The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before the lecture begins, please allow me to reflect for a moment on the solemn ceremony that some of us had to attend to a few days ago in Basel, near the site of our building. Last Saturday [April 4th] at eleven o'clock we committed the earthly remains of our dear friend Christian Morgenstern to the elements in Basel. By a turn of fate that I might almost call miraculous, it fell to me to speak about our dear Christian Morgenstern for the third time in the circle of anthroposophical friends, but to speak in the moments before we committed his earthly remains to the elements.

I have already had the opportunity to point out twice — once in Stuttgart, once in Leipzig on the occasion of a lecture cycle — how we have seen Christian Morgenstern in our anthroposophical center for years with how much heartfelt gratitude and love. So today I would like to say a few words to you, his fellow anthroposophists, before Ms. von Sivers reads some of the wonderful final poems that are still awaiting publication and will be published soon.

It was in Koblenz a number of years ago that Christian Morgenstern first came to our anthroposophical center. We knew him at that time as the poet who had important things to unfold and reveal to the world on two sides. We knew him as the poet who was able to rise so wonderfully into the spiritual worlds, whose soul was born to live in the spiritual worlds. And on the other hand, we knew him as the important satirist who, above all, knew how to strike a spiritual note within German literature that is entirely his own. And for those who are willing to go to the poet's country, to the poet's spiritual realm, in order to achieve understanding, it is important to understand that a mind like Christian Morgenstern's needed the rhythmic transition from the lonely spiritual heights where he knew how to live so wonderfully with his soul, to the way of rising above the disharmony of existence, the weaknesses of existence, which in Christian Morgenstern's case only came to the surface in his own emotional life, and to rise satirically above this disharmony, as it came to him.

Christian Morgenstern carried within himself what he had taken from his hereditary line – his ancestors were painters –: the deepest affinity with nature, but with the spirit of nature. He was so familiar with everything that trembled in his soul, with the most delicate and secret workings of nature, that when his soul allowed what nature spoke to it to resonate, it actually told of the voices of elemental beings, of elemental spirits that wander and weave through nature. And starting from all that a deep human soul can gain from nature through an intimate, kinship-like experience with that nature, from all that, our dear Christian Morgenstern knew how to rise to those moods in relation to the universe where art not only becomes a hymn that echoes the secrets of creation, but where art becomes prayer. And few have truly understood how to transform the poetic tone into the tone of prayer as did Christian Morgenstern. He knew what the poetic, the artistic, the anthroposophical prayer is in the face of the spirituality that permeates nature. If one is able to rise to the spirit of nature in such a way that its word resounds through natural phenomena as through restrained speech, then what the soul would like to breathe out becomes: Yes, I will be among you! And when the soul is able to enliven this yes within itself in such a way that what lives in the soul itself becomes a surging, flowing world, flows out into the universe, knowing itself to be one with it, and when the soul overflows with gratitude for being allowed to live in this universe, to be pardoned, to be blessed by this universe, when all this then becomes a poet's sound, a poet's word, then art arises that sounds to us so often from Christian Morgenstern's poetry. The one who rises in this way, who has to rise through his karma to the spiritual heights of the universe, needs, like the day-awakening time of man, to alternate with the night-sleeping, the other side, which then comes to light in Christian Morgenstern's satire, in that satire, which one only understands completely if one penetrates into the tender, loving soul of Christian Morgenstern. That was his nature, the nature of the anthroposophical poet, the anthroposophical poet who felt deeply, when he joined our ranks in Koblenz.

Now we experienced his ordeal in the last years, during which he increasingly connected everything that was spiritually and emotionally valuable to him with the goals of our spiritual movement. We experienced his ordeal on the one hand and his high poetic upsurge, the wonderful revelations of a magnificent human soul, on the other. Yes, it can be counted among the favorable strokes of fate of our anthroposophical movement that it has been able to have Christian Morgenstern in its midst in recent years. That which we strive to explore, that which we strive to immerse ourselves in with regard to the spiritual worlds, it resounded to us in such magnificent tones from the poems of Christian Morgenstern! He recreated our research in poetry. Anyone who grows so close to our movement that suffering and the highest poetic inspiration become one with the most intimate goals of our anthroposophical life ennobles our movement. And Christian Morgenstern, with all that he was able to elevate within himself, but also with all that he experienced in his ailing body, which offered him so many obstacles in his last years, with all his suffering, he belonged to us because he belonged to us with the full extent of his feeling. How did he accept his suffering, that which confronted him as an obstacle in his physical body, when he felt that what is revealed to us was poetically reflected in him through our ideas, our views, our experiences? And so he was able to speak, to speak of his strength wasting away in his body, that in a sketch that appeared in the last period of his life he found the following words:

“Perhaps it was the same strength that,” he says, “after it had left him on the physical plane, henceforth accompanied his life spiritually and, what she could not give him in the physical world, she now gave him from the spiritual world with a loyalty that did not rest until she saw him not only high up in life, but also on his way up to the heights of life, where death had lost its sting and the world had regained its divine meaning.

That is how he spoke. That is how he understood his relationship to the spiritual world. It is up to us, to whom he belonged, to faithfully cultivate this memory. We do, after all, stand on this point of view: through our spiritual research, death has lost its sting for us all, if we understand it correctly. Yet last week we stood in pain before the earthly remains of Christian Morgenstern. We know that our friend has gone on a journey to a land that our research is revealing more and more to us. He has not left us, he has moved into the spiritual worlds, where he will be more and more intimately connected to us.

But there was something else very special about Christian Morgenstern in his last years. It was something so wonderful for those who were closer to him personally to know that, when he was resting in the Swiss mountains or trying to improve his health, far away from us in space but united with us in spirit. It was often such a sweet, intimate feeling for me, here or there, in this or that city, to know that he was speaking about spiritual things. To know: he dwells in the Swiss mountains, living in the same spiritual heights and traversing the soul lands with me.

Then there was his dear wife, who is with us today, often the messenger who came to the cycles, the lectures, who brought us physical messages from him, who told him what was going on between us. There was an intimate community, an intimate spiritual community between us. And he was up there. Oh, he had learned to live in the loneliness of physical life because he sought the spirit throughout his life and found it. He only needed to be connected to this external world of people through his wife, who was so infinitely understanding, only through her did he need to be connected to this external world of people, which, through the rare understanding she showed him, was able to represent the whole of humanity. It is a wonderful thing in life to be able to witness such intimate understanding between two individuals.

But we were also there in pain at his physical end. When I met him in Zurich during his stay in Switzerland, his voice was already hoarse, his body no longer had the strength to resonate the voice, hoarseness had poured over his speech. But there was another language with Christian Morgenstern, a rare language of those wonderful eyes in which the soul shone, as it can shine through eyes in only a few people; one felt how much he could say to one with his eyes. And one felt in many a moment how much one could say through the telling that was only his. We will no longer be able to speak this language with him. That was our pain, for we loved him so much. But that will also be the reason why we will love him more and more, and will be united with him faithfully, according to our spiritual capacity. He will live among us as an example, and when we ask ourselves: What should the best anthroposophists be like? we will answer with one of the first names that comes to mind: Christian Morgenstern!

In Leipzig, when I was still able to speak in his presence, I was allowed to use a word from those poems in which our world view resonates, which I speak from the bottom of my soul because I feel the truth of this word so deeply: Christian Morgenstern's poetry, of which you will hear some samples later, speaks to us truly not only through that which is expressed in thoughts and feelings - soul lives in them, that lives in them, which we often call aura. His poems have aura! And I could often feel how these poems are living beings when I tried, as Christian Morgenstern himself did, to penetrate into his soul, into his soul, which had become so dear to me that through this love I also gained intimate understanding when I tried to go with my soul to where so many of his wonderful poems lead: to this lonely island! For some of his poems are as if they led us to a lonely island, but to an island where one can feel at one with what flows through the universe. And when Christian Morgenstern, sensing the sounds of the spirit of the world within himself, let his wonderful sounds resound on the island of the soul, he could only be understood by those who knew how to follow him. It has often been said: If you want to understand the poet, you have to go to the poet's country. Christian Morgenstern is a poet of the spirit. If you want to understand this poet of the spirit, you have to go to the lands of the spirit, to the spirit lands. Some of the sounds in the poetry that you will hear later exude an aura; they are as if they had truly already been spoken from the spirit world, by a soul that is fully aware of being in the spirit world, by a soul that was allowed to say:

We had to leave Christian Morgenstern's earthly remains to the elements at that time, when we are expecting that precisely those poems that reveal his highest spiritual aspirations will go out into the world. We expect these poems to touch the innermost depths of many souls, and that many, many souls will experience these artistic creations in their deepest depths in such a way that they will lead the souls to the spiritual realm.

With this, I have told you some of what I would like to say to you from a very personal point of view. He lived in such a way that he expressed a longing in a little poem, a longing of which I would like to say from the bottom of my heart: It has been fulfilled!

He, the enigma-maker, loved the enigmatic poets of the North; he translated the poetry of Ibsen and other poets in such a profound way. And while he was in the north, he grew to love the north. This was a feeling that harmoniously combined with what of German intellectual life resonated in his soul. The great experiencer Nietzsche, one of the most German poets, Lagarde: it was their views, their impulses that his soul so gladly delved into. All this was crowded together in Christian Morgenstern's soul. And in a moment, which was probably born out of a mood that is revealed in the lines I allowed myself to read to you twice, in such a moment those lines were created:

To Niblum I want to be buried,
on the edge between marsh and geest...

I want to rest in Niblum
from all of the present.
And there on my stone house, write for me
only the name and: “Lest Lagarde!”
Yes, only the two things small and large:
this request and then just my name.
Just the name and: “Read Lagarde!”

The islet of the motherland there, no,
I will not disdain that.
Let the North Sea take me home there soon
with steep, tumbling seas –
the mother sea, the mother flood...
oh, how good it will be to rest down there, far away from German events!

Much has changed in our feelings in the last few years. But we, in spirit, we see him, abandoned to the elements, on the edge of physical being, on the shore of physical being. And we see - in a still higher way than he was able to express it in those lines - taken up by the mother flood, the highest human home, this soul, which was so much at home in the motherland of the spirit, the human soul. Yes, we may say it: he is buried where he desired to be buried. But he shall be buried, buried so that this burial will be a constant resurrection in our hearts, in our souls: in them he wants to live! And his name will be written on our souls. And those of us who do not just want to be connected to the spiritual life that we have dedicated ourselves to on the outside, but rather very deeply within, will understand when I now present each of them with a very personal request: may the souls of our friends be allowed to deepen their anthroposophical experience of what they can experience and deepen within themselves through the artistic rebirth of anthroposophy in the poetry of Christian Morgenstern.

So let us joyfully, united with his wife, who so understandingly and lovingly stood by him and continues to do so, stand by her faithfully in the cultivation of his memory. We want to be united with our friend in spirit, we want to read his name often on the memorial that is to be erected for him in our hearts, and then we know that we will never do so without the deepest spiritual gain if we follow the word, which I now change his own words as my deepest wish: When we see the name Christian Morgenstern written on the memorial stone of our hearts, then let us take this, changing his words, as an invitation: Let us read, let us read Christian Morgenstern often!