62. Document from Barr, Alsace I: Autobiographical Sketch

Very early on, I was drawn to Kant. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, I studied Kant very intensively, and before I went to the University of Vienna, I occupied myself intensively with the orthodox followers of Kant from the beginning of the nineteenth century, who have been completely forgotten by the official history of science in Germany and are hardly ever mentioned anymore. Then I immersed myself in Fichte and Schelling. During this time — and this belongs already to the external occult influences — the conception of time became completely clear. This realization had no connection with the studies and was directed entirely from occult life. It was the realization that there is a backward-going evolution interfering with the forward-going evolution — the occult-astral one. This realization is the condition for spiritual vision.

Then came the acquaintance with the agent of the Master.

Then an intensive study of Hegel.

Then the study of the newer philosophy as it had been developing in Germany since the 1850s, namely the so-called theory of knowledge in all its ramifications.

My childhood passed without anyone outwardly intending to do so, so that I never encountered anyone with a superstition; and when someone around me spoke of superstitions, it was always with a strongly emphasized rejection. I did get to know the church cultus, as I was called upon to assist at cultic services as an altar boy, but nowhere, not even among the priests I met, was there any real piety or religiosity. Instead, certain dark sides of the Catholic clergy kept coming to my attention.

I did not meet the master immediately, but first one of his disciples, who was completely initiated into the secrets of the effectiveness of all plants and their connection with the cosmos and with human nature. For him, dealing with the spirits of nature was something that was taken for granted, and it was presented without enthusiasm, but it aroused all the more enthusiasm.

The official studies were directed towards mathematics, chemistry, physics, zoology, botany, mineralogy and geology. These studies offered a much more secure foundation for a spiritual world view than, for example, history or literature, which, in the absence of a specific method and also without significant prospects in the German scientific community at the time, stood there.

During his first years at university in Vienna, he met Karl Julius Schröer. At first, I attended his lectures on the history of German poetry since Goethe's first appearance, on Goethe and Schiller, on the history of German poetry in the 19th century, on Goethe's “Faust”. I also took part in his “exercises in oral and written presentation”. It was a kind of college college based on Uhland's institution at the University of Tübingen. Schröer came from German language research, had done significant studies on German dialects in Austria, he was a researcher in the style of the Brothers Grimm and in literary research an admirer of Gervinus. He was previously director of the Viennese Protestant schools. He is the son of the poet and extraordinarily meritorious pedagogue Christian] Oeser. At the time I got to know him, he was turning entirely to Goethe. He has written a widely read commentary on Goethe's “Faust” and also on Goethe's other dramas. He completed his studies at the German universities of Leipzig, Halle and Berlin before the decline of German idealism. He was a living embodiment of the noble German education. In him, the human being attracted. I soon became friends with him and was then often in his house. With him it was like an idealistic oasis in the dry materialistic German educational desert. In the external life, this time was filled with the nationality struggles in Austria. Schröer himself was far from science.

But I myself had been working since early 1880 on Goethe's scientific studies.

Then Joseph Kürschner founded the comprehensive work “Deutsche National-Literatur” (German National Literature), for which Schröer edited Goethe's dramas with introductions and commentaries. Kürschner, on Schröer's recommendation, entrusted me with the edition of Goethe's scientific writings.

Schröer wrote a preface for it, through which he introduced me to the literary public.

Within this collection, I wrote introductions to Goethe's botany, zoology, geology and color theory.

Anyone reading these introductions will be able to find the theosophical ideas in the guise of a philosophical idealism.

It also includes an examination of Haeckel.

My 1886 work, Erkenntnistheorie, is a philosophical supplement to this.

Then, through my acquaintance with the Austrian poet M. E. delle Grazie, who had a fatherly friend in Professor Laurenz Müllner, I was introduced to the circles of Viennese theological professors. Marie Eugenie delle Grazie has written a great epic “Robespierre” and a drama “Shadow”.

At the end of the 1880s, I became an editor of the “Deutsche Wochenschrift” in Vienna for a short time. This gave me the opportunity to study the national psyche of the various Austrian nationalities in depth. The guiding thread for an intellectual cultural policy had to be found.

In all this there was no question of publicly emphasizing occult ideas. And the occult powers behind me gave me only one piece of advice: “All in the guise of idealistic philosophy”.

All this went hand in hand with my more than fifteen years of work as an educator and private teacher. My first contact with Viennese theosophical circles at the end of the 1880s had no lasting external effect.

During my last months in Vienna, I wrote my small paper: “Goethe as the Father of a New Aesthetic”.

Then I was called to the then newly established “Goethe and Schiller Archives” in Weimar to edit Goethe's scientific writings. I did not have an official position at this archive; I was merely a contributor to the great “Sophien Edition” of Goethe's works.

My next goal was to lay the purely philosophical foundations of my world view. This was done in the two works: “Truth and Science” and “Philosophy of Freedom”.

The Goethe and Schiller Archives were visited by a large number of scholars and literary figures, as well as other personalities from Germany and abroad. I got to know some of these personalities better because I soon became friends with the director of the Goethe and Schiller Archives, Prof. Bernhard Suphan, and visited his house a lot. Suphan invited me to many private visits that he had from visitors to the archives. It was on one of these occasions that I met Treitschke.

But the friendship I formed soon after with the German mythologist Ludwig Laistner, the author of “Riddle of the Sphynx,” was much deeper. I had repeated conversations with Herman Grimm, who spoke to me a great deal about his uncompleted work, a “History of German Imagination.”

Then came the Nietzsche episode. Shortly before, I had even written about Nietzsche in an opposing sense.

My occult powers pointed out to me the need to let my interest in the true spiritual flow unnoticed into the currents of the times. One does not arrive at knowledge by wanting to assert one's own point of view absolutely, but by immersing oneself in foreign currents of thought.

Thus I wrote my book on Nietzsche by placing myself entirely in Nietzsche's point of view. It is perhaps for this very reason the most objective book on Nietzsche in Germany. Nietzsche as an anti-Wagnerian and an anti-Christian is also fully represented.

For some time I was considered the most uncompromising “Nietzschean.”

At that time the “Society for Ethical Culture” was founded in Germany. This society wanted a morality with complete indifference to all worldviews. A complete construct and a danger to education. I wrote a sharp article against this foundation in the weekly “Die Zukunft”.

The result was sharp replies. And my previous study of Nietzsche led to the publication of a pamphlet against me: “Nietzsche-Narren” (Nietzsche Fools).

The occult standpoint demands: “No unnecessary polemic” and “Avoid defending yourself wherever you can”.

I calmly wrote my book, “Goethe's World View,” which marked the end of my Weimar period.

Immediately after my article in “Zukunft,” Haeckel approached me. Two weeks later, he wrote an article in “Zukunft” in which he publicly acknowledged my point of view that ethics can only arise on the basis of a worldview.

Not long after that was Haeckel's 60th birthday, which was celebrated as a great festivity in Jena. Haeckel's friends invited me. That was the first time I saw Haeckel. His personality is enchanting. In person, he is the complete opposite of the tone of his writings. If Haeckel had ever studied philosophy, in which he is not just a dilettante but a child, he would certainly have drawn the highest spiritualistic conclusions from his epoch-making phylogenetic studies.

Now, despite all of German philosophy, despite all of Haeckel's other German education, Haeckel's phylogenetic thought is the most significant achievement of German intellectual life in the second half of the nineteenth century. And there is no better scientific foundation of occultism than Haeckel's teaching. Haeckel's teaching is great and Haeckel is the worst commentator on this teaching. It is not by showing Haeckel's contemporaries his weaknesses that one benefits culture, but by presenting to them the greatness of Haeckel's phylogenetic ideas. I did this in the two volumes of my:

“Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the 19th Century), which are also dedicated to Haeckel, and in my small work: “Haeckel and his opponents”.

In Haeckel's phylogeny, only the time of the German intellectual life actually lives; philosophy is in a state of the most desolate infertility, theology is a hypocritical fabric that is not remotely aware of its untruthfulness, and the sciences, despite the great empirical upsurge, have fallen into the most barren philosophical ignorance.

From 1890 to 1897 I was in Weimar.

In 1897 I went to Berlin as editor of the “Magazine for Literature”. The writings “Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert” (World and Life Views in the 19th Century) and “Haeckel und seine Gegner” (Haeckel and his Opponents) already belong to the Berlin period.

My next task was to bring an intellectual current to bear in literature. I placed the Magazin für Literatur at the service of this task. It was a long-established organ that had existed since 1832 and had gone through various phases.

I gently and slowly led it in the direction of esotericism. Carefully but distinctly, by writing an essay for the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth, “Goethe's Secret Revelation,” which only reflected what I had already hinted at in a public lecture in Vienna about Goethe's fairy tale of the “green snake and the beautiful lily”.

It was only natural that a circle of readers should gradually gather around the direction I had inaugurated in the Magazin. They did gather, but not quickly enough for the publisher to consider the venture financially promising. I wanted to give the young literary movement an intellectual foundation and was actually in the most lively contact with the most promising representatives of this movement. But on the one hand I was abandoned; on the other hand, this direction soon either sank into insignificance or into naturalism.

Meanwhile, contact with the working class had already been established. I had become a teacher at the Berlin Workers' Education School. I taught history and natural science. My thoroughly idealistic history method and my way of teaching soon became both appealing and understandable to the workers. My audience grew. I was invited to give a lecture almost every evening.

Then the time came when I, in agreement with the occult forces behind me, could say: You have given the philosophical foundation of the world view, you have shown an understanding of the currents of the time by treating them as only a complete believer could treat them; no one will be able to say: This occultist speaks of the spiritual world because he is ignorant of the philosophical and scientific achievements of the time.

I had now also reached the fortieth year, before the onset of which, in the sense of the masters, no one may publicly appear as a teacher of occultism. (Wherever someone teaches earlier, there is an error).

Now I could devote myself to Theosophy publicly.

The next consequence was that, at the urging of certain leaders of German socialism, a general assembly of the Workers' Educational School was convened to decide between Marxism and me. But the ostracism did not decide against me. In the general assembly, it was decided with all against only four votes to keep me on as a teacher.

But the terrorism of the leaders meant that I had to resign after three months. In order not to compromise themselves, they wrapped the matter up in the pretext that I was too busy with the Theosophical movement to have enough time for the labor school in.

Miss v. Sivers was at my side almost from the beginning of the theosophical work. She also personally witnessed the last phases of my relationship with the Berlin laborers.