Memories of Rudolf Steiner by Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz. Chapter 7

       

MEMORIES OF RUDOLF STEINER

by Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz

Chapter 7

In the year 1910 a branch of the anthroposophical movement was founded in Vienna, Alfred Zeissig, a dentist by profession, being chosen President. Zeissig led this branch and, later on, the Austrian National Society, until the year 1935, with the greatest faithfulness and devotion to Rudolf Steiner’s work. My father had known Zeissig before I met him and told me of the very favourable impression he had formed of him. A friendship that grew closer and closer was established between us, and his family provided me with a home, especially at the time when, after Rudolf Steiner’s death, responsibilities grew and many destinies were understood which made the bonds between individuals still more intimate. I think with joyful gratitude of the work that was done together with these friends during the long years of ever-changing events.

When, in 1912, we moved to Linz on account of our sons’ education, we arranged a lecture-room of our own, where I gave anthroposophical lectures and courses for two years, until the beginning of the war. This work was done in complete harmony with the already existing branch in Linz, led by Herr Raimund Filir.

Rudolf Steiner loved Austria and the characteristics of her people. He speaks of this in his autobiography, The Story of My Life. The narrative unfortunately had only been brought up to the year 1907 when Rudolf Steiner’s death occurred — in 1925. The necessity of a spiritual renewal through anthroposophy demanded, for various reasons, the strongest concentration of his work in Germany, but whenever he came to Austria he spoke with particular warmth, and also esoterically when his audience and circumstances made it possible. He came often to Austria and lectured in Vienna, Prague, Graz, Linz, and Klagenfurt. It was frequently my lot to help in the preparations for these lectures. Shortly before the outbreak of war, at Easter 1914, his lectures in Vienna were especially well attended. For members he spoke on "The Inner Being of Man and the Life between Death and Rebirth." He concluded each of the six lectures with a Rosicrucian saying: Ex Deo nascimur; In Christo morimur; Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. As far as I know, he had never done this anywhere or at any time before in lectures to members which were open to many who had only just joined the movement, as well as some outsiders.

It was in these lectures that Rudolf Steiner spoke for the first time of the economic situation in Europe as a "carcinoma" in the economic life, the healing of which alone could save Europe from a catastrophe. Loving Austria as he did, he was ever concerned about her future destiny, a fact which I realized again and again through the years that followed. During these years I had many personal talks with Rudolf Steiner. He spoke much of Austria’s national problems, saying that they were not easy to solve and that old ways of thinking were not adequate. He also spoke of the powers which were opposing a solution. Gradually he prepared me for a real understanding of these matters. I can only speak of this more concretely later on.

The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess of Hohenberg, on June 28th, was a foreboding to us all of portentous consequences. For a long time the immanent world war had been spoken of. The tension was felt by everyone who was in the very slightest touch with the events of the time. As far as I was concerned, the feeling of this tension went back as far as the year 1887, when I was at the Cavalry School at Mährisch-Weisskirchen while the war with Russia was threatening. My parents provided me with all the necessities in case of that event, as I should have had to enlist. This atmosphere of tension about an approaching catastrophe had never left me, and Rudolf Steiner’s disclosures were therefore a deliverance from unintelligible presentiments. It was not only the fact of the assassination in June 1914 that was so moving, but also the circumstances of this double destiny. I have written about it in my book, Das Mysterium der Europaischen Mitte, and have called this destiny a world-historic one.

The assassination was a consciously prepared event, the execution of a carefully conceived plan, devised by well-hidden circles for the purpose of creating an opportunity to carry out long-cherished political intentions. At the time of the event I did not know of these underlying currents. I had only a dark presentiment that most of the conditions of life would be changed, especially in Middle Europe. Rudolf Steiner spoke of the destiny of the two victims and of the Archduke’s soul after death, how he had drawn to himself all the fear which prevailed on the earth before the war and so let loose the forces of war. By and by I learned to gauge the underlying currents of events which had taken place since 1914, and today, after twenty-two years, I may be allowed to say that the determining realities are not apprehended by merely looking at outer events and documents without realizing that hidden powers often use absolutely honest and highly intellectual men as tools to carry through their destructive aspirations for might. The people in prominent positions are therefore often only puppets or tools in the hands of wirepullers in the background who, by certain objectionable practices, know how to make contact with demonic spiritual forces antagonistic to spiritual development. Through such events as the double assassination in 1914 — and other similarly arranged events have happened since and will happen again because the good counter-forces are still rare and weak — we can grasp the threads in the background if we try to do so and if we really have the courage to think and to conquer obstacles in the life of thought. But then we can only look on so-called investigations into such an event with a pitiful smile, revealing as they do the poverty of insight, lack of perception, and helplessness which up to the present time have prevailed in all subsequent events.

My attention was lately drawn to a feuilleton in the Neue Freie Presse of September 8, 1887, entitled Aesthetische Streifziige (Aesthetic Flights), written by the Viennese comedy-writer Eduard von Bauernfeld (1802-1890) in his eighty-fifth year, and closing with the following lines:

Extinguished are the brilliant stars of poetry,
The time of gracious peace appears gone by,
The world war threatens from no distance far,
Delivering us to dire barbarity.

The eighties of last century were significant for the hatching of plans for the destruction of Middle Europe (many individuals of Middle Europe were, of course, also concerned in these plans), and perhaps Bauernfeld in his last years had an inkling of the fact that such plans were being made, without realizing it concretely. In old age it is possible, even without training, to grasp a hidden fact without necessarily being in full waking consciousness.

The times being what they were, my wife and I were anxious not to miss any opportunity of attending lectures, and so, together with many others, we went to Norrköping on July 9th. Rudolf Steiner gave four lectures to members on “Christ and the Human Soul.” He also gave public lectures. On our return journey we were in the same train as Rudolf Steiner. During the crossing from Sweden to Germany we met a French man-of-war; later on we were told that it was taking Poincaré to Petrograd. As we were passing Stralsund I was standing with Rudolf Steiner in the corridor of the train and he remarked: "This is the town Wallenstein said he must conquer, even if it were chained to heaven." Rudolf Steiner said this with particular emphasis, as he often did when he wanted us to reflect more deeply. As is well known, Wallenstein never conquered the city.

Rudolf Steiner went to Hamburg, and we travelled via Berlin to my wife’s home, Castle Heiligenkreuz, near Taus in the Bohemian forest. After Rudolf Steiner’s words it struck me as a curious piece of destiny that we were going exactly the opposite way, Eger to Pilsen, from the way (Pilsen to Eger) that Wallenstein had taken before his assassination. As I had been so closely related to the Waldstein family ever since my childhood I was especially struck by these words. Unfortunately, as in so many other cases, I did not give any further thought to the episode.

When the war broke out I volunteered for military service. I had retired in 1901 as I was suffering from the effects of a fall, and was very often ill. As I had not been serving for some length of time, I was only accepted for local work. As Parliament was not sitting, my brother, who was at that time Councillor and Director of Chancery in the Upper Chamber, turned the Parliament building into a hospital for wounded and invalided officers and men. Soon afterwards I was made military inspecting officer of the hospital and took up residence there. In this capacity I had practically nobody above me. My old friend General Cann Wallis, once tutor to Emperor Karl, had the highest military authority, but my brother had asked him to accept this appointment, knowing that through him the administration of the hospital would enjoy a certain amount of freedom. Therefore, although I was in military service I was also able to devote myself to anthroposophical work, and could often get brief leave and be absent for a short time. It was then that I started giving anthroposophical lectures in Prague, which I have continued to do ever since. I went there every fortnight on Saturdays and Sundays. Rudolf Steiner had said to my wife in Dornach that he would be glad if I could help the work in Prague, as Herr Toepel, who had been very active there, had to join the army.

My wife and two sons spent the winter and spring, November 1914 to the end of May 1915, in Dornach and worked as carvers on the architraves of the Goetheanum. For this purpose I took my sons temporarily away from their school in Linz. On account of the war there were not enough people for the artistic work which had to be done by anthroposophists, and my wife therefore decided to go to Dornach. I shall always be grateful to her for this decision. It was also of benefit to my sons, though not from a narrow, bourgeois point of view, which I always loathed. At Christmas I too went to Dornach. I shall never forget this Christmas, because of its deeply spiritual atmosphere. From Alsace one heard unceasingly the thunder of guns, and in the Goetheanum anthroposophists of all nationalities were working together in perfect inner harmony, with utmost sincerity and devotion to the great work.

Rudolf Steiner directed the building in every detail. There were all kinds of different things to be done. For example, I remember a dear old English lady who sat sharpening the knives for the carvers from morning till night. Nobody gave a thought to fatigue, and when Rudolf Steiner returned after a visit to Berlin or Stuttgart it was a red-letter event for everyone. They all wanted to consult him about their work, and everyone received what he needed. In the evenings there were lectures on many themes concerning art for those who were working on the building. My sons, in spite of their youth, were allowed to be present at some of the lectures; they played in the orchestra, in some scenes from Faust, and also, later on, in the Oberruferer Nativity Plays produced by Rudolf Steiner. The carpentry workshop which, to begin with, was used in the daytime, served as lecture-room. Everything corresponded with the seriousness of the times; one felt that humanity needed most sorely the work Rudolf Steiner was putting into the building of the Goetheanum. On the one side, we were experiencing the beginning of the work of destruction; on the other side, we saw, at Dornach, the rising of a new culture for the salvation of a future humanity. During that Christmas at Dornach I naturally spoke to Dr. Steiner about the war, which depressed us all so greatly and for the end of which we were all longing. Rudolf Steiner said that it would be dire calamity for mankind if the war were protracted, as seemed to be happening. If a genuine peace was to end the war this could only be achieved by new, creative thoughts giving rise to a fundamentally new order of all spiritual, political, and economic conditions.

On Christmas Eve, a tree was lit in the workshop, trimmed with thirty-three candles, thirty-three roses, and the symbols of Christmas. In front of the first row of seats a small bench was placed for the few children of some of the members. That evening Rudolf Steiner gave an address only for the children, speaking of the great poverty in which the Christ Child had been born. We grown-up people knew that this was an indication of the poverty which was to be the fate of Middle Europeans, and that only from this could there arise the great spiritual, Christian rebirth. Rudolf Steiner gave the Christmas lecture for members two days after, indicating that December 24th is the festival of the Birth of the Child.

In this connection I will mention a remark of Rudolf Steiner which, although it does not belong to that time, seems to be connected with this address to the children. Some years later, when I once came to Dornach and was asked to dine with Rudolf Steiner, I was wearing a fur coat which still looked quite presentable. He said to me with a loving solicitude in his voice: "You do not know yet how poor you and all of us are." I often had occasion to think of these words later on.

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Source: https://rsarchive.org/OtherAuthors/Polzer-HoditzLudwig/MemoriesOfRudolfSteiner/Chapter_VII.html

in 1937

Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz played a central part in the development of the anthroposophical movement from 1911 to 1925. He was a personal friend of Rudolf Steiner and one of his closest helpers. As such, these memoirs present a first-hand impression of Rudolf Steiner in daily life.

In 1913, Rudolf Steiner called him to Dornach so that he could be present at the laying of the foundation stone of the first Goetheanum. In 1917, Graf Polzer-Hoditz, whose brother Arthur was the Prime Minister and a personal friend of Kaiser Karl of Austria, belonged to a small circle to whom Rudolf Steiner gave the first indications regarding the Threefold Social Order.

As a member of Austrian aristocracy, Graf Polzer-Hoditz was very influential in cultural and political circles of the times, thereby enabling him to work for social reform during and after World War I. The Count was present at the burning of the first Goetheanum in 1922-23 and was also given special responsibility for the then newly-founded School of Spiritual Science in 1924. He vividly relates his memories of his travels with Rudolf Steiner and those who participated in the early anthroposophical movement.