Our Dead

GA 261 — 29 June 1923, Basel

Eulogy at the Cremation of Hermann Linde

Dear Mourners!

Now that our dear friend has been escorted by the clergy into the realms of light, words of farewell are spoken from the hearts of those who were most closely connected to our dear friend: to his dear wife, daughter and to you, dear friends, who were so closely connected to Hermann Linde. These words, which may resonate in the soul of our dear friend, are spoken:

Your soul's gentle beating of wings
Carried you, dear friend, in spiritual orbits,
Your destiny's solemn guiding hand
Brought the spiritual word to your ancestors. Many a doubt stepped into your path,
But the strength of the heart found
through the light of life and the shadows of existence
to the goal of thought in the spiritual realm. And so look, faithful friend soul,
in the full spiritual reality,
what you sensibly and meaningfully envisioned
as the future after your time on earth. And in the evening of your life, you still had to Your daughter's faithful memory
Shall preserve your noble striving. And we, united with you in spirit in our earthly existence,
We who accompany you to the new life,
Want to dwell with you in spiritual union
In the times of the future and in the vastness of the world.

Dear mourners! Our dear friend was one of the first of our spiritual community to join us in heartfelt intimacy. And we got to know his kind, good heart, whether it was in such a effectively accomplished, sacred work duty for all of us, or whether it was in walking side by side in the confession of our spiritual knowledge, we got to know this good, dear heart, we learned to appreciate it, and we should know to remain connected to it, even after our physical eye can no longer look into his physical eye. And so let our soul's eye look into his in the future, remembering him with all our heart and love, into his dear spiritual eye.

Dear friends! On his earnest path to spiritual research, Hermann Linde has found many doubts and many other soul obstacles on the way. But he has possessed a spiritually inclined, soul-warm inner heart power. With strong inner power, it led him to what he then found as his spiritual word, his spiritual insight, in which we were united with him in intimate friendship.

One could say that Hermann Linde walked in loyalty with the three epochs of anthroposophical life. First he found this spiritual life. Then came the times when he worked in Munich as one of the most effective, devoted and sacrificial collaborators on our festival mystery plays, which, together with others, were also his work. My dear friends, there are many things we have to say: at the time when we had to work on them, they would not have come about without Hermann Linde.

And then, when the call came to build the Goetheanum, which was so dear to all of us and also died on the Dornach hill, he was again one of the first to offer advice and help, giving everything he had: his art, his being, to the work. We have seen how Hermann Linde, outgrowing his artistic life, ultimately sacrificed everything he was able to give in art to the work with which he had completely identified.

And anyone who is able to appreciate and love human loyalty and human devotion could not help but appreciate and admire the quiet, gentle, and yet so energetic soul of Hermann Linde, and feel him as the dearest friend soul who walked with us on our spiritual path.

Many are the hours that come to mind's eye, when I met Hermann Linde working, working at the side of his dear wife, our friend, up in the dome of the Goetheanum, and when he sacrificed his best for the work, whose downfall he and we had to experience with such deep pain.

And when you saw Hermann Linde quietly working in his studio, completely absorbed in the Goethean idea, everything he could feel as an artist, mysteriously enmeshed in this Goethean idea, then you knew: he was one of the best who work among us.

Dear mourning friends, Hermann Linde stands before us. But we also had to accompany him in such a way that we always saw in him how a strong soul, a soul with many desires, nevertheless lived in a weak body. And this weak body took Hermann Linde from us early, much too early, for all of us: this weak body, which those who were more intimately connected with Hermann Linde knew, that everything that stood in Hermann Linde's life, that even doubts arose in him, that sometimes did not allow the intentions of the work to come into full effect, came from him. Those who were very close to Hermann Linde knew that his soul was great and that he himself often felt an inner tragedy due to his weak body,

But that is precisely why he belonged to a spiritual community that is able to look beyond everything that physical-earthly sensuality alone gives, that is able to look up to that which, as a supermundane ability, the spiritually willing soul longs for and hopes for as its great goal. And in my intimate friendship with Hermann Linde, I often had the thought: You may tell yourself that not everything you want in your earthly existence will be granted to you, but you may take comfort in the fact that in spiritual regions your will to transcend the earthly will be strengthened and that you are able to give to the earth all that you would like to give to it. But we had to remind ourselves that we cannot make the same demands on ourselves that Hermann Linde made on himself. And we were truly always in complete agreement with this gentle and quiet soul. We appreciated what he did for us as one of the best.

And, my dear mourners, Hermann Linde can be a role model for many. He wrestled in his quiet mind, wrestled with earnest strength, wrestled with solemn dignity beyond all doubt, beyond all inhibitions, to that knowledge that brings man the certainty: That which you live on earth comes from divine heights of existence. But Hermann Linde appreciated the sacredness of the divine heights of existence, Hermann Linde knew how to see through what secrets these divine heights of existence hold, and he therefore knew how little of that which we carry into this existence from heavenly heights through earthly birth enters into human consciousness of earthly existence.

It is true that we are all born of God into earthly life. But during this earthly life, the human consciousness is too thin to be permeated with divine power. And only in this death, experienced with earthly consciousness, can the divine power rediscover the strong soul power that feels connected to the impulse of Christ, give birth again, resurrect the God in the human breast, the connection with Christ.

And so did Hermann Linde feel. Just as he knew that he had been led from divine existence into earthly existence, so he knew that in earthly death the awakening Christ lives, with whom the human soul, the human heart, can connect. And so today, in this solemn hour, we look up with you, beloved soul, into spiritual regions, knowing that he who retains in earthly existence the awareness of divine origin, who conquers for earthly existence the permeation with the power of Christ, will be reawakened, will resurrect in bright, luminous spiritual heights. Dear friend soul, our friendly glances from the depths of our hearts longingly accompany you. We want to let our best thoughts, which were connected to you, follow you there. We know you in the heights of spirit in the future. It will be for us to seek again and again from the depths of our hearts the thoughts that go to you, that may unite with your thoughts of purpose in the light of spirit, that want to remain with you for all time, that you will have to go through for all the worlds, that you will have to permeate. Yes, our thoughts may be with Your thoughts, out of the earthly labor, which we could feel, with which You were spiritually connected to us through Your own choice in this earthly life.

May Your thoughts, my dear mourners, always follow the spiritually connected one in his future earthly joyful existence, preparing himself for a new earthly existence full of light. So may it be. And so may our thoughts follow you, may they stay with you, our dear Hermann Linde, and may we understand to stay with you, even when our soul must seek you in the bright heights of the spirit.

The gentle beating of your soul's wings
Carried you, dear friend, in spiritual paths,
Your destiny's solemn guiding hand
Brought the spiritual word to your ancestors. Many doubts arose in your path,
But the strength of your heart found
Its way through the light and shadow of life
To the goal of thought in the spiritual realm. And so look, faithful friend soul,
In the full spiritual reality,
What made sense to you, shiningly envisioned
As the future after the time on earth. And in the evening of your life, you still had to
Deep in the soul, our great pain
from the flame;
For earthly existence, it broke your heart. Your wife's sincere heart love,
She will follow your spiritual life;
Your daughter's faithful memory
Shall preserve your noble striving. And we, united with you in spirit in this world,
We, who accompany you to the new life,
Want to dwell with you in spiritual union
In the times of the future and in the widths of the world.

29 June 1923, Dornach

This morning we had to see off our dear friend Hermann Linde at the gate through which he will now enter the spiritual world. At such moments, my dear friends, it is up to us to make real, in a deeper, moral-religious sense and in a deeper sense of feeling and perception, what anthroposophy can trigger in our souls, what anthroposophy can inspire in our souls. It is, after all, our whole endeavour to get to know the spiritual world, to learn to live in the soul with the spiritual world.

In the moment when a dear soul departs from physical existence and enters into that life, in order to gain knowledge of which we strive, we must also feel the strength and the power to sustain in the full sense of the word all that which should have become ingrained in us during that time while we were here on earth in a spiritual bond with a soul that has now passed away from us. And we should learn to understand in the right sense that we should maintain the community in which we have found each other, beyond the bonds that are woven through earthly life. We should be able to hold that love warmly, which connects us with such souls, even when that warmth of feeling cannot be kindled by external impulses as it can when the soul in question is still walking among us in a physical body. Only then do the powers of perception that can be triggered in us through anthroposophy have the right strength, if we are able to do so. We should also be able to keep the memories of a dear dead person alive in a different way than someone who has not taken in spiritual knowledge into the depths of his soul as we have set ourselves the goal.

And Hermann Linde is indeed bound to our souls by many beautiful memories. A large number of those sitting here know this without a doubt, some perhaps in a looser way. But Hermann Linde was a personality of whom it may be said that even those who knew him only briefly grew to love him. Those who have been part of our society for longer know Hermann Linde as one of the first to join the society in order to follow a shared spiritual path with the other friends united in it. And those who knew Hermann Linde more intimately know that he was not one of those who joined this spiritual path in a mere effervescence of feeling, in an inner-soul sensation, but that he strove, out of innermost self-knowledge, to find the possibility of uniting his path with the path of this spiritual current.

Hermann Linde was a mild nature, but a nature that also had a strong, justified critical spirit within the mildness of his soul, a nature that examined what came its way, and a nature that had to examine because other impressions that were already there had stuck in the soul in a strong way. And so Hermann Linde had to fight his soul's battles with what lived in his soul, what warmed his soul, what often filled his soul with bitter doubts on the one hand, and with what, because it differs so much from everything else that one encounters in the present, on the other hand, with anthroposophy, he had to fight his soul's battles with these two currents. And today, when his life on earth is complete, we can look back on it and say to ourselves: When a soul so noble, mild and inwardly earnest has found its way into this spiritual movement, not from overflowing sentiment but from inwardly true self-knowledge, then this spiritual movement can regard it as a kind of testimony that confirms its inner strength. A movement that is in a position to point out that good people have found the opportunity to unite with it can consider itself fortunate in the most beautiful sense.

And it was indeed the case that our anthroposophical movement in its first period could, by the nature of things, be nothing other than a place where souls found themselves and their connection with the spiritual world. In view of the tasks that the anthroposophical movement has had to take on in later times, many older members may well say to themselves: Oh, if only it had always remained so, if the Anthroposophical Movement had remained in that first epoch, when it was basically a gathering of people who interacted as people, who formed an inwardly cohesive association that initially looked to the spiritual current flowing through it.

Hermann Linde knew how to unite with his own soul that which flows through the Anthroposophical Society as a spiritual current; but he was also one of those who, with an open heart and an unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, devoted themselves to every new task that arose from this spiritual movement. And for many who enter this spiritual movement, it should be so that they look to the example of such a personality.

Hermann Linde entered the anthroposophical movement as an artist. He first placed his entire artistic being at the service of this movement and then, in the third phase of this movement, sacrificed it at the altar of the same. We look back because what happened through the personalities working within our movement must be of value to us. We look back to the time when the Anthroposophical movement in Munich, steeped in true inwardness, had to be led into artistic channels. At first we needed people who could infuse it with artistic life. And now I would like to call upon those of you who remember the Mystery performances in Munich to recall in your inmost soul how marvelously unified were the stage sets that Hermann Linde contributed to the individual scenes of these Mystery Dramas out of his, I might say, natural willingness to make sacrifices. For some of those who were present at those performances, these images will be unforgettable, for they arose out of a real experience of what was to arise at that time before the soul-vision of our anthroposophists. And the words I spoke this morning from a deeply moved heart, I would like to repeat them here: We know very well that much of what was to be done back then could not have been done without a subsidy like the one that came from Hermann Linde.

And when the idea arose in some people's minds to erect a building for the anthroposophical movement, it was again a matter of course to call upon Hermann Linde in the circle of those who wanted to devote themselves above all to the construction and management of this building, because they knew that they would find a willingness to make sacrifices, a willingness to work, above all, what is most needed: a reconciling, loving spirit that balances differences.

And so Hermann Linde joined the small community of those who, as a kind of committee, led everything that was initially connected with the intention in Munich and then with the reality here in Dornach: to build up the anthroposophical cause. And he was also one of the foremost in the ranks of those who took on the work of this construction. He was imbued with such inner love for the cause that he now linked his entire existence in these last years with this construction.

And again I would like to repeat a word that I said this morning: When I think back to the hours when I met Hermann Linde, working up in our now-defunct dome room, working in harmony with our dear friend, his wife, when I discussed the most diverse matters with him up there that were related to the management of the building and to the role he held within this leadership, then in all of this lay, firstly, the revelation of his unlimited willingness to make sacrifices, the unlimited application of his artistic skill to what was to be built there, and on the other side there was also that reconciling spirit that balanced out the contradictions, which was always there with advice, rather than criticism.

Many a person has thought that either they themselves or others – as is always the case in life – could have done better what Hermann Linde has done. But these things are vain illusions. What matters when something real is brought into the world lies much more in what Hermann Linde had in such an outstanding degree than in what some believed he did not have. It would not have been possible to work with the things that were often criticized. Hermann Linde's approach to our work, which was so self-sacrificing and lovingly conciliatory, allowed us to work on every detail and as a whole. And if we are to talk about the workers in our cause, then Hermann Linde must be mentioned in the first row.

But then it must not be concealed how great our sorrow must be that he left us so early, for a difficult time that undoubtedly lies ahead of us. But he was so intimately connected with everything that concerns us here in our earthly existence that we may hope for the help that the souls from the spiritual realm can provide for those who have remained here from him to the greatest extent possible, if only we prove worthy of this help.

Many people are unaware of the extent of the individual concerns that weighed on the leading personalities during the last few years of the Dornach building work. Today it is self-evident to point out that Hermann Linde was one of those who bore these worries in the most beautiful way, but that Hermann Linde was also one of those who followed everything that happened here with a broad-minded interest and who would have liked to see many things develop into greater fruitfulness, precisely by reconciling the differences, than has been possible so far.

Many of us will remember how Hermann Linde was always among those who had the sincere desire to bring about a union of artists here among us. He was certainly not a person who would have excluded or restricted any individual activity. Out of the infinite kindness of his heart, he wanted to create a collaboration. And much of what has been achieved in this direction can be traced back to his initiative. And the fact that many of the seeds he has planted in this regard have not come to full fruition is truly not due to a lack of his own zeal. Let us remember with what heartfelt love and devotion he reported on the progress of the artistic work at our Goetheanum during the meetings of the Goetheanum Association here in this hall. Let us remember such things as what is most intimately connected with the history of our movement. We must not forget, especially at this moment, that it was Hermann Linde, for example, who gave the impetus for the small further training school established here at the Goetheanum, and that he devoted his special care and attention to this further training school.

But this is just one of the many gaps that arise in our ranks as a result of Hermann Linde's passing away from the physical plane. And those who will have the task of filling these gaps in some way will feel what Hermann Linde meant to us. Because what we take for granted in certain areas of life – that wherever a gap is created by a person, another will step in – is not the case at all.

And finally, Hermann Linde had to go through with us the pain that affected our and his work. He had to be among those who, in a short time, saw what had been built out of love and devotion dwindle to ruin. And it is truly true in the deepest sense, as I had to speak this morning, that for his earthly existence this broke his heart. This impression, which he experienced on New Year's Eve and which was a death for much of what our cause is, was deeply burning in Hermann Linde's soul. And the short span of time that he was still granted to spend on earth after the Goetheanum fire was entirely under this impression.

The last time he spent here on earth was a time of suffering. He also felt deeply in his innermost heart all that is being done against the anthroposophical movement by various opponents. That is why the last time he was allowed to dwell on earth was a time of suffering. And if pain is what deepens life in the spiritual world that follows on from the time on earth, Hermann Linde has taken much of noble pain into the form of existence that he has now entered. All this, my dear friends, should fill our soul today. And it should be the starting point for thoughts of devotion for this soul to remain in our souls. Then we will worthily find again the dear soul that has been taken from our physical sight, but that should remain with us in the most intense way in our spiritual sight.

If we can do this, if we can love Hermann Linde with the same intensity with which we loved him here, and with an ever-increasing strength, then in this case we fulfill the anthroposophical view of life that we should be able to fulfill.

The starting point for a spiritual community with this soul should be the days when he is snatched from our physical sight. He left behind his dear wife, our dear friend, and his dear daughter. We must understand the pain they feel over his death, in true inner warmth. We must understand that we make our thoughts about him, which are devoted to him, quite precious by remaining connected in the most intimate love, as long as we are granted this on earth, with these, his friends who have survived him. We must make it our will and his spiritual joy to be for those who remain behind what can serve him, when he looks down on what is happening on the site where he worked for so long, to give him inner spiritual and soul satisfaction. This is truly practical anthroposophy for the soul. If we know in the right sense that death is not the destroyer of life but the beginning of another form of life, then we must understand in the right sense that the love that has been assigned to one who is now dead to earthly life also enters into another form of existence with this death. And if we do not understand this metamorphosis of love, then we do not understand in the right sense the metamorphosis of life, which we think we understand when we join a spiritual movement like anthroposophy.

And so let us reflect today on how beautifully Hermann Linde has realized in his own heart the conviction that what a person is and does here on earth comes from the divine: Ex deo nascimur. It should be borne in mind that he found in his heart the strength to recognize, for earthly consciousness, that in this consciousness the power of Christ must come to life, so that what begins to die in man at birth may, through the experience of the power of Christ, gain the right to a new life: In Christo morimur. And in thinking of Hermann Linde today, we share the conviction that when the consciousness of our divine spiritual descent unites with the consciousness of union with the Christ impulse, we may live in the conviction that human existence is God-conscious and imbued with Christ: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

These thoughts affirm that in us which enables us, for all time, to look up in loyal thoughts to the soul of Hermann Linde, which will continue to work in the spiritual existence as a continuation of its earthly existence. As a sign of this, my dear friends, we rise from our seats.

My dear friends, perhaps it is appropriate on this day, in the short span of time that remains to us, to reflect on an event like this. We must be clear in the innermost part of our soul about how what we live through in our physical existence on earth, and also live through in our soul, is bound to the outer senses and to what the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses. But the outer senses, with everything that the mind makes of them, do not follow us into the after-earthly existence. We hand over the external senses to the earthly existence with physical death. What the mind makes of the impressions of the outer senses, we hand over to the etheric world a few days after physical death. It melts away from us, and in all that follows, we are dependent on continuing to live out that which is immersed in the darkness of the unconscious while we live our earthly life.

To some extent, a person lives their life in the state between waking and sleeping. They are filled with what is experienced through the senses and through the mind, and what they find extinguished with death in the form in which they experience it here on earth. Every day, people experience the other side of existence between falling asleep and waking up. But even if the experiences within are immersed in the darkness of the unconscious for earthly consciousness, what appears to some to be of little importance for earthly existence: for what comes to life in the human soul when it has passed through the gate of death, it is precisely these experiences, which then transform into full consciousness, that are the most essential part of earthly life. What we go through here on earth in unconsciousness, we carry through the long time between death and a new life on earth.

The greatest difference between what we perceive, see and think here on earth and what we see on the other side after we have passed through the gate of death is in relation to the outer nature. Anyone who believes that they can exhaust what is hidden and revealed in nature with their physical senses and earthly mind while they are awake is mistaken. They only know the smallest part of nature. Nature has another essential side, the side that we live through between falling asleep and waking up, which is deeply hidden from the conscious mind, which in the truest sense of the word represents another side of our existence. The one side of existence that nature assigns to our earthly senses and our earthly mind is extremely different from the other side, which is assigned to our soul, our spiritual nature, which belongs to eternity.

He who can form a correct idea of this radical difference, he who realizes to what a high degree it is the case that, while nature reveals to our senses a completely unspiritual, un-animated entity, seen from the other side it is through and through an infinite abundance of spiritual entities in themselves, he can also comprehend what an enormous difference there is between the human being when it is clothed here in the physical body, and the human being when it has discarded the physical and etheric bodies and lives on in its soul-spiritual part beyond the gate of death. Not only in itself, but in the whole relationship to ourselves, there is a radical difference. We face a human being in earthly life, we experience together with him what happens in earthly life. What he experiences is imprinted on our earthly thoughts. Through our earthly thoughts it becomes our memory. During our time on earth, we carry this other person within us in our memory. But every time we see him again, it is not just the earthly memory that works in us, but what flows out of his soul as a living being and is poured into this earthly memory. Consider how the memory of a person that we carry within us is enlivened when we are face to face with him in earthly life, how infinitely more alive for earthly thinking is that which streams from him into our memory than is this memory itself.

And now he leaves us, out of the physical existence on earth. We are left with the memory, to which he himself adds nothing metamorphosing, nothing transforming, nothing enlivening after his death. We are left with the memory, just as we are left with thoughts of the outer nature when we see it with our physical senses, grasp them with our physical minds, where the things of nature add nothing to our knowledge, to our thoughts, where we must keep our thoughts all the more objective, the more we want to faithfully depict that which is, and where we must not be led astray by that which could modify these thoughts from life. But just as the other side of nature is different from what it assigns to us for the senses and for the earthly mind, so is that which a human being is when it has become merely an earthly memory for us, different from what it was when it lived these earthly memories day after day, from time to time. For from this point on, this human being now appears to us, to our experience, entirely on the other side of existence.

Just as we live in our sleep, so we live with the natural beings, who are inwardly spiritually alive, in contrast to what is dead and assigns its dead countenance to us for the earthly senses. So that part of the human being that which for our earthly life has now become only a memory, lives on this other side of existence, in that realm which we experience when we are pushed into unconsciousness, into the darkness of unconsciousness, in that realm which we pass through in our sleep.

Yes, my dear friends, just as our thoughts are invigorating and our impressions are vivid when the physical human being steps before us and we consciously experience him in his earthly consciousness, so we experience — unconsciously, but no less real for that — the approach, the coexistence with us in sleep of the one who has passed from earthly existence. To the same extent that the deceased disappears from our waking consciousness, he enters our sphere of life for our sleeping consciousness. And if we human souls, based on anthroposophical knowledge, know how we have to learn to adopt a completely different attitude to life for sleep than we do for waking, then we will feel what has been said.

If we could only live in such a way that the later always follows the earlier in physical time, we would never be able to experience the true spiritual. We only learn to experience the true spiritual when we can change the direction of life in the opposite direction. As paradoxical as it may seem to the physical thinker, all life in the spiritual takes place in the opposite direction. The wheel of life comes full circle. The end comes together with the beginning at last.

This seems so incredible to people on earth only because they have distanced themselves so far from any spiritual view. But every time we fall asleep, even if it is only for a moment, we experience time running backwards. For the path leading back to the spirit from which the world originates is a path leading forward.

And even what older cultural movements recognized as correct, namely that those born later return to the forefathers in death, is more correct than the idea we have in our seemingly so enlightened time.

But then, when we set out on our journey to the spiritual realm every night, in the opposite direction to the physical, those who have gone before us in physical death are the ones who precede us. And as we enter a spiritual world every night, we find, so to speak, figuratively speaking, the entities of the higher hierarchies at the front, who never incarnate on earth, and then, below them, the procession of those souls with whom we were fatefully connected and who passed through the gate of death earlier than we did. And that part of the journey, which, if not consciously, then at least in our unconscious thoughts we are allowed to follow in every state of sleep, that is the part in reality we follow them.

And if we can keep the memory of our dear dead alive and vivid, if we also have these thoughts in a vivid imagery again and again in our waking state, then what we lovingly carry within us as memories during waking hours makes it possible for the dead to have an effect in this world, to pour their will into it, and that the will of the living continues to live in the will of the dead. But also what we fully awaken again and again in our memories during waking hours for the dead, goes with us into the state of sleep as forces with a lasting effect. It is different for the dead when we fall asleep from a life in which we have forgotten our dead, or from a life in which we have lovingly called the images of our dead to our soul again and again. For what we carry into the world of the spirit every time we fall asleep becomes a sensation for the dead. There their soul perceives the images that we carry through the portal of sleep into the spiritual world every day. And so we can bring it about that the perceptive faculty of the dead unites with the images that we faithfully preserve for them during sleep. In this way we can bring it about that the will of the dead unites with our will through our thoughts, if we cherish and care for them in loyal remembrance when we are awake. And so we can learn in a real way to live with the dead.

Then the dead will find us worthy of living with them. And only then will the true human community arise, which is instinctive only within the physical world, but which also becomes spiritual for this physical world when the extinguishing of physical life on earth does not loosen or even break any spiritually formed bonds, when everything that is bound in the soul can remain, even though the outer earthly bonds are loosened or broken. This means that through the human soul the reality of the spirit is preserved when we admit the truth to the spirit in life by not depriving it of its reality, by not surrendering to the physical and sensual alone, but by finding the possibility to live freely in the spiritual and soul, as if compelled to do so in the physical and sensual.

This is what every death, and in particular the death of a dear friend, can remind us of, what it can call us to, not just as a dead memory, but as a lasting, living sensation, memory.