Memories of Rudolf Steiner by Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz. Chapter 3

   

MEMORIES OF RUDOLF STEINER

by Ludwig Graf Polzer-Hoditz

Chapter 3

Shortly before my first meeting with Rudolf Steiner, my wife and I had purchased an estate which lay near to the small Austrian village of Gutau. We settled down to a rural life with great pleasure, the more so as the surrounding neighbourhood was especially interesting. The many small mills which served outlying farmsteads had caused the region to be called the Mill district. The land, together with the Bohemian forest, was called by the Romans the Hyrcinian Forest, but the Romans had never set foot there. Bohemia was once encircled by an almost impassable wall of forests — only towards the east was there any break. The upper reaches of the Moldau flow along the present Austro-Bohemian frontier from the northwest to the southeast, and from there the Moldau takes a northerly course to Prague. The writings of Adalbert Stifter have made this district known to many people who are not Austrians.

Throughout my whole life the Slav temperament was very sympathetic to me, although the full significance of this had to await the explanation of Rudolf Steiner. My mother’s family was of mixed Bohemian and Silesian descent. I myself was born in Prague, while my wife also comes from Bohemia. In the pre-war Austria, Germans, Slavs, and Hungarians found themselves mingling together in harmony, and my own life pursued this course. My schooldays were spent in Steyrmark. My military career brought me to Hungary, but throughout my life fate led me repeatedly to my homeland in Bohemia and the Slav countries. I realized how the people of these parts had on successive occasions throughout the course of history been played one against the other by outside forces striving for mastery. But it was only later that I could understand the deeper spiritual background. For myself, I always felt at home among the Germans, the Hungarians, and the Slavs, and never was subject to a feeling of excessive nationalism. In fact anything that savoured of nationalism, even abstractly, injured my sense of human dignity. The situation in the old Austria was different from that obtaining in nationally unified states, and therefore I loved it. The feeling of constraint first came over me when Austria in the days after the war became the national State it now is, completely disregarding the spiritual needs of its future.

Adalbert Stifter’s novel Witiko taught me to understand much of the future needs of Central Europe, wherein so much of the old Roman Empire was still to be felt. Witiko was the founder in the twelfth century of the Rosenberger family, which later, under Roman influence, fell into decay. At that time, when the Stauffen were emperors, it was the Babenberger who did not exactly lead, but at any rate prepared the German elements for their future mission. The whole spirit of Witiko was such as if the writer himself felt from his own historic past the deep spiritual community between the Germans and the west Slavs. The experiences of Witiko with the Bohemian Dukes, especially his close contact with Vladislav I, first king of Bohemia, seemed to me to be a repetition of the friendship at the beginning of the tenth century between the first Duke Wenzel (Vaclav) and the Emperor Henry the Fowler. Even in the twelfth century there was widespread in northern Europe a deep pre-Christian feeling of a necessary brotherhood between Germans and Slavs. The nature of these two races was completely at variance with the external Roman conception of Christianity. One might say that they foresaw the coming destiny of future centuries.

At the time of my first meeting with Rudolf Steiner, the management of my estate took up so much of my time that for the next few years I was only able to follow his train of thought by reading his fundamental books. The time had not yet come when my wife and I followed up his lectures in the different towns. My agricultural pursuits gradually taught me the life and needs of the peasants. I saw how the instinctive capabilities of the peasant to utilize natural and cosmic forces in conjunction were practically dying out in the younger generation. For a short time I took a leading part in agricultural societies where a rationalistic, materialistic outlook taught methods which could not replace the former living instincts of the peasants. I saw how the agricultural societies only imbued the peasant with a spirit of commercialism, and how harmful and futile were agricultural subsidies. In agricultural exhibitions mechanical things played the chief part, and industrial products were valued by their deceptive outward appearance, but their life-giving qualities were not recognized or appreciated. I was aware that “science” could not be built up by intellectualism alone. I was also conscious that with the normal methods and way of thinking, the peasant could not be helped, but that the so-called love of the peasant was only the hidden selfishness of the consumer and of the town dweller. Then I did not know how this was to be remedied — later I was to learn through Rudolf Steiner.

If the needs of the life-force were to go unmet, the social structure of mankind would progressively suffer, and historic forms would fall into chaos. It was these thoughts that led me to take up politics. We were well off, and it was not from material grounds that I took up this career. At the granting of universal suffrage for the 1911 election I stood as an independent candidate. I had no thought of beating Prelate Hauser, who represented the Christian Socialist party, but only wanted to exploit the opportunity afforded by the election to popularize some new ideas. I drew up a manifesto which I sent to all kinds of people throughout the country. My main point was that it was not progress to circumscribe all the activities of man to the rule of the State. It was, I felt, flying in the face of Providence, and was making man unfree and depriving him of his self-reliance. Then I naturally did not dream that there were powers in the world which were the tools of demonic forces seeking to retard the spiritual and moral development of mankind. But these forces must first be recognized before the counteracting forces can be set in motion.

Deliberately, in order to create a surprise, I entered at a late period of the election, and as the constituency was very extensive I could only hold a few meetings. The dominant Christian Socialist Press lost control of itself, and let loose a flood of quite irrelevant and demagogic attacks, thereby helping me by giving the equivalent publicity of many election meetings. The so-called Liberals, who were also authoritarian in outlook, were glad to see the dominant party opposed, and so supported me. At the election I obtained therefore the surprising total of 2,000 votes, but as I expected these were some 5,000 less than those of my opponent. Some years later, during the war, I was glad to come into friendly relationship with my opponent, Captain (formerly Prelate) Hauser. He was a typical Roman, but quite attractive, having the openness of a peasant, and was by no means a dry-as-dust lawyer. This was in June 1911. The following month I, together with my wife who had hitherto held aloof, read the series of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in Hamburg in 1908 on the Gospel of St. John. These lectures sufficed to make my wife as enthusiastic a follower as myself. In August of the same year we went to Munich to hear Rudolf Steiner. I now knew that for all situations of life I could only obtain guidance from Rudolf Steiner, and that I had set my feet on the path that I had sought to find, and that only he could guide me.

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

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.