The Pre-anthroposophical Rudolf Steiner
by Stefan Zweig *
From �Die Welt von Gestern� - Zweig�s autobiography
I received a whole series of recommendations from my Viennese friends,
and I didn�t ignore any of them. The objective of my escapade was to escape from
the secure, bourgeois atmosphere and instead to live unimpeded and dependent
only on myself. I only wanted to meet people to whom I had found my way through
my own literary efforts - and the most interesting people possible; after all,
one hadn�t read �Boh�me� for nothing and as a twenty-year-old one had to live
accordingly.
I didn�t have to look very long for such an indiscriminately thrown
together circle. From Vienna I had been contributing for some time to the
�modernist� Berlin periodical �, ironically named �Die Gesellschaft� (The
Society), edited by Ludwig Jacobowski. That young poet had founded a society
shortly before his early death with the seductive, for young people, name �Die
Kommenden�, which met once a week on the second floor of a caf� at
Nollendorfplatz (Berlin). Modelled after the Parisian �Closerie des Lilas�,
this large group attracted the most heterogeneous poets, architects, snobs and
journalists, young girls who draped themselves as artists or sculptresses,
female Russian students and snow-blond Scandinavians who wanted to perfect
their German. Germany itself was represented by all its provinces, strong-boned
Westfalens, honest Bavarians, Silesian Jews: they all mingled in wild
completely unconstrained discussions. Now and then poems or dramas were
recited; most important was, however, getting to know each other. In the center
of these young people, who ostentatiously acted like bohemians, an old,
gray-bearded man sat calmly like a Santa Claus. He was respected and loved by all,
for he was a real poet and bohemian: Peter Hille. That seventy year old man
gazed good-naturedly and guilelessly with his blue dog�s eyes at that peculiar
band of children, always enclosed in his gray overcoat, covering a tattered
suit and very dirty linen. He always allowed himself to be encouraged by our
appeals to take a rumpled manuscript from his coat pocket and recite his poems.
They were unequalled, really improvisations of a lyrical genius, but too loose,
too accidentally formed. He wrote them in the tram or in the caf� with a
pencil, forgot them afterwards, and when reciting them had difficulty finding
the words on the rumpled, stained paper. He never had money, but he didn�t
worry about money, slept as a guest here, then there, and his otherworldly
forgetfulness, his complete lack of ambition had something attractively true
about it. No one understood when and how this good forest man had found his way
to the great city of Berlin and what he wanted here. But he wanted nothing, not
fame, not to be celebrated, and was nevertheless carefree and freer due to his
poetic dreaminess than I ever saw later in other men. The noise and screams of
the others flowed around him; he listened calmly, argued with nobody, lifted
his glass amiably to one or the other, but hardly ever participated in the
discussions. I had the impression that during the wildest tumults verses and
words were being sought in his shaggy and somewhat tired head and were
eventually found.
The truth and childishness of this na�ve poet - practically forgotten
today in Germany - perhaps diverted my attention from the elected president of
�Die Kommende�, but this was the man whose ideas and words would later be
decisive for the lives of countless people. Here in Rudolf Steiner, through whom
later as founder of Anthroposophy the most splendid schools and academies were
made by his followers as the realization of his teaching, I met for the first
time after Theodor Herzl a man whose destiny it was to be a guide for millions.
Personally he didn�t come across so much as leading like Herzl, rather as
seductive. A hypnotic power lived in his dark eyes, and I listened to him
better and more critically if I didn�t look at him, for his ascetically lean,
spiritually passionate face was well apt to be convincing not only to women. At
that time Rudolf Steiner had not yet developed his own teaching, but was
himself still a seeker and learner; occasionally he gave us commentaries about
Goethe�s theory of color, which became Faustian, Paracelsus-like in his description.
It was exciting to listen to him for his learning was stupendous and
marvellously many-sided, in contrast to ours, which was limited to literature.
I always returned home from his lectures and many good private conversations
enthusiastic and at the same time somewhat depressed. Nevertheless - if I ask
myself today if I would have prophesized then that this young man would have
achieved such a philosophical and ethical mass effect, I admit to my shame that
I must say no. From his seeking spirit I expected great things in science and
it wouldn�t have surprised me in the least to hear about a great biological
discovery achieved through his intuitive spirit. Many years later when I saw
the grandiose Goetheanum, that �School of Wisdom�, which his students had
established for him as a platonic academy of �Anthroposophy�, I was rather
disappointed that his influence had gone so much in the direction of mass
appeal, even sometimes to the banal. I do not pretend to judge anthroposophy,
for it is still not clear to me what it means and what it wants to accomplish.
I even think that essentially its seductive effect is attributable more to
Rudolf Steiner�s fascinating person than to an idea. Still, to have met a man
with such magnetic strength at that early stage where he undogmatically and in
a friendly manner imparted knowledge was an immeasurable gain for me. In his
fantastic and at the same time profound knowledge I recognized that true
universality, which we had arrogantly deceived ourselves that we already
possessed, can not be attained by mere reading and discussion, but only in
years of long and ardent effort.�
Contained in �Der Andere Rudolf Steiner� � 2005, Pforte Verlag, Dornach,
Switzerland. This extract is titled �Hypnotische Kraft� (Hypnotic Power).
Translation: Frank Thomas Smith
*Stefan Zweig� 1881 (Austria) - 1942 (Brazil)
Stefan Zweig was an extremely well-known writer in the 1930s and 1940s.
Since his death in 1942 his work has become less known. Zweig wrote novels and
short stories, and several biographies, of which his most famous is probably
the one of Mary Stuart. This was published in German as Maria Stuart and in
English as (The) Queen of Scots or Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. At
one time his works were published in English under the pseudonym "Stephen
Branch" (a translation of his real name), when anti-German sentiment was
running high. Born in Vienna, Zweig was the son of Moritz Zweig, a wealthy
Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida (Brettauer) Zweig, the daughter of an Italian
banking family.
Zweig studied philosophy and the history of literature, and in Vienna
was associated with the avant garde Young Vienna movement. Being a Jew, he fled
Austria in 1934. He was famously defended by the composer Richard Strauss who
refused to remove Zweig's name (as librettist) from the posters for the
premiere, in Dresden, of his opera �Die schweigsame Frau� (The Silent Woman).
This led to Hitler refusing to come to the premiere as planned; the opera was
banned after three performances.
Zweig then lived in England (in Bath and London), before moving to the
USA. In 1941 he went to Brazil, where he and his second wife Lotte (n�e
Charlotte E. Altmann) committed suicide together in Petr�polis using the herbal
concoction Vironal, despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. After
the fall of Singapore, they believed Nazism would spread over the whole earth.
"I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in
which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest
good on earth." His book �The World of Yesterday� is a paean to the
European culture he considered lost.
