Our Dead

GA 261 — 20 September 1918, Dornach

Eulogy for Marie Hahn

My dear friends!

Our thoughts today, which are connected with the fact that five years ago today we laid the foundation stone of our building here in this place, were interrupted by the sad news that one of the oldest members of this area, our dear Mrs. Hahn, left the physical plane this morning. And I truly need not say much to stir the appropriate feelings in those of our dear friends who have known Mrs. Hahn. And those who knew her, who really knew her, truly loved her very, very much. We who knew her see before us her gentle, quiet nature, but precisely because we knew her, we knew how much strong, internalized power was in this quiet nature. And we had ample opportunity, through the long years during which Frau Hahn was connected with us at the side of our dear Mr. Hahn, to feel deeply satisfied with the intense bond with our movement through this soul, which has now left the physical plane.

In her deepest soul she had absorbed that which speaks through spiritual science. She had grasped it, one may say, in the whole breadth of her extensive emotional life. And what spoke particularly deeply through her, she had found the possibility everywhere to tie that which revealed itself to her through spiritual science to her deeply inward, spirit-given, and we may say in the truest sense of the word, pious soul nature. She was one of those souls who did not feel any contradiction between her original, elementary inclination towards spirituality, towards piety, and towards devotion to the spirit, and what, one might say, should come as a bright light to illuminate the spiritual world through spiritual science. One of the qualities of this good soul, which manifested itself particularly in her attitude towards our spiritual scientific movement in the most beautiful way, was her striking loyalty to the movement, that loyalty which emerged in the beautiful nuance that it did not merely represent an adherence to something familiar in the past, but an ever new experience. One could see in this soul how true loyalty to a cause consists in the fact that it can be revitalized every day, every hour, through the inner strength of the cause and through the heartfelt connection with the cause.

And so, when looking back, the soul of our dear the dear soul of our Mrs. Hahn, the beautiful picture of her truly held in the spiritual sense of her expectation of death, an expectation of death that knew how to take this event, which cuts so deeply into human life, as a transformation of life, to whom it was natural to take this event as a transformation of life, to whom it was natural to enter through a gate into another form of life. And one could see in this soul how important it is for a person to have such a possibility of being in the spirit, even if severe suffering, as was the case here, had been going on for the last weeks, months, and even years. It is wonderfully symbolic of the beautiful picture that emerges of this faithful and loving soul that one may recall the fact, which is probably rare in human life: On the day when our dear Mr. Hahn and our dear Mrs. Hahn united in the bond of life, as on their wedding day in 1906, they came in the evening to the second lecture, the second public lecture that I was allowed to give in Basel on our spiritual science. The entry into our movement, my dear friends, was the wedding celebration of our two friends.

And it is a beautiful, symbolic union that the thoughts that move us today in connection with our building are carried up into the spiritual world by a loyal and loving messenger. For truly, we can be sure of this: our dear Mrs. Hahn will carry our best thoughts, which we can cherish on the occasion of this quinquennium of our laying the foundation stone, up into the spiritual world like a faithful and loving messenger.

I only have to say that the funeral service will take place next Sunday at noon. We gather at Mr. Hahn's 'house of mourning' at noon on Sunday, in Reinach, Therwilerstraße.