Europe Between East and West E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 579

Beschreibung

In a broad-ranging series of lectures, Rudolf Steiner shines new light on the spiritual background to the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. Spiritual entities stand behind the various peoples of the world, he says. He describes how these beings – Folk Souls – relate to the cultural diversity of Europe, America and the East, and speaks of their individual tasks and destinies in relation to the deeper causes of the catastrophic war. Central Europe has the particular mission of mediating between the Western world, the Slavic countries and by extension the East. Steiner alleges that Western secret societies consciously suppressed the spiritual life of this central cultural region through malign activities. These same brotherhoods exploited H. P. Blavatsky's occult faculties for their own ends. Given in Munich between the years 1914 and 1918 – and appearing in English for the first time – Rudolf Steiner addresses an array of topics in these lectures, including the potential elimination of the soul through specific medicines; intelligence testing as an expression of an ahrimanic trend; the stunted state of inner growth of many people after the age of 27; the effects in the spiritual world of those who die young; how war is an educator of selflessness; and the significance of Michael for the appearance of Christ in the etheric. The volume also features an introduction by Terry Boardman, editorial notes and an index. Twelve lectures, Munich, Dec. 1914–May 1918, GA 174a

Leseprobe

EUROPE BETWEENEAST AND WEST

IN COSMIC AND HUMAN HISTORY

Twelve lectures for members of the Anthroposophical Society held in Munich between 13 September 1914 and 4 May 1918

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIANA BRYANINTRODUCTION BY TERRY M. BOARDMAN

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 174a

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of the translation of these lectures by the Anthroposophical Society of Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

Originally published in German under the title Mitteleuropa Zwischen Ost und West. Kosmische und Menschliche Geschichte Band VI (volume 174a in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand notes that were not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second German edition (1982), edited by Helmut von Wartburg and Robert Friedenthal

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1982

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 647 0

Cover by Morgan CreativeTypeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, IndiaPrinted and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction, by Terry M. Boardman

LECTURE 113 SEPTEMBER 1914, MUNICH

The spiritual background to the outbreak of war. Symptomatic events at the start of hostilities. Robert Michel on the support of positive thoughts. War as educator of selflessness. Incisive events: the Punic Wars, migration of people in the present war. Mantric verses for co-experiencing current events.

LECTURE 23 DECEMBER 1914, MUNICH

The connection of the individual with their Folk Soul in waking and sleeping. The unique natures of the French, Italian and Russian Folk Souls. The significance of Michaël for the appearance of Christ in the etheric. The reversal of war’s constellation in the spiritual world. Disastrous effects of Imaginations that do not surface to consciousness. The connection of German occultism with the spiritual life of a people. The contrast between German and British occultism. The serious nature of the times.

LECTURE 323 MARCH 1915, MUNICH

Verses imprinted with real soul-experience for friends who have died. The importance of the moment of death for life before a new birth. The diversity of the peoples of Europe—their tasks and destinies. The effects of spiritual powers behind the events of war. The separation from the Theosophical Society in the context of war between Britain and Germany.

LECTURE 429 NOVEMBER 1915, MUNICH

The importance of those who have died for the work of anthroposophy. Soul experiences after death. I-consciousness through the retrospective after death. Going backwards through sleep experiences immediately after death. The effect in the spiritual world of those who died young. The serious nature of the times.

LECTURE 518 MARCH 1916, MUNICH

Annie Besant’s defamation of anthroposophy. The being of a Russian person. Representatives of Central Europe on their way towards spiritual science. In the West, no bridge between official spiritual life and occultism. The conscious suppression of Central European spiritual life by Western secret societies. The appearance and destinies [sic] of H.P. Blavatsky; use of her occult faculties for the goals of Western occultism. The machinations of Western secret societies. The murder of Jaurès. The connection of these with slander by Annie Besant.

LECTURE 620 MARCH 1916, MUNICH

The genesis of the physical body. The connection of our ether bodies with the animal kingdom, of our astral bodies with the plant kingdom. Inklings of these connections by Oken and Schelling. The work of the hierarchies on the elements of our being. Spiritual-scientific thinking and sense in practical life: Karl Christian Planck. The ancient wisdom in a painting by Master Bertram. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Changes in the behaviour of many human beings since the start of war: Krapòtkin.

LECTURE 719 MAY 1917, MUNICH

The significance of the Fourth and Fifth post-Atlantean Epochs. The increasing youthfulness of humanity. The stasis at the age of twenty-seven: Rudolf Eucken and Woodrow Wilson. Practical knowledge of life through spiritual science. Remembrance of those who have died: Ludwig Deinhard and Prof. Sachs. When personality projects into society. Two measures as a consequence.

LECTURE 820 MAY 1917, MUNICH

Insufficient courage to work on oneself: Maurice Barrès. Destruction of the ideas of the French Revolution through mere theorizing. Validity of the ideals of brotherliness, freedom and equality for body, soul and spirit. Elimination of the spirit at the Council of 869, elimination of the soul through specific medicines. Confusion in conceiving Christ’s impetus. Adolf Harnack. The enforced initiation of Roman Caesars. Current deficiency of will in thinking. The specious comparison of state with organism in Kjellél. The damage to spiritual science from bringing the personal into the societal.

LECTURE 914 FEBRUARY 1918, MUNICH

The significance of spiritual science for the twentieth century. Reversal of consciousness conditions after death. Impulses of historical life in dreamlike experience. Historians’ errors. Converse with those who have died. The corruption of modern thinking. The essential nature of alert and intensive pictorial thinking for interacting with the dead. The differing ways in relating to those who died young from those dying old. Grasping reality through spiritual science.

LECTURE 1017 FEBRUARY 1918, MUNICH

The unconscious spirituality of our times. The tasks of ahrimanic beings and archangels. Michaël’s spiritual fight. Mirroring events before and after 1879: 1844–1879–1914. The meaning for our times of the sequence of Folk Souls. Deeper causes of the world catastrophe. Abstraction in modern thinking and its essential conscious spiritualization. Alexander Moszkowski, honest representative of materialism.

LECTURE 112 MAY 1918, MUNICH

Growing enmity towards anthroposophy. The tendency to comfortable thinking and egotism. Misunderstanding as an expression of contemporary tendencies. Awakening a mood of expectation is a task of education today. Intelligence testing—an expression of an ahrimanic trend. Independent knowledge of reality through spiritual science. Contrasting head and limbs. The effects of Folk Souls in the various elemental realms. Becoming aware of contemporary needs through spiritual science.

LECTURE 124 MAY 1918, MUNICH

Characterizing contemporary trends: bigotry in thinking, mean pedantry in feeling, clumsy ineptitude in willing. The destiny of Johann Heinrich Lamberts. Widening experience by observing rhythms in the world. Lloyd George as a representative of our times. The ancient spirituality of Rabindranath Tagore. Spurs to a new spirituality in German spiritual life. President Wilson as a representative of the American state of soul. The stunted state of many after age twenty-seven. The chaotic dawning of real spiritual knowledge in Otto Weininger. Imagination, Intuition and Inspiration in life after death. Children’s urge to imitate as a continuation of pre-birth soul stance. The co-operation of those who have died in resolving life’s great questions.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THIS volume contains lectures given to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Munich during the First World War, 1914–1918. Collected Works volume 174b combines the lectures held in Stuttgart during the same period (The Spiritual Background to the First World War, Rudolf Steiner Press 2024).

INTRODUCTION

IT is not only military men who know and say that the best-laid plans do not survive contact with the enemy—that war is unpredictable and one never knows where it will lead and what will come out of it. Many people in the two decades before the outbreak of what was soon called the ‘Great War’ in 1914 never imagined that Europe, in the ‘progressive’, new twentieth century would fall into a terrible, pan-European war catastrophe as had been the case in the Napoleonic era. Europe was now far too advanced for that, they said; its economies were too interdependent, its values no longer so primitive. The shock was therefore all the greater when the assassin’s bullets fired in an obscure Balkan town in June 1914 resulted not only in just such a European war catastrophe only 34 days later, but a conflict that spanned the world. A few, more insightful people had seen the disaster looming, however. Rudolf Steiner had been one of them, although he had still hoped that it might yet be avoided. In Vienna in the spring of 1914, he had given lectures1 in which he spoke about ‘the cultural carcinoma’ that had developed in European society over recent centuries, a disease rooted in materialism, and which had resulted, amongst other things, from overproduction in capitalist economies, their consequent need for cheap labour, and hence the poisonous class conflicts that were so violent and tense throughout Europe on the eve of the Great War.

A major factor in these class conflicts was the bourgeois comfort in which the middle classes lived, insulated from the suffering of the workers and farmers. This lack of interest and concern for the lives of others is a major feature of the lectures in the present volume. A terrible result of this ‘cultural carcinoma’ was the Communism which, in the crisis of the war, seized upon Russia from late 1917 and then overshadowed Europe and the world for the next 72 years. In 1910 in Oslo (then Christiania), Steiner had given a cycle of lectures in which he had spoken about the urgent need for Europeans to understand the archangelic spiritual forces (Folk Spirits) that guided, shaped and informed their cultures, and to see how these mighty beings were related to each other in the ways that tribes, nations and races emerged, flourished and faded in history. War, then and now, has been one of the worst consequences when such understanding has been absent. Fascism and Nazism were both consequences of the Great War of 1914-1918.

Many people were also shocked by the conflict that broke out—or rather, suddenly expanded—in February 2022. As in 1914, they too had not seen it coming or else had felt that such a conflict was not possible in our advanced European civilization of the twenty-first century, interlinked by all its telecoms and AI technology, its smart-phone-connected younger generation. The mass media have tended not to show pictures of the old red Soviet flags flying on some Russian tanks fighting in the Donbass or the swastikas and other Third Reich imagery openly displayed on some tanks and uniforms of the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As we have seen so many times since ‘the end of the Cold War’ in 1989-1991, the shadows of the consequences of the Great War of 1914-1918 have been long indeed. Today, we are being told by European politicians that we are no longer in a postwar era (i.e. post-World War II or post-Cold War) but have entered a ‘pre-war’ era (analogous to the 1930s) and must prepare accordingly for war with nuclear-armed Russia.2 The propaganda of 1914 and 1939 is being reheated. The only thing that can stem another catastrophe, says Rudolf Steiner in these twelve lectures, is consciousness, awareness, real insight into what is going on in our world, and that must include insight into the forces of the spiritual world which are reflected in and by current events. To develop this insight, Steiner urges, we must expand our active interest in contemporary events along with our understanding of spiritual-scientific principles.

∗

The twelve lectures in this book were originally all given by Rudolf Steiner to members of the Anthroposophical Society in the city of Munich, the capital of Bavaria, southern Germany, on eight visits to that city during the First World War, 1914-1918. The overall German title given to the lectures was Mitteleuropa Zwischen Ost und West, Kosmische und Menschliche Geschichte, Band VI (Central Europe Between East and West. Cosmic and Human History Volume VI, which is GA 174a of Steiner’s Gesamtausgabe, or Collected Works).

The first four lectures were given on four separate visits, two in late 1914 and two in the spring and autumn of 1915. During this period Steiner gave many lectures about the Folk Souls and Folk Spirits of the European peoples in relation to Christ and also about experiences on crossing the threshold of death.3 The next two lectures are from a visit in March 1916, in the first of which Steiner addresses recent criticism of himself by Annie Besant, president of the Theosophical Society. The immediate background to this is the separation of Steiner’s pupils from the Theosophical Society in 1912-1913 and the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in 1913. The deeper background lies in the aims of Western occult groups and the differences between the East, West and Central European approaches to spirituality, all of which are discussed in the lectures in this book.

The two lectures from March 1916 are followed by two lectures from a visit to Munich in May 1917. In these, Steiner took up certain problems that had recently been emerging in the Anthroposophical Society, and also spoke about the principle of humanity’s ‘decreasing age’ in contrast with the increasing age of human individuals. This was something he had researched the previous winter. He also addressed the threefold nature of the human being and the Eighth Council of Constantinople in the year 869. The last four lectures were given in 1918, two in February and two in May. Amongst other things, the February lectures address communication with the dead, a subject on the hearts of countless bereaved family members who had lost loved ones in the war, and also the struggle between the Archangel Michael and his spiritual opponent Ahriman since the 1840s. The final pair of lectures, from May 1918, deal with growing opposition to anthroposophy, with the effects of the Folk Spirits, and with certain growing contemporary phenomena: bigotry in thinking, a mean-spirited pedantry in feeling, and clumsy ineptitude in willing, and how to overcome them.

∗

From August 1914 Germany was fighting on two fronts, against Britain and France in the West and against Russia in the East. The well-equipped Russian armies invaded German East Prussia on 17 August, some two weeks before the main German armies in the West entered northern France from Belgium. The day before the first lecture in this book, the German strategy for the invasion of France had failed at the Battle of the Marne (5-12 Sept.). Later that autumn, mobile warfare in the West would cease and a fixed system of trenches would stretch from the Channel to Switzerland. This remained basically static, despite massive assaults to breach it by both sides, until the summer of 1918 when, after the German Spring Offensive had failed, a war of mobility finally resumed, and the Allies, reinforced now by large numbers of American troops, began to push the Germans back towards their own borders. For four long years, Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary—which was itself engaged against Russia in the East and against Serbia and Italy in the South—faced enemies all around them (except Scandinavia), a strategic situation of encirclement that had resulted from carefully constructed Anglo-French-Russian diplomacy over the period 1887-1907 as well as by the Germans’ own errors.

Looking at Europe’s spiritual crisis in the war from his vantage point in German-speaking Central Europe (Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland), Rudolf Steiner saw that the Western Powers of Britain and France were actually led from behind the scenes of their much-vaunted ‘democracies’ by the ancient, desiccated forces of Freemasonry—much stronger then than they are today—while to the East, Russia was guided by the semi-mystical rituals of the even more ancient forces of Orthodox monarchy and religion, which reached back to Byzantium and the late Roman Empire. Steiner himself had sought to unite the achievements of modern natural science with a new, esoteric Christian understanding that was not Protestant, Roman Catholic or Orthodox. He recognized that our modern age—which began in the fifteenth century and has the task of developing what he called the Consciousness Soul (and sometimes the Spiritual Soul), the individual understanding of oneself as a spiritual being in this material world—is led in a sense by the economic motivations of the English-speaking peoples of northwest Europe and their North American offshoot, just as the previous epoch had been led by the political motivations of the peoples of southern Europe, the Greeks and the Romans.

In our current epoch, which will last until the mid-fourth millennium, the leadership by the English-speaking peoples will in its first part be of an external and material nature. But the role of the English-speaking peoples in natural science, politics and economic life needs to be complemented by what Central Europe can contribute in the cultural and spiritual sphere. This is where Steiner saw the task of spiritual science, or anthroposophy. In order to lead development in a healthy way in this present epoch, the English-speaking peoples need to collaborate with the peoples of Central Europe and not seek to dominate or ignore them. Moreover, in these lectures Steiner emphasizes that it is a vital need for the future that Central and Eastern Europe also collaborate and not fight or hate each other. In the epoch after ours, which will begin in the fourth millennium, it will be the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia that will have the ‘vanguard’ role to help humanity create a new form of genuine community life based not on the ancient forces of blood and heredity but on inspired feeling and spiritual insight. This has to be prepared today and not undermined, which it was in the twentieth century in the two huge wars between Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent division of Europe between those two regions—a disastrous process that was very much steered from the West.4 In February 2015, in a speech in Chicago titled ‘Europe: Destined for Conflict?’ the American geostrategic analyst George Friedman revealed something that no Western politician had ever dared mention in public but which, he said, had actually driven the policy of the USA for over 100 years: ‘The primordial interest of the United States over which, for a century, we have fought wars, the First, Second and Cold War, has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united, they are the only force that could threaten us—and to make sure that that doesn’t happen.’

Because of the restrictions of wartime conditions, Rudolf Steiner could not travel abroad widely and had to hold his lectures in German-speaking regions. All the combatant populations in the first two years of the war, driven on by the propaganda of the state or the media, were largely possessed by a fiercely nationalistic or chauvinist mood. Until 1916, Steiner at first tried to deal with this mood not by condemning it outright but by encouraging his German-speaking listeners to re-evaluate and re-esteem those great achievements of German culture of the period 1750-1840 which were not of a nationalistic but of a universally human and individual nature. These had been much forgotten in Germany since the reunification in 1871. In the febrile nationalistic atmosphere of 1914 and 1915, Steiner sought to elevate the feelings of German-speakers away from chauvinistic attitudes of superiority and antipathy towards other peoples and towards the highest and essentially human faculties and achievements of German-speaking culture. He had, after all, sensibly chosen to relocate the centre of his activities from Berlin, Stuttgart and Munich to Dornach, near Basel, in the neutral country of Switzerland, and during the war, people from some seventeen countries, including many from opposite sides in the war, collaborated in Dornach in the construction and decoration of the Goetheanum building, which was intended to be the new centre of the anthroposophical movement and was designed by Steiner himself.

This multinational effort could itself be seen as an example of the future collaboration of European impulses: the new spiritual impulse coming from Central Europe, the new social (and non-Bolshevik!) impulse coming from Eastern Europe, and a physical impulse coming from the West. Steiner himself said, after the destruction of the Goetheanum by arson on the last night of 1922, that it was most regrettable that the people of the West would no longer be able to see the Goetheanum and the living wisdom that it visibly represented, for it is, he said, especially the English-speaking people of the West who feel the need to see the spirit realized in the physical world. Through those ten years of the construction of the Goetheanum, there were a few people from English-speaking countries working on it and one in particular, the sculptress Edith Maryon, had moved to Dornach in 1914. There she worked closely with Rudolf Steiner on the nine-metre-high wooden sculpture titled ‘The Representative of Humanity’, which was to be the artistic centrepiece of the building, and on one occasion, in the autumn of 1916, she saved him from serious injury and possibly even from death when he nearly fell from scaffolding.5

∗

After the great defeats for both sides on the Western Front in the second half of 1916 at the battles of Verdun and the Somme, the enormous losses of the Russian armies in the East, and then the refusal of the Allies at Christmas and New Year to engage with German proposals for peace talks, there was a great change in the mood of the war. The enthusiastic, even exalted patriotism and nationalism of the first two years had by the end of 1916 given way to a resigned, grim determination to fight on until total victory, and the war became even more savage, ruthless and machine-like, increasingly driven by technological developments and the imperatives of state bureaucracies.

In June 1916, the commander-in-chief who had led Germany’s armies in the first months of the war, Colonel-General Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger) died. His wife was one of Rudolf Steiner’s earliest pupils, and Moltke himself became close to Steiner in the last two years before his death. After he died, a remarkable, indeed unique, series of conversations began between his soul and Rudolf Steiner which continued for seven years until July 1924.6 After his death, Moltke’s soul reflected deeply on his past life and continued to observe events on earth closely. He communicated these reflections and observations to Steiner, who passed them on to Moltke’s widow, Eliza.

We can see a certain change in Steiner’s view of the war after Moltke’s death, most likely as a result of these communications with the late general. Steiner’s earlier appeals to the higher nature of German-speakers and their cultural achievements in the age of Goethe and Schiller et al. receded and instead he focused more and more on the threefold nature of the human being and the threefold nature of European civilization and on the consequences for that civilization of the fateful decisions of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869, where, as Steiner explains it, the human triad of body, soul and spirit was effectively reduced through a new dogma to a dyad of body and soul only. The effects of this dogma (Canon XI of the Council) rumbled on through the centuries and had culminated in the Great War. They would go on into the future, creating more disasters, unless Europeans reawakened to the reality of the human triad and the threefold nature of human society (culture-politics-economy) and of Europe itself (East-Middle-West).

This new focus of his activities in the last two years of the war led Steiner eventually to launch the threefold movement for social renewal amidst the social and political turmoil of the immediate postwar years 1919-1922, and also to a whole series of practically-oriented social initiatives in the fields of education, agriculture, health and medicine, curative work and finance and banking, alongside his earlier initiatives in the arts, which had begun in Munich in 1907. While one can certainly see connections between this later threefold focus and Steiner’s earlier activities going back some 30 years, it is no exaggeration to say that his unique communications over the period 1916-1924 with the soul of Helmuth von Moltke, especially given the karmic destiny of that soul,7 are likely to have played a significant part in Steiner’s new focus after 1916. The question of the relations between East, Middle and West and their ramifications in numerous aspects of culture now urgently took centre stage in his thought, as the influence of America and Russia grew to cast overwhelming shadows from the West with Wilsonism8 and from the East in Leninism.

The twelve lectures in this book can be seen in the context of this change in Rudolf Steiner’s focus after 1916. Those from 1914 and 1915 addressed the cultural issues of the German-speaking world that reached back to the time of Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte et al., as well as aspects of the issues surrounding the parting of the ways between the Theosophical and the Anthroposophical Societies in 1912-1913, and how this was connected to the issues of the subsequent world war. The enormous death toll of the battles of 1914 and 1915 deeply shocked many Europeans. It had been a long time, a hundred years, since there had been such massive death in warfare in Europe—and the shock of this directed people’s attention to their loved ones who had suddenly crossed or might, at any time, suddenly cross the threshold of death, most of them young conscripts. Providing a compassionate understanding of the nature of the spiritual world on the other side of that threshold was thus one of Steiner’s constant endeavours in the first two years of the war, and the lectures in 1914 and 1915 reflect this.

However, one feels that after 1916, while he continues to enlighten his listeners with important information about the spiritual world and about the nature of the human organism and relations between East, West and Middle, his own attitude, after the middle lecture of 20 March 1916, which is of a kind of transitional nature within this group of twelve lectures, changed to become firmer and grimmer, stricter even, as he had to witness the failures of many of those in the anthroposophical movement to overcome their inclinations towards comfort and sectarianism, despite the worsening situation of the war, and their reluctance to engage actively with the needs of people in the wider world.

The later lectures in this collection therefore have more of an urgent mood, encouraging and sometimes critically admonishing his listeners to make radical changes in their thinking. In the last lecture, for example, he notes a question asked by the young Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger (1880-1903): ‘How do I become the continuer of the impulses of my soul and spirit that I had between my last death and my recent birth?’ Steiner comments that many answer this question in the wrong way—through focusing on the nerves, blood, skin colour, muscles, i.e. through sex, genetics, racism. (This particular material focus would lead on to Fascism and Nazism after the war.) Weininger also asked: ‘Why do we have no memories… of the time that flowed past before birth?’ Such questions, says Steiner, can be answered by those who occupy themselves with spiritual science (anthroposophy) but only if all narrow-minded philistinism is removed:

All bourgeois pettiness—all philistinism—has to recede. People sealing themselves off in narrow interest groups has to be systematically combatted. Certain questions have to be framed quite differently than has so far been the case. How did the religious evolution of the past millennia itself frame the question through which a few people are still able to relate to the spiritual?

That question was: ‘What happens in my soul and spirit when I have gone through the gate of death?’ Steiner’s answer was that many people’s motives here are egotistical, but if they were informed by spiritual science, they would ask: ‘To what extent is life here on earth a continuation of the life I spent earlier in worlds of soul and spirit?’ In his book The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science (1906), Steiner showed how children in the first seven years of their lives are primarily imitators:

…imitating—transposing yourself into others—is a continuation of the Intuitive world of the last third of existence between death and a new birth. You can still see—streaming into and illuminating their lives—that existence between death and rebirth if you observe children’s lives in a meaningful way.

This, he says, will lead to a feeling of responsibility, not egotism, and people will come to feel that: ‘I have to continue here what I was enjoined to do, in that I have brought with me a legacy from worlds of soul and spirit.’ And furthermore:

…wanting to understand this ‘Beyond’ [the threefold spiritual world of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition]—wanting to revere and recognize it—will become part of the newly-framed question about immortality, which will occur in spiritual evolution in a less egotistical way than the question of immortality did so widely throughout the evolution of religions in past millennia.

In relation to thinking, feeling and willing, he says that it is vital that petty narrow-mindedness be overcome and that mobility in finding one’s way into the circumstances of the world gains ground; that philistinism is overcome and open-hearted interest takes hold of human hearts; that clumsy ineptitude is overcome and people once more become skilled, educated to dexterity in the most varied areas of life. Learning to understand the world in the most varied areas of life! A skilful understanding, so as to be capable of dealing with the most diverse situations in life—this is what matters.

All these are questions that are still of very great moment today when we struggle with issues of education in an age increasingly pervaded by technology, which threatens to draw children into virtual fantasy worlds away from the practical world of the five senses. Issues of war and peace, of political freedom and economic totalitarianism, of the decline and rebirth of religion, China’s rise and the decline of the West, the so-called ‘Clash of Civilizations’, pseudo-empires versus the nation state, spiritualism and materialism, and in the middle of it all, the ongoing question as to the nature of the human being itself, when much-vaunted voices allied to global elites tell us ‘the time of soul, spirit and free will is over’9—in all these issues spiritual forces of various kinds are moving.

∗

In the later lectures in this book Steiner calls on his listeners to have the courage to face what is going on in the wider world. We certainly need such courage today. In this age when people intuitively rebel against the ‘extinction’ of nature but ignore the spiritual forces working through the world, we seem to be pushed—or are we pushing?—towards yet another great world conflict that might even prove terminal for humanity. Clearly, despite the hard lessons of two world wars and a Cold War, humanity did not sufficiently awaken to the truth of the human condition. Today, is such terrible pain and suffering, close to actual extinction, the only way that (what will be left of) humanity can awaken? In these twelve Munich lectures by Rudolf Steiner from the Great War of a century ago, there is much for us to learn about the spiritual impulses that will help us avoid a far worse catastrophe and plant the seeds of a better future.

Terry M. BoardmanApril 2024

1The Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and Rebirth (Collected Works GA 153), Vienna, 14 April 1914.

2 Grant Shapps, UK Defence Minister, in a speech on 15 January 2024.

3 See, for example, the lectures contained The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations (GA 157), Rudolf Steiner Press 1986.

4 See R. Steiner, The Karma of Untruthfulness, Vols. I and II (GA 173, 174), Rudolf Steiner Press 2005.

5 Christoph Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner—Eine Chronik 1861-1925, Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1988, p. 370.

6 See T. H. Meyer, Ed., Light for the new Millennium—Rudolf Steiner, Helmuth von Moltke, Eliza von Moltke: Letters, Documents and After-Death Communications, Rudolf Steiner Press 1997.

7 Steiner’s research revealed that the late General von Moltke had previously incarnated as the very significant mid-ninth century Pope Nicholas I (858-867), who had, for profound reasons, striven at that time to separate Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. See note 6 above.

8 Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the USA, 1913-1921. His administration created the Federal Reserve system, invaded Mexico, took the USA into the First World War despite having promised to keep out of it, and in his 14 Points (Jan. 1918) programme, Wilson championed the League of Nations. At the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, Wilson and his close adviser Col. Edward M. House played a key part in reconstructing the map of Europe, a continent which neither man knew well.

9 The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, interview Oct. 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV0CtZga7qM

LECTURE 1

13 SEPTEMBER 1914, MUNICH

IT is to my deep satisfaction that karma has enabled us to meet this evening and for me to say a few words in these solemn times. Above all, at this moment we would like to think of those who are out in the field, sacrificing their courage, their lives, their blood for the tasks set for humanity by these extraordinary times. First and foremost, we wish to direct our loving, help-imploring thoughts to those who have often sat among us in our communal contemplations and who are now abroad, having to take direct part in those great events that are bringing national and human karma into evolution—initially to those connected with us and then, more widely, to all those involved. Then we want to nurture an onward perspective—looking ahead in a specific way, both in an immediate and in the widest possible sense—such as we also seek in the course of our spiritual stream, which binds each soul with every other soul in being challenged by these colossal events. Let us direct our loving, beseeching thoughts to those out in the fields and, in token of our bond with them, let us stand up and dedicate the following words to them: 1

Spirits ever watchful, guardians of your souls,May your wings bearThe beseeching love of our soulsTo those earthly beings entrusted to your careSo that, united with your power,Our prayers may radiate helpTo the souls whom they lovingly seek!

We wish to send out our loving thoughts to you, that Christ the helper may be with you, whom we seek, Christ who calls upon our souls, challenging them, seeking out harmony amidst disharmony, that He will lead those souls to whom He has to apportion suffering, in certainty to the redemption they need so that the purpose mapped out for human- and folk karma is fulfilled: With you, O souls, do we wish to be united in the sign that connects us with the sole true Spirit of the Earth, with Christ.

What has apparently so suddenly engulfed what we have to call all earthly humanity could long have been foreseen. It erupted so surprisingly because, it has to be said, occult sources have also had a hand in these events,2 influences that have only since 28 June3 gradually been revealing themselves. During these times it has been possible to acknowledge ever new aspects of spiritual worlds. I can only allude to what I mean here in a few words. When I returned in July from Sweden, from the Norrköping lecture cycle4, I had to alert someone, who is in a certain sense connected with current events, as to how that event in Sarajevo had some remarkable consequences for occultists; how it had been an outer symbol and how curiously differently this deceased person behaved from all the others who could hitherto be observed in death in occult fields. It was in this way that in the occult background there also broke out what—in such terribly rapid steps—played out as events on the physical plane during the last days of July and the first days of August. However, those disposed to keeping their distance from spiritual life must lately have had certain premonitions and inklings of a spiritual world, have been occasioned to become aware of the presence of a spiritual world. It can indeed be said that the experiences earthly humanity is undergoing are unprecedented and daunting.

Dear friends, wishing as I do to address a few words to you, let them be connected with remarks that have often over the years been reiterated within our spiritual-scientific considerations. What should we seek as our deepest soul connection with the spiritual world? That it should grant us certainty and inner strength; certainty that, amid all the vicissitudes of the times, all the vagaries of events, there is something firm onto which we can hold fast. In times such as these, more than a belief in the unconquerable nature of spirit life and its tasks can imbue our souls: we need to learn to connect this faith in the victory and indomitability of the spirit with outer events.

In early August, as the first squalls of war declarations were mustering from the most varied directions in the world, I had to recall words recently spoken, which may engrave themselves deeply upon each of us, words just reiterated that affect us very directly. An important figure5 said the following in a prominent place a few weeks before the outbreak of hostilities: We and all our forces are in complete and amicable agreement. We fell out this spring after the machinations of the press started up in Russia and were echoed in the German and Viennese papers. Let us take no notice of press issues, let’s stick to the neighbourly friendships of old. Another thought-provoking statement was issued in June: The general easing of tensions is making progress. A further phrase in that same statement claimed: Talks with England are not yet concluded but are being conducted in the same spirit of friendship that characterizes all relations with Great Britain. Just think about now! Just think how changeable is what human beings believe at the moment in the physical world, and what they will be obliged to see over the course of events even in the coming weeks. Do reflect on the surging, storming, havering, hectoring events of this physical world, do remind yourselves how necessary all this surging and storming is. I’d like to say: What can be believed today will prove to be untrue tomorrow. How essential it is, amid this turbulence, to have something solid and certain onto which to hold, something which will remain true tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and for all eternity! What is true in those terms is truth from spirit sources, truth of the spirit’s mission pervading all human evolution.

I would like to mention something because it is quite symptomatic—and is not personal—really symptomatic and symbolic, speaking to the soul. You know that the first volume of The Riddle of Philosophy came out in July. Volume 2 was printed as far as page 2066 when war broke out. It was just at the point of transition from the thoughts of the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson to the German philosopher Preuss and was referring to the way in which Bergson renders a thought in a slightly frivolous, superficial way, skimming over it where he previously approached with robust thoroughness the unknown and solitary Preuss as he prefigured our theosophical world view in the last third of the nineteenth century. I was trying to portray that solitary thinker correctly. It then turned out that the print run had to be interrupted and continued later, just at that transition from France to Germany. War broke out. I had to see those two-thirds-printed pages as a symbol of what was taking place between Western and Central Europe by way of the transition in my description.

Other issues might appear symbolic. Here I am remembering our building in Dornach,7 which was also able to thrive to a certain point, albeit not as far as we would so dearly have wished. Perhaps some of our friends know how fervently it was desired—in face of salient facts and as long as this made sense—that this building could be finished by the first of August this year: not only as my heart’s wish but as a necessity for all to see. One might now reflect whether it would have been good had the building been finished by 1 August. In face of the facts, something such as a wish could not be combated and, among several construction issues that needed solving—about which I will not speak today—was the problem of the acoustics for a larger space and its solution through greater resonance. It was in July, when the building was already timber-shuttered, that a few words, spoken at a particular spot in it, confirmed an inkling that this acoustic problem could be solved once the building was finished. At certain points it could be heard—through the emergent resonance and the occult calculations for its location—how words and music could be expected to sound, how they could really be expected to resound as they should. It was a kind of ideal—even in those first days of August—to hear the word spoken there that was to sound from out of the spirit … and yet what our friends first heard in our building was the reverberation of cannon fire as it thundered on the nearby Alsace fields of slaughter. Thus did the space we had in a sense dedicated to the resounding of spirit words first become witness to cannon fire rumbling in its close vicinity. Other friends of ours saw, as it were symbolically, the great ideal we were awaiting. We were awaiting the annunciation of spirit light—sounding forth from spiritual worlds—that this light of spirit worlds would come into being. Yet what transpired was that the lights of Istein Fort could be seen on several nights, stretching across, piercing and lighting up our building for four minutes at a time; the sound and light of present events!

Other thoughts and feelings were also able to pass through our souls, however. On 26 July I was speaking with several of our friends,8 amongst other things about our building, and had referred to the gravity of the times piercing our windows. I must say: I could only read through tears the letter which one of our younger friends, who had been with us on 26 July, subsequently wrote to his mother. Immediately afterwards, he was called up9 and returned to his home country of Austria. From the spiritual strength he had gained through our spiritual striving, this relatively young member found the strength—in the most beautiful and, I must say, pure and holy way—to take up the lot assigned him by his karma.

And again it was another of those who had been with us on 26 July who himself wrote to me en route to the Serbian theatre of combat, full of feelings flowing from certainty in the spirit and faith in its triumphant victory, on the one hand, and nourished, on the other, by enthusiasm for his participation in the events of our time and his place within them.

Truly, my dear friends, one feels souls growing at this time—souls maturing—and it spoke to our hearts both beautifully and magnificently when observing that all the feelings and sensations that had suffused and passed through the souls of our friends also turned out to be suited to leading people to the right place, in the right way, amid today’s gruelling situation.

When speaking of the certitude that ought to be gained from considering the spirit and spiritual being, this certitude is intimately linked with our chosen motto,10 based on Goethe’s words. It is rendered like this: Wisdom lies in truth alone or Wisdom exists only in truth. Among the deep hopes one is justified in cherishing out of these times is that everything connected with Wisdom lies only in truth will be imprinted upon humanity, precisely through the great pain and deeply affecting tests of these times. Everything contained in the words Wisdom is in truth alone needs to impress itself ever more deeply upon people—and now much has already been brought about by the great teacher in overcoming materialism.

Shortly before the outbreak of war I read what a respected journalist11 had written. He says the following:

Despite the reproval of Mr Liebknecht, I remain convinced that responsible agents of Government are not only justified but are obliged to repudiate truth and to affirm untruth. This right, this duty of collective morality in what is conveyed by those under their leadership, is restricted by two preconditions: Untruth must be neither provable nor counter to state interests.

Just compare this declaration with the axiom we decided upon when we founded the Anthroposophical Society: Wisdom lies only in truth! Much will collapse because quite a different sentient ethos has come to inhabit the souls of those who sense the seriousness of the present situation.

How often, my dear friends, have the words spoken in this place elicited what sounds like this: Reality is not constituted only by all that takes place on this physical plane, but human thoughts have even greater reality, strength and power of agency. Let us admit, for it is true: such things have only been said on the basis of foundations bearing a spiritual imprint. Just now, on the very complex journey I had to make, a document12 came my way bearing the date 1 September 1914. It contains a very nice essay by a soldier, Robert Michel, who jots down his battlefield thoughts. His essay details how the mobilization came about and how he and his comrades set off into the unknown. His last words are important for us: ‘But every single remnant of the monarchy has a duty to galvanize to its utmost their supportive forces until decisive victory has been achieved. All the fine words, heartfelt acclamations, good wishes and blessings accompanying our exodus increased our confidence. They were slivers that have not been lost. This bounty of psychic strength needs to accompany our army continuously and the will for victory needs to vibrate, to shimmer, from every single individual to the fighters on the Front. This is why nobody fled the decisions being prepared in the North. Those obliged to passively watch the immense deployment of armed forces and nations from the sidelines also need to contribute their sliver, their shard, sending forces to souls on their way. Those who have God’s ear should pray; those who cannot pray should gather all their thoughts and will power in aid of a fervent longing for victory, and those with nothing else to offer should cross their fingers and repeat: We must be victorious, we must be victorious. In this way even the weakest will have contributed to victory.’

A soldier leaving for battle writes from the field words that sound like an echo of what has often been said on a basis of spiritual life: Whoever cannot pray, let them gather their thoughts and will forces in a fervent wish for victory. Now we see belief in the spirit, at the start of momentous events.

We need subscribe to no illusions. Some things may look different in the near future, but the time will come when what has been implied in these few words will become reality. World progress has to take place and what must happen will happen. Sometimes this occurs in a remarkable way; people’s wills are led in gradual stages, so that one can see how, step by step—no differently from the way a teacher would do it—directions they will later take are poured into souls. In truth, one need only watch briefly to see how—above human powers—spiritual powers are spreading out, working pedagogically for the greater progress of humanity.

It is now timely to nurture a thought, which may affect one but is seldom considered. 1866: German brother stood against German brother—German against German. No more than a decade passed: 1870–71. A portion of Germany had to take part in an enormous event, one in which the other part could not participate. One of my teachers at Vienna High School13 often said something that struck my heart deeply at the time. ‘We Germans in Austria must be aware that what happened is our fate and not our fault: that we were not allowed to take part in an exceptional event. Now, this time, both parties are as if welded together by an iron force, where once they were opponents, when each stood separately without the other.’

This is no coincidence but important and momentous, and this major insight has taken less than a century to affect all subsequent times: human progress and what the spiritual hierarchies will for humanity has to take place. But it can come about in the most varied ways. By a certain point in time something quite specific has to have been achieved. Let’s say—not that this necessarily tallies with what I was wanting to say—that by the year 1950 a certain amount of willingness for sacrifice, capacity for love and selfless conquest over egotism has to have been expended across humanity. Let’s say that by 1950 what has to happen will have happened in accordance with the demands of the time. On the one hand, this will come about by speaking to human hearts that the power of the word is to be trusted, that what holds the fate of humanity in its hands will approach human individuals spiritually, seeking to advance them to a point where the spirit can work upon them. But the other taskmaster, that second teacher who speaks through living proof, often has to step in. And haven’t we seen his successes! What immeasurable sacrifice, human love and selflessness have been engendered in an amazingly short time in this materialistic age since the great instructor stepped forward and the war, on the one hand so terrible yet which has, on the other, enabled what occultism terms iron necessities to be achieved: the goals essential to this particular moment in human evolution. Streams of blood are being shed, precious lives wilt and fade away, others are ripped from physical life in an instant when the hostile bullet strikes. All this is happening on such a vast scale today. What does it signify? It is a great sacrifice, my dear friends, an enormous sacrifice on the altar of pan-human evolution. On the one hand is something that has to transfuse humanity—something to which humanity has to be surrendered in order to progress—and on the other is the necessity for sacrifice.

It has been infinitely telling for me to watch how deeply bound—beyond death—are those souls who are directly involved in these momentous events. It could often be seen how those who had been laid out by an enemy bullet would be taken up into spiritual worlds, not yet having awoken into their greater individuality but still bound up with all that was transpiring below. I am not sure whether you can empathize with the extent to which one is affected by seeing, behind those fighting on the battlefield, their psychic personality, which has already encountered death, protecting and abiding with the one below still fighting and bound to the physical plane. They belong to those occult experiences of mine which I could not compare with any others. Un-awakened fighters who, having gone through death, are still connected with events below and are simultaneously like doubles to those still fighting in the physical. In spiritual worlds, too, realities exist that can pour confidence into our hearts, even if such confidence is not easily won.

Who would have thought what percentage of humanity is fighting each other? Who would have thought—we are just at the start; this war has only been raging for a few weeks—what losses of human souls these few weeks would have cost? They might be inclined to waver, wondering what might ensue were this to continue for a long time. Though it often dismays me—it can really take one aback—the thought revives me that what is right will happen and what is presaged by spiritual worlds will take place. If one can muster the certainty that not only are the living engaged in fighting, but that the dead remain bound to their destinies, then sufficient strength will be available to us.

Something else occurred to me recently. Our Society unites in a single spiritual stream those from the most varied peoples: nations who are presently fighting each other. This can be something of a comfort to us! We look back on times when we were quite dissimilar and had little in common, back to the age which the Bhagavad Gita describes for us, the oft-depicted human conditions and times when people lived in small, blood-related circles. The transition from blood-relatedness to a time when blood fights blood is described in the Bhagavad Gita,14 when Arjuna is directed by the great spirit: Truly, over there are your brothers, and here are you; you will fight each other though the same blood flows in their veins as in yours. Yet in the spirit there is the potential to find a compensatory equality. What fights each other evolves from out of what ought not to be at war—another iron necessity essential to human evolution! The spirit bridges the gap that causes brother to fight brother in enmity, so that the other develops the means to bridge the disharmony existing between them. Those times are unlike our own. We take the opposite path within our spiritual movement. We seek to gather up what was strewn across the Earth. Those belonging to the most diverse nations connect with each other in community, becoming brothers within our ranks. Now we are seeing how here someone comes from France, having left friends there, how they have had to face the massed Germans and have to expect to face their anthroposophical friends in battle. It is the opposite situation here: scattered members of humanity are seeking each other in spirit, and we will find one another rightly once we understand the spirit of truth in all seriousness and can take hold of it in all earnestness—we just need to find ways to do this.

I must say that we Germans have a hard time in making our way, possibly the hardest! It may sound strange to you that I say this, but it is difficult for us because—without wishing to boast—it is always hard to justify ourselves; it is easier to justify someone else’s entitlement than one’s own. It is also difficult because it will not be easy for present humanity to see things with what I’d like to call the requisite objectivity, with a sufficiently unbiased overview, amidst the perspectives often put forward in our spiritual science and which are also found in the lectures on Folk Souls.15 It is going to be necessary for anyone seeking to grasp spiritual life in the true and genuine spirit of our times to learn how these Folk Souls—those true and genuine Folk Souls—form a kind of choir, in which they already live together in harmony. But one has to find one’s way to their being, and this can only be done in spirit.

Actually, this is not the right moment to draw attention to the feelings and sensations being voiced in the background of souls at present, so I would like to divert your attention towards a way of communicating that is open to us, a way of holding a dialogue—a closely discrete inner dialogue—with the spirit of the nation to which we belong and finding the right path for our souls to follow. I can only advise you: if you allocate a few minutes, especially at this time, you can use the following words to orientate yourself in the present world situation:16

You, Spirit of my earthly realm!Reveal the light of your age.

Why ‘your age’? With spiritual beings, one says ‘your age’ where on Earth one would say ‘The light of your being.’ Age is for the spirit what being is for earthly existence.

You, Spirit of my earthly realm!Reveal the light of your ageTo the Christ-endowed soul,So that, striving, I may find youIn the choirs of the spheres of peaceResounding in the praise and powerOf human hearts devoted to the Christ.

Here we find a way to the Folk Spirit to whom we belong and the way from this Folk Spirit to the dialogue between that Folk Spirit and Christ, teacher of all Folk Spirits. When they come together in the Christ, they will be duly foregathered, because for all these Folk Spirits, leading nations as they do, Christ is to be regarded as their teacher, as can be learnt from the book The Spiritual Guidance of Humankind.

I often have cause to hope that what is being communicated is not true: in an Eastern national assembly—in their Duma—in which the ruler17 had rallied his people to join the war, the ultimate cry was: The God of Russia is great! What a dreadful invocation, were it so! Thoughtlessly, they call upon a Spirit whose character is imagined as acting within their own limited context instead of invoking a Spirit so connected with the destiny of humanity that also those opposing them in enmity place themselves in its service, seeking the salvation of all humanity as well as their own. When the Christ leads a people, He leads them such that in seeking their salvation they seek the salvation of all humanity. We are justified in calling upon the Folk Spirit with whom we are inwardly connected, so that we look aloft to the way in which it, in turn, communes with Christ; via our Folk Spirit do we commune with Christ. Many thoughts are prepared in this way, thoughts which remain in the spiritual atmosphere of humankind until such time as a meaningful war is followed by a significant peace.

A sacrifice, as I say, is one that is brought on the altar of humanity; and it is sacred blood that flows onto our Earth, blood which is witness to those who are now fighting a war between peoples, whose souls are rising up out of the physical into spiritual worlds, and who will return in future incarnations to be important members of humanity’s spiritual advancement—a sacrifice indeed, a great sacrifice! What is now happening has to take place in this way. Whoever wants to look back to times long passed, seeking first causes, needs to look back to the Punic Wars of the third century BCE, to the time when the Roman military leader18—you can read this up in historical records—used boarding ramps and ladders to achieve their initial decisive victories. It is debatable as to what the original event19 of this present war was; future history will tell—it is difficult to go into these things.

Many things lead us back to the times when the Romans were warring with Germanic peoples, when human fate was being determined for many millennia. Then we come to the third great event—that is, our present situation—which will have as significant an effect as did the Punic Wars. Despite their albeit long extent, they were minor by comparison with today’s world affairs, yet the qualitative effects of the Punic Wars still project into our times. Just as the great determining events of humanity recur in a certain sense, connected as they are with migration periods—a whole human cycle is encapsulated in the term—just as then, in Rome, what needed to be resolved had to take place: that the form of the human I, as it was in the third century BCE