The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Now that the priestly word has guided the soul we love from the visible into the invisible world, allow me, in the name of the spiritual friends gathered here with her and united with her, to say a few words that now, at this moment, penetrate our souls, which were so closely connected to hers.

Marie Hahn's life, as it played out in the external world, has just passed before our spiritual eyes. Those who knew the dear soul well can well imagine how many satisfactions, but also how many sufferings and disappointments, were traversed by this soul over the years. Again and again, a light shone through everything that Marie Hahn experienced and achieved in her external life. Marie Hahn was not a dreamy soul, but a soul who strove to grasp the outer world as it presents itself to people in the sensual world in which they are placed. Marie Hahn was a soul who lived in full devotion to the duties that life presents to a person. Only those who knew Marie Hahn, knew how the friends who were spiritually connected to her for more than a decade of her life strove to know her, know that from all the phenomena of life, from all the work of life, Marie Hahn sought the true spiritual light, spiritual knowledge, that world that lies beyond that gate through which the dear, dear soul has now passed. And when we ask why, in turning to spiritual science, Marie Hahn sought the paths that lead from the world of the senses to the spiritual world, that lead from all duties, from all observation of the labors of life to the survival, to the supersensible, we get an answer by taking a deeper look into the soul of the dearly departed, which tells us that in this soul was born with when she entered this world, the strong, firm consciousness of the divine origin of the human soul. The soul must wander and struggle through the world's appearances, but within the paths of the world, the soul, when seeking the truth, finds the spiritual light, and the soul finds the deep, eternal truth: man is born of God.

And Marie Hahn, in her own way, found the spiritual light that shines from this truth. And we may commemorate her search by speaking in her spirit with Angelus Silesius that which also expresses her deepest conviction:

God must be the beginning, the middle and the end.
Where shall be thy favor, O Lord, in the works of thy hands.

An originally pious consciousness awakened in this soul a firm confidence in its divine origin. But this alone did not fulfill this soul. The soul longed to feel the Divine that permeates the world, that radiates through human life, and to experience it in her own soul. She grasped the spiritual truth with such a sure volition that loyalty to this volition, to this spiritual truth, was a matter of course for her. Deep within this soul rested the other conviction, that Christianity alone is the truth that is experienced in the deepest human soul, in the innermost human heart, that in the innermost heart it takes hold as the full power of what has been accomplished in truth and in reality through the Mystery of Golgotha as the meaning of this earthly life, as the meaning of this entire earthly body. And again we may express the dearly departed's very own conviction with the words of Angelus Silesius:

The cross on Golgotha cannot save you from evil
Where it is not also erected within you.

This gave the dearly departed, when she began to grow frail, when suffering settled over her otherwise dutiful life, the strength to say to herself: “If I enter through the gate of death into the spiritual world, I enter with Christ: in Christ I shall die.

But she knew how to combine death and life, this soul, to combine them in that holy spirituality that illuminates and radiates over all death and all life in the surviving, in the supersensible. That what is condemned to transience here through earthly events in the realm of permanence, in the realm of permanence, in its true essence, is permeated and illuminated by the light of the spirit, that was what permeated and illuminated the whole life of our dear Marie Hahn, that was what gave her strength, real, true strength, spiritual strength in the last difficult years, difficult weeks and difficult days. Those who were privileged to visit her and see with what spiritual devotion and what strong soul-power she passed over into the other spiritual form in which she is to continue to exist, had the most vivid proof of the spirit and the power, but also of the knowledge, the recognition of the spirit and its truth.

And you, dear Rudolf Hahn, dear friend, who is connected with us, lose the most precious being for this earthly life. We know what it meant to you to be at the side of this soul for more than a decade of your life; we sense it and know to some extent how closely your thoughts were connected with the thoughts of the dear one passing through the gate of death. We look back on all the intimate, loving conversations you had after your day's work with your dear, loving and beloved wife, which you must now continue in spiritual union. But the soul that has left you for the visible world was strong, and so were its thoughts and its will. And this strength and purity in you will be with you constantly, forever, as a soul through life. And if the connection with the thoughts of loving friends, who empathize closely with the soul passing through the gate of death, can be a comfort to you for what you are to lose in the visible, only to gain it again in the invisible, then let our thoughts, coming from the bottom of our hearts, be this comfort of friendship. We want to send them, our loving thoughts of friendship, up into the other, bright spiritual world, when your thoughts point up and penetrate into those spiritual places where we have to look for the dead, the dead for this world.

And so, as her last words here, from the visible world into the invisible world, let the words be sent to her that are now passing through our soul at this moment:

You soul with the mild, strong feeling:
You have joined us in friendship during your earthly journey
because you wanted to find the entrance to the spiritual world
through that gate
that also shows our souls the way.

So know that we will take you into the realm of souls
Because you wanted to find the entrance to the spiritual worlds
Through that gate
Which also shows our souls the way.

So know that we enter the realm of souls
And the light of the spirit with such love,
The reflection of your friendship,
We want to follow you thoughtfully
Through that gate which now
Will lead You to forms of spiritual life.

In Your changing times we were always allowed to see
The loyalty that knew how to keep
What You proclaimed as true and in keeping with the spirit
With a firm will
And then led through that gate
Which strong intuitive thinking opened up to you.

So know also that your future spiritual vision
Shall find loyalty in our souls,
Which we want to keep for you permanently,
When we have to seek you in loving thought
In the realm of the soul through that gate, from us to you may open up.

And if we often speak to you like this, you will hear us, because you live in the spirit, and you will continue to live in the spirit. Your attitude was that of Angelus Silesius, which sounds to us from here as if from the very depths of your soul:

But You, to whom the whole work is most dear,
You, the great God, the Holy Spirit, speak the blessing.