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.

For those who have passed through the gates of death as a result of the difficult events of the war, we repeat our words today:

Spirits of their souls, watchful guardians,
your wings may bring
our souls' imploring love
to the human beings of the spheres who have placed their trust in you.
So that, united with your power,
our plea may helpfully shine
on the souls it lovingly seeks!

And the spirit that has passed through the mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth and the progress of the earth, that has taken on the suffering of mankind as a divine being in its infinite wisdom for the good of the earth, for the good of mankind and for the progress and freedom of mankind, may it be with you and your difficult duties.

It is my sad duty to inform you, my dear friends, that our dear friend, the leader of the Munich branch, Miss Sophie Stinde, is among those whom we must now count among the people of the spheres. She left the physical plane last night. There is no way to talk about this extraordinarily difficult and significant loss for our Society in the first few moments. I just want to say a few words about this painful and significant event at the beginning of today's reflections with you.

Miss Stinde is one of those who is well known in the widest circles of our friends. She is one of those who have taken our cause to the very bottom of their hearts and fully identified with it. In 1904, I was able to give the first intimate lectures on our cause that I had to give in Munich at her and her friend, Countess Pauline Kalckreuth's house. And it may be said that from that first time that Fräulein Stinde approached us, she not only devoted her entire personality to our cause, but also her entire working capacity, which was also so valuable, so excellent, and so deeply committed. She left behind what had previously been an artistic profession – Miss Sophie Stinde was a landscape painter – in order to devote herself entirely and solely to the service of our cause with all her strength. And she has worked intensively for this cause in a rare objective, completely impersonal way, in both the narrower and the broader circles since that time. For Munich she was the soul of all our work. And she was such a soul that one could say that through the inner qualities of her being she provided the very best guarantee that our cause could develop in the very best way in this place, in Munich. As you know, the performances of the mystery plays and everything associated with them for Munich had imposed a huge workload on the personalities working for us there in the early years – for quite a number of years. Miss Stinde and her friend devoted themselves to this work with the utmost intensity and, above all, with the greatest understanding, born entirely out of the innermost essence of our cause, out of a will that can only itself be born out of this inner essence of our cause. And perhaps one may also hint that the intensive work that Miss Stinde did really consumed her vitality in the last years very strongly. So that one really has to admit: this valuable vitality, perhaps consumed a little too quickly in the last years, was dedicated to our cause in the most beautiful, most deeply satisfying way. And there is probably no one among those who knew Miss Stinde better who could ever completely shake off the impression that this personality in particular was one of our very best workers.

It is certain that some of Miss Stinde's work was misunderstood here and there, and it is to be hoped that even those of our friends and supporters who have misunderstood Miss Stinde's work through prejudice will subsequently fully recognize the sun-like power that emanated from this personality. And those of our wider circle who were able to observe what Fräulein Stinde did for our cause will, along with all those who were closer to her, keep her in their most loyal memory. We can be sure of her, especially when we emphasize the word, which in these days has often had to be said in connection with the departure from the physical plane of some of our friends. It is precisely in view of Miss Stinde – with all the trials and tribulations and the opposition that our cause has faced in the world – that this word can be emphasized: We, who profess our loyalty and honesty to the spiritual worlds, count those who have only changed the form of their existence, but who, despite having gone through the portal of death, are united with us as souls, among our most important and significant co-workers. The veils that still often surround those who are embodied in the physical body gradually fall away, and the souls of our dear departed are certainly among us. And we need precisely such help. We need such help, which is no longer contested from the physical plane, such help, which also no longer has to take into account the obstacles of the physical plane. And if we have the deepest, most earnest belief in the progress of our cause in world culture, then it is also for this reason that we are fully aware that those who once belonged to us are our best forces, even when they work among us from the spiritual world by spiritual means. Sometimes the confidence we need in our cause will have to be confirmed by the fact that we know: We thank our dead friends for being in our midst, and that we, united with their strength, can accomplish the work for the spiritual culture of the world that is incumbent upon us.

In this sense, I only wanted to touch on this painful event with a few words today, and I just want to tell you that the cremation will take place next Monday at 1 p.m. in Ulm.

We look up to the spirit that has been snatched from our earthly existence. We look up out of the pain that has to arise in these days from the roots of that deep joy with which we worked for so long at our dear friend's side for what is dear and valuable to us in the world. From the beautiful soul traits of our dear friend and from what the affection of my soul for her has poured into my own soul in the last hours, I will try to send our feelings up to her.

Guide you from earthly existence
To the spiritual sun-land
The beings whose reflection we
in Thy work;
They lived for us as fruits of existence
in all that Thou on the paths of the earth
in strength and love didst create.

Thou lookest from the heights of the spirit
into the hearts of Thy friends;
Thy soul's gaze meets
The blossoms of thy works of love;
They shine through the pain
In that bright light
That thou didst create around their souls.

The certain loyalty in the rightly recognized:
It was the first spiritual being
That inspired all thy deeds; —
Whoever sensed this in You, Gained boundless trust in Your own work, which he Was allowed to unite with Your work.

The sense of truth, which unerringly Arose from Your clear soul,
He was the second being,
To whom everything was allowed to approach, What on the paths of human life He could in pure heart's mildness
The strictest duty act conceal.

So you stood in our midst,
In your being fully embodying
The meaning of the work to which we live;
The place in the mind that you
With your power invigorated:
In your way, No other will ever be able to revive it.

It will have to appear empty to friends in the world of sense;
But bright will shine from it
The spiritual flame that you
With your being inflame in it.
It will shine in the mirror of your friends' souls
In the powerful reflection.
The eternal human spirit,

Which your earthly shell
Lovingly revealed to us,
Hear him from that etheric height,
He now connects himself,
The soul's ear as a word of comfort proclaims
To friends who are filled with deep sorrow:

"I will unite with your earthly work
What in the spiritual realms
The soul gives itself in powers.
So the bond that in the time being
Could bind me to you
The eternity of the power of the seal
reveal the power of the seal in light and truth.

Dear friends! From the deep bliss that we were able to feel during our many years of living together, in a way that was so exemplary and commendable on the part of the one who left us, arises the pain, that pain that can only be felt and cannot be expressed in words and should not be expressed at all. From this place we look up to send the last greeting to the body, to have it as a starting point to that never-ending union we have with our dear, precious friend.

And how does it present itself to our soul, this image that has been at our side for so many years from the earthly shell of the dearly departed? We look back on this entire life, which has now come to an end for this incarnation, and we must look in awe at the unique, unified greatness of this life, which, through its own nature, has created an enduring earthly monument in our hearts and everywhere it was allowed to work. For this dear friend chose her earthly surroundings as if selecting them for herself, surroundings from which so many human souls emerged that are so similar to her in their general appearance. From her austere region of Nordic Central Europe, they have emerged, the many similarly natured natures with the often so austere-seeming outer shell and with the deep, deep inwardness, which the heart's mildness and warmth is so beautifully able to imbue through the rigor and sense of duty in life. And so she came into our midst, our dear friend, more than ten years ago. She came into our midst as the very embodiment of the general image of humanity that I have just hinted at, a human image that took on a very special character in the family from which the dear woman came. Years ago, when we were privileged to step aside our friend, we greeted in her Julius Stinde's sister. We greeted two members of that family, in which has ruled a religious belief that constantly struggled for clarity and yet penetrated into all depths, a deep yearning for the source of life, for solving the riddles of life. Not long after our dear friend entered our midst, we had to join her in her grief at the death of her brother, Julius Stinde. And to us, who were close to her, she really seemed, in the years we were privileged to work with her, like another human aspect of the essence of Julius Stinde himself. Together with him, she was one of those natures who know how to respond sympathetically to everything that has to be taken for granted in everyday life, that has to be done to please people, to bring people so very close to humanity. That was indeed the deepest core of Julius Stinde's being. But in this genuine humanizing of everyday life, of what lives directly in nature and the human environment around us, a deep urge for spiritual secrets mingled with these natures in particular. And it is one of the most beautiful gifts that our friend, who has now left the physical plane, showed me in those days, that she was able to show me what her brother had written down in notes about the spiritual worlds, out of the attitude in which his dear sister had been connected with us for so many years. Behind all of Julius Stinde's external work lay his deep connection to those worlds that we want to work our way into through our spiritual striving. Behind all of the external work that he has done for what people need for the right purpose in life lay the profound sense of research for the unknown worlds that are unknown to physical perception and physical knowledge. And one would like to say: so has this meaning, which remained hidden from the world in the soul of our dear, expensive friend, been spoken of in all its fullness and in all its scope.

And she dedicated all that she was able to achieve in this earthly life, especially in the last decades, to this attitude. She devoted everything in her power to this life in the spiritual world, so that her work truly brought countless hearts that mild warmth they need, and gave countless souls that strength they crave. And our friend herself became ever more refined in her love for the spirit and ever brighter and clearer in her knowledge of the spirit. There was such a yearning in all her nature for the spiritual that it could find the way, this inner way to the connection with the Christ, so that this Christ would not only reach the deepest human feelings but also the highest human thoughts. Our dear friend was such that the Christ could come alive for her, that she was able to perceive the Christ impulse in all the individual things that human work and human strength bring forth in the development of the earth. And so, in her striving for the Christ, she found this living Christ, who lives in everything and yet, as a single entity, can only be found through the deepest effort of the spirit. Thus she stood, uniting her striving for this Christ with our own striving, making us happy who were allowed to rule by her side. She came to us, she laid down the day's work, which she had so hopefully accomplished until then, in favor of our work. Those who today still immerse themselves in the lovingly speaking, deeply revealing landscapes of our friend know how nobly formed her artistic nature was, and they also know what treasures of human strength she has brought into our ranks by uniting her work with ours with such artistic sense, with such deep artistic depth of soul. And so she joined us, joined us like someone who, from the first moment of getting to know us, proved to be an understanding connoisseur of what has been said, but also of what has not been said, that our world view can give to bear the human existence. Few knew how to accept, with deep understanding of heart and soul, the many unspoken things in all that is spoken, which lies in our world view, as Sophie Stinde did. Few knew how to penetrate with that fire of will and that warmth of feeling, to bring that which our spiritual outlook wants to bring into the world to the hearts of friends.

I can only characterize the precious bond that united us with Sophie Stinde to some extent with words that only remotely describe it by saying: One could understand her in all that words can speak to people, but one could also understand her in all that words cannot speak to people, what invisibly from human soul to human soul, what inaudibly from soul to soul. There is so much to be done when embarking on a spiritual undertaking, and one must be able to place it in human hands, and be sure that they will carry it out as one might not even be able to do oneself. There are things in such human endeavor whose fruitfulness, whose value cannot be expressed at the very moment when the work must be begun, whose fruitfulness and whose value must first develop as the work is done. And Sophie Stinde was one of those people who helped in the most powerful way when action was needed. And with that I fully express how deeply, deeply, not with blind but with seeing trust she was connected to us, we were connected to her. And, my dear friends, she was connected to us in such a way that much of what was allowed to happen within our work could never have happened without her active participation. Those mysterious connections between what is to be seen in spiritual worlds through higher senses and what lies in the artistic nature of man, that mysterious bond – we needed it in human souls at a certain time of our work. The structure that rises in the south, to be the envelope of our cause, was born out of the soul of Sophie Stinde. Not only in its intention, but also in the strength of love from which it alone could arise, in that artistic sense without which a world view cannot be poured into art. What we could only have in her, that is what Sophie Stinde brought us when she entered our midst. And I will never forget the image that has remained with me from those days when I was first allowed to speak in Munich in a more intimate way at the place of her later work and her earlier work in her and her dear friend, our dear Countess Kalckreuth, about that to which such a large part of our life force is dedicated. What touched the depths of her soul touched the depths of our soul, and what touched the depths of our soul touched the depths of hers. Kindness and love truly surrounded one of the spirits that animated her here on earth and that now carries her up to bright spiritual heights. He knew how to inspire her when she clearly pursued her life's task with her sense of truth, which guided her with certain loyalty; and in turn, to give nothing, nothing of the strict sense of duty, that was what this spirit inspired in her, which also stood by her side when she worked with love and kindness, to combine strictness, to combine rigor with love, gentleness and benevolence at all times. Thus she was our happiness in life. Thus she was one of our most precious treasures in life, as all those who were truly allowed to get close to her came to recognize her. And anyone who had once won Sophie Stinde, truly won her, could never lose her.

And now let them stand before us, all the moments when one or the other of us talked through and worked through the deepest matters of the development of humanity and also that which is closest to the human heart with her in shared longing. All these moments are eternal for those who truly experienced them, because a warmth has been poured over all these moments that can never fade away, that must remain inextinguishable in the souls. And so she worked in her place in an exemplary way for us all. She worked in such a way that from this place, truly everyone who worked with her here on earth felt connected to her. She worked in such a way that an unforgettable light radiated from this place, a light by which many will be able to enlighten themselves for a long time to come: She has so deeply, deeply embedded in the work that is ours that to which she ultimately sacrificed all her human resources. And when we look, even if she is no longer with us in the flesh, when we look at our workplace, when we feel in the midst of our work the most valuable forces that lie in this work, Sophie Stinde's ghostly voice will always speak mysteriously from our workplace, from our working hours, from our way of working, to which we have been allowed to become accustomed in such deep veneration over so many years.

Yes, we look up to You out of the pain that must arise out of the deepest bliss that flowed to us from the union of our being with Your being over many years. But we see You there in spirit. And You Yourself in the powerful way that we got to know, You Yourself in Your loving, gentle way that we also got to know, You are our consolation. You are our consolation because we take from Your heart, from the depths of Your soul, the promise that if we continue to work for the beliefs we hold to be true, You will work with us with all Your strength, so that what You have connected with us in time will remain connected with our soul for all eternity. And it will be one of the most beautiful and blissful experiences when we, always trusting, find You, our blessed spirit, at our workplace, during our working hours, in our working power. The Christ we seek was so often in Your heart - when You wanted to unite with dear friends here in the innermost part of Your being. At the same time, your deepest nature was what your thoughts sought as a worldview, as a way of life. Just as your so lovable imagination worked in your art, just as your mind and your feeling worked in your view of life, so your whole being was consciously resting in those divine powers from which the world of the senses sprouts in a spiritual way. United with that which flows and permeates the whole world as the Divine, you knew that which your soul had brought with it from the world of souls into this earthly existence. And in a deep sense you found the inner strength of desire, to find during your earthly journey the Christ, who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation and progress of the earth, so that he can carry - uniting in their divinity his soul with our soul - our soul from a fruitful life through the gate of death, so that it may become one with the wide light and all of Spirit.

That was your nature. That was your life. And it must remain indelible in our souls, what is now bound between us and your eternal, as beautifully as the bond between us and your temporal has been bound. A world value presents itself in the world of the senses in your exemplary soul, which will be an indelible light for us in the spiritual world.

The eternal human spirit
Which your earthly shell
Lovingly revealed to us,
He hears it from the heights of the ether,
Who now connects himself
The soul's ear as a word of comfort proclaims
To friends who are filled with deep sorrow:

“I will unite with your earthly work
what in the spiritual realm
gives the soul its strength.
Thus the bond that in the time being
could bind me to you
will reveal the eternal power of the seal
in light and truth.”

And so, with heavy hearts, we bid farewell to your earthly shell, which we must now surrender to the elements. And so we reunite with your spirit, which we have long sought in our earthly existence. And so we vow to always keep our thoughts active, for our souls can always find them on their way to your soul. Thus we pledge ourselves to You, You loyally connected spirit friend soul, thus we pledge ourselves to You in this hour forever!

A place has become empty for the physical world among us, which was filled by a personality who filled this place with the warmest striving for knowledge and most understanding loyalty. Our love flows to this place, it looks to this place and seeks to revive the intimate bond that has connected us for many years with this personality who has passed away from the physical plane. Our pain looks for her place. This pain will remain alive, as is the thought that carries us back to all the invigorating, blissful loyalty and love with which we were connected to dear Sophie Stinde. And the deep esteem that we had to have for her, seeking to understand her very unique nature, must transform itself in us into the most faithful memory, so that, now that she no longer walks with us in the physical world, her spirit may reign among us, work with us, that spirit that shone so wonderfully for us over the years in its significance, in its value within our work, has shone so wonderfully for years. The esteem in which we held Sophie Stinde will be sorely missed, and this loss can only be compensated by our faithful adherence to the spiritual realm, through which we will always be connected to her, to Sophie Stinde. Let us try to unite ourselves today in the image she created of us through her love, her work, strong influence she created in us through her sympathetic work within our work – in this image we seek to unite, remembering how her soul's eye looks down on this image and can unite with us when we, with the right mind, with the right love, with deep understanding, recreate the image that she herself created in us in this moment in our soul.

So, my dear friends, as the dear soul of Sophie Stinde floated away from us, in the heights of the ether, this image of her formed before my soul:

You lead us out of earthly existence
To the spiritual sun-land
The beings whose reflection we Were allowed to feel in Your work;
They lived for us as the fruits of existence
In everything you created on the paths of the earth
In power and love.

You look from the heights of the spirit
Into the hearts of your friends;
Your soul's gaze meets
The blossoms of your works of love;
They shine through the pain
In that bright light
That there around their souls you created.

The certain faith in what was rightly recognized:
It was the first spiritual being
That inspired all your doing; —
He who sensed this in you
Gained boundless trust
In his own work, which he Was allowed to unite with your work.

The sense of truth, which unerringly
Worked from your clear soul,
He was the second being
To whom everything was always allowed to approach,
What on the paths of human life
Related feeling must strive for.

The third spirit who lived through you,
Felt its warmth of soul,
Those connected to you for life's work;
He steeled your noble love power
Through a sense of duty that was firm;
He could
Conceal the strictest duty deed in pure heartedness.

So you stood in our midst,
In your being you fully embodied
The meaning of the work to which we live;
The place in the world of ideas that you
Invigorated with your strength:
In your way, no other will ever be able to invigorate it

It will appear empty to friends in the sense of being;
But
the spiritual lambs will shine brightly from it,
which you
have ignited with your being.
They will shine in the mirror of your friends' souls
in a powerful reflection.
The eternal human spirit,

Whose earthly cover
Lovingly revealed to us,
Hear him from yonder etheral height,
Who now unites with himself,
The soul's ear as a word of comfort proclaims
To the friends, who are filled with deep sorrow:

"I will unite with your earthly work
with what in the spiritual world

My dear friends! Thus, Sophie Stinde's soul stands before our own. We sense how she is guided in the heights of the spiritual ether by the three genii, by the three spiritual beings, by whom her work, her activity, by whom her character, by whom all her being here, as it manifested itself in the physical, was accompanied.

The unwavering loyalty with which she was connected to our spiritual striving, built on an infinite firmness, is truly the one essence that we could feel at Sophie Stinde's side, and that she so confidently and so deeply understandingly put on the path of our work. When we let our eyes drift thoughtfully into life and try to feel which people we must seek out in the most serious, important, and meaningful moments of life for our shared journey through life and work, then it is those people with whom we not only connect with what can always consciously live in our soul when we are with the souls of friends, the souls connected in love: those are the souls we must seek in such moments of life, those who are connected with us in the deepest part of our soul, in that part of the soul that constitutes our being and carries our being over into the friend soul and from the friend soul over into ours, so that we can be sure even then, when we must be united with it through ties that cannot be consciously revealed under all circumstances. We approach our life's work, we are often unsure how we should proceed at the beginning of one or the other; we take our friend's hand; we know how to tell him: In this or that way, we expect you to help us, to do with us what we intend to do. There are those strong souls of friends to whom we do not need to say such things, with whom we are so deeply connected that we need only tell them what we ourselves know from the beginning of our endeavors, but who feel so intimately related to us in our striving that they work with us even when the fruit and essence of the work can only unfold in the joint effort itself. There, below the threshold of consciousness, the soul-connecting loyalty develops, that loyalty that must truly be there on the ground of a spiritual striving, as ours should be, that loyalty that holds souls together firmly, even in what is revealed and lived out by the souls not only here on the physical plane, which holds the souls together to the deepest depths of the spiritual being. Those who were truly allowed to get to know Sophie Stinde felt this way here on the physical plane, connected to her, and so they came to recognize the one of the three companions who guided them through life and who now guide their soul up into the realms of eternity.

And what we may call the direct sense of truth, which unerringly awakens in the soul as a self-evident light, so that this soul finds the strength to follow the sincerely meant realization through its own nature, this sense of truth, it was the second genius who stood by Sophie Stinde's side, that genius who made those who were close to her so secure in her presence, that genius who caused the atmosphere of truth, the atmosphere of the most earnest, most dignified search for truth, to spread between her and her friends.

And the third of the spirits who were with her, who will remain with her, was the one who kindled in the human soul that deep, deep love for humanity that knows how to find those depths in the soul of one's neighbor that are in need of love. And Sophie Stinde's soul – one may say – her love always knew how to find the places in the soul where love is needed, and she was aware that love must work where it is needed, if it is allowed to work. But radiating into this love, into this warm love, was a sacred sense of duty, duty in the guise of the body, that was the third spiritual being at Sophie Stinde's side. The one who understood Sophie Stinde knew how sacred the sacrificial service of duty was to her; but he also knew how intimately she could connect with the hearts and souls towards which her fulfillment of duty had to be directed.

So she really stood among us, so she stood among us in faithful work, in serious, deep work of knowledge and love, so she made the work of our spiritual science her own work, so she devotedly combined the best forces of life with what is needed for our work, so she also took upon herself as a matter of course all the sacrifices that are to be made for our work. Someone who is so closely connected with our work, as Sophie Stinde is and was, works, ignoring everything personal, purely objectively, always keeping only the objective in mind, for the goals that our striving must set. Many misunderstandings arise. It is only natural in life that we encounter many misunderstandings when we try to speak as human beings purely for the sake of the matter at hand in the other person. Our dear Sophie Stinde was not spared misunderstandings, which come precisely from the background, which are connected with the objective work, because she was a model in terms of objective work, so objectively suppressing her personality that she could not help but surrender to faith when she was so absorbed in objectivity that everyone else could also accept what she wanted in full objectivity.

Those who saw her work among us will keep her image within them as a power upon which the soul's eye, the spiritual gaze of the being that lived in Sophie Stinde, can look down, can force itself down into the souls of her friends, upon whom this being can draw with the power and strength from the spiritual realms and work into the souls of her friends. For the soul that has worked among us will continue to work when we know how to accept its work in our hearts, in our innermost being.

And Sophie Stinde was connected with our work not only from one side or the other, she was connected with our work in the most comprehensive way. She came into our midst by, in order to fully grasp what she recognized as her task within our midst; she came to leave the art she was so fond of, which she believed at certain times would fulfill her life. We see in the pictures she created, and which we would like to bring here today, where we want to connect our thoughts with Sophie Stinde's earthly thoughts, the most loving grasp of nature, the most intimate coexistence with what spiritually permeates and lives through nature. Because she believed that she had to serve something even higher within our spiritual science, she left this field of her work and devoted the energies she had previously offered to art to our field. And we felt the way in which Sophie Stinde's soul's deeds flowed into our spiritual work, the direction of her strength, which, full of artistic meaning and artistic warmth, could pour artistic imagination into what the spirit wants to work out within our midst. And those who feel most deeply connected to our work, who are not distant from what art actually carries and nurtures, can perhaps appreciate what it means for our work when artistic imagination combines with the soul's effectiveness that we need in the practice of our spiritual scientific work. For it is the same thing that flows out of the human soul into color and form in one sphere of activity and into other artistic forms of work and effect in another, that becomes active in the cognitive powers of spiritual science, that becomes spiritual scientific vision. The one who brings infinite treasures into the field of our work brings them from the realms of art, from the warmth of enthusiasm for art, from the capacity for artistic creation. And so we felt connected to her in the field of work in which our dear Sophie Stinde was active, as if we were standing with her before the sacrificial altar of our work, on which she willingly wanted to sacrifice her best from her current life on earth with us. So we felt united with her in a sacred duty and – as we may believe – in loyal love; so we look back with heartfelt gratitude on what she achieved in her incarnation on earth in our midst to our delight. And so we follow in faithful remembrance of her soul, knowing that she continues to work among us, even if she has changed the way she works, her powers. And we need them, these forces among us. That we were able to connect with the idea of building the structure that was first to be erected in Munich and that will now be erected in Dornach is intimately connected with what Sophie Stinde longed for our work. And what had to be done to bring the first germination of the idea of this building to life was largely done by Sophie Stinde. She combined her thoughts and aspirations for our spiritual work with the very first seeds of thought for this building, and she devoted her work to it as she did to the other branches of our work. Indeed, in recent years, especially in the last few months, we have often seen how she weakened from overworking in the wide range of duties that had gradually fallen to her. We anxiously observed how often her overworked physical body could reveal the soul. Those for whom our work is precious, who understand our work, will always associate our work with the name Sophie Stinde. We worked at her side in Dornach, we looked at what we saw emerging piece by piece as the artistic form of our work there in the Dornach building. It was dear and precious to us to be able to work with Sophie Stinde on this building and to see this building as it was created piece by piece. The physical eye of Sophie Stinde will not rest on the forms of this building on the day when this building approaches its completion, as we have to write down today. In the physical sense, Sophie Stinde's workplace around this building is abandoned, but nothing in this building, as in our other spiritual scientific work, does not carry Sophie Stinde's spiritual activity imprinted in the deepest sense. And those who feel our work in the living sense, rather than in the abstract, also feel Sophie Stinde's spiritual eye and spiritual deeds, which belong to the organs of this work. Physically we will not have her with us in our work, but spiritually she will always be with us. We will not only feel that she will remain loyal to us in her spiritual form, but we will know that she will continue to work among us with the strong power that she developed during her incarnation for the spiritual form. The souls that came close to Sophie Stinde will feel this. Those who were able to work with her in a closer sense will feel a particular pain and love that will remain in their souls as a monument, strong and always shining in the most serious moments of life. How faithfully, lovingly and beautifully Sophie Stinde worked together with her friend, Countess Kalckreuth, here in Munich. Those who are close to this work, I know that I am not addressing their souls in vain when I express to them, together with these souls, our love for our dear friend, Countess Kalckreuth, who is the closest of those we have lost to grieve, when I tell her that we will faithfully share her pain and faithfully cherish the memory of our dear friend. Our dear Countess Kalckreuth has allowed us to share in an exemplary way the intimate love with which she was united to her friend, allowing us to share without envy, to share devotedly, claiming nothing for herself that she did not gladly give up from the precious treasure that her friendship was to her. So may she allow us to vow in 'loyalty to now also bear her pain together with her, that pain that writes itself so deeply into our souls from all the love and all the esteem that we had to show Sophie Stinde because we tried to recognize her, because her work shone among us as such a clear light, clear light of truth. But to those dear friends who knew how to appreciate and love Sophie Stinde, I would like to say: Turn your feelings, turn your thoughts, turn all your loving soul being to the spiritual places where you now sense Sophie Stinde's soul being, turn these feelings, these thoughts there and learn to get used to to turn these thoughts and feelings of yours to this spiritual place of Sophie Stindes, which you sense, whenever you, who were bound to her in loyal friendship, need strength for what you have to accomplish here on earth, need advice and encouragement for many things you want to do. Turn to the soul in her spiritual realm, who has so often stood by you in life with advice and active help. You will not turn to her in vain, to this power, to this soul being in the spiritual realm. You will feel when you say to yourself: This is one of those moments when I would seek Sophie Stinde if she were still here in the world of visibility. When you experience such moments, you may feelings up to their spiritual place, you may feel intimately connected with them in your soul, and if you have won the right love, the right appreciation for them here in this earthly existence, then they will turn their spiritual gaze, the soul's eye, the spiritual power down to you, and you will feel advice and help from the depths of your souls, which they will send to you by spiritual means. We can recognize this from the way in which we now feel connected to a number of our dear departed, that those who were connected to us in the physical life continue to work among us, even after they have visited their spiritual place. Sophie Stinde, one of our first workers, will also be one of our most effective spiritual workers where she now dwells, after she has left the physical body. And so, in this hour, we connect ourselves as deeply and as strongly as we can with her soul, we grasp together all that can live for her in our soul according to the strong power with which she lived among us:

Dear soul, you who were so dear to us, we turn to you, so that from this turning our soul power may take its start to the constant bond with you in loyalty, in love, in growing striving for knowledge.

The words of remembrance: “To lead you out of earthly existence...” are spoken once more. So let us establish the feelings and thoughts that shall bind us to the spirit of Sophie Stinde. So let us vow to ourselves and to her in loyalty that we will hold fast to what connects us with her and she with us forever.

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!

Before I come to the subject of our deliberations today, I feel the need to say a word about the great, painful loss that we have experienced in the physical realm in these days. As you know, Mr. von Moltke's soul passed through the gate of death the day before yesterday. The man's outstanding role, the tremendous role he played for his people in the great fateful events of our time, and the significant and profound impulses from the human events that shaped his actions and work, will be the task of others for the time being, will be the task of future history. In our day it is indeed impossible to give a completely exhaustive picture of all the things that concern just these our days. But as I said, with regard to what others and history will say, it is not to be spoken here today, although it is the most heartfelt conviction of the one who speaks to you here that the coming history will have a great deal to say about this man in particular. But some of what is before my mind at this moment may and should be said here, even if it is necessary for me to say one or two words in such a way that they sound more allegorical than in the actual sense, which will only gradually become understandable. This man and his soul stand before my soul as a symbol of our present and the immediate future, born out of the development of our time, truly a symbol of what should and must happen in a very, very real, very true sense of the word.

We emphasize again and again that it is truly not the arbitrary act of this or that person to incorporate what we call spiritual science into the culture of the present and the near future, that this spiritual science is a necessity of the time, that the future will not be able to continue if the substance of this spiritual science does not flow into human development. And here, my dear friends, we have something great and significant that should now come before our eyes as we remember the soul of Mr. von Moltke. In him we had a man, a personality among us, who stood in the very most effective, in the very most outwardly active life of the present, the one that has developed out of the past and in our time has come to one of the very greatest crises that humanity in the course of its conscious history has ' has to go through in the course of its conscious history, a man who led the armies, stood in the middle of the events that form the starting point of our fateful present and future. And at the same time, in him we have a soul, a man, a personality who was all this, and sat here among us seeking knowledge, seeking truth, with the most sacred, most ardent urge for knowledge that only some soul of the present can possess.

That is what should come before our soul. For this makes the personality, who has just passed through the gate of death, a towering historical symbol, in addition to everything else that he is historically. The fact that he was among those who stand at the forefront of outer life, that he served this outer life and yet found the bridge to the spiritual life that is sought through this spiritual science, that is a deeply significant historical symbol; that is what can place the feeling of a wish in our soul, which is not a personal wish but which is born out of the urge of the time, which can place the feeling, the wishing feeling in our soul: May many and more and more who are in his situation do as he did! Therein lies the significant example that you should feel, that you should sense. However little this fact may be spoken of in the outer life, it does not matter, it is best if it is not spoken of at all; but it is a reality, and it is the effects that matter, not what is spoken. This fact is a reality of the spiritual life. For this fact leads us to recognize: This soul had within itself the correct interpretation of the signs of the time. May many follow this soul, who may today be very far in one direction or another from what we call spiritual science.

Therefore it is true that what flows and pulses through this our spiritual scientific current has received from this soul as much as we could give it. And we should keep that in mind, because I have spoken of it here many times. It means that now in our time souls go to the spiritual world that carry within themselves what they have taken in here in spiritual science. When a soul that is still very active in the beyond passes through the gate of death and now finds itself in the bright world, which is to be explained to us through our knowledge when we know it up there, when, in other words, what we are seeking is carried through the gate of death by such a soul, then, through the union it has entered into with such a soul, it is a power in the spiritual world that is deeply significant and effective. And those souls who are here and understand me at this moment will never forget what I meant here at this moment about the significance of the fact that this soul now takes with it into the spiritual world what has flowed through our spiritual science for years, that this becomes power and effectiveness in it.

All this, of course, cannot be there to trivialize the pain we feel over such a loss on the physical plane. Suffering and pain are justified in such cases. But suffering and pain only become great and weighty and effective forces themselves when they are permeated with a rational understanding of what underlies suffering and pain. And so you take what I have said as an expression of the pain at the loss on the physical plane that the German people and humanity have experienced. Once again, my dear friends, let us rise:

Spirit of your soul, effective guardian!
May your wings bring
our soul's imploring love
to thy protecting son of heaven's own sphere.
That, united with thy might
our prayer may help to shine
on the soul that loves and seeks her.¹

• 1. Rudolf Steiner also said this prayer at the beginning of the commemoration.Bind them together with us, who are of a spiritual nature and are inseparable through the physical event of death.

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.