Social Ideas, Social Reality, Social Practice II

GA 337b — 23 August 1920, Dornach

5. The Testament of Peter the Great

Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz will give a lecture on “The Testament of Peter the Great”. After the discussion, Rudolf Steiner will give a concluding word.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear attendees! There would, of course, be an enormous amount to say in connection with the very stimulating remarks of Count Polzer and the various questions that have been raised by this or that in the discussion. However, due to the late hour, we will probably have to limit ourselves to a few points.

I would first like to point out that Count Polzer obviously wanted to emphasize the importance for European politics of the legacy of Peter the Great rather than the details of the effectiveness of this legacy of Peter the Great. And with regard to this, I would like to say that things like this legacy of Peter the Great can only be judged from the overall context of the events in which they somehow came about. It just so happens that in the years referred to by Count Polzer, in the 1870s, in the years following the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and then in the years of Count Taaffe's government in Austria, a great deal happened in Austria that was along the lines of the effect of Peter the Great's testament. One could single out various events from the abundance of these events, each would be just as good as the other to illustrate what one wants to say. I will only highlight a few events that seemingly have nothing to do with Peter the Great's testament at first, but in which this testament is definitely effective.

Let us take the end of the period to which Count Polzer has drawn particular attention: the period during which Austria had received the mandate from the Berlin Treaty to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina led to a very significant dispute within Austrian politics. As Count Polzer has already emphasized, there were fierce opponents of this shift of the center of gravity, which pushed Austria eastward, and there were supporters of this occupation, this shift of the center of gravity eastward, in Austria. Supporters were actually essentially those who, in some way, had very special reasons to make themselves servants of Habsburg domestic politics. One must just bear in mind that Habsburg domestic policy at that time had already sunk to such a point of decadence that it was basically a mere prestige policy even then. What had been in preparation for a century had indeed been fulfilled with the Austro-Prussian War, and the Habsburgs needed some kind of compensation for it. They therefore resorted to what was now offered to Austria. Now, however, we can fully consider everything that was basically contained in that point of Peter the Great's testament, which indicates how to bring more and more discord and quarrel to Austria by seemingly giving it something. The occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a real bone of contention, and it was only saved because the so-called Bosnian Left split off from the so-called German Left in the Austrian Reichsrat, which was still a factor at the time.

You see, the leader of the German Left Party in the Austrian Reichsrat was the deputy Herbst. Herbst's policy developed out of the policy after 1866; it was a policy that was welded together out of a certain aspiration to give Austria a kind of German character, but at the same time to give it a kind of abstract liberal character. This policy resisted the occupation of Bosnia, particularly in the person of Deputy Herbst, because the Herbst people said to themselves: If Austria gets any more Slavs – and it was an addition of Slavs that they got there with Bosnia and Herzegovina, except for the Turkish element, which was also found there. If Austria gets more Slavs, it will be all the less possible for the German element to be given special priority in Austria in the future. Well, this fall was indeed an epigrammatic rebuff by Bismarck. Bismarck was determined to create some kind of confusion in Austria, to make Austria shift its center of gravity to the east, so that no more aspirations could arise on the part of the Habsburgs against the aspirations of the Hohenzollerns. For a large part of 19th-century Central European politics, especially in the mid-19th century and the second half, was actually a dispute between the two dynasties, the Habsburg and the Hohenzollern dynasties. Bismarck, who wanted to expand the Hohenzollern power base, wanted to push Austria towards the Slavs, towards the East, and so it suited him very little that these Herbst people in Austria were working against him. Bismarck then also coined a witty epigram, as was his way, which was one of those epigrams of political life that killed the one they hit. He called the Herbstleute the “Herbstzeitlosen” (autumn daffodils), maintaining that the time simply demanded that Austria's center of gravity be shifted eastward, out of Austria, and that anyone who did not know how to adapt to this temporal imperative was an “Herbstzeitlose,” because the leader of this Austrian German liberal party was Herbst. Well, the whole thing was saved by the fact that at that time the younger Plener, while he was previously fully immersed in the party of the Herbst people, emerged with a certain following, which could form a majority in the Austrian Reichsrat for the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Plener formed the Bosnian Left at that time.

Ernst von Plener is precisely the kind of person that Count Polzer wanted to talk about today. Plener was a speaker in the Austrian parliament who was very much in the style of the liberalist average speaker, a man who spoke in the Austrian Reichsrat in such a way that he would have put forward what he put forward much more correctly in England. Plener had been attaché at the Austrian Embassy in London for many years and had become very familiar with what is called English parliamentarism. This English parliamentarism, which had grown out of the English element and fitted it very well, was now more or less successfully transferred to the whole of Europe, and it is one of those factors that prove how much the Western impulses gradually gained influence over Europe. I would like to say: when Plener spoke in the Viennese Parliament, he was actually speaking as a politician who had been thoroughly trained in the English political mold. Of course, for Austria, to which it did not fit at all, this had something extraordinarily abstract. One has only to consider what was thrown together in this Austria from the most diverse nationalities, but held together by the clericalism of the Habsburg power base. The English stereotype of opinion with its pendulum system of left and right actually fitted into this like a completely abstract element. And for someone as abstract as Plener, it was never a matter of thinking from the perspective of the specific effective forces, but he could always do otherwise. And Herbst, who was stubborn and bullish in certain respects, stuck to his German liberal point of view. On the other hand, Plener, who was a kind of man of the world – I can still see him before me today: he never came to parliament in anything but light-colored trousers, which were always turned up at the bottom, and with a kind of beard that was halfway between a mutton-chop and a diplomatic goatee – Plener could always do otherwise. He formed the Bosnian Left in order to do a service to Emperor Franz Joseph and the Habsburg power base that could be honored later. I must say that there always seemed to me to be a certain connection between two events: the formation of the Bosnian Left in the Austrian parliament by Ernst von Plener on the occasion of the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a later event that seems insignificant but must be considered symptomatic. Plener then became finance minister for a short time when the Taaffe Ministry was replaced by the coalition Windischgrätz Ministry; he had always striven for this. But the glory did not last long. Then something happened that actually always indicates that underground forces are at play. Plener became president of the Supreme Audit Office and then, oddly enough, withdrew from politics when he had become president, despite always having played a prominent role in his party. And when he was interviewed about why he had withdrawn, he replied: “This is something that concerns only me and my emperor, it is a secret I will not discuss.”

I have always seen a certain connection between the events that took place during the formation of the Bosnian Left in the 1970s and this event, which did not take place until the 1990s. Let us now take a look at the situation after the Bosnian occupation. In Austria, the second Taaffe Ministry was formed after the last phases of the system of concessionary governments, which had come about precisely because of the attempt, after the Austro-Prussian War, to see whether one could manage with the German element in Austria or not. This was attempted with the so-called Ministry of the Bourgeoisie from 1867 to 1870, first with Prince Carlos Auersperg, then came the episode under Potocki and Hohenwart, where the Slav element asserted itself. But then, from 1871 until the end of the 1870s, there was the ministry under Adolf Prince Auersperg, which was again a kind of bourgeois ministry, and which, as I said, formed the last phase of what was attempted there. Then came the Taaffe Ministry. Let us take a look at this ministry. It managed the affairs of government in Austria for more than a decade, one might say, in the 1880s, and there, I would say, everything that is a compendium of European politics took place. Taaffe is Prime Minister; he remains at the head of the ministry despite being quite an incompetent head. He mainly stays in the ministry because he is particularly good at projecting rabbits on the wall with his handkerchief and fingers during the evening entertainment at court. The ladies at court liked it so much when Count Taaffe made rabbits and other similar tricks, and that is how he stayed in the Austrian government for so long. Now one can say that in the 1880s, Germanism was pushed back in Austria. The countries on this side of the Leitha – yes, this area didn't really have a name. This area, what was on this side of the Leitha, was called “the Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Reichsrat”, and the lands over there, on the other side of the Leitha, at least had a more comprehensive name, they were called “the lands of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen.” The lands on this side of the Leitha, that is, “the Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Reichsrat,” were ruled at that time by the ministry headed by Taaffe. Certain humor magazines wrote about Taaffe in a very strange way: Ta - affe (it is written on the blackboard).

Now, it was also difficult to find a common name for these countries, because what did this area of “the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrat” include? First there was Bukowina, then the adjoining Kingdom of Galicia with Ruthenia and Lemberg as its capital; Krakow would be there (drawn on the board). This Galicia was mainly inhabited by the Polish element (shaded, left), but here it was inhabited by the Ruthenian element (shaded, right) – the Ruthenians a kind of Slav, the Poles a kind of Slav. Further on was the Silesian area, the Moravian area and the Bohemian area – Slavs and Germans thrown together everywhere. Then comes Lower and Upper Austria, Salzburg, Vorarlberg, Tyrol, Styria down to Brunn – mostly German; then South Slav, Slovenian near Carinthia and Carniola; down here Istria and Dalmatia. Over here, on the other side of the Leitha, were the lands of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen: here Hungary with Transylvania, then Croatia with Slavonia. We would have to look for the Leitha somewhere around here; everything that was over here, all these motley groups of people, they formed the “kingdoms and countries represented in the imperial council”.

Now, what was the representation of the “kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrat” in Vienna like? It was, in fact, remarkable enough. You see, if you looked at the ministerial bench: in the middle sat the rabbit manufacturer Taaffe, with his receding forehead, at his side on the right Dunajewski, the finance minister, a Pole, then there was a striking personality, Minister Prazäk, a Czech, then Smolka, another Pole, one of those Poles who were once beheaded in effigy in Austria because they were traitors, but who had then risen [politically] again. One can say: when these personalities were spoken of, it was, in a sense, extremely interesting.

On the first bench of the left - let's say, for example, that it would have been a budget debate - sat a good German, Carneri; you know the figure of Carneri from my book “The Riddle of Man”. He began the debate in a Central European sense; he hurled the most terrible accusations at this Taaffe ministry. One of his most effective speeches ended with the words – it was perhaps in 1883 –: Poor Austria! – Then a little further away sat Herbst, Plener and so on. But all the speakers in Austria spoke as people of a perished trend spoke. What Carneri spoke, for example, was beautiful, spirited, great, but it was not something that could live. But something else lived in Austria in those days; something really lived in Austria when, for example, the Polish deputy Otto Hausner spoke. In Austria it didn't matter if a member of parliament had a German name; because if, for example, your name was Grégr and you were a young Czech liberal member of parliament, then you had a name with a catch, because before you became Czech you were called Gröger; such metamorphoses happen. When Otto Hausner spoke, he emphasized at the same time that he was speaking from the Polish element, and he did so, although he emphasized that he had Rhaetian-Alemannic blood in his veins - although I don't know what Rhaetian-Alemannic blood is. He was not a person I liked. I still vividly remember: when you walked down Vienna's Herrengasse and old Hausner came along, this old dandy with his monocle, who still cleaned himself, even though he wasn't really a cute-looking old man; he wasn't exactly a particularly likeable personality. It must be said that when Hausner spoke during these crucial years, he spoke in such a way that world history rolled through him. And I would like to say that when Otto Hausner spoke, one could hear the words of Peter the Great's testament rolling. One could hear them roll when he spoke of the fact that the people of Austria should not allow themselves to be duped by Berlin, by Bismarck, that they should not accept the Berlin Treaty. Time was speaking, the rolling time, when Otto Hausner spoke about the Arlberg railway, how he saw it as a strategic railway to make an alliance between Austria and France possible against German politics. And one would like to say that in the speeches of Otto Hausner from that time there was something prophetic that foretold everything that would come later. In particular, however, one of Hausner's speeches was effective: on “Germanness and the German Reich”, in which he rhetorically gave a wonderful characterization of all the dark sides, especially the dark sides of Germanness and the German character, never the light sides. Everything in Central Europe that was actually working towards its downfall, this Polish deputy, Otto Hausner, knew how to explain in a wonderful way in his speech at the time. Apart from him, there was another strange character who often spoke, his name was Dzieduszycki. It was extraordinarily strange, because when he spoke, one had the feeling that he had not just one, but two lumps in his throat, running after each other and back again. But still, when he spoke, world history rolled through what he said. It was world history that spoke – and so did many of those sitting there. And yet, when these people spoke only from their personalities, it was not world history at all.

At the time when the school law in Austria, which had already been ruined by the liberals, was to be completely ruined, how did the majority come about? I will tell you a great secret: despite Austrian politics, Austria actually had the best grammar schools until the 1970s; and it was only with great difficulty that the later Minister of Education, Gautsch, managed to destroy these grammar schools, which were good from a certain point of view. And do you know who was to blame for the fact that these good grammar schools in Austria - good for the time - had been founded? It was the arch-clerical Leo Graf Thun who introduced these grammar schools in Austria. It was just the case in Austria that, strangely enough, objectivity sometimes interacted with very bullish politics. This Leo Count Thun, who was a cleric and was completely black in many respects, he brought about a brilliant school system in Austria, but it was then dismantled by the liberals, and what the liberals left behind was to be ruined even more later on. How did the majority in the Reichsrat develop in these matters? Yes, these majorities came about in a strange way. There were the Ruthenians, and there were the Poles. If one wanted to push through certain things that were easier to implement with the Poles, then one formed a ministry consisting of Germans and Poles. And if one wanted to push through something else, then one excluded the Poles and formed a majority of Germans and Ruthenians. The Ruthenians and the Poles, who then fought each other terribly, were used to tip the scales. And depending on what was thrown into the scales in the end, the opposite result was achieved. Now, at that time, when the school law was to be completely destroyed, the Poles were the tip of the scales; something was to be negotiated between the clergy and the Poles. If the clergy went along with the Poles, it was said, then the school law could be destroyed. But the Poles were intelligent enough to object that this could not be done to Galicia, to impose such a [new] school law on their country. And so they resorted to a way out and said: Yes, we will go together with you, we will eliminate the [old] school law, only Galicia will be excepted. The strange thing about this was that a Slav element was used as a cover, but this Slav element excluded itself from what it clearly admitted it wanted to exclude from its own country. Such were the special circumstances in Austria at that time.

There was also the characteristic figure of the old Czech Rieger. While the Germans ruled in a liberal, formalistic and abstract way, the Czechs did not come to the Viennese parliament; they absented themselves. Count Taaffe had now earned the great external merit of bringing the Czech Club back into the parliament. So now Rieger was also among these Viennese parliamentarians: an extraordinarily characteristic figure full of inner fire, a somewhat shaky little figure, but with a powerful head, with eyes from which one believed that not just one devil, but several devils, spitting fire, would come out at the end. There was indeed something extraordinarily lively in him.

You see, that was the situation. You could say that you knew there was an element that you couldn't grasp, but it was clear to see that this peculiar configuration in Austria was really the result of Peter the Great's legacy. When you had these concrete circumstances in front of you, you knew that something like that existed. In fact, one knew exactly why, for example, Count Andrássy's policy – who, despite being Hungarian, was Austrian Foreign Minister for a while – was difficult to implement: because people could not imagine that Austria should shift its center of gravity to the east, to the Slavic countries. One could see that the Slavic element was asserting itself, but one could not say anything other than: Yes, what will actually come of it all? What will come of it? What is it, the whole? And you could actually see the Slavic element at work, especially under this Taaffe, the incompetent Taaffe – he did have some very capable Slavic minds among his ministers, such as Dunajewski, the Polish finance minister, or Prazák. But it was through the Slavic element that confusion reigned; capable minds, quite excellent minds in some cases, but confusion reigned throughout. And it was even more the case when combined with the German element.

Now, please, imagine this together with something else, imagine that Peter the Great is the person who goes to the West, to the Hague, in his youth, and comes back to St. Petersburg from the West, that he is the person who strives to introduce Western ways into Russia against the efforts of many who believed they were truly Russian, Orthodox Russian people. Try to realize what the relationship is in this story between what it means to be Russian and what Peter the Great brought into Russia. What he brought in, Peter the Great, was not something that would only have an effect in the short or even medium term; it was something that provided an impulse that extended over the centuries. One could say that one knows what Slavdom rooted in Russia wants, one knows how it interacts with differentiated Slavdom, but there is still something in it that was brought from the West by Peter the Great. Now, Peter the Great did not write anything down, but he did pursue a certain course in his government activities; what he did is oriented in a certain direction, in a certain style. And so that which comes from Slavdom alone rolls along in parallel and interweaves with the other, which was brought from the West through Peter the Great, who had become powerful in soul there. Now imagine yourself in any period after Peter the Great and look at European politics – can you not say: Yes, in what continues to have an effect from Peter the Great, there are concrete factors in it that have an effect? – Anyone who has seen things like the ones I have described to you now knows that they are there.

Now along comes a Sokolnicki, and he meditates on the conditions under which he lived. There, in the depths of his soul, he turns to what is called the “Testament of Peter the Great”. He asks himself: What forces lie in what Peter the Great started? What will happen if this comes to pass? What would it be like to write down the unwritten testament of Peter the Great, to think it written down from what partly results from inspiration, partly from state papers and the like? - Do you have to ask how the person dipped the pen in the ink or what ink he used or how he held the pen when you ask about the origin of a document? It is not so in world history.

I have often related a small matter that happened to me. I have tried to show how Goethe's essay On Nature, the Hymn to Nature, came into being. I proved that Goethe went for a walk along the Ilm with a Swiss man named Tobler and spoke this essay to himself. Tobler had such an excellent memory that he went home afterwards and wrote down what he had heard from Goethe and had it published in the Tiefurter Journal, which was just found at the time I was in Weimar. In the 7th volume of the Goethe-Jahrbücher, I have now tried to prove, for internal and intellectual reasons, that this essay in the Tiefurter Journal was by Goethe, despite the fact that this essay “Die Natur” is printed in the Journal as literally as possible according to Dobler's manuscript.

The point is that one cannot get along historically if one asks about the origin of the most important things in a, I would say prosaically philistine, literal, philological way. Certainly, with regard to the writing, the testament is a forgery - but it is a true reality. And we have the real origin of the Testament, precisely that origin that Count Polzer tried to prove, when we say to ourselves: Sokolnicki, in a kind of meditation and inner contemplation, wrote this down in connection with what was there, with what happened. But he did not conjure it out of thin air or experience it through some kind of inner mysticism; rather, he saw it in the context of world events. And one could say: he wanted to achieve precisely what had been inaugurated by Peter the Great, what he had brought from the West, but what had not yet happened.

And now let us take a look at this Babylonian Tower of the Austrian Reichsrat under the Taaffe Ministry, as I have just described it. Let us see how the Slavic element is represented, how it is precisely the talented element, but can only bring confusion. And if you get to the bottom of it, you find in what is expressed there something like a continued effect of this testament of Peter the Great. So you can say: Yes, this testament of Peter the Great, it works as an historical force, but at the same time, if you look at the concrete facts, it works in such a way that it confuses. Now, add to this what I have often said on other occasions, namely, that the West inaugurated a later policy, of which I have said that it can be traced quite well back to the 1660s. This policy consists in the fact that it was sought to bring about in the East that which was then sufficiently fulfilled in all its details, and which then basically produced the world war catastrophe. Then one can say to oneself, if one is now able to think historically, inwardly historically: Yes, is not the whole thing with Peter the Great a wonderful prelude, a grandiose prelude to what came later? I would like to say that if some spirit had wanted to produce what came later in the 20th century, it could not have done better to cause the confusion that emanates from the East than by letting Peter the Great come to The Hague, where various things were concocted in relation to the interconnections of European politics, because there is a short way to the Anglo-American one. But Peter the Great then went back to St. Petersburg, and there he inaugurated what was to have a lasting effect as the “Testament of Peter the Great,” whereby one initiated in a wonderful way that which created the very conditions needed to bring about what happened later.

Of course, when one says something like this, it always sounds as if things were deliberately being dragged into paradoxes; but when one has to summarize something, one cannot avoid putting some things more sharply than others. But I wanted to show – if you wanted to describe it exactly, you would have to say some things differently – how Peter the Great's testament is actually a real historical force, even though, as Count Polzer said, it is a forgery and Peter the Great never wrote anything like this testament or the like. I have shown you how it has had an impact, as can be seen from the example of the kingdoms and countries represented in the Austrian Reichsrat. I have shown you how one can say that when one takes Hausner's speeches about civilization and reads all the speeches that were delivered by Prazák and others, one can feel, I would say feel the wind that comes from this Peter the Great. In all the speeches that were held for and against the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, you can feel how something had to be done in the struggles that took place at the time. One tried to bring meaning into Austrian politics: no meaning could be brought in because that which was supposed to take away the meaning was at work, that which was supposed to cause confusion in order to be able to bring about that which then came in the 19th century and later.

Unfortunately, there was not enough time to discuss these matters in as much detail as would be necessary to present them as evidence. However, it is clear that we can see the effects of Peter the Great's legacy and that it is essential to understand the impact of this legacy. For this testament – I am not saying this now with a moralizing nuance, but purely as a fact, without emotion – this testament of Peter the Great actually destroyed Austria, of course in addition to the inability of the Germans in Austria to understand this testament.

And therefore one can already say: Whoever really wants something promising must simply replace the testament of Peter the Great with another document. And for that it is necessary to seek out the forces that were just described by those theses to which Count Polzer has already referred. I do not want to go into this matter now. I just wanted to give a few brief indications of how one has to imagine how Peter the Great's testament is a reality that has drawn circles, and how these circles are also political-historical realities.