her task within our midst; she came to leave the art she was so fond of, which she believed at certain times would fulfill her life. We see in the pictures she created, and which we would like to bring here today, where we want to connect our thoughts with Sophie Stinde's earthly thoughts, the most loving grasp of nature, the most intimate coexistence with what spiritually permeates and lives through nature. Because she believed that she had to serve something even higher within our spiritual science, she left this field of her work and devoted the energies she had previously offered to art to our field. And we felt the way in which Sophie Stinde's soul's deeds flowed into our spiritual work, the direction of her strength, which, full of artistic meaning and artistic warmth, could pour artistic imagination into what the spirit wants to work out within our midst. And those who feel most deeply connected to our work, who are not distant from what art actually carries and nurtures, can perhaps appreciate what it means for our work when artistic imagination combines with the soul's effectiveness that we need in the practice of our spiritual scientific work. For it is the same thing that flows out of the human soul into color and form in one sphere of activity and into other artistic forms of work and effect in another, that becomes active in the cognitive powers of spiritual science, that becomes spiritual scientific vision. The one who brings infinite treasures into the field of our work brings them from the realms of art, from the warmth of enthusiasm for art, from the capacity for artistic creation. And so we felt connected to her in the field of work in which our dear Sophie Stinde was active, as if we were standing with her before the sacrificial altar of our work, on which she willingly wanted to sacrifice her best from her current life on earth with us. So we felt united with her in a sacred duty and – as we may believe – in loyal love; so we look back with heartfelt gratitude on what she achieved in her incarnation on earth in our midst to our delight. And so we follow in faithful remembrance of her soul, knowing that she continues to work among us, even if she has changed the way she works, her powers. And we need them, these forces among us. That we were able to connect with the idea of building the structure that was first to be erected in Munich and that will now be erected in Dornach is intimately connected with what Sophie Stinde longed for our work. And what had to be done to bring the first germination of the idea of this building to life was largely done by Sophie Stinde. She combined her thoughts and aspirations for our spiritual work with the very first seeds of thought for this building, and she devoted her work to it as she did to the other branches of our work. Indeed, in recent years, especially in the last few months, we have often seen how she weakened from overworking in the wide range of duties that had gradually fallen to her. We anxiously observed how often her overworked physical body could reveal the soul. Those for whom our work is precious, who understand our work, will always associate our work with the name Sophie Stinde. We worked at her side in Dornach, we looked at what we saw emerging piece by piece as the artistic form of our work there in the Dornach building. It was dear and precious to us to be able to work with Sophie Stinde on this building and to see this building as it was created piece by piece. The physical eye of Sophie Stinde will not rest on the forms of this building on the day when this building approaches its completion, as we have to write down today. In the physical sense, Sophie Stinde's workplace around this building is abandoned, but nothing in this building, as in our other spiritual scientific work, does not carry Sophie Stinde's spiritual activity imprinted in the deepest sense. And those who feel our work in the living sense, rather than in the abstract, also feel Sophie Stinde's spiritual eye and spiritual deeds, which belong to the organs of this work. Physically we will not have her with us in our work, but spiritually she will always be with us. We will not only feel that she will remain loyal to us in her spiritual form, but we will know that she will continue to work among us with the strong power that she developed during her incarnation for the spiritual form. The souls that came close to Sophie Stinde will feel this. Those who were able to work with her in a closer sense will feel a particular pain and love that will remain in their souls as a monument, strong and always shining in the most serious moments of life. How faithfully, lovingly and beautifully Sophie Stinde worked together with her friend, Countess Kalckreuth, here in Munich. Those who are close to this work, I know that I am not addressing their souls in vain when I express to them, together with these souls, our love for our dear friend, Countess Kalckreuth, who is the closest of those we have lost to grieve, when I tell her that we will faithfully share her pain and faithfully cherish the memory of our dear friend. Our dear Countess Kalckreuth has allowed us to share in an exemplary way the intimate love with which she was united to her friend, allowing us to share without envy, to share devotedly, claiming nothing for herself that she did not gladly give up from the precious treasure that her friendship was to her. So may she allow us to vow in 'loyalty to now also bear her pain together with her, that pain that writes itself so deeply into our souls from all the love and all the esteem that we had to show Sophie Stinde because we tried to recognize her, because her work shone among us as such a clear light, clear light of truth. But to those dear friends who knew how to appreciate and love Sophie Stinde, I would like to say: Turn your feelings, turn your thoughts, turn all your loving soul being to the spiritual places where you now sense Sophie Stinde's soul being, turn these feelings, these thoughts there and learn to get used to to turn these thoughts and feelings of yours to this spiritual place of Sophie Stindes, which you sense, whenever you, who were bound to her in loyal friendship, need strength for what you have to accomplish here on earth, need advice and encouragement for many things you want to do. Turn to the soul in her spiritual realm, who has so often stood by you in life with advice and active help. You will not turn to her in vain, to this power, to this soul being in the spiritual realm. You will feel when you say to yourself: This is one of those moments when I would seek Sophie Stinde if she were still here in the world of visibility. When you experience such moments, you may feelings up to their spiritual place, you may feel intimately connected with them in your soul, and if you have won the right love, the right appreciation for them here in this earthly existence, then they will turn their spiritual gaze, the soul's eye, the spiritual power down to you, and you will feel advice and help from the depths of your souls, which they will send to you by spiritual means. We can recognize this from the way in which we now feel connected to a number of our dear departed, that those who were connected to us in the physical life continue to work among us, even after they have visited their spiritual place. Sophie Stinde, one of our first workers, will also be one of our most effective spiritual workers where she now dwells, after she has left the physical body. And so, in this hour, we connect ourselves as deeply and as strongly as we can with her soul, we grasp together all that can live for her in our soul according to the strong power with which she lived among us:
Dear soul, you who were so dear to us, we turn to you, so that from this turning our soul power may take its start to the constant bond with you in loyalty, in love, in growing striving for knowledge.
The words of remembrance: “To lead you out of earthly existence...” are spoken once more. So let us establish the feelings and thoughts that shall bind us to the spirit of Sophie Stinde. So let us vow to ourselves and to her in loyalty that we will hold fast to what connects us with her and she with us forever.