Our Dead

GA 261 — 11 January 1924, Basel

Address at the Cremation of Georga Wiese

My dear mourners!

First of all, I would like to address my dear sister and dear brother of the dearly departed and then all of you, my dear mourners, who were united in loyal love with the one who has left us in the physical world.

At the mortal remains of our friend Georga Wiese, we stand in the soul's eye, the eternal spirit going to light heights from us. Dear Georga Wiese!

We know what moved you in spirit,
We feel what warmed you in the heart,
We strive for what your will urged. Your mental agitation, your warmth of heart,
your will urge,
They stand before our soul.

And memory presents you to us:

How you thought with us,
What we consider the most worthy content of thought,
How you felt with us, What we consider the most beautiful love of the soul,
And how you strove with us,
What we consider the truest goal of humanity.

And as a reminder, the spiritual vision stands before us:

How you are received by the spirits of the light-filled heights,
to work in the spirit,
to see the result of your deeds,
to speak the language of eternal being. Weave, oh Georga Wiese, in your work in the spirit,
Behold in the result of your deeds,
Let penetrate into the language of eternal being
The ray that can penetrate into our hearts
And that returns to you again,
So that in the times to come
can live the spiritual existence together with you.

My dear mourners! When I put myself in Georga Wiese's dear soul, then these words resound in this dear soul:

Whoever was looking
for a loving heart,
Dear friend, he will surely find it beating in your chest. Those who seek
an understanding soul, Dear friend, he will surely find it gazing from your eyes. Those who seek
active help, Dearest friend,
He will surely find it coming
Through your will. So may hearts beat for your soul,
so may eyes look into your eyes,
so may wills come to your spirit,
when, like the sun, your example
in the eyes of our souls
From spiritual heights. We,
Your heart's companions,
Your soul's partakers,
Your will's admirers,
Gaze
Upon Your soul, released from time. Remain
Our eternal companion. Let,
Ye spirits in bright heights,
Us keep
In the endless spiritual lake,
What unites us
To Thee in the earthly realm. Thou gavest us
Most faithful spiritual friendship.
Ye spirits in bright heights,
make our hearts strong,
so that we may prove worthy
of the gift
that the gods have given us.

My dear mourners!

Deeply moved and filled with sorrow, we stand at the mortal remains of our dear friend Georga Wiese, looking up to her soul as it rushes off to the spiritual realms that she sought with such earnest striving during her earthly existence. And we know that she will be united in the future with those spiritual forces with which she united during her earthly existence out of such warm and active striving. We see what her spiritual existence will be like: a continuation of what has already been spiritually alive in her heart, in her soul, in her spirit here on earth. And we remember, my dear mourning assembly, every dear hour that united us with Georga Wiese, because these dear hours were always filled with active participation and with earnestly placing ourselves in the spiritual world. It was always filled, so it may well be said, by each individual who stood opposite Georga Wiese; it was always filled, this hour of being together with Georga Wiese, by the heartfelt conviction: You are standing opposite a dear, a loyal, a heart-warming person.

And this love, this loyalty, this wonderful warmth of heart, it radiated from Georga Wiese to such an infinitely beautiful extent that everyone who met her felt how beneficial and at the same time how deeply understanding this togetherness could be. We were privileged to get to know Georga Wiese in her native environment, to which she wanted to convey the spiritual life with such zeal and such an understanding gaze from her beautiful soul. We got to know her in her loyal attachment and love for the country, for which all of us who were privileged to be up north felt the most heartfelt love, and we saw it, and we were allowed – at least a large part of us – to work in this Nordic, rocky, sea-washed, divinely interwoven land, which presents itself so beautifully and majestically to one, and upon entering which one can believe that the hard rocks speak a hard but inwardly spiritualized language. And one comes to love this country. And one comes to love it especially when one is favored by fate to find such dear people in it, like Georga Wiese and those around her.

We took the most heartfelt interest in how the dear mother had preceded us into spiritual lands, and we wanted to witness how expectantly and understandingly this dear mother would now receive her precious daughter.

We saw Georga Wiese lovingly in the midst of the Nordic circle that had become dear to us. We saw her surrounded by a number of like-minded people. And my eye could not detect anyone who was not devoted with sincere love to the devoted soul of Georga Wiese. And much, much of what we were able to achieve in that country, where we are so happy to work, has been made possible by the sacrifice of Georga Wiese.

Do we still need much to recall in our hearts today, in these days of mourning, all the love that we had to feel for the dear departed over a long period of time, because earthly love could only be a reflection of the intimate, active, sacrificial love that came from her. The union with Georga Wiese was beautiful, and the beauty of this earthly union will be the seed for the spiritual union, which we must enter because Georga Wiese entered the spiritual realm before us. For it is a beautiful image that arises in the soul when we imagine ourselves in the Nordic country. We found warmth, the warming rays of sunshine in our hearts through Georga Wiese.

And it was always a beautiful thought, it was always a warm feeling to be able to say to ourselves, within the work in the Nordic country, Georga Wiese will stand by our side with all that she can be. That, my dear mourners, will no longer be here on earth; but we know, we hope, we long for it in our hearts, that we will remain united all the more deeply and intimately for all time with the soul of the one who united with us in a friendship of the spirit out of such a free and devoted will.

And today we remember with sorrow, with deep sorrow, with deep pain, that we will never again be able to look into those loving eyes, that we will never again be able to feel the blissful closeness. But we look up to the light of the heights, to the worlds of spiritual life, with which Georga Wiese has united, and to which we want to send our warm thoughts again and again and again, so that she may find the thoughts that are sent down to us from these bright spiritual heights, thoughts that protect, warm and help us.

And we digress from the image that has led us up to the Nordic homeland, and we look to the building that we tried to build the spiritual life here in the vicinity, which a bad, sad fate has snatched from us; we know how much has been snatched from it as well as from our dear friend. But we saw her over the years, when she repeatedly came to the Goetheanum in Dornach, as if seeking a home, and we see her in everything that had to be done, working faithfully and in close understanding. We see the hundreds of hands and the hundreds of hearts that worked and beat for what was happening at the Goetheanum, and we saw, among them, the beautiful enthusiasm that Georga Wiese brought back from the Goetheanum in Dornach, working there with a mild soul, a whole, mild personality in the light of love. It was beautiful, glorious, and almost beyond words to describe. And wherever something was missing, wherever help was needed, on a large or small scale, Georga Wiese was there. And she was there because she believed that she should do, out of her loving heart, whatever needed to be done, in complete freedom.

And we, we can only stand there today with heavy, grieving, sorrowful hearts and send heartfelt thanks to the soul that is fleeing, seeking the spiritual realm. Thanks that remain warm in our souls, as everything 'that was soul-warming, what Georga Wiese brought into our ranks, into our work. And she knew how to do it so unpretentiously, so intimately modestly. You could tell that she only gave when she had detached it from the personality. Georga Wiese's personality always took a back seat to what she meant to so many. And when, my dear mourners, the word has been used for centuries to describe souls that were of this nature, then today we no longer use the once much-used expression that encompasses so much: a beautiful soul. Goethe called the dearest person in the spiritual realm that he had come to know a beautiful soul, and today, in all the sense that ancient times once associated with these words, we look up to the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese.

And our soul's eye comes to the third image. We called the friends who wanted to join us in shaping the Anthroposophical Society in a new way at this Christmas season, to the Goetheanum in Dornach. And among those who came with an enthusiastic heart was Georga Wiese. And as soon as she arrived, anticipating the festive event she wanted to take part in, she had an accident in which she broke her arm at an unfavorable point on the upper arm. And she had to spend the days we had gathered to establish the new form of the Anthroposophical Society, to lay the foundation stone for it, in hospital. She had to spend the days she wanted to spend in festive company with those she loved in hospital. She had arrived at the place where she had often wanted to come, and she had come gladly again, and fate had kept her away from what she wanted to take part in.

Once again, the beautiful soul of Georga Wiese was at work. Outwardly, she had the most faithful care in the hospital and from the understanding doctor, and in this respect I was deeply satisfied when I was able to speak to her doctor myself during a visit shortly before her death. But it was still very moving to see Georga Wiese lying in serious illness and to have to bear in mind how much she would have liked to have been in a different place during these days. But once again, the radiance of what I have just mentioned outshone my dear mourners, the beautiful soul. She carried everything she hoped to find within our festive Christmas community in her soul, in her heart. And from her bed, in an almost heavenly transfiguration, she radiated to me from her faithful, loving heart all that she had experienced at the end of the days before Georga Wiese's death, when we celebrated the festival that she had also come to. She truly carried this celebration in her heart, she truly carried this celebration in her soul. For within her, everything in her soul was filled with powers that spoke to her from spiritual heights: “Ex deo nascimur, from the divine all human beings are born.” These words came to her without end, deeply affirming her own being.

And Georga Wiese knew that she was called by the divine. She knew that she was carried into earthly existence by the wide powers of divine existence. She knew this divine power at work in her own soul. She felt these divine powers in her own heart. She wanted to let this divine warmth, which flowed through her, stream into her own will without end. Her soul itself lived in the light of the words: Ex deo nascimur. — And she knew how that which reached divine heights disappears into earthly existence, and how the human being, whose outer physical body, is accepted by earthly existence. But she also knew that even if man dies into matter at every moment, the great power imparted by grace, which is in the living Christ, is at work in the earth. She felt it, it lived in her heart, it lived in her soul, it lived in her mind: In Christ morimur.

Dear mourners! If I could have read in the heart that I saw just a few hours before the difficult day that preceded her death, if I could have seen the light that radiated from this “In Christo morimur”, it was so sincere, so deeply spiritual and honest in the soul of this faithful soul, so genuinely devoted to everything beautiful, great and loving in the world. Oh, there was a great contrast in these last hours between this soul, which looked out of tired eyes, but with infinite luminosity, into the indefinite, which complained how little her body could still tolerate of earthly substances, and which was so visibly filled by what the spirit communicated to the soul.

I had to leave Georga Wiese in a state of deep concern. My dear mourners, if one understands the spiritual underpinnings of the human being while he is still on earth, one may only strive with strong, powerful thoughts to say that he will, he will be healthy. For it is often such thoughts that, with the mysterious forces that exist between human soul and human soul and between world spirit and human spirit, still carry many a soul beyond the act of death. But the patient was still alive because of the serious damage that had been done, which only allowed for ominous forebodings. It originated from the damaged area and spread like dark rays over the entire body. But hope lived on. The next day, hope was no longer allowed to live. We received the news that our dear friend had been taken from us in the morning for earthly life.

Dear mourners, this soul is now deeply connected to that which we have all striven for here, to that which moved us so deeply during the Christmas days, as we are all deeply connected to it, since she left us, to die in our midst during these our festive days, still sharing in spirit here on earth what we went through, then seeking the way up to spiritual heights.

Dear mourners, I can assure you that I speak for everyone here when I call this soul, so deeply devoted to the power of Christ, the one who, through this tragedy of death, has joined us in the very depths of all eternity, in such a solemn time for us. Always remember this soul devoted to Christ with all the strength that will ultimately transform the pain in your own souls when you allow the deep tragedy associated with this death, which fills us with such sorrow, to take effect.

Oh, from this death a spiritual life shall spring that unites us intimately with Georga Wiese for all eternity. And this spiritual life, she always lived it. From the “Ex deo nascimur - In Christo morimur” arose for her the self-evident conviction that the human soul, if it harbors the power of the Father's Word, if it cherishes the will of the Son of God and His love within itself, will resurrect in the Spirit, in order to grasp in the Spirit the life that belongs to the endless Spirit of the Kingdom of Light: “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus”. This is surely the magic breath that has been wrested as the living breath when the earthly breath ceased with Georga Wiese.

And with this spirit, which constantly awakens all that is dead, we want to unite to gain the strength to remain united in the eternal spiritual existence of the future with Georga Wiese.

The three pictures may remain unforgettable to those who have come to know her: the lover in the midst of her beloved homeland, which we ourselves have grown so fond of; the loyal, active woman who inspires enthusiasm with her heart, herself loyal, active, enthusiastically sharing, working, creating, living in the construction of the Goetheanum in Dornach; the dying woman, uniting with us in death to eternal life at our very meaningful Christmas gathering in the transition from 1923 to 1924. The power of these three images must live in your hearts! And they will live in your hearts if you allow the power of these images, together with everything that this beautiful soul had in common with you, to take effect on you, will be united in the beautiful, light-filled life of the one who has now left us in death.

We know what moved you in spirit
We feel what warmed your heart,
We strive for what your will urged. Your mental excitement, your warmth of heart,
your urge to will,
they stand before our soul.

And the memory of earthly things presents itself before us:

How you thought with us,
what we consider the most worthy content of thought,
how you felt with us,
what we consider the most beautiful love of the soul,
how you strove with us,
what we consider the truest goals of humanity.

Alongside the memory of earthly things stands the vision of the spirit – up to the light-filled heights:

How you will be received by the spirits of the light-filled heights,
To work in the spirit,
To see the result of your deeds,
To speak the language of eternal being. Weave in your work in the spirit,
Look into the result of your actions,
Let penetrate the language of eternal being
The ray that can penetrate into our hearts
And that returns to you,
So that in the future we
we may live the spiritual life united with You.

Oh, it seems to me as if Georga Wiese is speaking from bright heights:

I was united with you.
Remain united in me.
We will speak together
in the language of eternal being.
We will be active
where the result of action is effective,
We will weave in the spirit
where human thoughts are woven
in the word of eternal thoughts. Those who were looking
for a loving heart,
Dear friend,
were sure to find it beating
in your breast. Whoever sought
an understanding soul,
dear friend,
surely found it gazing
out of your eyes. Whoever sought
active help,
dear friend,
surely found it coming
through thy will. So may hearts beat for thy soul,
so may eyes gaze into thy eyes,
so may wills come to thy spirit,
when thy sun-like example
in the eyes of our souls
shines from spiritual heights. We,
Your heart's companions,
Your soul's partakers,
Your will's admirers,
Gaze
Upon Your soul, released from time.
Remain
Our eternal companion. Let,
you spirits in the bright heights,
keep us
in the endless spiritual realm,
what unites
you in the earthly realm.

And when we see you, received by the spirits of the bright heights, by the souls of our dear relatives who have preceded you in death, to whom we lovingly think, because they were yours, then, then the words shine into our warm hearts:

You gave us most faithful friendship of minds. You spirits in bright heights, you united with Georga Wiese in spirit, you preceding, you belonging human souls, make our hearts strong, so that we become worthy of the gift, that the gods have given us with Georga Wiese, we will do so.

With this attitude and the promise to unite our thoughts unceasingly again and again with your spiritual being, dear, dear friend, that you are with us even when we can no longer look into your faithful eyes, that is what we want to promise you, knowing that when we now, in this moment of suffering, commit your mortal remains to the fire, in the heavenly spiritual fire, which does not consume, but works charitably warming through souls and spirits, we will be united with you, united in the light, in love, in loyalty to humanity, in the will of the spirit. Thus we part. Thus we do not part. Thus we feel united, united, united for eternal times of existence with the soul that lovingly departs from us.

Ex deo nascimur In Christo morimur Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.