Our Dead

GA 261 — 20 June 1916, Berlin

Eulogy for Helmuth Graf Von Moltke

My dear friends!

Before I come to the subject of our deliberations today, I feel the need to say a word about the great, painful loss that we have experienced in the physical realm in these days. As you know, Mr. von Moltke's soul passed through the gate of death the day before yesterday. The man's outstanding role, the tremendous role he played for his people in the great fateful events of our time, and the significant and profound impulses from the human events that shaped his actions and work, will be the task of others for the time being, will be the task of future history. In our day it is indeed impossible to give a completely exhaustive picture of all the things that concern just these our days. But as I said, with regard to what others and history will say, it is not to be spoken here today, although it is the most heartfelt conviction of the one who speaks to you here that the coming history will have a great deal to say about this man in particular. But some of what is before my mind at this moment may and should be said here, even if it is necessary for me to say one or two words in such a way that they sound more allegorical than in the actual sense, which will only gradually become understandable. This man and his soul stand before my soul as a symbol of our present and the immediate future, born out of the development of our time, truly a symbol of what should and must happen in a very, very real, very true sense of the word.

We emphasize again and again that it is truly not the arbitrary act of this or that person to incorporate what we call spiritual science into the culture of the present and the near future, that this spiritual science is a necessity of the time, that the future will not be able to continue if the substance of this spiritual science does not flow into human development. And here, my dear friends, we have something great and significant that should now come before our eyes as we remember the soul of Mr. von Moltke. In him we had a man, a personality among us, who stood in the very most effective, in the very most outwardly active life of the present, the one that has developed out of the past and in our time has come to one of the very greatest crises that humanity in the course of its conscious history has ' has to go through in the course of its conscious history, a man who led the armies, stood in the middle of the events that form the starting point of our fateful present and future. And at the same time, in him we have a soul, a man, a personality who was all this, and sat here among us seeking knowledge, seeking truth, with the most sacred, most ardent urge for knowledge that only some soul of the present can possess.

That is what should come before our soul. For this makes the personality, who has just passed through the gate of death, a towering historical symbol, in addition to everything else that he is historically. The fact that he was among those who stand at the forefront of outer life, that he served this outer life and yet found the bridge to the spiritual life that is sought through this spiritual science, that is a deeply significant historical symbol; that is what can place the feeling of a wish in our soul, which is not a personal wish but which is born out of the urge of the time, which can place the feeling, the wishing feeling in our soul: May many and more and more who are in his situation do as he did! Therein lies the significant example that you should feel, that you should sense. However little this fact may be spoken of in the outer life, it does not matter, it is best if it is not spoken of at all; but it is a reality, and it is the effects that matter, not what is spoken. This fact is a reality of the spiritual life. For this fact leads us to recognize: This soul had within itself the correct interpretation of the signs of the time. May many follow this soul, who may today be very far in one direction or another from what we call spiritual science.

Therefore it is true that what flows and pulses through this our spiritual scientific current has received from this soul as much as we could give it. And we should keep that in mind, because I have spoken of it here many times. It means that now in our time souls go to the spiritual world that carry within themselves what they have taken in here in spiritual science. When a soul that is still very active in the beyond passes through the gate of death and now finds itself in the bright world, which is to be explained to us through our knowledge when we know it up there, when, in other words, what we are seeking is carried through the gate of death by such a soul, then, through the union it has entered into with such a soul, it is a power in the spiritual world that is deeply significant and effective. And those souls who are here and understand me at this moment will never forget what I meant here at this moment about the significance of the fact that this soul now takes with it into the spiritual world what has flowed through our spiritual science for years, that this becomes power and effectiveness in it.

All this, of course, cannot be there to trivialize the pain we feel over such a loss on the physical plane. Suffering and pain are justified in such cases. But suffering and pain only become great and weighty and effective forces themselves when they are permeated with a rational understanding of what underlies suffering and pain. And so you take what I have said as an expression of the pain at the loss on the physical plane that the German people and humanity have experienced. Once again, my dear friends, let us rise:

Spirit of your soul, effective guardian!
May your wings bring
our soul's imploring love
to thy protecting son of heaven's own sphere.
That, united with thy might
our prayer may help to shine
on the soul that loves and seeks her.¹