From a Fateful Time
GA 64 — 5 November 1914, Berlin
2. The People of Schiller and Fichte
How we look in our fateful time at those who stand outside in the east and west and with their blood, with their soul, stand up for what our time demands, we saw it eight days ago in the lecture. In this lecture too, I do not intend to violate the word that Bismarck has spoken in relation to those who have remained at home. At a time when great destinies are still being decided for humanity in other ways and in other fields than through the word, the word must not interfere in an improper manner with the decisions that must be brought about in a different way. Only that which speaks externally and to our hearts, wherever we look, triggers trust, hope and confidence; it triggers devotion and selflessness in such a wonderful way.
Now, in our time, where the basic tone of speaking is more materialistically colored than it can be here, there is much talk of heredity, of inherited traits. Today, in view of the great things happening outside, it is easier to translate into the spiritual what is spoken of today in a more materialistic sense as inheritance. What lives outside in the deeds of those who bleed for their people? And what should live in the hearts of those who want to be genuinely connected to the great fateful, destiny-bearing time?
Perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding today if one still uses the word “inheritance” in a higher sense: if one points to the real powers that emanate from the great ancestors and continue to work, that blow through the ranks like a magic breath; if one points out that the same thing lives in the deeds of the warriors as lived in the great geniuses of the Central European people. And perhaps one will not encounter misunderstanding if one dares to say that by this life one means something real, that it is really not just as expressed in the Greek fairy tale: that the power of the great ancestors lives in the present as if blessing the present, but that this reality permeates and pulses through blood and souls. And since we, as human beings with full consciousness and knowledge, should actually live in what is also spiritually around us, perhaps two personalities may be singled out today from the ranks of the great Central Europeans who, so to speak, are still close to the present, two geniuses, one of whom has most certainly become part of the heart and soul of the Central European population, while the other, so to speak, can stand before us, expressing in his spirit the greatest and highest of this Central European population. Even if it may be said again today that there are perhaps many who play a heroic role in this time and yet know little of Schiller, and even less of Fichte, we can still be inspired by the fact that the same power that flows outwardly in Heldenbhute is the same power that flowed in Schiller, in Schiller's creations, and in Fichte's great encouragement of his people. Truly, not to evoke sentimental feelings in your hearts, but because I believe that there is indeed something characteristic in the fact that the German people so eagerly want to be intimately connected with the most important moments of their greats, I would like to point out the last moments of the earthly life of the two great geniuses who are to be discussed today.
Schiller –- he passed through the gates of death in such a way that the last-mentioned great German, Herman Grimm, could speak of Schiller's death: “Goethe passed away, Goethe fell asleep; Schiller died.” The younger Voß literally leads us into Schiller's death chamber. We see how Schiller lived with the greatest expenditure of the powers of mind and soul; we know that he was able to sustain himself up to the age that he unfortunately only reached, in that mind and soul achieved a tremendous victory over the body. Thus we see that in the last days, when the body was already in some respects given over to death, this soul is still heroically connected with all the great things it has thought, conceived and created throughout its life, and we follow at the hand of the younger Voß into the room where Schiller died; we see the last moments of the great genius. We see how his spirit, in his weak body, still tends towards his great ideals; we see how he then has his youngest child brought into the death chamber, how he looks at this child with the same eyes with which he had looked at the world, has looked at the world, looks at this child, looks deeply into his eyes, then hands him over to his attendants and then apparently – we sense this – takes a look into the deepest part of his soul, of which we can say: Certainly, the younger Voß is right when he says that Schiller may have thought that he could have been much more to his youngest child in life. But this act may appear to us symbolically, to the effect that we feel: if Schiller had looked into the eyes of all of us and then turned away into his own inner being, thinking that he also had much, much to say to us, then we feel as his heirs in a completely different sense than just the heirs of his works and of what he himself said; then we feel we feel connected to his innermost impulses, so connected that we know: we must, if we want to be like him, if we want to be worthy of him, if we want to place ourselves before life and the world from the same deepest impulses, want to be a spirit like his spirit!
And Fichte – in difficult times, he tried to shape and clothe in words what he had gained from the deepest reasons of his philosophical nature, which he spoke to his Germans in the time of German humiliation and German misery, in order to lift them up and breathe greatness into them for the further life of the people. And he was completely united with all that then led to the liberation struggles of his people. And it is a wonderful thing to look back now at the last moments of Fichte. He had often considered whether he should not go out to the battlefields himself; but he had then found that he could wield another sword better for the good of his people: the sword of the word – and he did so in a valiant manner. But his wife – she was a loyal carer for those who had fought in the battles – brought the military hospital fever home to him, and he was seized by it. During his last moments, his son brought him the news of the Germans crossing the Rhine and the state of the liberation struggle at that time. And now we see how one of the greatest philosophers, who has shaped the most powerful but also the most crystal-clear thoughts, lives out his feverish fantasies – but these feverish fantasies are characteristic. In the last moments of his life, he saw himself in spirit in the midst of the fighting. And what he believed he could give to the world and the German people from the deepest root of life's impulses, what he could have done for Germany's redemption, that resounded from the soul of the great German philosopher in his feverish fantasies; a moment that can deeply move us. The medicine was given to him. He rejected it with the words: “Leave that alone, I need no medicine; I feel that I have recovered!”
They stand there like warriors themselves, the two great minds, fighters for the best that the world has produced, and at the same time we see the two, Schiller and Fichte, united with everything that the time, the immediate present, demands.
And now we turn to the two greats; let us try to recognize in them what – to use this Fichtean saying – sprouts in the deepest root of German life. Let us turn to Fichte to help us, so to speak, to see for ourselves what we have to say for ourselves – even if not at first for others in these much troubled times – when judgments about European culture come at us from so many sides, coming from sources that certainly do not emphasize German nature and German spirit. We can see this from Fichte, the people who are now so often to be called barbarians.
Fichte posed three questions when he wanted to speak to his people about what could uplift this people; and we must be clear that when Fichte gave his so inspiring “Speeches to the German Nation” at that time, it happened in a different time than today, in a time with a different character. Fichte posed three questions that today - at most with a single intermediate sentence - can no longer be posed in the same way. But it is precisely from these three questions of Fichte that we can learn an enormous amount for the present day. The first question is:
“Whether it be true or not that there is a German nation, and that the continued existence of this nation in its original and independent character is now endangered?”
If we disregard the second part of this question, we have to say that it is impossible to ask this question today in this way, because Fichte's descendants have proven that there is a German nation. Similarly, his second question can no longer be asked today:
“Whether it is or is not worth the effort to preserve it?”
And the third question is:
“Is there any sure and effective means for this preservation, and what is this means?”
Well, here I have spoken year after year about the spiritual life of people. And truly, especially with regard to what has been said about this spiritual life of man, I was convinced that it is the further development of what was already before Fichte, before Schiller and other souls. Fichte tried to find the means to lead the Germans out of oppression and misery, the means for a German to become aware of himself, to work from the deepest root of life. Fichte wanted a complete transformation of education; and from the way in which the German people express themselves in their “language”, he wanted to recognize the way in which they relate to other cultural worlds. Today, there is no possibility of engaging with the way in which Fichte developed these questions; what matters is that the force that can inspire and invigorate us in Central Europe today is the same as it was for him. Today we shall seek to discover the nature of the German people neither in language, as Fichte did, nor in the spirit of the age, although we certainly want to honor the full significance of language; nor do we want to speak today of Fichte's educational system, which, after all, could not be carried out at the time. But we may point out that out of the impulses of life, out of which Fichte spoke his “Addresses to the German Nation” at that time for the self-preservation of his people, there resounds the spirit which, further developed, gives true spiritual science. We can gather this from many a thing that is perhaps not always sufficiently taken into account when these wonderful addresses of Fichte's to the German nation are read today. Let us speak today — and it has often been spoken of from this place — that there is not only materialistic science, materialistic knowledge, which looks at man as he develops between birth and death; that there is not only that knowledge which passively surrenders to external appearances and forms its judgment according to what is gained from the external world in the sense of this knowledge. Rather, we are talking about a courageous, active knowledge that dares to grasp the “innermost roots of human life,” as Fichte put it, in order to grasp man where his being reaches beyond birth and death, where, according to Lessing's great idea, he grasps what passes from life to life in physical reality. There is a knowledge that, through a brave and courageous grasp of the soul's inner powers, rises to that which, even after death, looks down on man's physical activity and on his corpse itself; there is a science that truly grasps the soul, the science that leads to the divine just as much as outer science leads to the natural. For if we grasp the outer man, the material man, with the help of outer science, natural science, we find that man emerges from all the forces of nature, as it were as nature's flower; but if we grasp man with the help of spiritual science, we perceive how the soul, with its deepest roots, is connected with the Divine, with that which lives and weaves in the spiritual. Even if we can no longer take Fichte's standpoint with regard to his individual statements, we can take what lives as an attitude, as a tendency in his thinking. Thus we find it ourselves, how the basic nuance, the fundamental tone of spiritual-scientific knowledge lies in the discourses through which he wanted to awaken enthusiasm in his people when he utters the words:
“Time and eternity and infinity beholds it (the philosophy he means) in its origin from the appearance and becoming visible of that One, which in itself is absolutely invisible, and only in this its invisibility is grasped, correctly grasped.”
“All persistent existence appearing as non-spiritual life is only an empty shadow, cast out of sight, and mediated many times over by Nothing. In contrast to this and through the recognition of this many-mediated Nothing, seeing itself is to rise to the recognition of its own Nothing and to the acknowledgment of the Invisible as the only True.”
It has been pointed out here several times how the soul can grasp itself in that innermost being in which it becomes aware of what goes beyond death. Then it may speak – not from a passive, but from an active science – of how, after death, man looks down from this eternal core of his being to his body in a higher consciousness. There is something strange in Fichte that lives in him like a presentiment. We can hardly imagine that someone who does not already have the presentiment of such spiritual knowledge, which can arise from his own presentiments, would use a simile as Fichte does. He speaks of a new education of his people; of how people should learn to find their way into something that people have not experienced before and that is difficult for them to find their way into because it is difficult compared to the familiar, which one must discard. And Fichte now describes what it is like for this people when it is to rejuvenate and will look back on its old being, from which it is to slip out, as it were, according to its ideal; and he speaks in such a way that the parable he uses seems to have been taken from the modern spiritual science of the immediate present. In that he wants to inspire the people, he says:
"Time appears to me like an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases just drove it out, and laments, and cannot tear its gaze away from the once so beloved shell, and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plagues. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of life; the friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time."
Truly, one feels that this comparison is taken from what modern spiritual science has to say about the experience of the soul! And then we stand, one might say, much more “faithfully” before Fichte than he could stand before himself, so that we say: Yes, something of that in which we want to hold fast as a spiritual knowledge of the true nature of man stirs in this personality.
And how did he who, in his spiritual life, at least for a time, lived in close union with Fichte, how did Schiller, like Fichte, seek, each in his own way, to reach the innermost source of the soul's life impulses!
Oh, today, despite the fact that Schiller has become so dear to our people, it has not yet been fully recognized what fruits the forces have borne in the people of Schiller and Fichte. And one would like to say: we have to catch up with our knowledge of what is already being gloriously demonstrated on the battlefields in the West and the East; for these are the same forces that have been spiritually elevated in Schiller. Schiller was incessantly seeking — to use his own expression — in human nature, in contrast to what the everyday person is, what the person is who lives with the things of the outer world, who takes these things of the outer world in and processes them; incessantly he sought, in contrast to this person, what he calls the 'higher person', which lives in everyone. And what Schiller expresses in his Letters upon Aesthetic Education concerning the search for this higher man is one of the greatest cultural achievements. In the last lecture I ventured to point out that one professes and reckons with Germanness in a different way than the members of other nations relate to their nationality: one is German, but one seeks an ideal that can still be elevated; one seeks something higher than what lives in ordinary human beings. And so, in his Aesthetic Letters, Schiller seeks to express how, on the one hand, man does not come to the fullest comprehension of his innermost stirrings of life – which is his higher self – if he lives only for the external world, only for the externally real. He who lives only according to external impulses is, as Schiller says, like a slave who lives under the impulses of external sensual necessity. But for Schiller, he who is inclined only toward abstract thinking, who submits only to the necessity of reason, is also not a complete human being. On the one hand, Schiller sees the necessity of reason; on the other, sensual necessity. But he seeks the human being in the everyday person who can live out his life in such a way that he is able to look at the ennobled nature in such a way that the sensual life meets him with the expression of beautiful spirituality, but to whom reason also reaches. Only he who is able to confront the spiritual with the same liveliness, with the sense of the beautiful, as the other confronts sensuality, is a complete human being. And from the middle mood that arises from this, Schiller believes he can deduce the manner by which a higher human being can be conjured out of the everyday human being. But that man must do this, Schiller finds as the highest ideal of man, and with that he is again one of the great inspirers of true spiritual-scientific knowledge, which seeks with all its powers what lives as a higher man in man, and which cannot help it if it wants to seek this in the truly modern spirit, as to tie in with the impulses, as they can flow, for example, from Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. Precisely what I took the liberty of saying in the lecture I gave eight days ago: how, as a German, one always seeks, not the “German” one-sidedly, but the human being who goes beyond all nationality, who regards all nationality as something that belongs to the outer man, — that so beautifully in what Schiller strove for, what he sought to express in his letters on the aesthetic education of man and what is basically expressed in all the works of art that Schiller presented to his people and that have become so dear to the people's hearts and souls.
And Fichte – does he shape a one-sided concept, a one-sided idea of Germanness? No! we can say; he coins a universal concept of Germanness, a concept of which it can truly be said: The German always wants to become; and he believes that one can only be a German in the fullest sense of the word if one is a human being in the fullest sense of the word. Hence the beautiful word in Fichte's “Address to the German Nation,” this wonderful, heartening word:
“The principle according to which it” — whatever Fichtean philosophy is — “has to conclude this is presented to it; whoever believes in the spirituality and freedom of this spirituality and wants the eternal development of this spirituality through freedom, wherever he was born and in whatever language he speaks, is of our race, belongs to us, and will join us.”
Those who think this way belong to us and will join us. This is Schiller's way, this is Fichte's way: to become German by seeking the higher man in man in the most comprehensive and universal sense of the word, who seeks the way to what is foreign to the outer man, who is human and great because he is able to love everything great and to be loved in other people of other nationalities as well. And this Schiller seeks as a whole German, in that he was allowed to speak the words, which only came out long after his death, not only in the face of the German people, but of all civilized humanity:
"He who forms and rules the spirit must ultimately gain the upper hand; for at the goal of time, if the world has a plan, if human life has any meaning at all, custom and reason must ultimately triumph, brute force must succumb to form – and the slowest people will catch up with all the fast, fleeting ones.
To him – the German – is destined the highest honor, and just as he is situated in the center of Europe's peoples, so he is the core of humanity, those are the flower and the leaf.
He is chosen by the world spirit to work during the struggle of time on the eternal construction of human education, to preserve what time brings.
Therefore, he has appropriated what was previously foreign and preserved it within himself.
He has preserved everything that was valuable in other times and peoples, that arose with time and disappeared, it is not lost to him, the treasures of centuries.
Not to shine in the moment and play its role, but to win the great process of time. Every nation has its day in history, but the day of the Germans is the harvest of all time.
Thus they spoke. And in their spirit – in the sense that as Germans we will always strive and never remain with what we have already achieved – we, their students and successors, can become like them. Swearing by these words of our ancestors to the letter cannot be our way. But this can be our way: to try to understand our time, to continue to work and to create out of the same innermost impulses of life that created them. And in so doing, we have turned our gaze to these great ancestors. We now ask ourselves – even if perhaps in the course of the nineteenth century and up to our time many things have become different from what these great geniuses directly imagined in their consciousness: have these impulses they have given produced something that corresponds to them? Is there something in Central Europe that reveals the spirit of Schiller's spirit, the soul of Fichte's soul?
Now, it is undoubtedly not easy to speak in the immediate presence of what one's own people have achieved, what lives in them. And you will understand that in a way one may shrink from even remotely coming to what seems like a self-characterization – even if only a self-characterization of the people – in our fateful times. Therefore, I will choose a different path, so that it cannot be said that this people, who have been called “barbarians,” indulge in self-praise and self-love. I would like to choose a path through which we can hear, as in an echo, what has become of the people of Schiller and Fichte. Let us choose words that have been spoken – in English – by the great American Emerson, words that are not our words. Emerson, the great American, spoke about the nature of the German people in the post-Schiller, post-Fichte period in the following words – as I said, not even in German – by saying what he had to say about Goethe:
"One particular phenomenon that Goethe shares with his entire nation makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public,
– as I said: a quality that Goethe has in common with his entire nation! – “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of his conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going anywhere. In all these countries, however, talented men write within the limits of their gifts. If what they produce stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is sufficiently respected. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed to practicality, nor, finally, the American adventurousness; but what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: Where is this going? The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them.
There is intellectual activity: well then, what is it in favor of? What is the man's opinion? — Where does it come from? — Where does he get all these thoughts?
This, says Emerson, is what the German public demands of anyone who wants to speak to them and be something for them. We can hear another of Emerson's words as an echo of what emerged from the impulses of Schiller and Fichte:
“The English see only the particular and do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.... The Germans think for Europe.”
— The English-speaking man in America says this! —
”... The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.
And what has become of these reasons that Emerson cites for himself here? He also provides the answer to that. Again, these are his words that I want to read:
"For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are so highly esteemed for their acumen and learning, look upon their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too closely connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves about it, Goethe speaks,»
— Emerson is speaking here in reference to the German nation, even though he is talking about Goethe —
"the head and the content of the German nation, not because he has talent; but truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, even though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says may be, he has something in view that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from the truth."
Thus the English-speaking American on what has become of the impulses of those whom the Central European regards as his great geniuses.
Now, one sentence from Emerson's writings may be particularly engraved on our consciousness in our present time, the sentence where Emerson says: “The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.” It is self-evident that when we speak of spiritual knowledge, we are aware that when we speak of “man”, we can never speak of this man being identified with his nationality. Spiritual matters are matters of the whole of humanity; there are no differences between nations and races. So it is not individuals that are at issue; rather, if we, as we now want to do, turn our attention to what the German nation has of Schiller and Fichte, this is something that is above the national, that is anational, that is divine and eternal. And were we always of this opinion? We may ask. Did what was said in cooler days seem less significant to us than what is being said today?
Now, there is a strange anomaly here. And even if you do not want to go into the detailed book – or books – by Miss Wylie, which Lord Haldane has prefaced and which has also been published in German, you can still delve into Miss Wylie's arguments if you pick up the two special issues of the “Süddeutsche Monatshefte”, those brown issues that are available at every train station. I will just pick out one thing that an Englishwoman said about the nation of Schiller and Fichte shortly before the outbreak of the present war; and her words may be quoted because she lived in Germany for eight years and got to know the nation that Emerson says is not known in English-speaking countries. Miss Wylie not only got to know German intellectual life directly, but she also got to know how German intellectual life manifests itself in hospitals, schools, universities and industry. She says:
"We read much about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. The existing one is the mature work of generations, what has always been there. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it gave an epoch-making impetus; in music, it has always dominated.
— That is the echo! We are not saying it ourselves.
"German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnoughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnought, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in turnover, but the human qualities that prompted it.
Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence. And it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined fight against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago... Its opponents are sitting on every border and across the water, commercially and politically, and are eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little to pounce on it and crush it. Germany knows this full well.
So says the Englishwoman. Yes – she knows it! But others have known it too. Last time I mentioned a book, “Germany in the Nineteenth Century,” by Herford, which was based on lectures given at the University of Manchester and was intended to educate those who know nothing - namely, as the book itself says, “the press people” - about what German character is. Today I may quote, even if only a few words, from this book, which was said as a kind of admonition about the German character in Manchester in 1912 – so also recently – because it refers to the real conditions of the very immediate present. This is how it was said in Manchester:
"On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Empire has contributed to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for the light of the past to shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that appear hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For when we look to the past, we find – spoken in Manchester, in English! “that our ancestors looked on France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. ...
To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe.
– and this was said in Manchester! –
"and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866 to 1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often on the wrong track; they enabled the German people to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish a new European system on a secure basis, which has maintained peace for forty years.
— So spoken in English in Manchester in 1912! —
“This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all its expenditure of blood and money, could not have achieved, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.”
So it has been recognized to some extent that there is some truth in what I had the liberty of saying in my lecture eight days ago, quoting Herman Grimm: that the German will indeed sacrifice himself for his fatherland at any time when the time demands it, but that he would not long for or bring about the moment when this can happen through war. And in view of the fact that we also hear this as an echo from outside, we may also turn our gaze to what our immediate present is. Therefore, I ask you now – I would like to say: to direct our feelings to the way we have to look at what we are in these fateful times – to remember what happened in the days at the end of July and the beginning of August, which is well known. I would like to try to characterize in a unique way how the events may present themselves; with words in which an unbiased observer of Central Europe – or may the others also say: a “biased” observer – could have expressed how this Central Europe feels about the great war. Let us remind ourselves of this. I will try to do so with the following words.
We recall the newspaper comments that came to us from Russia as early as the spring of this year. It could be seen from them how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German policy. These attacks increased during the following period to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. Germany could not lend a hand here; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? One might have believed earlier that it could be, because one said to oneself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. When one speaks with Russian friends about such disagreements, one cannot exactly contradict them. However, the events showed that even a complete subordination of our policy to Russia's – for a certain period of time – did not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our efforts.
I believe these words could show what a person of the present day could say to characterize spring and summer. But I did not put these words together; I did not write them at all. I only changed them a little. These words were spoken by Bismarck on February 6, 1888 in the German Reichstag, when he had to defend a defense bill and wanted to explain that this defense bill was not in the interest of an aggressive war, but in the interest of peace. And now I will read his words to you:
”... how a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, and I personally was suspected of my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, until 1879, to strong demands for pressure that we should exert on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend a hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, telling myself: we have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even if our policy were fully implemented (for a certain time), we would not be protected from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.
This characterizes the forces that have been present not for a year, but since that time, and which were well known to anyone who knew what smolders and glows in Europe. Those who look at the historical context in this way will be able to see from the mere fact that what can be felt today coincides with what Bismarck said at the time that it would have been impossible to avoid the conflict with Russia even if “German policy had fully taken Russian interests into account”. I think that this kind of historical perspective says a great deal. And what was the mood at the time when these words were spoken? Was it only Herman Grimm who spoke of the fact that Germany, that the German as such wants peace, that he also wants to put his armaments in the service of peace? In the same speech, Bismarck said something else that should also be borne in mind: he had done so much for Russia at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 that he should have been awarded the highest Russian order with diamonds for it – if he had not already had it. Nevertheless, he had to speak these words, which he spoke at the time. And we also hear him speak about the mood in which they flowed:
"One does not attack with the powerful machine that we are training the German army to be.” If I were to stand before you today and tell you – if the circumstances were different from what I am convinced they are –: “We are under considerable threat from France and Russia; it is foreseeable that we will be attacked; I believe this as a diplomat, according to military intelligence; it is more useful for us to use the advance of the attack as a defense that we are now about to launch; it is more advantageous for us to wage a war of aggression, and so I ask the Reichstag for a loan of one billion or half a billion to wage war against our two neighbors today – yes, gentlemen, I don't know if you would trust me to grant it. I hope not.
All this tends to confirm the conviction that Germany only wanted a war if it arose out of European necessities, and that she was far, far from wanting a war for the sake of war. But then one may decide whether these voices – including this voice about the immediate external events – correspond to what German intellectual life is. – I cannot help but say a few words about another impression that German intellectual life made at a certain point.
This summer we heard how one man truly could not find harsh enough words – and I say harsh – to berate German “barbarism”. This same man once cited three spirits who had most, or at least a great deal, influenced his worldview: the mystic Ruysbrock, the American Emerson, and the German mystical poet Novalis. The man who speaks of the German mystic poet Novalis among those who have led him to his spiritual vision poses a remarkable question: What, after all, is everything that is in Shakespeare's dramas, what is negotiated between the individual persons and what plays from person to person, what is that compared to what lives in many other poems? For suppose, he says, a spirit came to us from another planet, who lived under quite different conditions from the souls on earth: would he be in the least interested in what the persons in Shakespeare's plays experienced? Would we not have to offer him something quite different, something that is not expressed in everyday life, something that comes from the human soul, if he were only to pay attention to us? And then he remembers how a German mystical poet, Novalis, has brought him something that speaks of what he would rather remain silent about, but of which he believes that the soul of another who comes down from another world would see something worth sharing in it. And so the person in question speaks of Novalis, the German mystical poet, who has something in his soul that, as coming from the innermost part of the human being, could even be shown to a spirit alien to the earth if it asked:
“But if other proofs were needed, it would” – that is, the soul would probably – ”lead him among those whose works almost stir silence. It would open the gate of the kingdom where some loved it for its own sake, without caring about the small gestures of their body. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness is heightened by a degree and where all those who are plagued by restlessness about themselves attentively circumscribe the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. They would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are in the invisible, where he must be constantly on his guard. On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and images that resemble her and are as compelling as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth to the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the sounds of bells in the eyes of a higher reason; but in their works, the people mentioned have come out of the little village of passions and said things that are also of value to those who are not of the earthly community."
Thus says a man who has been impressed by Novalis and wishes to express his views about Novalis. This is the same man who has now spoken in a very peculiar way – you will know it well – about Germanness and the German character: Maurice Maeterlinck. When we hear that something like this has been said by Maeterlinck, can we not say that he has actually changed his nature quite “essentially”? Could one not even say that his present words sound in such a way that one could say of them: In truth, it is difficult to question his soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless cries that surround it? One would truly like to count him among these useless screamers, against whom weak children's voices cannot prevail. But I also took these words from Maurice Maeterlinck; for they are his own words, which he also speaks on the occasion cited: “In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to hear its weak child's voice amidst the useless screamers that surround it.”
We have tried to fathom a little of what Schiller and Fichte wanted from their people. And we have tried to recognize, even if only in an echo, the extent to which these impulses have been realized. Today, there is much talk of all kinds of feelings that Germans are supposed to have towards other nations with whom they are at war; for example, there is talk of feelings of hatred that Germans are supposed to have towards Russians, towards the English, and also towards the French. Truly, after what I have said today and last time, what I am about to say now will not be interpreted by me as an un-German sentiment, but as one that must flow from the true foundations of spiritual science. For I believe that if we look at the innermost roots of the German's life, then these feelings of hatred and contempt for other nations are all untrue! Even if many a word may be spoken in the present day that we ourselves might perhaps find “un-German” within the German, the truth is what could be said about Schiller and Fichte: He who seeks the “human being,” the higher human being in the human being, as Fichte himself says, belongs to us! And the German relentlessly seeks to go beyond the narrow fetters of his nationality. Therefore, I do not believe that it can go beyond everyday life if feelings other than feelings of devotion are also spoken of as the most valuable in other peoples today. And are we not allowed to adduce evidence for this too?
Oh, we may believe that what has emerged as the highest fruit of German intellectual life really does live in the most primitive German nature. Does the German really hate the English? I would like to say: no. I would even coin the paradoxical word: the German has proved that he loves even the English more than they love themselves. Let us take seriously the saying: by their fruits ye shall know them. How has the German cultivated Shakespeare? Compare the importance Shakespeare has acquired in the German intellectual life with what he has become in England. We can then say: we see the new awakening of Shakespeare in the German intellectual life. The Germans have cultivated Shakespeare more than the English have, however this is taking things to an extreme. But as it was said that the marshal's baton is in the knapsack of every soldier, so this sentiment is in the soul of the humblest German, even if it must be sought for a little, since the German is now threatened from all sides. But we can also go to more recent times. We have spoken of Goethe. Goethe also belongs to those who, with the most loving disposition, have immersed themselves in what is universally human, in all nationalities and at all times. We see him immersing himself in that which was so dear to him, in ancient Greece; we see this immersion symbolically depicted in the second part of Faust, in the union of Faust with Helen, as a symbol for the union of the two national elements. And Goethe lets something emerge from this union: Euphorion, who, after all that we have already been able to say about Faust, can appear to us as something that is connected with Goethe's ideal of humanity. Euphorion is a strange figure. Let us remember words of Euphorion that can resonate deeply, deeply in our souls, especially today. Euphorion says:
No, I have not appeared as a child:
The youth comes to you in arms!
Join the strong, the free, the bold,
He has already done so in spirit.
Now away!
Now there
The path to glory opens up.
Then further:
And do you hear the thunder on the sea?
There, valley after valley thunders again,
Hordes upon hordes in dust and waves,
Thrust upon thrust to pain and agony!
And death
Is the law;
That is understood.
And then:
Should I watch from afar?
No! I share the sorrow and the need!
Who was Goethe thinking of when he wanted to paint this essence of humanity in front of his soul? Byron, the great English poet, was his model for what he presented in his “Euphorion”!
Sometimes it seems as if the Germans are also tempted to emphasize their distinctiveness in the face of foreigners. Then one must only know how in this emphasis there is always something that wants to defend itself against something. There are words that Friedrich Schlegel once spoke when Paris made a great impression on him: “Paris would actually be a wonderful city, only there are too many Frenchmen in it.” Of course, such words have also been spoken. But there is more to it than that. In particular, there is something that symptomatically indicates how the German wants to stand at least in the midst of cultural life. There is more to it than that, as Schiller looked to a great figure in world history. Others have also looked to this figure in world history: Shakespeare, Voltaire – an Englishman, a Frenchman. I am talking about the “Maid of Orleans”. If we really think about it, we cannot help but say: Shakespeare approached the Maid of Orleans in a narrow-minded national way; Voltaire treated her with cool, dismissive skepticism. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Schiller could only express himself about her by saying: “The world loves to blacken what is radiant and drag the sublime into the dust.” And so he sought to portray her, who for him had become a messenger of heaven, a messenger of the spiritual world. Schiller has often been criticized for creating the figure of the Maid of Orleans. Today, when considering the way in which the German places himself in the cultural life, one should remember how Schiller tried to live himself into everything that came to him from the French as a gift from heaven, in order to embody it, but which, in the judgment of the German spirit, is connected with struggle and conflict and victory. It is hard to believe, if you do not think like a German, that courage and a fighting spirit and a willingness to engage in a dispute can unite in the soul – and that humanity can still be preserved in the heart. That is precisely what Schiller wanted to express. Whereas people who do not think like a German say it is not possible, we have to say that, fundamentally, it is possible for every German, if we look at German nature at the roots of its vital impulses. The German, unlike many others, approaches battle and war, and it is in him – sometimes darker or clearer – that he has to treat the one with whom he is fighting only like an enemy in a duel. He does not hate him; he faces him and is happiest when he can touch him in the highest humanity. I would like to say: Schiller sought to infuse such a truly German quality into the Maid of Orleans. Those who know what the Maid of Orleans was will find it natural that Schiller was so moved by her, even at a time when the Germans had no reason to glorify the French spirit. But Schiller also — and that is why he has become the greatest source of inspiration for German intellectual life again — included the weaving of the forces of the unseen in his drama. And so they weave in as in the Invisible Man, in Talbot, who appears as a black knight. It has been widely criticized; but Schiller could not help but let the eternal spiritual powers also play a role in his drama. Therefore, he truly represents the quality that is quintessentially German: to make no distinction from nation to nation where the greatest, the highest in human life is at stake. That is why I said: I do not believe it when people today talk about feelings of hatred and antipathy of the Germans towards other nations, that these feelings go to the very roots of the German life. Therefore, one need not be blind and dull to what is coming to light; but one can distinguish between what comes from outside and presses upon man, and what man, with his higher nature, seeks to overcome. And Schiller is not so far removed from outer, practical life that we would have to say that he was blind to what is external to the various nations. He wrote a poem “The Beginning of the New Century”; in it we read the significant lines, which are also very close to our present life today:
Two powerful nations wrestle
For the world's sole possession;
To devour all countries' freedom,
They brandish the trident and lightning. Gold must every landscape weigh for them
And, like Brennus in the rude times,
The Frank lays his brazen sword
In the scales of justice. The British extend their merchant fleet
Greedily like a polyp arm,
And the empire of the free Amphitrite
He wants to close, like his own house.
These are also words of Schiller, which sounded, despite the fact that Schiller was one of those who, in a truly German way, wanted to cultivate the principle of not seeking the human in the national, or rather – one can also put it this way: to seek the human in every national. Therefore, it may be said that something for which Schiller and Fichte longed for their people may well emerge from our fateful days as the most beautiful fruit: the German has often said that he knows how to live together with other nationalities. And when we look today at a country that borders directly on Germany, and that has not only in an external sense, but also in the innermost depths of human behavior, managed to remain neutral, when we look at Switzerland, at the Switzerland in which Fichte found in Pestalozzi the roots for his German national education, we can say: We see in this model country of nationalities that it is possible for Germans to live together with other nations. Anyone who is able to follow Swiss life knows that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this country, where three nations live together in an exemplary manner, that they can maintain in spirit what is truly in their own interest for their national territory, the spirit of neutrality. But the spirit of neutrality should be respected and it should be remembered that the Swiss know full well from their own sound judgment what the historical mission of the German spirit is. And one should understand that it can justifiably offend this sensitivity if one floods an area that is of particular importance for the immediate present because it stands on the side of the most honest neutrality with what is today called “educational literature”. I believe that someone who speaks about the mission of the German language as I have done can also draw attention to this.
So we may now say: We can hear the effects of the impulses of Schiller and Fichte like an echo. Let us once more, in conclusion, place before our soul's eye the words that Emerson spoke of Goethe: “He is wise to the highest degree, though often his wisdom may be obscured by his talent. How excellent is what he says, he has something in mind that is even better... He has that awe-inspiring independence that springs from dealing with the truth.” But from this ‘dealings with the truth’ also springs this trust, this confidence and hope, as well as the selflessness and sense of sacrifice that we see all around us and that are put at the service of our great time to make true what Emerson speaks of again:
"The world is young, great men of the past call to us in a friendly voice. We must 'write sacred scriptures to reunite heaven and the earthly world. The secret of genius is not to tolerate a lie, to make everything we are aware of a truth, to inspire faith, determination and trust in the sophistication of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to inspire faith, determination and trust, and to honor every truth by not only recognizing it but also making it a guiding principle for our actions, in the refinement of modern life, in art and science, in books and in and trust, and to honor each truth by not only recognizing it, but making it a guiding principle of our actions, from the beginning to the end, in the midst of our journey and for endless times to come.
In the contemplation of German life, which, out of an attitude such as that of Fichte and Schiller, strives towards true spiritual insight, personalities such as Emerson emerge. And then we understand how — as if from the elementary — that which is intimately connected with this search for the higher human being in the everyday human being is also expressed in Bismarck's speech of 1888. What is intimately connected? I already said at the beginning of the lecture when I pointed out how, in the end, the best German geniuses point the way to spiritual science: As the outer man rests in outer nature, so that which can be found as the higher man in man, that which passes from life to life, that which passes from one nationality to another in the course of earthly lives, rests in the divine All-existence. And when man grasps the roots of his innermost being, he feels connected with the God whose nature permeates and pulses through the world. And Schiller and Fichte speak of this God, of whom Bismarck also speaks, in his elementary way, in the already mentioned speech, calling out to the Germans the words:
"We can easily be bribed by love and goodwill — perhaps too easily — but certainly not by threats! We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world; and it is the fear of God that makes us love and cultivate peace. But anyone who breaks it will see that the militant patriotism that called the entire population of the then weak, small and exhausted Prussia under the banners in 1813 is today common property of the whole German nation, and that whoever attacks the German nation in any way will find it united and armed, with every soldier with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us!
The German has always tried to seek this God of his in the spiritual realm. As I indicated last time, the German has tried to create in Goethe that Faust figure which cannot be said to be “German” or “French”, “English”, “Russian” or “American”; but which can be said to be human and which can only arise from the German spirit. I also pointed out how one always becomes as a German. But Goethe places the figure of Mephistopheles, the embodiment of evil and, above all, of untruth, right next to his Faust. Thus the German may look in his consciousness at the juxtaposition of Faust and Mepistopheles – and, recognizing his mission in the world, as Emerson expresses it, he may emphasize: Wherever we Germans may spread our influence, we carry with us the consciousness expressed in the words of Faust: “On free soil with free people stand!” These are words that are spoken out of the spirit that in reality respects and understands the true value of every nationality and hates none. Thus the German can look with calmness at one of the last great ancestors, at Bismarck himself, and at the words: “We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.” And he can, listening to this great statesman, hear, as if from the spiritual realm, certain words that are nevertheless—one only has to know Bismarck—genuinely Bismarckian: “There is no doubt that the threats and insults, the challenges that have been directed at us, have also aroused a very considerable and justified bitterness in us, and that is very difficult for a German, because he is inherently less susceptible to national hatred than any other nation; but we are trying to appease them, and we want peace with our neighbors as much as ever.” Therefore, anyone who knows the German must search deeper if he wants to find something in him to despise, something to hate. Goethe searched, but he did not create a human being; instead of Faust, he created Mephistopheles! Wherever people live, we will seek out their humanity, regardless of nationality. But we must not be blind to what lives in people. by the spirit of untruth. Especially in our time, when so much that is harsh and untrue sounds to our ears, we may still say: it is as if we were hearing Bismarck's words. He always strove not to disdain his opponents, but to do them justice, for example when, living at war with the French, he pointed out the old French, the fine French nature, with which he so liked to negotiate. This was also the case with the speech already mentioned, where he said: “Bravery is the same in all civilized nations; the Russian and the French fight as bravely as the German.” Indeed, the German does not look to the others for what he might have to hate, reject or dislike. He is spiritually inclined, he looks for the spiritual, just as Goethe in his Faust looked for the spiritual in the lie in Mephistopheles. And so, in conclusion, we can say, as if we were hearing Bismarck himself, whispering to us from the realms of the spirit: When we hear untruths being spoken in the West, Northwest and East, we should not allow ourselves to be led to hate and contempt for personalities and nationalities; for just as it is true that the German, when he reaches into his higher self, finds the universal humanity that can be found everywhere on earth where the human face appears, so it is also true that the German must first find the object of his hatred through spiritual contemplation. It is true that just as the German feels united with his God in his innermost, most sacred self, so too can he only go to the deeper roots of his hatred in those places where he is allowed to hate, to the spiritual level. It is true, in a certain sense deeply true: the German fears God, but nothing else in the world. But in the face of all that comes to us, I would say, from all directions, the word may also be coined that will prove to be true once we look more clearly than today at the roots of the German character:
The German, basically, hates no nationality, no human being, insofar as they live on the physical plane. The German hates only – if it is to be spoken of – the spirit of lies and dishonesty; for he loves and wants to love the spirit of truthfulness wherever it can be found!