The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Still under the impression of the “Faust” performance, something may be expressed at first, to which the soul can urge in this moment.

Indeed, as a result of the momentous events of our time, we have seen many a soul pass over from the physical plane into the spiritual world, and join the circle held together by our spiritual science. Even those who belong to us have become victims of this time, which demands so much pain and sadness. And there is much we could say about what we have experienced as a result of the sad events that have caused our dear friends to depart in this way.

But here we have a special duty to commemorate the ascension of the soul of a friend who worked faithfully with us in this place to help build the structure we want to dedicate to the pursuit of our spiritual science. And because he was so faithfully united with us in his soul and had such a wonderful aspiration to work with us in erecting this monument of our time, it is our special duty, but certainly also the impulse of our special love, to remember him at this hour, which may stand under the after-effect of the mystery of the ascent of the human soul, of the immortal in man into the spiritual world.

Our dear friend Kramer, the younger, left the physical plane after uniting with us in order to place what he had attained through his endeavors in the outside world, through his desire to learn and work, at the service of our cause. After he had found the opportunity to work selflessly with us here in the sun of his most beautiful feelings and his highest devotion to our cause, he was recalled, and his soul ascended into the spiritual worlds after his physical shell fell victim to the warlike events in the east. Just as we could see into his soul, how it felt so completely at home with the stream of spiritual life that we seek through our spiritual science, and how it was more and more completely at one with this stream, and how its earnestness grew ever greater and greater, so we may say that we hoped for much, much from our friend Kramer, even for this physical plane.

But we submit, my dear friends, with him himself to the external necessity of karma. We know that he is among us. We even know, since we got to know him, that he is with us with special love even now that his soul has gone to the spiritual worlds. We know that he longs to return to the place with which he, I would say in solemnity, combined his knowledge and ability before he left for the place where duty called him. And so we know that we are also united with him after he has only changed the form of his work by withdrawing his soul from the physical plane into the spiritual world.

And in love, in sorrow, in genuine warm friendship and brotherhood, we direct our soul, we lift our spiritual eye to the protecting spirit that guides him from incarnation to incarnation, and call after him the words that we want to find to such protective spirits, through the human soul, want to find their way into the spiritual-soul worlds, sending up pleas for help for these spirits.

To do this, we rise:

Spirit of his soul, effective guardian,
May your wings bring
Our souls' pleading love
To the man of the spheres, familiar to thy care;
That, united with thy power,
Our prayer may help to radiate
The soul that lovingly seeks it.

My dear friends!

Today I feel the need to speak once more about the great loss we have suffered; not so much because I believe that after what I had to say yesterday, we committed our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, to the fire elements, but rather because I truly believe that focusing our thoughts on the very unique essence of this woman for our souls, for our hearts, can and should be of great importance, especially at this moment.

We may, as Mrs. Gertrud Noß stood among us, truly regard her as an exemplary personality, and we may carry the view of her being as something through our further life, which is suited to equip us with powers that can have deep significance for our lives.

My dear friends, death, when it comes before us, is, one might say, the most profound phenomenon in human life, and when it comes before us in such a way that it means for the living: You will no longer be able to look into an eye that you were so often allowed to look into, you will no longer be able to hold a hand in yours, which you so much wanted to feel again and again in yours for a long time, you will no longer be able to face a personality with whom you were intimately connected in life. If death approaches us as a manifestation of life, then this approach really connects us for a shorter or longer time, depending on what we are capable of, with the eternal, with the sources of the spiritual.

Now, with the death of our dear friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, we have every reason to anchor this thought very deeply in our souls. We have had to watch, in quick succession, how Mrs. Gertrud Noß herself stood before the last mortal remains of her beloved son, who, as one of our hopes, stood so beautifully in our midst. And at least some of us – but many of us should know this – were able to experience how the death of a deeply beloved close friend affected our friend herself at the time. Some of us were touched by the great change that had taken place in this woman's soul after the deeply meaningful, deeply painful death of a close friend had passed her by.

From the depths of my soul, my dear friends, I spoke yesterday the word that this death for our friend was a kind of consecration of the spirit. You could see from our friend's soul how close she had come to an intimate spiritual understanding in a very natural way, precisely since death had passed by her in such a painful way. I have often said that it can never be the task of someone who has to speak words when death comes upon us to comfort the surviving friends, that it can never be the opinion of the one who has to speak on the occasion of a death to want to give comfort that is supposed to ease the pain. For to assuage pain would be to speculate on the weakness of human life. The pain we feel in such a case is fully justified, and the one who wanted to assuage it did not in reality reckon with the deepest demands of life. So it cannot be the task in this our case either to want to assuage the pain of those who are seized by pain in this moment.

But something else is what the words press onto our tongues when we are faced with such an event. We have seen how death touched our dear friend, and we ourselves then had to be touched by the death of that friend. The death of a person close to us brings us, as it has brought our friend close, close to the spiritual world; under all circumstances it brings us in some way closer to the feeling, to the real grasp of the spiritual world. For the very closest, the most obvious thing we feel and experience in the face of death is that we say to ourselves: When we face a person in life, there are perhaps many conditions that nuance our feelings towards that person in this or that way, so that they can easily change again at a later time. There are many, many conditions that, after we have formed a judgment, a judgment of life about a person, cause us to change that judgment about the person later on as a result of something that person does or says. We may not think about how we make a change in this sense, but we do change many things. Everyone who has thought about life knows, and anyone can know it if they just think about life a little: We often change our feelings and perceptions of people and always have the belief, I would say, in an incomplete judgment. When we face death, we instinctively feel that what is then thrusting into our soul is a kind of involuntary review of life, which we have experienced with him, felt about him. When we face the moment of death, we instinctively feel that what then forces its way into our soul, what then seems like an involuntary review of the life we have lived with the person, is something lasting, something that now stands as a conclusion in our soul, something we only have no feeling of dissatisfaction when we know: we form these thoughts in such a way that they can remain in our soul in a certain way. — Yes, we have the feeling from the outset that we may form only such judgments and feelings that can remain in our soul and take root so that we can keep them. We feel this as a sacred obligation to the dead person; we feel a certain responsibility awakening in our soul to be completely true to the dead person, and we also feel when we know that the dead person is now actually beginning to be much closer to us. We may not say to ourselves that he is beginning to be much, much closer to us, but in a subconscious way we have in our thoughts, in our feelings, the realization that we want to be closer to the person now than we were when he was alive.

During our lifetime we were aware that we could not fathom human beings, not even in our thoughts. Now that we are face to face with the dead person, we get the feeling that, step by step, he grows into our thoughts with that which, in his nature, passes from the temporal into the eternal. We must not think anything untrue about him, if we do not want to stand before him as a liar through what we think; we must not think anything about him that is distorted for our own feelings by our own feelings, which are often dominated by resentment and envy towards the living, without us knowing it. So when we stand before the so-called dead person, the thoughts about what we experienced with him come over us; we are summarized, as it were, into a kind of conclusion that we have within us involuntarily when forming the words, a greater responsibility, so that we feel a greater responsibility than was the case with the living. And we also have to come to terms with our feelings towards the dead person in a certain way. He stands there, as it were, having passed from the temporal into the realm of the lasting, into the realm of the enduring for us. He stands there so that he now becomes for us something that looks at us unchangingly. Our feelings towards the dead person must become selfless because we now know that we cannot express the love we feel for him on the earth plane in any earthly way so that he can find it in return.

That, my dear friends, means a great deal. We enter into a new relationship with a soul that we have come to love.

Herman Grimm, whom I have often spoken of here, was once at the funeral of a friend, and when he then had words printed about the deceased, there was a sentence within these words that was obvious but extraordinarily meaningful.

Yes, my dear friends, the souls who have passed through the gateway of death now belong to that light, fine cloud themselves and no longer to the reality from which the dead person has departed. But we can meet the needs of the dead more and more fully if we fill the light cloud with what we have experienced in close connection with the dead.

My dear friends, we are talking about the mortal, physical remains of a person; we can also talk about those remains of a person that the soul leaves behind on earth. And this soul on earth is embedded in coarser things, which are our hearts, our souls themselves, as long as we are embodied in the earthly body. The thought stones, the thought bricks made of this coarser material are the thoughts that we take with us through life from those with whom we have been brought together by life. For a personality such as our friend had, we can perhaps say, we may say, take with us thoughts that will further invigorate our life on earth. The attitude that our deceased friend developed from her spiritual familiarity before her passing was moving. For in her case, in the last months of her life, one must speak of spirit communion. As I said, the attitude was touching. What would now happen to her, how she herself would continue her existence in the great cosmic context, was permeated by a basic feeling, especially in the last days, when it was already clear to her that the scales were very much in balance between life and death on earth. A basic feeling pervaded her attitude, that was the feeling of surrender, of surrender to what was to come, be it life or death; for so firmly rooted was the conviction of the wisdom that pervades the world in the soul of our friend, who was detaching herself from the body, that she knew, however it might turn out: Everything corresponds to this wisdom that pervades the world. Everything, however impenetrable it may be for the individual human soul, must be right in the eyes of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. This feeling was a deeply meaningful force in our friend's soul. Therefore she could look back at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze and look into the spiritual world with a calm and serene gaze.

By looking at the earthly world with a calm and serene gaze, the attitude that she always carried through life proved itself. I was allowed to speak of this at her funeral. The attitude can be expressed with the words: She tried to extinguish herself wherever she could, in order to do for others what was necessary for them to live. During her last days she did not consider a possible continuation of life on earth as a personal need for her own yearning, but only as an opportunity to continue to care for those people who were close to her and with whom, in the narrower sense, she had to fight the battle of life. She only thought how different it would be for them when they would have to live without her, when she could no longer be their leader and helper. Those were her thoughts; not the thought, not the need, to still live here on earth herself. She had always lived mainly in what she did for others and in what she was allowed to be for others, and so, before her earthly departure, the images arose before her eyes of those who would be there and who would now have to take up the struggle in life without her, who would now stand without her in this earthly life, while they had received the warming, regulating light from her for so long.

Then probably also the thoughts of her previous son came into her mind, who had remained in close contact with her soul and with whom she was connected even more intimately since he had parted from his earthly shell. And then there lived in her that which is so difficult to express, my dear friends, which certainly did not come before our friend's soul with a distinct thought, but which lived in her and spread the quiet, calm, awe-inspiring serenity over her entire being in her last days, the thought that looked from the living to the dead, from the dead to the living, from the spiritual to the earthly, from the earthly to the spiritual, and which, as a matter of course, knew how to unite the two worlds into one.

She had truly struggled to such a basic feeling, which glorified her death so much, through the way she lived here on earth. And much, much of how she lived makes her a role model for everyone, and we would do wrong to the feelings and sensations that blossom from the spirit in the being when we do not dare to express on such an occasion what we are able to recognize in human value and human dignity through spiritual science, through its deepening in relation to the individual person.

I know, my dear friends, that the simple, inner greatness and great modesty of our friend would never have allowed what was not possible during her time on earth to be said about her. But that is also one of the peculiarities of the death experience in others, since our tongues may be loosened with regard to it. If we ask ourselves what exactly made our friend of such greatness in the face of her immediate confrontation? Then we have to say that because our friend tried to

explore life, one might say, to remedy the difficulties of this life in others in a self-evident way. She never had to ask herself whether she should intervene when she was able to help. Instead, she always had the same question before her soul: How can I best intervene? How can I learn the conditions so that I can intervene in the best possible way, so that I can do the best thing in such a way that it also benefits the people it should relate to?

This woman's heart, out of its original, elemental goodness, always knew how to find it.

We see, my dear friends, so many natures in life that are intent above all on changing the people they meet, on wanting to teach the people they meet something that should change these people. We see so many people saying: How can I help this or that person? And they actually only have their eye on how they can help themselves, because they cannot stand that this or that person is different from them. Our friend, Mrs. Gertrud Noß, was never of that kind. She never had the desire to make any person different from what he or she is. She never had the desire to reduce the difficulties that arise in relationships with people by first wanting to change the person before entering into a relationship with him or her. She knew all too well from her original wisdom how little one can actually change in life about people. But she also knew, and sensed it with a sure instinct, that people can still be changed, and that they change most of all when you don't want to change them, but at the appropriate moment do what you feel is right for that person at that moment. When we first transform our ability to help people into deeds, into a deed that corresponds to the person at that moment, we approach him without wanting to change him in this moment, if we do everything in such a way that we leave people as they are and do the right thing, perhaps the thing we ourselves do not want but what they want, then the deeds we perform in the context of life will also become causes for other people in certain directions. This is what is meant when it is said that we contribute most to changing the people who, according to our judgment, should be changed, when we do not want to change them at all, but when we do the right thing at the right moment.

My dear friends, when I myself often faced our friend Gertrud Noß in life, a thought arose in me that I felt was a matter of course precisely with regard to this woman. In the book in which I have summarized the thought forms that I had gained through my research into life up to the 1990s – I am referring to The Philosophy of Freedom – you will find a chapter that deals with the rhythm of life, with the transition of our morals and ethical principles into that which is expressed in life as the natural rhythm of life, where in man, as in a habit, what regulates his life relationships with other people comes to light, where it has become self-evident to man what he should do in this or that situation in life, so that he does not need to think about why he should do this or that, and yet does it in such a way that it becomes right in life. This must strengthen people's faith in life again and again, that there are people who have such a sense of life, who, I would say, always know in a nutshell what is necessary in life, who have a sense of morality and a sense of life. This is what was spread over our friend's entire being like an imprint, so that one could say that when one met Gertrud Noß without prejudice, one saw much that could awaken faith in the values and meaning of life. Those people who awaken faith in life and radiate certainty are the ones who most readily allow those sources to flow within them, so that they cannot be accused of having anything devious in what they do. It really takes a warped mind not to immediately recognize in Gertrud Noß, when she encountered someone, that what she poured out over the surface of her actions and behavior came from the very innermost part of her soul; she had the gift of putting soul into every word and every look. And a beautiful soulfulness was expressed in her actions and also in all her relationships, which she had to establish with people. This gives a sense of security, a sense of security in dealing with such people, to those who are allowed to get close to such people. Where could the thought or feeling arise in the minds of those who are straightforward when they have come close to Gertrud Noß: You are unsure about the feelings that this woman has for you? Well, they give you the certainty that what they give in the moment is also deeply rooted in all the following moments of life; they give you the certainty that if you can be connected to her soul once, you could never be abandoned by her soul again. Being with such people and forming a life bond with them gives life security, the security that life needs, and this security also arose when one was face to face with Gertrud Noß in the most sacred matters of her life. Yesterday I already mentioned how she did not join our spiritual movement out of blind faith and with a light heart, how she was perhaps even repelled by the first impressions of our spiritual movement, but how she then grew into this spiritual movement, and from the way she grew into it and how we got to know her within it, we may again have that certainty of life which we also need in our spiritual movement and which we must appreciate in our spiritual movement. It consists in the fact that man is connected with the spiritual world in a natural, elementary way and not in a sentimental-egoistic way. Gertrud Noß will never want to impose this teaching in any external way on those who are not initially attracted to it. Gertrud Noß knew how to talk about our teaching when it was right to do so, and she knew how to remain silent about our teaching when it was right to do so. That is also the beautiful, right rhythm of life.

And when we now look at what connected both those who were intimately and closely connected with our friend in life, who were closest to her, and those of us who were connected with her through a shared world view, when we look at that, one thought in particular comes to mind: The pain of the death of Mrs. Gertrud Noß.

This woman passed away from us at an early age. She was one of those people who make us think: what might have been in terms of a shared life together if we had been allowed to look into the sunny eye for longer, if we had been able to enjoy sunny company for longer, if we had been able to be with her for longer here in this life. She is, so to speak, one of the prematurely deceased. When we know her as we were able to get to know her, we say to ourselves: As she undoubtedly would have become more and more serene and serene, she could have done much, much for the inner well-being of those with whom she was connected during this earthly life. But she left us, and we remember, in the sense of our teaching, how this earthly life is followed by life in the spiritual worlds. We also consider how each earthly life, in the way it is spent, is the preparation for future earthly lives. And now we

ask ourselves: What was the state of mind of our dear friend with regard to one of the vital nerves of our teaching, with regard to repeated earthly lives?

I can imagine that there may be many people who, out of a certain vanity, might harbor the belief that they are closer to the teaching of repeated earthly lives than Gertrud Noß was, because they occupy themselves with this teaching much, much more with regard to their own lives. I believe I may say that nothing was further from our friend Gertrud Noss than thinking about herself. When considering repeated lives on earth, to think of herself as this or that embodiment, as this or that historical personality, and at the same time to think of Gertrud Noß – it is impossible. And why? It is impossible because our friend held this teaching far too sacred to link it directly with her own life. And in this, more than in her dragging this sacred teaching down into her personal life, I see the intimate familiarity with the spiritual life. Our friend had a solemn sense of the spiritual world in the highest sense, that solemn sense in which one can be sure that even in one's inmost heart the contemplation of the spiritual world can never be abused. That Gertrud Noß could ever drag down into the realm of personal fantasy that which is sacred to us was inconceivable, due to the character and noble nature of this friend, and anyone who came close to her must also have considered it inconceivable. This revealed a great certainty in our dealings with our friend Gertrud Noß.

That was her loyalty to what she had found within our spiritual movement. She is one of those who enrich our spiritual movement, who have something to contribute to it in the way of a secure, inner attitude of the soul, in, as I said yesterday, a straight, inner sense of truth. She knew and never ceased to know that as long as man is embodied in the physical body, he has to fulfill his duties in the earthly body, that he must not become alien to this life of the earth. And so she never lost her grounding, she was never one of those who want to live in the stars here on earth and then, because they do not respect the conditions of earthly life, get into all kinds of things, which a spiritual world view should never lead to. So what Gertrud Noß brought into our movement was, above all, a healthy, hearty, healthy soul life. And in this respect she is exemplary, undoubtedly exemplary for many.

My dear friends, we do not only learn from those who speak to us with words of teaching, we learn much more when we have to make ourselves learners. You could learn a lot from Gertrud Noß if you were just eager to learn, because life itself is an even greater teacher than any word or teaching. But life speaks modestly, in such a way that one must first prepare the ear of the soul to be able to hear. Dealing with Mrs. Gertrud Noß was a lesson, a deep lesson. And among the many things that the death of this noble woman should remind us of, so that they remain with us, is also that we should not pass up opportunities where life can be our teacher. One often speaks of balance in life. But in our times, we have forgotten how to feel this balance in life in the right way. You see, when we encounter what grows in the meadow, we will take it for granted that we can distinguish the beautiful flower from the less beautiful one, without wanting to blame the less beautiful flower for not being the more beautiful flower, because we see in the beauty of the flower not only the expression of what is directly before us, but the expression of divine-spiritual activity. We must really struggle to the realization that it is divine-spiritual work when so much beautiful work is expressed in a person, as it has been expressed in our friend. We must learn to form the concept of divinely gifted people again.

Yes, my dear friends, and then the thought of compensation comes, then we may well wonder, when such people have passed through the gate of death, what the compensation will be in such a case, and there we, like our friend, who passed through the earthly gate of death prematurely, has an earthly life behind her that touches us, especially when we speak of repeated earthly lives, so much so that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has given much, much to him who was attached to it. when we speak of repeated lives on earth, so touched that we say: This life had passed so that the one who was blessed with this life has added much, much of what can be carried over into a later life, great and beautiful, for further earthly development.

And how could we then escape the thought of the divine spiritual real wisdom of the world, when we see on the one hand people who appear to us to be divinely graced, and on the other hand people who show us how they take on the effort and work of life precisely because of this and seek out all possibilities to benefit from life and to create life forces. And how do we see how we can most intensely recognize, I would say, in such a person's work the significance of one earthly life for the following ones in reality. In what she did and how she did it, Mrs. Gertrud Noß expressed how she thought and felt about the connection between her present earthly life and the one to follow. And that is the healthy, firm standing in life and at the same time in spiritual vision. That is also what compelled me to utter the words at the cremation of Frau Gertrud Noß, that the traces she has left in our movement here during her life on earth will not be able to fade within our movement for so long as this movement itself exists. And just as we thought, when our dear Fritz Mitscher died, how he is a helper to us in his spirituality, so we also think so now, so we think, the best help for our spiritual movement will arise for us when such soul beings as Gertrud Noß were united to us. And if we should ever entertain the thought that our movement could perhaps be based on error or aberration, then we can always take comfort in the fact that souls of such health, such uprightness, such a sense of truth wanted to connect with our movement as Gertrud Noß did. And so we remain, we want to remain, closely, intimately connected to her. We only want to admit to ourselves that her loss in earthly life is deeply painful for us, that we do not want to be consoled by it. But we also want to admit to ourselves that we want to become worthy of having such souls among us who can give such certainty for the whole of human life.

We will no longer be able to look into her dear eyes, we will no longer have her wonderfully human kindness before our physical eyes, but we will remain united with her in our souls, because we have the certainty that we have found each other with her in such a way that we face her in such a way that she will not leave us. And that will be an important, essential, significant thing for us.

I would like to ask those who, even if only as the two representatives of those who were close to our movement in life as well as otherwise, were close to our Mrs. Gertrud Noß, the two of her relatives and those present among us today, I would like them to know that the union of the spirit that Gertrud Noß has sought will keep this love and loyalty for our friend, will always give her love and loyalty, that we cling to her with them, insofar as we have recognized her. I ask you to believe us, those of us who have met Gertrud Noß. And if pain, which should not be cured by easy consolation in this case either, must be experienced because we can no longer live in the physical proximity of a loved one, in which we would have liked to have continued to live, if such pain, which is so deeply justified in life, can be alleviated by sharing it, then I ask those who were so close to our dear Mrs. Gertrud Noß to believe that they will find fellow-bearers of this pain, fellow-bearers of this suffering, that they will not stand alone in humanity with their suffering. It is out of this spirit, my dear friends, that we begin to develop those thoughts that have become second nature to us in life, that, if we have been close to Gertrud Noß, are in our soul and should continue to live in our soul. Once more we let the thoughts pass through our soul, which I had to convey to our souls yesterday, when we stood before the earthly remains of our dearly beloved friend and saw her beautiful soul ascending into the spiritual world. It is a good feeling for all of us when we see such a soul ascending into the spiritual world, much as it was for Friedrich Rückert when he directed his thoughts to the soul of her who had preceded him in death. There Friedrich Rückert, who had drawn and shaped so much from the spiritual world, especially in terms of feelings and emotions, expressed a beautiful thought, and the thought arose in me when I had to think about how the heavenly-spiritual part of this woman united with a physical body, with a physical human life, through which she brought happiness to many, to bring about a grace-filled earthly existence. This union of the spiritual with the physical could present itself to the soul in the same way as it presented itself to the soul of a man as spiritual as Rückert, when he had to direct his thoughts to his wife who had preceded him in death:

I dreamt that I stood as a vine
In the ground of a grave,
The roots are directed towards the ground,
While the crown reaches for the sky.

And from the grave, through the root,
The lifeblood rises, which waters the vine,
Which, poured out through the vine's eyes,
Becoming solid tears, gives grapes.

Then a dove flies out of heaven,
And from the tearful vine's stem
She plucks the berry-rich grape
And carries it up where an angel
Smilingly receives it and in Eden's bower
Counts the tears from the land of want.

So we also felt how a spiritual dove united our friend's soul with life, and so we feel how this spiritual dove carries the spiritual seeds that she planted on earth, where an angel takes them smilingly and counts the tears from the land of shortcomings in the bower of Eden.

So let us, my dear friends, take up the thread of what we have made our own from the life of this woman, the thoughts that we will remain true to her in a loyal spiritual connection with her.

A bright human star
Faded from earthly vision;
It will shine in the spiritual splendor
shine in the eyes of the soul, which felt its beauty of light as a gift of life's happiness.

When did the joyful light of life shine brightest for us
from your faithful heart
? —
When did you create joy
the souls that needed joy
you invented.

When did your quiet
human greatness, shining with kindness, feel
life's most beautiful happiness?
When did you succeed in awakening the
warming light of happiness
on other people's paths through life.

So you yourself were happiness
For the souls that fate
In the struggle of life connected to you.
You carried the power of noble love
In your gaze and in your words,
In your work and in your thoughts.

Those who recognized you in the full force of life
In your worth,
It was revealed to him in you, How kind power and sense of truth From the depths of heart and soul Are embodied in human beings.

Those who followed your soul's release From bodily being and form, In holy awe, It was shown to them through you, How souls find each other in the spirit,
Who wanted to live striving as spirits.

You look at our sorrow;
We feel the mildness of Your gaze;
We feel the power of Your soul;
We need consolation in our suffering:
You Yourself console us
With loving spiritual words.

We are certain that you are near,
United with the power of your son,
Who now walks in the bright heights of the spirit
Towards you,
You will shine for us, not lost,
Another soul star in the spiritual realm.

When I last spoke to you here in this place, the person who is most intimately connected with this building was still among us: our dear Sophie Stinde.

You have commemorated the great, painful loss here, and in the time when Sophie Stinde's soul left us, you have evoked in your own souls those feelings that arose from the deep, intimate connection that existed between your souls and Sophie Stinde's soul in relation to our spiritual work. Nevertheless, my dear friends, I cannot resume these lectures here without mentioning the departure of Sophie Stinde's soul from the physical plane, which had such a profound impact on our lives. Only a few words are needed, for our souls, each one's soul, speaks to us so much when we think of the soul that has left us, and the more abundantly, the more fully perhaps the soul has to say to itself at this point, the shorter may be what is expressed with outer physical words.

My dear friends, for many years we here in the physical world were faithfully connected with this soul that had passed away from us in a way that we can say, in the highest sense of the word, was exemplary for us and to us. For the way in which Miss Stinde has placed herself in our spiritual endeavor is so connected with the deepest, most inner soul impulse of this personality, with that in this personality which, within this incarnation, constitutes its essential character of existence.

It was only a short time since we had begun our work in Central Europe, and our task was to establish this work in various places. In the house of Fräulein Stinde and her dear friend, Countess Kalckreuth, it was possible for me to speak the first intimate words to a community in Munich that was willing to receive them at that time. And from that moment on, Fräulein Stinde was with our work out of the very abundance of her beautiful will, was with our work in a sense that our work needs it.

For we must distinguish between two things. The content of our work must be taken from the spiritual world; if the earth is to reach its goal, it must belong to what will flow into the spiritual development of humanity in the course of future earthly ages. This is what we must humbly face in our soul. In our time we can be convinced of this content, or we can reject it. It is a matter that can be said to belong to something that may already now, but will certainly one day, flow into the spiritual development of humanity, even if our efforts, as they are being attempted by us in the present, should fail due to the resistance of souls that are too weak for our cause.

But working within our own circle, with those who strive with us to incorporate the spiritual content of our world view into the spiritual heritage of humanity, to bring this content to the souls and hearts of those who need it, is something else entirely within our society. There is no possibility of saying: if not now, then later. There is only the one possibility of committing oneself with one's whole, undivided soul. And anyone who is committed to this, who puts everything he has and can do at the service of the cause, as if this work were one of the most necessary things he has to do in life, can be said to have grasped the full meaning of how our work is to flow into the spiritual culture of the world through a socially organized circle.

For the time being, for the content of our world view, no goodwill is required of people; only the inner truth of the matter is needed. But it is true that under certain circumstances the matter can fail, and the time may lie further in the future when this content can be incorporated into the spiritual culture of humanity. There is nothing but understanding of the content, nothing but learning to recognize, there is no need to speak of trust, of this or that kind of will, there is only need to speak of the inner truth of the matter.

The situation is different when we look at the instrument through which this spiritual content is to enter the world. This has nothing to do with the truth content of our world view. But this truth must be carried into the present day in the mutual trust that the souls of the members have for one another, and the goodwill that is connected with the warmth and light of the cause must extend into that which, as if in a necessary stream of development, must be brought into the present day.

For those who, so to speak, have a special task to work on, there are many things to consider. The first thing is that they have the good will to gather together what karma has brought them in this incarnation up to the moment when they enter our spiritual house through the gate of our spiritual aspirations, so that they know how to transform and transmute everything that has presented itself to them in the present incarnation in order to put it at the service of our cause. Some will bring this, others that; some were capable when they came, others when they go. There is no path in the life of present-day humanity that does not lead to the center as if it came from the ends of a circle: to the place where the gate to that house stands.

And so was Fräulein Stinde. And she had important and essential things to bring, and she had goodwill, the best of intentions, to bring through our gate that which she has become with this incarnation. Among the many things we may remember in these days of the Christmas season, the world's earthly motto stands before our soul above all:

Revelation of divine powers in the heights
And peace on earth to men,
Who are of good will.

Yes, this soul was of good will. She had a goal in life when she came to us, and this goal was embraced by her artistic endeavors. A heartfelt artistic sense lived in her soul and expressed itself to all who came to know what this soul had attempted and created in the field of art through the heartfelt way in which she worked artistically. But it was of infinite value that she could bring this through the gate to our spiritual home. For that which blossoms in artistic fantasy may find its way more easily than from many other starting points to the spiritual secrets that must be brought down from the realms of imagination. And what this soul was able to experience, what it was able to acquire from art, it brought to us.

Only in this way was it possible to unfold that will, which then spreads and takes hold of many, that will to develop, which finds expression in this our building. Sophie Stinde was among the very first to whom the idea of this our building arose, and one can feel that we would hardly have found the way to this building from our Munich mystery thoughts if her strong will had not been at the starting point of the thought of this building.

A second thing, my dear friends, may come to our minds when we see Sophie Stinde's soul, which is intimately connected with the work and life in our society: her trust. Within the second, that is, within the context of where trust is necessary because cooperation is necessary, Miss Stinde can be an example to us. And where cooperation is necessary, mutual trust is necessary, quite independently of the teaching and the world view, which include the striving for truth and the striving for knowledge and not, for example, trust. But trust is part of working together.

Yes, those who knew how to work with Sophie Stinde were able to learn from her how the kind of trust that is needed for working together in our field is particularly special. I would like to say something here that I wish would sink into many souls so that they would fully understand it: When working together towards a certain goal, a goal that often only reveals itself to the outside world after a long time, that can only be manifested in the outside world after a long time, it is necessary to work together towards a goal that cannot be presented to others, but that wants to develop. People must work together who can trust each other to want to work together, even if the goal cannot be presented in a programmatic, abstract, theoretical way in a few sentences. Not trust in work, not trust in theories, but trust in souls, from which one feels and experiences that one will achieve with them what is to be achieved, even if one cannot yet determine it in the outer world, because it will show itself in the development itself. One must know, one is dealing with people who are not only able to grasp this deeper trust, which is not based on external formulations, but are also able to grasp the coexistence of souls that want to walk together, even if they do not know the goal. This goal will be the right one. That means: being connected to the living core of the work; that means: experiencing loyalty to the work in this core of life; that means: being selflessly connected to the work.

We will perhaps only agree with each other on the things that lie years ahead of us, which we would ruin now if we wanted to put them in front of us in an externally formulated way: you have to be able to say that to each other if you have trust in such a context, as our context should be. That such trust existed between them and Sophie Stinde was known to those who really got to know Sophie Stinde in this regard.

Thus, above all, the thought that comes to mind when we think about her is: because we know how she is with us in our souls, because we know how she belongs to those souls who, after passing through the gate of death, work in our midst with all the means of power that are then available to their souls and which are the flowering of what the souls have acquired here in earthly incarnation.

Their place in the external physical world will be empty in the future. But for those who have learned to understand her, this place will be the source of the idea of exemplary, dedicated, sacrificial work within our ranks. And this idea must live in particular in the rooms under the double dome, in the rooms where Sophie Stinde's soul already worked as her co-work during this incarnation on earth. If we grasp our relationship to her in the right sense, it will be impossible to turn our gaze to our forms without feeling connected to her, who first turned her gaze to him to whom she dedicated her own work, and in whom Sophie Stinde's soul will continue to work.

My dear friends, spiritual science cannot be there to dull the pain that weighs on our soul when we suffer a great loss, for pain is a world principle. And the great and the sublime in the world, as we have explained in various places in our world view, arise as blossoms and fruits from the mother soil of pain. If we were to sin against pain, we would sin against the meaning of the world. But we may look up to the words that she spoke as Sophie Stinde's spirit, the words that we can learn from her: “I will be with you as I was with you! Our relationship will have changed as a result of passing through the gate of death, changed only, not changed, and one may think that our understanding of the connection with the departed souls may then increase our overall understanding of the human connection with the spiritual world. For the understanding that we may have of such personalities as Sophie Stinde is interwoven with and sustained by love and mutual trust.

I do not think that there will ever be a significant occasion within this building where we will not have to remember how Sophie Stinde's soul has prevailed at the starting point of this reasoning, how she has connected with it. Of course, souls of this kind, who clearly recognize the task that is inwardly incumbent upon those who unite with our work, must accept many misunderstandings and go through many difficulties; they are not easily understood by others, misunderstood by many. This must be borne. But there are enough souls in our ranks who, in their deepest inner being, carry a flame of love, a beautiful flame of love, which shines towards Sophie Stinde's soul. The flames of love that Sophie Stinde's nature has kindled in the hearts of our members appear to me especially before the soul.

Just think how many a soul has searched, has come to her, and with those words that it was able to speak, has found that love, loyalty and friendship that such a soul needs. And then the flames of love are kindled by such love, loyalty and friendship, and they are especially kindled to a lasting degree where they flare up in the right way, where they can be kindled by a soul that seizes what it has to seize for the world in the highest sense of duty, and whose sense of duty never speaks, even when it must speak in the negative, without this sense of duty being crossed by the mitigating love. We must never let ourselves be tempted by love to dispense with duty. Love must be warmed by duty, duty must be strengthened by love. This could be seen in Sophie Stinde's soul. And so she also ruled within these rooms, so she ruled for the benefit of our building, and so the spirit of her soul will continue to rule as the soul of our building. May the souls be quite numerous who look with understanding at the way Sophie Stinde's soul is connected to this, our spiritual work.

My dear friends, I did not want to speak again within these rooms, where Sophie Stinde's soul ruled, without first mentioning her. If we loved her when she walked among us in the physical body, we will love her as a spirit that warms and illuminates us without end. Let us seek her among those to whom we look up with particular loyalty in the times when the spiritual realms shine even more brightly than at other times of the year. Let us seek in particular those effective forces that emanate from Sophie Stinde's soul, and in relation to which we want to make ourselves so worthy that they can always be effective through our work, especially in these rooms.

My dear friends!

Yesterday I had to remember the deep sense of satisfaction I felt when I was able to return to the site of our building after a long time. This satisfaction was tinged with a bitter note of sorrow because, among the dear friends who have worked faithfully and with infinite devotion on the progress of this our workplace, Miss Wilson is no longer here on the physical plane. She undoubtedly belongs to those of our dear friends whose thoughts cannot fade away for those left behind on the physical plane, simply because these thoughts are prepared through deeply appropriate, selfless work, and cooperation with those who are serious, sincere, and honest about this spiritual movement that is necessary for the world. Those who knew Miss Wilson well are only too aware of what the movement, in so far as it is embodied in the physical plane, has lost by Miss Wilson's departure from the physical plane. And I feel impelled to say that a deep pain has pierced the souls of all those who learned of Miss Wilson's passing from the physical plane in recent times through the messages of friends here. Miss Wilson placed herself in our movement in her infinitely unassuming way, but with such deep understanding and such earnest devotion, not only in so far as this movement is a current of spiritual life that wants to absorb the soul, but Miss Wilson also placed herself in our spiritual movement with the deepest understanding of what this movement should be and wants to be and must be in the whole course of development, namely in the spiritual development of humanity. And with regard to this kind of understanding of our movement as a spiritual world movement, many of us will have known Miss Wilson as an exemplary personality in our ranks, and in this sense those who knew her will always turn to her in thought, but will also feel their way up to her, since she now has to continue her existence in the spiritual worlds. Miss Wilson energetically joined our movement by helping wherever she could. Miss Wilson was one of those natures who took up our movement with such a strong impulse that she was able to see beyond what could so easily cause divisions and splits in our movement due to the prejudices of our time in particular, but which can never happen and should not happen if there are enough souls who, like Miss Wilson, know how to strive primarily for that which flows as a spiritual impulse through our movement, to strive for it as something higher, as something that unites, in the face of all that comes into our ranks from the prejudices of the time. In this respect, too, Miss Wilson is undoubtedly a model personality in our ranks. And we want to hold fast and true to the ideas that began to connect us with Miss Wilson, so that this connection can never end. In the sense of what our spiritual convictions can derive from our views, we may say and I may express it, that we shall be able to count Miss Wilson, now working from the spiritual world, among those souls whom we can always look upon as collaborators in the most beautiful and sublime sense. And great, truly great is the pain that permeates those who knew her, because we no longer have her among us on the physical plane, because we can no longer live on the physical plane here in the beautiful aura of sincere, friendly disposition with which Miss Wilson was among us. But we will build firmly and securely on the thoughts that connect us with her as a loyal, dear, highly esteemed colleague from the spiritual world. We will remain loyal to her, as we are convinced that she will remain loyal to us, and that we will be united with this soul for all time through our mutual respect and finding each other, for which human souls can unite after they have found each other.

Furthermore, my dear friends, I have to inform you of the sad news that another dear co-worker soul left the physical plane in the last few days, so those who worked with this soul will no longer be found here among the co-workers on the physical plane either. Our dear friend Dr. Ernst Kramer was killed by two shots on the battlefield of the Somme on July 1, and succumbed to his grave wounds on July 10. Many of us will remember the great hopes we had for the work that we could rightly expect from Dr. Ernst Kramer, who had been among our colleagues in the humanities for a number of years and more recently among the colleagues working on the Dornach building. His penetrating mathematical mind, his mathematical circumspection, his quick way of grasping a technical situation and fitting it into the whole, is what will remain unforgettable for those who worked with him and what justifies our hope that he will be united with us in the work that we are granted to do, will be united with us in the work that we, insofar as we are granted to do it, want to do together with all those in the future who want to be united with us on the physical and on the spiritual plane.

Today our souls are filled with a painful sense of loss. We mourn the death of two friends, both of whom were deeply connected to what is to be achieved here in the spirit of the progressive spiritual life of humanity. The sorrowful events of our time have taken our friend Ludwig from us a few days ago, and yesterday our dear friend de Jaager passed very quickly through the gates of death.

In both our friends, we have lost workers within our spiritual life for the physical plane, whose work is faithfully carved into the structure erected here on Dornach Hill, friends of our endeavors and friends of our hearts, who have worked with deep love on the work that is so dear to us all. And so, in them, we lose collaborators of our cause in the physical realm; but we also lose two people who have become dear to us through the years of their lives that have flowed into our lives. When we experience the death of close friends, it suddenly becomes clear to us, suddenly an awareness of what they were to the world, what they did in the world, while we, as long as they walk among us, take what is graciously given to us with their lives more for granted. We, from the point of view of spiritual coexistence, which may be interrupted by death but is never separated, look at death as the introduction to a part of life that is, of course, different from the other kind of life that takes place in the physical. Although we may always be karmically connected with those with whom we are brought together in our earthly existence, we must also remember that in each new earthly existence, new threads of existence are spun with the people with whom we are brought together; and we feel these new threads of existence. When they change so much from year to year, from month to month, from week to week, from day to day, then we take it more for granted. But when what has been taken for granted comes more sharply into consciousness through the vision of the gate of death, then we feel the difference that exists between the experience that runs from day to day and that experience which lies beyond death and which, precisely through the power that spiritual science gives us, we can make into a truly living experience, one that is, in the deepest sense, imbued with the seriousness of existence. We feel the difference between this life and the one to come so that what was fluid in earthly existence becomes, as it were, fixed, so that we look back through the span of time to something that has become a human being to us, whereas previously it became something new for us every day. And the sight of the gate of death remains harrowing from this point of view as well, because we must first find our bearings for that time of preparation, which we have to go through, and after which we will find again those who have approached us, so that we may continue the threads in spiritual life that have spun themselves here in earthly life. Spiritual science will thus be well suited to connecting us more vividly and intimately, because eternally, with those who approach us in life. It will certainly not be able to lead us to trivial consolation for the justified suffering we feel when we see the gate of death before us in such a situation. Because, my dear friends, the riddle of life is not solved with theories. Life's riddles can only be solved through life itself. And every death presents us with a riddle, a riddle of life, a test of life; a riddle that we must solve while we are alive, a test that we must pass while we are alive – a riddle that, by solving it, we make ourselves more worthy of the All-Life, a test by which we learn to prove all the bonds of love that we are blessed to to tie with other like-minded souls or souls that have been brought to us by their karma. And only in the face of death do we realize what a blessing it was from the wise guidance of the world's existence that we were brought together with this or that person, with whom karma lovingly brought us together. One would like to say how mysterious the two deaths we are now under the impression of are. One has occurred in the atmosphere that surrounds us today in such a painful way, surrounded by a roar that humanity will first have to understand, learn to understand, in order to realize what has taken place through the occurrence of this painful event. And again and again we have to feel what a riddle of life stands before us when we see that today young human lives are being claimed by humanity itself. Thus, I would say, stands that which touches us painfully in the background of the one death.

And how different the other death is! Peace surrounded the dear dead yesterday, when I could only meet him after he had already passed through the gate of death, peace that radiates from a person even when life has been cut short in this way by karma, when, as in this case, a warm and earnestly striving human life gives up its physical body, as I would like to say, in voluntary conclusion of the earthly existence that one has been given for this time by one's earthly karma. And so it is a double riddle of life that we are facing. Not because spiritual science made us powerless to interfere, as in every such case death is only a transformation of life, as in every such case death is also only a change in our friendship, but because the solution that spiritual science certainly gives us in a satisfying way in such a case, because this solution first wants to be experienced.

Our friend Ludwig – what we could see of him through his life on earth, through the years he was with us, was truly able to show how a person from less than easy circumstances, who has faced many trials in life, can connect with the innermost nerve of our spiritual striving through a deep trait of his nature. Ludwig was a person whose innermost nature shaped all his thoughts and aspirations in such a way that, to a certain extent,

the idea of karma, the idea of human destiny conceived in the sense of karma, was always in the background. Without one being able to say that Louis was a fatalist, his soul was such that it always accepted with a certain peaceableness what fate brought it, and despite this connection to the powers of fate, he was always deeply interested in what life brought him. That was a fundamental trait in the character of the one who has now left us for the physical world: he accepted what life brought with a strong and steady attitude, but he was also able to give himself to the joys and exaltations of life with intense interest and understanding. I have just been given a “Abendlied” (evening song) that our friend Ludwig wrote, and we would like to remember him by reciting it.

I stand on the mountain summit,
I spread my arms.
The treetops are burning,
The sun goes home tired.
Its setting gilds the lands,
Its setting gilds the air.
The slanting rays' garment
Glows and glitters in the fragrance.
And all around it grows still, oh so still,
Yet so far and so near
The beings and things sing only one thing:
Gloria, Gloria!

And in such a deep understanding of feeling, our friend also absorbed everything that was to come out of the building and, so to speak, knew how to incorporate into his own destiny the destiny of our movement, insofar as it is embodied in the forms of our building, and he faithfully carved his diligence and love for our cause into these forms. The after-effect of this industry, the effect of this love, really radiated from his soul when he said goodbye to go to those places from which so many hopeful lives today do not return for this incarnation. Like a shadow of this intervention of fate in his life on earth, our friend Ludwig sensed what was about to happen to him in the subdued words of farewell at that time. Those who were close to him, who were able to get to know him, will hold his memory dear and precious. But also all those in whose midst he worked here, all those in whose midst he stood with his spiritual striving, united by like-minded spiritual work, will turn their thoughts to him faithfully and lovingly. For we are united with those who unite with us, namely also in faithful striving within our spiritual life, which we have chosen out of the contemplation of human karma.

And the way in which our friend Ludwig has joined the circle of loyal workers here is attested by the other poem of the two that were just handed to me, which he wrote as a farewell to his comrades in August/September 1914, that is, to those who were drawn to the same fields that he was later forced to go to, who had to leave, as he later had to, the workplace that had become dear to them. These are the words he gave these who went to war before him in his heart:

From the peace haven into the wide world,
which is engulfed in war all around,
So those who are joined here go,
There, there into the land.

The heavy hour of parting strikes,
Parting draws near.
Each one feels in the bottom of his soul:
Stand fast at your post!

Once more we look back
At forest and river and meadow,
Where we were united in the purest happiness
in the bosom of nature
So many hours united in faithfulness
Laughing, joking, thinking, weeping.

The bonds of memory entwine
Around that which moves us,
Which, like a piece of fairyland
Everyone cherishes within.

And when the world is writhing in pain
And when it steams in the blood
The great, difficult struggle
will ultimately bring us peace.

The die is cast,
The iron clinks,
The battle cry rings out,
The bullet whizzes.
What must be will happen now
In those pure ether heights,
Where we shall meet again one day.

And in this spirit, which was in his soul, we want to be faithfully united with this dear friend who has now gone through the gateway of death.

Our dear friend de Jaager has been called away from an artistic life in the most eminent sense. When we look at this death that has occurred so quickly, we will, however, above all, insofar as we can say that we have before our soul de Jaager's earthly life, bathed in true beauty, we will be able to experience a feeling of deep peace even in this painful hour. De Jaager was an artist with every fibre of his soul, but an artist who gave birth to all art authentically from a deeply pious perception and fulfilment of life. When you stood in front of de Jaager's sensitive creations, so full of thoughts and feelings in the most beautiful sense, you could feel how this soul searched for an appropriate embodiment of what it sensed, as if in a vision, on the fields where her soul's gaze was directed, and where souls encounter the effects, ripples and undulations of the great riddles of existence, encountering those souls who feel the urge to pour what they see in artistic form, to pour it into forms, into artistic experience. And when, as in de Jaager's work, the soul's will creates a connecting link between the spiritual, which it senses, beholds, and the physical, which the physical eye can see and on which physical life is focused, then this artistically shaped vision is imbued with a very special magic when we see it in connection with such shy, beautiful and profound reverence for life, for the very life that appears so deeply mysterious to the spiritual scientist, but whose secrets we want to solve with our earthly existence. An artistic nature that treated all life with reverence, that was respectful of all existence, and whose reverence for life and respect for existence was expressed so beautifully in everything she created, in every thought she harbored, in every impulse with which she wanted to imbue her art. We looked, my dear friends, into the wise face, permeated with feeling-thoughts and thought-feelings, looking vividly into the world, and we will never be able to fade from our souls how gently devout and yet deeply reverent that eye looked into the riddles of existence. And we must always remember how earnestly and sincerely worthy this hand always wanted to be to shape what the contemplative eye saw and sensed of the riddles and secrets of life.

Oh, my dear friends, when we see such a life, which is so prematurely cut short, and to which one would like to attach so many, many hopes for life, hopes for the general world, hopes for our own spiritual striving, when we see that hanging before the gate of death, then, then spiritual science encourages us to look for the positive and not for the negative. The idea of karma, the idea of fate illuminated by karma, is particularly meaningful to us in the face of such a life. All that lived in de Jaager's art, what lived in his artistic sensibility, it is good to try to lovingly engage with it, hardly to be separated from two elements that perhaps seem to be connected by tragedy in this case, by the tragedy of life, but which we nevertheless want to look at with the same reverence and the same reverence for life with which de Jaager looked at life. When the power that can arise from a whole human life, perhaps from a long human life and its fulfillment, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a long human life, is combined with a more intense development for this existence, when this power, which can flow from a what otherwise a long life gives; if, in other words, the strength that we gain from a full life on earth combines, through its seriousness, through its diversity, with what must flow from the warmth, from the idealism, from the vision of the first half of life, and so what would otherwise permeate the two halves of life is used by pouring the strength of one half of life over both. What can live in a person in this way lived in Jaager's life, who in the thirty-third year of this incarnation passed through the gate of death. And it lives in his art. We look to him as to a person who took that which otherwise permeates a whole life into the first half of life. And we see this as the meaningful, as the particularly meaningful, as the extraordinarily thought-filled outpouring of his artistic endeavors. And we also saw this in the loving, faithful devotion with which he carved his skill into the forms of our building; he felt connected to our work, to our ideals, through the power of his own work, the power of his own ideals. It is precisely through such feelings that we will truly give life to the thought that must now, from this hour on, replace the other thought that was so dear to us: to be allowed to have this soul in our circle to fulfill the hopes and longings that we have for our movement. A tenderness had been poured out upon de Jaager's existence precisely because of what I described as the tragic in this life. And this tenderness was felt by those who were close to this dear friend. And this tenderness will live on in the loving, faithful memories that we want to preserve for our friend. His spiritual work will become one with our work, with our efforts and aspirations. We want to be inseparable from his will and often think how we must be compensated for what he would have achieved by standing physically beside us and working with us, what we see as flowing down to us from spiritual heights as long as we ourselves are determined by karma to work, strive and create on this physical plane.

And so let us be faithful companions to those who were particularly close to these two deceased. Among us, my dear friends, is our dear member Mrs. de Jaager, who is standing at the gate of death of the one with whom she was able to hope to spend a long, long time on this physical plane. Let us unite our thoughts and feelings with those of our dear member Mrs. de Jaager, and in this hour let us imbibe everything what can arise in our soul in terms of loyal, warm, loving feelings for the two who have passed through the gate of death, what can arise in us at the thought, which may also arise in us, of how they will be received by those who have gone before us from our ranks into the spiritual world. Let us think of ourselves together with these souls in a truly spiritual sense. But let us also allow the power of this thinking to become the power of true love, which can connect us with such dear friends who were connected with us in life, beyond the portal of death, beyond whom we think of being connected with in eternal time periods, we continue what has been initiated through that which brought us together here in earthly life. Let us carry the love that has united us here with those whom we will no longer see physically, but whom we want to take into our thoughts all the more vividly, so that our thoughts flow to them and connect us with them unceasingly.

A much-cited American coined the phrase some time ago: No one is irreplaceable here on earth. This testifies that everyone can be fully replaced by another in relation to their position immediately after their death. It must be said: how miserable a world of ideas can be, when it can lead to such thoughts and feelings. Those who, from the foundations that can be built from a more intense feeling for the human context of life, face the mystery of death, will actively feel the opposite feeling in their soul.

We have been looking back on the deaths of dear friends, deaths that have touched our hearts, very deeply, for the relatively short existence of our anthroposophical spiritual movement. We have seen friends pass through the gate of death who were allowed to live their lives through, as they say, a normal number of decades on earth, and we have seen young friends pass through the gate of death. In the quiet peace of a calm environment, the one has gone; the storms of today's world have also torn many, many souls from our ranks, others have passed away from the storm-tossed life through the gate of death. And as we cast a sensitive glance at the passing of our dear friends, so will we undoubtedly, especially on this day, which so painfully reminds us that we have already been conducting our work for a year without our dear, precious Sophie Stinde here on the physical plane, so will we undoubtedly, especially on this day, the other word, the other feeling will struggle out of the depths of our souls: For the physical plane, every human being who passes through the gate of death is irreplaceable. And even if it often seems otherwise to the superficial eye, one need only look at the souls of those who were karmically connected with the dead in one way or another, and one will realize that each one is irreplaceable.

While we would do well to take such words to heart, we look up to the spiritual world into which the dead person enters through the gate of death. We look up to this spiritual world as we may look up when not only does our soul come alive to that which spiritual science can give us, but when our being itself becomes active life in the spiritual science. Do we not already know comparatively from our physical life that we can only understand, really understand, that being in whose own existence we carry something akin, something echoing? Understanding of a being is only possible if something lives in us that also lives in the other being. We acquire the concepts and ideas of how alive a person's life is and how that person's life remains alive when he passes through the gate of death. But we should also endeavor to make the concepts and ideas that spiritual science gives us more and more alive in our souls. For only in this way does something enter into the life of our souls that also lives in the souls of those who have shed their physical shells and live in the spiritual world itself with an unclouded view through physical organs. And we shall gradually learn what it means to develop understanding for our dear departed if we make spiritual science the living source in our own soul, for the essence then becomes part of our own being, which is the element of life for them, the dead. No longer, when we acquire an understanding of their life element, do they then need to look over at the souls, at the hearts that they have left behind here, so that they must perceive: Oh these souls, oh these hearts down there, they lack the understanding that they must have when they look up at us with a look that we can answer them! Just as one can only get to know a being here on the physical plane if one is able to delve into its world, so we can only be in understanding with our dead if we have an inner life in the conceptions of those worlds in which they find themselves.

This, my dear friends, seems to me – and not only to me – to be a reminder from those dead to whom we look with love, who have risen from our ranks into the spiritual worlds, a reminder from them, because they now know from their own experience what it means for the whole world when people recognize the nature of the spiritual worlds. And we may indeed have progressed so far in our study of spiritual science that we hear our souls speaking with urgent words the words spoken to us from the spiritual worlds by our dear dead: “Recognize the spiritual world!” For among the many things that will come of this for humanity is that the dead and the living will be able to form a unity.

I know that we think in the spirit of many of our dear departed, especially in the spirit of Sophie Stinde, as she is thinking now, when we write this admonition into our souls today, and when we add so many other thoughts that can now become us, if we take in all seriousness and in full depth what spiritual science is supposed to be for us.

Perhaps I may refer to the fact that it has often been my duty to speak about the obligation to love in view of the recent death of dear departed members of our movement at their funeral or cremation. I may say: Such moments bring the thought particularly to mind, what it means to speak words under the kind of responsibility that arises when it is known: Not only in general is there a spiritual world, but in the concrete, the one with whom you have worked here to affirm the existence and nature of spiritual worlds looks down on you. To bear witness to the truth in such moments and in the moments that arise from them, to be aware of the community in this truth between the living and the dead, that is one of the heart and soul achievements of the spiritual scientific world view, belongs to that which flows through the spiritual-scientific movement from the livingly felt mystery of death. And we, my dear friends, may all, all be permeated by this feeling, by the feeling of our community, which we cultivate here as living beings in the physical body with the living who have passed through the gate of death, with the living in the light of the spiritual world and in spiritual life. And when we develop the feeling of that responsibility towards the knowledge of the spiritual worlds, which arises from the consciousness: Here we commemorate the spiritual world, and there are the spiritual eyes that look down and examine how we stand in relation to the truth of the world, there are the spiritual ears that listen to whether truth or lie dwells in our hearts, — if we develop this feeling in concrete community with those who have worked side by side with us here and who now continue to work with us with the currents of our soul, then, then the spiritual-scientific worldview, the spiritual-scientific movement, will become that living thing that builds the bridge between worlds, between those in our time and the eternal future, between which no bridge can be built in any other way.

And when we develop such feelings, when we truly awaken such feelings in our souls, then we also feel the karmic connection in a special way when we have been close to someone who has passed through the gateway of death in one way or another. And then, through those subtle, fine revelations that always exist between the spiritual world and our souls, we gradually learn to sense them — the voices of our dead, especially those who were karmically connected to us in a very special way. We experience them in the way just described, by directing our thoughts to them and, in the inner soul atmosphere and soul aura that which these thoughts convey to us, in a perhaps quiet, quite intimate, but nevertheless gradually perceptible way, we sense how they live on in us, those who have passed through the gateway of death, how they live with us, how they participate in our destiny, but how at the same time they give their strength to everything that is perhaps best in ourselves and can become of us in the working of the world. And so, starting from such feelings and thoughts, it becomes more and more possible for us to transform the abstract feelings towards death, which must become more and more widespread in our materialistic time, back into vividly concrete ones, to be allowed to be together spiritually and soulfully with those who have left us as physical personalities for a while, until we follow them through the gate of death. And perhaps it is a message from our dead to us when I say that we should be aware of the invigoration of earthly existence beyond the concept of death in the direction of the sanctification of this earthly existence, in that we take spiritual science with the seriousness that is necessary when we feel: Our dead are watching us, hearing our most intimate thoughts and our true or false presence in the realizations of spiritual science.

It feels like a message from the dearly departed that the conceptual world of the spirit must be revealed to humanity in general. For how does it cut to the heart, especially today, especially in our present time, when one hears the words from there or from there, from sides that many people even see as called, that countless people see as called, when one hears the words from such sides in this sad time often today: one owes it to the dead to continue what is going through the world in such a gruesome way today! If we recognize the attitude of the dead as I have characterized it, then we also know that the worst aspect of materialism is that the mystery of death is desecrated in our time, when people bring death into the world, in that the passions of the living invoke those who have passed through the gates of death. |

Let us honor and love our dear dead, my dear friends, by trying to bring living spiritual life into all the places where we are placed, one and the other, in our earthly existence. In this way, we also carry spiritual life into all world existence according to our ability, and we will be most united with our dear dead precisely in our zeal, in our devotion to a spiritual-scientific worldview. And I know that I also speak in the spirit of Sophie Stinde, who has now been in the spiritual world for a year, when I say these words, which have been spoken today in her memory and that of the others close to us and those who have passed through the gate of death, especially on this day. If on this day I try to awaken in you the awareness that in the work for the spiritual scientific world view, there are always those great, but also those intimate moments for our soul, in which our soul knows: Now you are not alone: the soul is with you, the soul to whom you were close when it spoke with the organs of the physical body, when it looked at you with the eyes of the physical body, when you were allowed to look into its physical eyes. You are close to this soul now, the soul you approached then, the soul you accompanied to the gate of death, the soul you mourned when it had to turn away from physical existence. You knew her, you loved her, she was dear to you; you continue to know her, you continue to love her, she continues to be dear to you. And since you accompanied her to the gate of death, only then did the nature of your being with her change; for you feel how she is around you, how she is with you.

Let us, my dear friends, on this anniversary of the death of our dear Sophie Stinde, permeate ourselves with such thoughts, and let us remember in such thoughts all those who have passed through the gate of death from our ranks, and who will all meet with her, because all were united with her by their common spiritual striving. And let us seek to be close to them all through the most intimate phases of our soul, united with them by the same yearning, the same striving for the spiritual world.

Most of the friends who have combined their work with the construction here were also united in their work with our friend Fleinrich Mitscher, who recently left the physical plane. They all know that we have lost the third link within that dear and loyal community, after Fritz Mitscher and our dear Mrs. Noss, who have previously passed away into the spiritual world. I do not need to say much in memory of Heinrich Mitscher, because there are a large number of friends here who, from a relatively long and beautiful working relationship, will feel what needs to be said in connection with Heinrich Mitscher.

Heinrich Mitscher was with us here from the very beginning of the construction of this building in Dornach, and how fortunate it was for this building, that for many things – especially the artistic natures united with this building will feel this in the same way – that for the work of this building we were able to have precisely this artistic force. In this incarnation, Heinrich Mitscher was a peculiarly constituted artistic nature, an artistic nature of whom one could say: This personality was first and foremost an artist, not a painter, not an artist in any other specialized field, but an artist first and foremost. Such natures have the peculiarity that within the present-day art world, the present-day artistic endeavor, they sometimes find it very difficult to find the path of life that is right for them. Those who, through a richer spiritual disposition, have artistic impulses in general, artistic impulses of organizational power, sometimes find it difficult to cope with today's specialization. But - and especially when the opportunity arises to develop general artistic skills, as is the case with the performance of this building - then such strengths are in the right place. And we felt that, with Heinrich Mitscher working here among us with his strong organizational skills, with his suggestive power in many respects, through which he knew how to convey intentions to other friends, with his strong will, which is suited to enforce what was intended. Above all, artistic natures are needed here, and Heinrich Mitscher was just that. Therefore, the services he has rendered to the construction cannot be praised highly enough.

In this construction, much has been done by dear, expensive friends, of which the world in general may not know much in the individual, specific case. Much loyal and devoted work is embodied here in what the eye sees. Much of the spirituality of Heinrich Mitscher, which was designed for greatness, is in this building. And his will was undivided in the sense of the building during the time when he devoted his strength to it. He was more inwardly connected with this building than with any other link in the anthroposophical movement. This was a consequence of his peculiarly artistic nature, and it will always be a sad memory for me to see Heinrich Mitscher say goodbye to this place of work here in the first days of the outbreak of the war. During the entire period in which his energies were devoted to the sad events now intervening in the development of mankind, he always knew how to put the right man in the right place. And the esteem in which he is held by all those who have recognized his value within the community that is carrying out this work has also been accorded to him in the circles in which he has then entered to engage in a very different kind of activity. To be known and to be connected in life with such natures is an extraordinary gain of life for those who are. For this acquaintance includes the feeling of a real individuality, inwardly willing and thinking in a certain way. In recent times, the word has been misused many times for all kinds of things, but one can still feel its good content, its good essence. One must then say: Those who have come to know Heinrich Mitscher have come to know a real individuality. Individualities are much rarer in today's world than one might think. Therefore, having the company of an individuality is a blessing and a gain in life. One must only understand correctly in such things. Certainly, some sharp, some cutting words could come from Heinrich Mitscher, but never was such a sharp, cutting word used other than in holy enthusiasm for the cause. And those who knew this individuality knew that behind the sometimes rough form, something tremendously fine, something from precisely artfully formed and artfully willing worlds, actually emerged.

Now, like so many of the present day, whose karma is connected in the narrower sense with these present events, Heinrich Mitscher has also hit the ball and he has left us. We may have the feeling, my dear friends, that just as the other members of the Mitscher-Noss family, this soul can also be a source of help and strength for us, especially from the spiritual worlds. And the sister who is in our midst may know and be assured that those who have recognized her brother's value, have experienced her brother's value and friendship, will feel with her in a brotherly-sisterly way and will faithfully carry the memory of this our dear friend. As I said, I do not need to say much about this, because in this case, too, the best is in the souls that have recognized the value of a friend's soul, an artist's soul, a loyally working soul.

Another thought that I would like to mention must be even briefer, my dear friends, because it is not permissible for me to speak at length when the event I am speaking about is one that is extremely close to me personally. But even in this case, even if I only speak a few words, these words must, as is necessary in this case, be spoken from the most personal feelings and emotions, so that these words, with their personal tone, find an independent echo in the hearts of many friends who are united here. Among the many recent losses in the physical realm, is that of Dr. Steiner's sister, Miss Olga von Sivers, who will remain in the loving memory of many of us as a true friend and a soul most beautifully united with our movement. Whoever saw it will not forget the lovely, beautiful embodiment of the figures that Olga von Sivers was able to portray for our mysteries. Who will not remember the quiet, reserved way in which this personality worked within the circles of our society.

Olga von Sivers was one of those members –– I may say –– who has been connected with our movement in a very specific way from the very beginning. She rejected in the most comprehensive sense everything that did not come from the occult truth, the occult impulse, the occult insight, from that strictness that we strive for, from that purity with which we should look at things. One can say: our movement, my dear friends, was, because one must always tie historical to historical, interspersed with other movements in the most diverse ways. One or the other soul even found its way out of other occult societies and theosophical movements with difficulty.

Olga von Sivers was one of those personalities who were never attracted to anything else. And so one could feel all the more closely connected to her, faithfully. In the place to which she found herself assigned, she cultivated in intimate circles what, starting from this movement, must be considered appropriate for spiritual life in terms of the needs of the present and the near future. She was so quiet in her appearance, so gentle in her actions, and so energetic in her inner life, although she kept to herself, that her connection with our movement was particularly specific.

When the war broke out, she had, in addition to the further care she faithfully provided for the anthroposophical cause in St. Petersburg and in Russia in general, she had devoted her energies to the Samaritan service of war, had had to let the heavy loss of her brother, who fell on the battlefield, pass through her soul, had consumed her energies, was inspired to the end by the hope of the spiritual court, which was almost no longer a hope for her because she no longer considered it realizable: to be united with all that is forming around this structure.

As I said, I am forbidden from saying more by the fact that I myself have lost so much, especially with regard to this personality. And I may also say here: It is my deepest conviction that those who have come to know the value and essence of this personality will keep her in the most loyal memory and will sympathize that it is difficult not to be allowed to know this personality in the future at the side of her sister in our circle here on the physical plane. She too will continue to help us faithfully from the spiritual world.

My dear friends!

Our thoughts today, which are connected with the fact that five years ago today we laid the foundation stone of our building here in this place, were interrupted by the sad news that one of the oldest members of this area, our dear Mrs. Hahn, left the physical plane this morning. And I truly need not say much to stir the appropriate feelings in those of our dear friends who have known Mrs. Hahn. And those who knew her, who really knew her, truly loved her very, very much. We who knew her see before us her gentle, quiet nature, but precisely because we knew her, we knew how much strong, internalized power was in this quiet nature. And we had ample opportunity, through the long years during which Frau Hahn was connected with us at the side of our dear Mr. Hahn, to feel deeply satisfied with the intense bond with our movement through this soul, which has now left the physical plane.

In her deepest soul she had absorbed that which speaks through spiritual science. She had grasped it, one may say, in the whole breadth of her extensive emotional life. And what spoke particularly deeply through her, she had found the possibility everywhere to tie that which revealed itself to her through spiritual science to her deeply inward, spirit-given, and we may say in the truest sense of the word, pious soul nature. She was one of those souls who did not feel any contradiction between her original, elementary inclination towards spirituality, towards piety, and towards devotion to the spirit, and what, one might say, should come as a bright light to illuminate the spiritual world through spiritual science. One of the qualities of this good soul, which manifested itself particularly in her attitude towards our spiritual scientific movement in the most beautiful way, was her striking loyalty to the movement, that loyalty which emerged in the beautiful nuance that it did not merely represent an adherence to something familiar in the past, but an ever new experience. One could see in this soul how true loyalty to a cause consists in the fact that it can be revitalized every day, every hour, through the inner strength of the cause and through the heartfelt connection with the cause.

And so, when looking back, the soul of our dear the dear soul of our Mrs. Hahn, the beautiful picture of her truly held in the spiritual sense of her expectation of death, an expectation of death that knew how to take this event, which cuts so deeply into human life, as a transformation of life, to whom it was natural to take this event as a transformation of life, to whom it was natural to enter through a gate into another form of life. And one could see in this soul how important it is for a person to have such a possibility of being in the spirit, even if severe suffering, as was the case here, had been going on for the last weeks, months, and even years. It is wonderfully symbolic of the beautiful picture that emerges of this faithful and loving soul that one may recall the fact, which is probably rare in human life: On the day when our dear Mr. Hahn and our dear Mrs. Hahn united in the bond of life, as on their wedding day in 1906, they came in the evening to the second lecture, the second public lecture that I was allowed to give in Basel on our spiritual science. The entry into our movement, my dear friends, was the wedding celebration of our two friends.

And it is a beautiful, symbolic union that the thoughts that move us today in connection with our building are carried up into the spiritual world by a loyal and loving messenger. For truly, we can be sure of this: our dear Mrs. Hahn will carry our best thoughts, which we can cherish on the occasion of this quinquennium of our laying the foundation stone, up into the spiritual world like a faithful and loving messenger.

I only have to say that the funeral service will take place next Sunday at noon. We gather at Mr. Hahn's 'house of mourning' at noon on Sunday, in Reinach, Therwilerstraße.

During the last few weeks, while we were in Germany, as you know, our dear Miss Anna Ziegler left the physical plane. Most of you knew Anna Ziegler, and I do not need to say to those who knew her what a valuable personality she was in our midst. But now that she has passed over into other realms of existence and we will no longer see her here in the physical world, we feel the need to recall today how she was among us. You are familiar with her truly quiet existence, which meant that she was often hardly noticed by her fellow human beings. But there are people who were able to notice this existence in a very strong sense and then notice it in such a way that they experienced Anna Ziegler as a personality who is a real blessing of existence to experience. As quiet as she was, she spoke loudly and meaningfully through her deeds for many people, through her deeds of love and benevolence, through which she was able to do things that could truly make the existence of the people she touched more satisfying than it would have been without Anna Ziegler.

Those who have received such information from her will know how true the words are that I am now speaking to you in this way about the departed from the physical plane. And the fact that I am allowed to speak them is well established from the fact that Anna Ziegler was our own housemate for a long time and we have everything to say about our own lives that many others have experienced with her.

But there is also much more to be said about the deceased. Above all, it is to be emphasized that she was truly highly esteemed in that the power to be convinced in an exemplary manner of what we call spiritual science lived in her soul. Her soul was completely filled with this power, to be thoroughly convinced of all details that come into consideration in the field of spiritual science. And this power of conviction was so effective in her that it may be said: If many people who have the opportunity to work more externally could carry such power of conviction within them as she did, our spiritual movement would benefit greatly.

And it may be said that such a soul with such power within means something very special even after her death. One can feel united with such a soul, so that one knows that she will be present as a soul in our midst when we have to fight for everything that needs to be fought for, if spiritual science is to gain the position in the world that it deserves.

In this sense, my dear friends, we will think of our friend Anna Ziegler again and again. Those who knew her will feel the necessity to turn their thoughts to her again and again. She also had the special quality of putting everything that happened around her, that she experienced in life, that she had to intervene in life, into the perspective of spiritual scientific observation. If she had to say anything about anything, and it was important from the point of view of spiritual science and especially from the point of view of the spiritual scientific movement, there was no doubt in her mind that everything must be done to carry through such a matter in such a way that it corresponded to her truly pure spiritual scientific perception. And that is what I believe we may recall today, and what I believe can be the starting point for many of us who knew Anna Ziegler to turn our thoughts to her again and again. These directed thoughts will not only be those that are most certainly received by the soul of Anna Ziegler in such a way that they are thoughts that awaken and generate love in her, that they are received with full love, but they will also be thoughts that, in coming back from the dead, can be strengthening for those who turn these thoughts to this dear soul.

Remembering her and feeling united with her, we rise from our seats and will often think of her, my dear friends, as we do at this moment.

My dear friends!

Last night our dear friend FJarald Lille left the physical plane. A great many of those friends who have been working here on this building for years, and also those who have come here from time to time, know our friend and have undoubtedly grown to love him very much. Lille was a personality who was completely devoted to the anthroposophical cause, a personality who was intimately attached to all the work and to the whole process of our construction. When Lille moved to his immediate homeland some time ago, prompted by his circumstances, the germ of the disease that has now taken him away was already in him. But it drew him back here. The opposing spirit in his body threw him, when he came here again last year, on the sickbed. It was a difficult time, he has gone through here. Then he sought rest in the mountains, always mindful of what is to arise here for humanity, and fully convinced of the value of that, what is to arise here.

When our courses began, he found himself back here, although he was suffering greatly and close to death. With a deep interest and a real inner radiance, he was still able to take part in a number of the presentations during the first week of the course. Then, however, the illness prevented him again. And just a day before his death, he assured me how extraordinarily glad he was that he had been able to let this part of the course, which he was able to attend, still sink in. He has passed over into the spiritual world with courage and in the light, hardly assuming any difference between the worlds of here and there within himself, having gone over as one of our most loyal co-workers, who will certainly keep all her thoughts, all her striving united with what is created here. And those who have come to know our dear friend and appreciate his character will be convinced of this. They will faithfully send their thoughts after him for the rest of his journey through life. He will most certainly, after he has repeatedly and repeatedly striven for the construction in his earthly life, already foreshadowing how his whole being is directed here, he will most certainly unite his thoughts with those that come up to him from here. As a sign of this, my dear friends, we rise from our seats.

The cremation will take place in Basel on Monday afternoon at 4 o'clock.