The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today we would like to share some information with you about our friend Christian Morgenstern, who passed away recently. First, I will speak about Christian Morgenstern's career as it developed before he joined our society as a member; then Ms. von Sivers will recite some of his poems from this pre-Theosophical period. After the recital of these poems, I will then take the liberty of speaking to you, so to speak, about Christian Morgenstern's time as a member of the Anthroposophical Society, and Ms. von Sivers will essentially recite poems by Christian Morgenstern from his Anthroposophical period, which will be presented to the public in a forthcoming collection of poems by our friend.

Not only can we talk about Christian Morgenstern as a loyal, dear and energetic member of our society and our intellectual movement, we can also talk about Christian Morgenstern in this branch for the simple reason that he was connected to it in the sense that the chairman and leader of this branch, Dr. Ludwig Noll, was a friend and doctor to him in a loyal, friendly, devoted manner for many years.

In 1909, I received an objectively amiable and modest letter from Christian Morgenstern, in which he applied for membership of our society, the society in which he then expressed that he hoped to find that which had been working in his soul throughout his life in terms of feeling and emotion, and which had always formed the basic tone and nuance of a large part of his poetic work. And it is fair to say that when we consider the overall mood of Christian Morgenstern's soul, we see that hardly any other member of our world in 1909 could have connected with us more fully, more wholeheartedly, than Christian Morgenstern.

Christian Morgenstern has found his way into this incarnation on Earth so that one can literally see from the way he found his way how this soul strove from spiritual heights to find the kind of embodiment that was appropriate for this particular individuality. One would like to recognize in Christian Morgenstern a soul that could not fully decide to find its way into the directly materialistic life of the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, a soul of which one would like to say that it imposed a certain reserve on itself at the time of embodiment, as it were, to remain behind in the spiritual world with certain powers and to look at the world of the earth, always imbued with that point of view that arises when one is half rooted in the spiritual world. So Christian Morgenstern could hardly find a more suitable succession of generations here on this earth than that of his painting ancestors. His father was a painter and came, in turn, from a family of painters. The family was accustomed to viewing what the Earth's orbit offers from the standpoint of the spiritualized artist, and they loved all the beauties of nature and everything that human life produces as its blossoms, even if the foundations are materialistic. And so Christian Morgenstern was placed, as it were, in a hereditary substance, through which a certain relationship to nature developed in him, since he came from a family of landscape painters. Thus, what I would call the relationship to nature was placed in him, which was particularly strengthened by the fact that he was allowed to travel with his parents as a small child. And so we see Christian Morgenstern growing up, and the poetic urge awakening in him early on. We see him developing this poetic urge to such an extent that he, I would say, withdraws with his soul life to a lonely island and looks at everything around him from the perspective of this lonely island. Then verses flow from this poetic soul, tender verses that seem to be born out of the soul itself, which still rests half in the spiritual, and other verses that easily show, when one looks into such a soul, that they must also flow from the same soul; other verses that have absorbed all the disharmony that one encounters when one looks at the external life of our present time. Thus, in addition to the poems that rise up in the mood of prayer, there have also arisen poems that the outer world knows almost only from Christian Morgenstern: those sarcastic, ironic, humoristic poems that such a soul must breathe out, just as the physical lungs must breathe out carbonated air in addition to inhaling pure air. Thus, in this twofold breathing process of the spiritual life, such a soul had to rise, as it were, in prayer to the most sublime wisdoms and beauties of existence in the world, while on the other hand it had to look at the unnaturalness, the discrepancies, the disharmony in the world around it, which struck such a spiritual soul so powerfully that she can do nothing but rise above this discrepancy with a light, fleeting humor.

Christian Morgenstern will be one of those artists by whom it will be recognized how intimately connected the prayerful moment on the one hand and the slightly humorous on the other are, especially in the spiritually attuned soul. Indeed, through this prayer-like quality, which elevates his poetry to the point of being prayer-like in mood, Christian Morgenstern was predestined to ultimately connect his life's journey with the life's journey of our spiritual movement. This prayer-like mood in all its scope and meaning is already evident in the poems from his earliest youth. Christian Morgenstern's prayer-like mood is threefold in its structure towards the world.

What soul can pray? One might be inclined to ask, and this is often the case with Christian Morgenstern's soul. And so he feels the answer to this question of the soul: that soul can pray which is capable of letting the greatness, the sublimity, the divine spirituality of the universe have such an effect on it that the mood of saying yes to this greatness, this sublimity, this fullness of wisdom escapes it. And that then, from this saying yes to the lofty phenomena of the world, the second link is added in the soul, which can be called: to merge with one's own soul in the universe, to submerge oneself in the greatness and beauty and wisdom of existence. — The third link is added, which Christian Morgenstern felt when he brought the idea before his soul: to be blessed by the greatness, sublimity and wisdom and the love content of the universe! - To be able to say yes, to be able to merge into the universe, to feel blessed as an individual soul by the wisdom, beauty and love content of the universe: that is the mood that Christian Morgenstern as a poet already knew how to breathe into many of his earlier poems.

He was sixteen years old when his contemplative mind was confronted with the question that has occupied us so thoroughly in our spiritual movement: the great question of the repeated lives of the human soul. He relentlessly struggled for clarity in this area.

When he was twenty-one years old, all that emerged from Nietzsche, the great questioner, from the personality that so tragically and yet fruitlessly wrestled with all the riddles that confronted man in the last third of the nineteenth century if he really took life and time seriously. Christian Morgenstern himself says that he felt a passionate love for Nietzsche's struggle for many years. Then he came across another mind, a mind of which he speaks the beautiful words: “The year 1901 saw me through the ‘German Writings’ of Paul de Lagarde. He appeared to me... as the second most influential German of the last decades, which was also true in that his entire nation had gone its way without him.” Now Christian Morgenstern immersed himself in Lagarde's ‘German Writings,’ those writings that are not written in Nietzschean style. One would like to say that they are not written in the manner that turns away from life in order to somehow gain a standpoint outside of life and to observe life from there, but Christian Morgenstern also found the other side, which is embodied in Paul de Lagarde: the side that directly engages with life. Lagarde is a mind that, with a keenly penetrating soul, comprehended everything that struggles in the present for reform, for transformation, in order to restore health to this life. And the thoughts that Lagarde, out of his erudition and deep experience of life, tried to shape in order to help the life of the German spirit are endlessly ramified. This has an effect on minds like Christian Morgenstern's, who in their loneliness feel alone with minds like Nietzsche and Lagarde. Nietzsche has since become popular, Lagarde has not yet become popular, but Christian Morgenstern felt a shared loneliness with this mind. So we can understand that when yet another mood was added to his loneliness, Christian Morgenstern found strange words for what he longed for in his future and the future of those with whom his soul felt a kinship in this incarnation.

The uniqueness of his soul then led Christian Morgenstern to immerse himself in the great Nordic mystery-seekers. He became acquainted with Ibsen, the mystery-seeker; he translated “Peer Gynt” and “Brand” and felt so intimately connected in his soul to the great mystery-seeker of the North.

But he also felt elevated above what directly surrounded him in German culture. It is truly permissible to discuss such things on anthroposophical ground and to assume that the dear listeners will set aside all one-sided political or patriotic sentiment and feel transported into a higher sphere when one points to words in which Christian Morgenstern foresaw what he foresaw for his future and the future of those he loved, even though he felt isolated from them. That is why the words that Christian Morgenstern wrote six years later, in 1907, after he had met Paul de Lagarde and a few years after he had immersed himself in Ibsen and translated some of his works, in 1907, have such a profound effect:

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

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

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

That was the soul, which then gradually grew, grew into that mood that overcame him at the time, when he was thirty-five years old, where he felt within himself: man and nature are of the same spirit.

Then came an evening, as though arranged by karma, one would say, when the Gospel of St. John lay before this soul. A new mood came over Christian Morgenstern, for only now, after this preparation, did he believe he really understood the Gospel of St. John. Now this soul was in a mood that it could say of itself: I feel incorporated into the broad, wide stream of the spiritual universe; I feel that which has gone through all times as a symbol of this feeling and must touch us quite particularly in modern times, since we feel something of the deepest basis of the world and of man. Contemplating the world around, the soul can break out, if it is prepared, into the deeply significant words: That art Thou! From the Gospel of St. John the wisdom of “That art Thou” flowed for the soul of Christian Morgenstern. He could say of himself, sitting in a kaflehouse: “So, from his marble table, his cup in front of him, to contemplate those who come and go, sit down and talk, and to see through the mighty window those outside drifting back and forth, like a school of fish behind the glass wall of a large container, - and then and when to indulge in the idea: That's you! And to see them all, not knowing who they are, who is talking to himself there, as she, and who recognizes her as herself from my eyes and only as her from her own eyes! “

Then another mood arose, a mood that many would wish would spread throughout the world. By then, Christian Morgenstern was already known as a poet in his late thirties. He lived as a person who had learned to empathize with the “That's you” and then felt a mood come over his soul, which he expressed in the words: “And yet such knowledge was only a surface knowledge and therefore ultimately still doomed to infertility.”

Do you feel, my dear friends, the humility, the inner, true humility of the soul, which only this soul really prepared to penetrate into the secrets of life!

Christian Morgenstern felt he had become two people. He stood at the gates of spiritual science. He stood at the gates of spiritual science and called everything that had gone before a “superficial knowledge” that was therefore “doomed to be ultimately fruitless”.

First listen to the sounds that that Christian Morgenstern's soul wrested from itself in his pre-anthroposophical period, then I will say a few words about his anthroposophical period, about what he spoke of in the very last days of his life on earth, that he had the only thing in him that never failed him in life, and of which he knew that he could never fail.

Recitation by Marie von Sivers:

Mittagsstille - Eins und alles - An die Wolken
Sommernacht im Hochwald - Präludium - Mondenstimmung
Morgenandacht - Inmitten der großen Stadt

On April 4 of this year, we had to hand over Christian Morgenstern's earthly remains for cremation near our Dornach building in Basel. As I spoke the words on that occasion before Christian Morgenstern's cremation, many conversations came vividly to mind that had taken place after Christian Morgenstern had found himself in our society in 1909, under the aforementioned conditions, of which I spoke earlier. In those conversations, there were often words that passed from him to me and vice versa that touched on profound questions of existence, as far as they can touch people. At the same time, these questions – and this was connected with Christian Morgenstern's recent entry into our movement – pointed to the great problems of existence, but which, on the other hand, through the struggles through the struggles and the struggles that Christian Morgenstern's soul had gone through, had a directly individual character. There again emerged all the feelings that Christian Morgenstern had gone through, for example, in his present earthly career, when for years he wanted to orient himself on Nietzsche, I may say, for the great questions of life.

From many a word he spoke in intimate conversation, one could see how the understanding of a human spirit like Christian Morgenstern, who himself had to struggle so titanically, differs from that of a soul that passes over the struggles of other souls on earth more superficially. And I may well say, without committing any kind of immodesty: I was allowed to believe that I could talk to Christian Morgenstern about Nietzsche in the way that Christian Morgenstern's soul might have desired, despite the fact that his thoughts, which he had also expressed about Nietzsche, had emerged from the depths of his soul. After all, it had taken me fourteen years, from 1888 to 1902, to gain some clarity in my own soul through Nietzsche. I knew myself what struggles and conquests it takes to gain orientation about all that a mind like Nietzsche has thrown into our time. I knew the tones that the soul struck, from the mockery and scorn itself, to much of what Nietzsche expressed, to loving admiration – I knew all the struggles and overcoming that one has to go through. And again, when Christian Morgenstern spoke about his beloved Paul de Lagarde, I was allowed to have my say there too. I had a soul before me that had found support in Lagarde in many ways. I may say that almost twenty years before, indeed even more than twenty years before, I had been able to see how Lagarde's “German Writings” affected at least a small group of people, so that these people received inner soul substance through Lagarde. I had, however, seen how Paul de Lagarde was drawn into a kind of national politics in this circle, but I had also been able to see the strength of Lagarde's thoughts, how the power of his thoughts could find its way into human souls when these souls needed direction and purpose in life. That had long since passed for me, when the lonely soul, the soul that Paul de Lagarde shared with me, encountered Christian Morgenstern.

And so I was able to get to know Christian Morgenstern's soul really, really well at that moment, when it stood at the gates of anthroposophy. It was at that time that Christian Morgenstern, after having enthusiastically participated in various of our anthroposophical events, also joined us on a trip up to his beloved North Country. I could then see how the severe collapse of his health and body approached. Often he had to think again and again, and he did so reluctantly, about how he could help his body to survive for a few more years on earth. Then came the time when he had to be withdrawn from us, when he lived for some time in the high mountains of Switzerland to find relief from his suffering in the fresh, free mountain air. He had previously found a wife who was also deeply involved in our movement and who now accompanied him into his involuntary solitude – for now he would have liked to have been sociable, would have liked to have been with our movement. Then came the time when one was allowed to think – while we were trying to communicate what had been allotted to us to the human souls – that up there in the Swiss high mountains lived one who ceaselessly sought to marry his poetic power to that which was to come to light in our spiritual current, that up there lived one in whom, in an individually unique way, what we are trying to experience in our spiritual-scientific movement, was reborn from the power of poetry. A connecting link was the wife, who in the end was the only link on the physical plane between his lonely soul life in the Swiss high mountains and our society. He could see how his wife brought messages from him down and carried up what she had taken in when he repeatedly asked her to stop by at this or that event so that he too could participate in what is to be conveyed through spiritual science to the culture of our time and to human spiritual life in general. He had indeed found the direct refreshment for his soul in the soul of his faithful and devoted friend and wife, who so deeply understood him. Through her, he saw the world of the physical plane. And it was strengthening for those who were allowed to participate in his soul life that especially in this soul found such an artistic-poetic response to what moves through our souls and what we believe is so important to humanity.

Then, after we had arranged this, I met him in Zurich when I returned from a lecture tour in Italy. The destruction of his body was so advanced that he could only speak softly. But in Christian Morgenstern's soul lived something that, I would like to say, almost made the physical plane dispensable, even for external speech. That was what was so very much before one's mind, even at the moment when one saw the transfigured soul of Christian Morgenstern escape from earthly existence in April of this year. That soul, which has been set free, set free in the development of its spiritual powers precisely through death, has truly not been lost to itself and to us: it has been truly ours ever since. But one thing could stand before us painfully, for that we had indeed lost: that peculiar language that spoke from those eyes that bore witness to such intimacy, which so wonderfully expressed in mute language the intimacy with which one would so like to see the spiritual scientific world view imbued. And the other was the sweet, intimate smile of Christian Morgenstern, which beamed out to you as if from a spiritual world, and which bore witness in every feature to the deep intimacy with which he was connected with all that is spiritual, especially where the spiritual expresses itself intimately and deeply.

When I met him in Zurich, he was able to give me those of his poems that arose, so to speak, from the marriage within him of his poetic power with the anthroposophical spiritual current. And again one saw, again one heard from Christian Morgenstern's poetry the great insights into world evolution, into past embodiments of the earth, into the revival of the forces and entities of past world bodies on our earth body, - brought into poetic form that which is striven for within our spiritual current. He himself had attained that which appears to us as the pinnacle of our anthroposophical research, speaking from his tender, intimate and yet so strong soul: the being imbued with Christ, of whom an idea is gained through the spiritual-scientific tradition. Truly, there lived, embodied in this frail earthly body, our world view, strong and powerful, inspired and spiritualized. And truly, deeply true, the words that Christian Morgenstern spoke about his relationship to this world view appear, after he first remembers the legacy of suffering that was inherited from his mother, that made him physically weak in life, that made him weaker and weaker in the end. After he has remembered all this, he speaks the words: “Perhaps it was the same power that, after leaving him on the physical plane, accompanied him spiritually from then on and, what she could not give him in the physical world, she now gave him from the spiritual world with a loyalty that did not rest until she had seen him not only high up in life, but also up to the heights of life, on the path where death had lost its sting and the world had regained its divine meaning.

So he was with us, and so he was ours. And so he wrote those poems that we will hear about later, which are to be introduced by a poem from his earlier period, in which his predestination for the world view that was then revealed to him is atmospherically expressed, when he had so intimately connected with us in terms of his views and spirit.

And then he appeared again, somewhat strengthened, at our anthroposophical events. We were able to experience the joy that at the end of last year in Stuttgart, his poems, which were closest to his heart, could be spoken by Fräulein von Sivers in his presence, and we were able to witness what was going on in his soul, which, I may say, made such a moving impression on me when we were still able to talk about him and recite his poetry in his presence. It was then that he found the moving words in a letter he addressed to Miss von Sivers:

“It was about four weeks ago, when I was selecting appropriate pieces from my various earlier collections, that I was overcome by a feeling that was very close to me at the moment. I said to myself – in view of the loss of my voice and in view of the fact that right now invitation after invitation is approaching me to read publicly – that these little songs and rhythms would probably never reach human ears as I had felt them. For I relived the wondrous bliss with which each truly vital stanza had been allowed to come into existence, and I said to myself: this state of mind will never again be conjured up by me, or by anyone else. At that time, as so often, I forgot the loving understanding of kindred souls, who are able to create a similar state within themselves, simply out of warmth for the work of art in question and the intuitive perception that they have for the impulses from which and under which it may have formed. On that unforgettable November 24, 1913, you punished me for my terrible forgetfulness in the most beautiful and tender way. For someone had entered that isolated circle of which our dear doctor spoke, had willingly followed the 'lonely one' to his 'island' and could now, as it were, with his own voice, reproduce the artless melodies that were found there and presented themselves.

From now on, I can be confident that one or another of my modest productions may also come to people as living sound – since I received it from you for the second time and thus a greeting from my youth and, on the other hand, a reminder to always serve you pure and high people and the ideals, which want to become truth under the constant sacrificial help of our beloved teacher through you, better and stronger.

With heartfelt veneration and gratitude!

Christian Morgenstern.

After all that we have since experienced, you will understand, my dear friends, that we would very much like to become faithful executors of his intentions with regard to the point that Christian Morgenstern touches on in this letter.

Then it was again in Leipzig, when we were able to give him a New Year's greeting, three months before his death. I spoke then, after once again letting the poems of his last period take effect on my soul, some of which you will hear about later – I spoke then a word that arose in me directly as an actual feeling from the poems. I spoke a word that I would like to repeat as follows: I could see how Christian Morgenstern, with his whole spirit, one might say, lived full of content in our world view, which had taken on a very individual form in him, so that what he gave was a gift for us, and we would never have had to think that he received it from us: we felt so happy in the mood that he gave us back from within himself what our world view had inspired in him. But not only that, something else also radiated from his poems. And I could not express it any differently than by saying: his poems have an aura! One feels the anthroposophical life and anthroposophical way of thinking directly flowing out of them like an aura. One also experiences something that lies not in the words but between the words, between the lines, and is directly auric life. — I was able to express it at the time as a feeling that actually arose for me: these poems have an aura!

I now know why, only now, why I said this word back then. And some of you, or perhaps all of you, my dear friends, who listened to the words of my lecture yesterday, will know why I only now know the “why”. These poems, yes, they have an aura – that is what I had to say when I was allowed to speak about him for the second time on the occasion of the reading of his poems in our circle in Leipzig in his presence. At that time, just at the beginning of this year, it was a happy time for Christian Morgenstern, I may say so. When I saw him in his room in Leipzig, it was strange to see how - yes, how healthy, how inwardly strong this soul was in this rotten body, and how this soul felt so healthy, so healthy in the spiritual life at that very time, as never before. Then it was that the words came to me that I had to speak before his cremation: “This soul truly testifies to the victory of the spirit over all corporeality!”

He worked towards achieving this victory throughout the years in which he was so closely connected with us through our spiritual movement. He achieved this victory not in arrogance, but in all modesty. Looking up to him, as his soul was released from earthly life, I was allowed to speak the words in Basel: “He was ours, he is ours, and he will be ours!” At that time, when I spoke of him for the third time, karma, I may say, brought about in a remarkable way that I was precisely at the place where he was laid to rest, in the vicinity of our building at Dornach, when his earthly remains were committed to the elements.

And so, after he had written those words, he had passed away from his lonely grave, still in his earthly life, through our spiritual current. And truly, one can perhaps feel it if, with a small change, reference may be made to the words that were shared earlier, which were spoken by him years ago, before he united with our spiritual current. We can now rightly say: we seek him in the spiritual realm, to which we

are seeking the path. 'We found a path' is also the title of his last

collection of poems, which will be published soon. In the spirit land we see him safe. We look up to him. We want to learn gradually, we want to learn to recognize what an important individuality was embodied in him. But that is not to be spoken of today. But what we feel deeply, as if it were written on his spiritual tombstone, which we want to set for him in our hearts, that will be the name we have come to love, with which we want to associate many, many things. It may stand as the only emblem on his spiritual gravestone. We will associate much with this name after he has become ours, after we have recognized him. Therefore, my dear friends, you will feel that I am being sincere when I say, building on the previous words:

In the spiritual realm we find him embedded,
at the edge, between the earthly and the spiritual.
There he works, there he does not rest,
there he continues to work as a spirit among spirits,
for all the present.

But we write on his spiritual house his name, which has become dear to us, and the words that we want to feel deeply:

Read Christian Morgenstern!

I myself would like to express this request in connection with the name Christian Morgenstern:

Read Christian Morgenstern!

He found his motherland there in spiritual heights, the spiritual world, the mother flood, brought him home. He has returned to his homeland, but to the homeland in which our soul is rooted with its strongest powers, rooted even in the moments, in the celebratory moments of life, when it must feel distant from all mere sensual events.

This is what I would like to say here, in words that arise from my own spiritual contemplation of Christian Morgenstern, before I present the lecture of the poems that he left us as a beautiful emblem of the effectiveness of our world view in a human soul that has wrestled and fought a great deal, that has fought as a spirit for victory over the body, that has experienced many people and has experienced many people and many world views, and who, even in the last days of her life here on earth, was able to speak the words:

“Actually, there is only one thing in which I have not, not even in the slightest, gone astray...”

Christian Morgenstern meant the world view to which we also profess ourselves.

But we want to be convinced, my dear friends, that this view remains with him for the life in the spirit that he leads and to which we want to look up.

Recitation by Marie von Sivers:

Sunrise Prayer · To a doubter · Moon at noon · Of two roses · Waterfall at night · Light is love · How do I break free from YOUR spell · There, take this · I lift up my heart for you · I am born of God like all being.

Is it not, in essence, my dear friends, all of us who are here together for the purpose of our construction, not strange karma, now, in a harrowing event, to experience the connection between karma and seemingly external coincidence? We can already understand this when we take everything we have experienced in anthroposophy so far and turn it into a conviction: that human lives that are taken away early, that have not gone through the worries and sorrows, nor the temptations of life, that such human lives are forces in the spiritual world that have a certain relationship to the entire human life, that are there to have an effect on these human lives. I often said: the earth is not there as a mere vale of tears, as something where man is transferred, as it were, as a punishment, out of a higher world, the earth is there as a place of learning for human souls! - But if a life is short, with only a short period of learning, then there is just enough strength to work down from the spiritual world and to flow away...

We then also recognize the lasting value of the spiritual world's effects in such a life, which is snatched from us, like the good boy who was snatched from us for the physical plane. We honor him, we celebrate his physical departure in a dignified way, when we learn, learn a great deal, in the indicated and in many other ways from what has been experienced in the last days. Anthroposophy is learned by feeling and sensing. Then, when we face such a case, we look up into those spheres where the soul of the child whose body we have today given back to Mother Earth has been transported. What is now being sent out by many anthroposophical souls to people who sacrifice their personalities can also be spoken to those who have died for the earthly plan with a small change. For they too are reached by the request that we speak. These requests apply to the living and also to the dead. And when we are convinced that the soul has already left the body, then we speak the mantram, which most of our friends here are familiar with, with a small change, with the small change with which I will now forward it to the dear, good 7beo, to his soul, as it lives on in the spheres as a sphere-man:

Spirit of his soul, active guardian,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To your trusted spheresman,
So that, united with your power,
Our request may helpfully shine
On the soul that lovingly seeks it.

Dear fellow sufferers!

After the kind words of the pastor, I have to be the interpreter for those hearts that have been lovingly received by the dear one who has passed away from us. First, I would like to address my dear, dear partner, dear father and dear children, and then all of you who are gathered here to accompany the earthly shell of our beloved friend to her final resting place.

It has been a short time since we walked the same path and promised the dear companion of the deceased to share her pain, to share the pain that we did not want to comfort her about, but rather promised her that we would share it.

And today we are in a position to have to try to keep the promise of sharing the increased, the magnified pain with our dear friend and with the others with whom the dear departed was so close. Over time, he has become ever closer and closer to us, drawing on the most profound human strengths, the strengths that we can come closest to with another human being, the best strengths of our spiritual striving.

This time, too, I would like to express nothing more with these words than I did when we stood at the grave of our dear child: that we want to bear, faithfully bear the pain that so justifiably follows the cover to the grave, that will last, but that must be borne bravely and courageously in the knowledge that from the spiritual worlds, where the human soul is received after death, space and time separate us, but that nothing separates us from the spiritual worlds when souls want to be connected to these spiritual worlds through the powers they carry within themselves and through which they can, in faithful connection with these worlds, triumph over space and time. We knew our friend Albert Faiss in such striving. Years ago he came into our midst, tested, severely tested by the outer life. It is fair to say that his lot was work, hard work and laborious striving. But when you got to know his soul, how it lived, how it looked out of those kind, faithful eyes so confidently, you saw that this soul had found support and security in itself, was able to bear heavy, laborious work and worries of life because it knew itself to be firmly on the secure ground of spiritual life.

The one we loved had to travel far away, and even in the far distance he did not find his goal and rest, but in his own heart, in his own soul, he found it. He found it, and we appreciated the strong cohesion of the striving that he developed in his soul, with our own striving. We appreciated what must be so infinitely valuable to us, my dear mourners.

If someone finds the connection with us that our friend Faiss found, it is because this connection is already prefigured in the eternal grounds, because he sought with us only what he always sought in his own soul. This also gave our friend that wonderfully beautiful, unified nature that those who came close to him could observe in him again and again.

He had chosen a profession that brought him into contact with nature. He had managed to make his profession, at least in his mind, into what every profession should be and what can be made of every profession from the security of the intellectual life. He managed to achieve higher aspirations within his profession. When he spoke in this way and wanted to penetrate the forces that the earth develops to produce food in his profession that could best serve humanity, when he inquired which plant was better suited for this or that human need, then one saw how he understood how to develop service to humanity out of his profession. It was a beautiful part of his nature that he never thought of pursuing his profession for personal reasons, but tried to make it into a service to humanity and thus into a form of worship. He tried to imbue human activity with the consciousness of divine activity.

That is our task, and our friend Albert Faiss devoted himself to this task with heartfelt dedication, with all the strength he had at his disposal. That which lived so in his soul, which he knew so lovingly and intimately to penetrate with his whole being, and everything that lived so in him, oh, that brought him the love, the intimate love of those who lived near him. We all know Frau Faiss, we know how she was united with the dear departed in intimate love and common striving, we appreciate the harmonious interaction of these two people, and since we know this, we will also find ways to share with her the pain for which there are hardly any words of comfort.

I can think of no better way to express the wonderful beauty with which the powers expressed in our friend's soul were able to acquire active love than to say a few words about the child who has fallen asleep.

When the father went to war and the mother was alone with the children, the dear departed child – the oldest of them – spoke as she worked faithfully by her mother's side: Now that father is gone, I must work especially hard to be a support to my mother. That is laborious love, such as is acquired by the noble powers of mind that the dear departed possessed. This child will now receive the soul of the departed friend in an appropriate way; they will work together in the spiritual world, and we should unite with them in the spirit that we believe we are grasping.

Strong are the thoughts of the dear ones who send them from the other side to those they have left behind; they expect us to direct our soul's gaze to them. We will often think about how the dead, the so-called dead, can know how the souls here look after them, how the souls here are united with them. So let us cultivate the loving service with the deceased in intimate, loyal friendship with those left behind, knowing that he was united with us in the same striving.

Yes, dear friend, dear soul, you knew how to walk the path of the spirit from your very nature. You did not take a step in your daily life here on earth without knowing that everything your eyesight embraces, your hands grasp, is given by God the Father, the eternal God, in all your earthly work. You knew that you were woven into the eternal of God.

And so was your work, dear friend, dear soul, that it had to seek for the knowledge that was appropriate to it, that it might be imbued with the essence that first gave meaning to the earth, with the essence of Christ. You knew that. And that is what you sought when you took your last earthly steps in this region, when you wanted to unfold your activity in harmony with our spiritual striving near the building through which we want to develop this spiritual striving.

So you sought in your own way to penetrate the eternal in you, already during your life on earth with that power that strives to grasp the meaning of the earth, and you sought to gain that knowledge which strives to gain the meaning of life on earth, which the Christ Jesus has given. In this way you knew that you were connected with your eternal, divine part in Christ Jesus himself, knew that you were interwoven with him. And so you also knew that you would one day die in Christ Jesus, and knew that you would carry the aspiration to live with the spirit, with which we are all united, through the gateway of death.

So you lived with God, lived with Christ, so you died in Christ and so your soul will be united with him and we may look up to you in spirit.

In this consciousness of being united with You, we often direct our thoughts to the realms in which Your soul is now active, for we believe that the dead are alive, alive with us, as they were in earthly life when they were still connected to us in the physical body. And we know that What we now feel for him is also interwoven here on earth with what flows down from the spiritual planes into which the dead have entered. United with Your powers, we know those powers, those soul powers, which are beyond space and time.

We give you this as a promise to stand faithfully by those you have left behind here, with whom we will try to bear their pain, looking up to you, who will receive from the soul of the dear child with whom we are united. In eternal spheres, not only in death, we feel united with you, and we may, full of this consciousness, call out to your soul: farewell, farewell in spirit, and let us, as far as we are able, live with you!

The soul whose passing we mourn today showed the full, most noble strength to exchange this earthly life with that other into which she was called to enter. And the friend was ready to receive the revelations of that other world, as she was always ready to receive the revelations of this earthly world. We, my dear mourners, raise our souls to this soul, in union with all the loved ones, in the pain for the dearly departed here. We sympathetically unite our souls with the souls of our dear relatives and look up to the soul that has departed from this earthly world and its way of life. And when we try to explore, feelingly, discerningly, what lived in this soul, when we imagine it free from all that was earthly, when we want to listen to it where it speaks from its deepest conviction, from its deepest feeling and will, then we, my dear mourners, may well feel as if we were hearing this dear, this powerful soul speak words like these:

In world-wide expanses I will bear
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred activity.

In world thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

I will dive into the depths of souls
With devoted contemplation, that it may become strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In God's peace I strive so
With life struggles and worries,
My self to the higher self preparing;

Longing for a joyful peace,
Sensing the world in my own being,
I would fulfill my duty to humanity;

Then I may live in anticipation
of my soul's star,
which in the spiritual realm grants me the place.

A life full of work, a life full of strength, a life full of lively concern and human duties, which she was assigned in her earthly life, in her present phase of life, has come to an end in our beloved friend, and in such a way that one word comes to mind and to the soul when this life is to be characterized by the nature of her personality, a word in which much, much can be included. But nothing, I think, is in this word that should not be included when looking at the personality who has left us: an “anima magna” in the noblest sense, a beautiful soul in the best sense of the word, and a soul that knew how to pour out what radiated in her in glorious beauty for all those who were close to her or came into the slightest contact with her, so that one became partakers of the love, the goodwill, the strength that emanated from her. Everyone around her could perceive the strengthening and revelation of intimate soul beauty.

Such a soul has passed from us, and we feel our relationship to her, which is truly felt, like the setting of a sun that we have so gladly seen around us.

But again, my dear mourning friends, when we turn our spiritual gaze to this evening of life after a life of work, we are overcome by the most heartfelt consolation from this soul itself, consolation in many respects.

One can think of the life ideal of many ancient souls who, when they came to the realization of the evening of their lives, said that they would not want to come to this evening of their lives without the soul being able to enter in a corresponding way into the spiritual worlds into which they are to submerge when the gate of physical life is closed. Countless spirits in ancient times felt the same way: May I be granted an evening of life so that I may go, feeling, into the spiritual world. Those who had not yet taken in the feeling of their connection with the spiritual world felt, as it were, their purpose in life slipping away. What a beautiful feeling and sensation this woman had been given in what she had around her in her old age, and that is why such a purpose in life, which brought her closer to the spiritual world. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful entry into and life in the spiritual world than was the case with our friend.

When you look back on her life, you see a life dedicated to taking care of the smallest, most insignificant things in life, that powerfully wanted things from the details of life and yet was again inspired to embrace all the details of life in a grand sweep. who had the joy and the good fortune to approach this soul, it was exemplary through its noble, through its strong activity, exemplary through the care in the individual, exemplary in the most loyal action.

And then again, this soul, who has fulfilled her life through work, effort and worry, felt the need to live and immerse her soul in the revelations of spiritual life. She also had this need in an exemplary, truly exemplary way. My dear suffering friends and friends of my dear friend, from the revelation of spiritual life to which we profess, one receives a conviction for spiritual knowledge, admittedly through a saying of Goethe. But standing in this conviction, one feels the truth of Goethe's saying so strongly that one can hardly feel the truth of this saying in any other field: “What is fruitful is alone true!"

Oh, how often one had to think of our dear departed when one contemplated her strong, exemplary life! In her, the connection with the spiritual world proved truly fruitful. With her whole soul and her whole heart she stood in the elements that take hold of us and flow through us when we seek the connection with the spiritual worlds. She repeatedly felt imbued, flooded and strengthened when she really wanted to experience the connection with the spiritual world, and then the forces flowed into her physical upright posture.

Truly, our spiritual current, my dear friends, feels fortunate to be able to be united with such souls. And it can do so, for on the one hand it must tell itself that it receives from these souls as much as a glorious gift of right living as it gives; and on the other hand, when it can be seen what spiritual science can be to such souls, spiritual science also feels strengthened and invigorated, and strength flows to it from such souls. That is why such souls are living stars in the midst of our spiritual current, and we look up to them as we would to certain stars. Because we look up to such living stars, we are comforted in our pain, and we feel this comfort even when we can no longer see the loving eye or hear the dear voice. If it can be a consolation for the dear ones that many souls united with our friend in true friendship unite in outer pain and mourning, then they can truly be sure of this consolation; they can be sure of the consolation that comes from the awareness, at least the outer one, the consolation that turns to a feeling that can be truly consoling, especially for such a soul.

We will consider and feel: Now she has left us, now she will no longer reach out to us, now we will no longer feel the warmth of her heart, no longer have her benevolent gaze resting on us, now we will no longer see her strength in the physical world. When we feel all this, we turn to the other feeling, especially when we are faced with such a soul, to the feeling that this soul is an infinitely precious gift of our life on earth. And let us consider every moment in which she was allowed to devote herself to us in this physical world, which we think back on with love and loyalty, as a gain, and then let us consider every moment in which we can no longer have her in the physical world, as such, in which we want to hold fast to the love and devotion that she so richly deserved.

Let us no longer look at the moments when she will be physically gone from us, but let us look at the moments she gave us and let us cherish those moments in our memories. They will be rich and full of important things. Such was this soul that the memory of her can be more than abundant. If we do not find only sorrow in their absence, we will find strength and power among the many other things. The sight of them shows us a soul in which the value penetrates into one's own soul, into the anima.

Souls of this kind are among those through whom the gods reveal how much they love the world. Lives that flow in this way, blessing, full of work, full of devotion in love, which are then also allowed to reap the fruits in children and children's children, and which, in the insight into this satisfaction from their earthly life, are allowed to look within themselves, such souls are the ones through whom the gods reveal their love for the world to man. And when such a soul departs from us, then our own souls feel as if they are united in spirit with the spirit that flows through all worlds, with the living force that goes through all life. Then we are closer to understanding these words, which are given to the human race, than we are in the ordinary moments of life, when we feel united with the noble soul that hovers over our life, the fleeting life, and then we do not say in a different sense than usual; Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.

A sense of the world permeated our friend's soul, a sense of the world that constantly spoke from the heartfelt interest she had in intellectual life. And, my dear friends in mourning, you have to resort to the words of a great ancient sage if you want to find words that shape that which filled this anima magna:

“No longer shall your breath alone be in harmony with the surrounding air, but henceforth your mind shall also be in harmony with the rational essence that surrounds everything, for the power of reason is poured out upon us all and permeates everyone who wants to draw it to themselves, just as the air permeates those who can breathe it.”

This world view of the ancient Roman sage lived in our friend's heart. But in addition, she had a living understanding of the union of the individual human soul with the whole; she had everything that the human soul can fulfill in our time, when it seeks the path through the earthly shell up into the spiritual worlds. And when she felt this sense of life in our sense, our friend, that the spirit surrounds us and wants to be breathed in like the air - truly, honestly and sincerely, lovingly and urgently, she often felt through her soul: “I was born of God” - of God, with all that my physical shell, my earthly life, has done.

But then, when such a soul rises into the spiritual world, when it seeks that which can shine forth from the spiritual worlds, then, in its search in the spiritual worlds, an inkling, a belief, a knowledge of those worlds arises in it, which are exalted above space and time, above birth and death and above the stars. Then that feeling begins, which the old Roman sage could not yet have, that feeling that truly makes the sight of death a new birth, that makes the sight of death appear as the birth of the soul for the spiritual worlds.

The soul here felt surrounded by reason, by spirit, by world thoughts in the earthly world. So the soul, which can feel, which has been initiated, feels the soul of the friend. When she delves into her reasons, she feels how she finds the way to the world that is beyond space and time, in which physical death forms the entrance to the connection with the Christ, who reveals Himself through the mystery of Golgotha, who reveals Himself anew in the understanding soul in every moment. And then such a soul finds the true conviction, which no soul can find more sincerely than the soul that hastened ahead of us, the word: In Christ we die. - Everything she gave us in her life, when we saw her among us, for years and especially in the last times, is an affirmation of her being imbued with the Christ impulse. This is an affirmation of what she felt when she constantly turned to the mystery of Golgotha, the wisdom that can flow into all human souls that want to receive it. Thus we find her death, which for her was consciously a new birth, in intimate union with the Christ. She died in the Christ.

But that gives us the strength of thought to know that we are united with her in spirit, to find the main consolation beyond all pain and grief: As true as she hastened into the spiritual world, clothed in the luminous and powerful thought, “In the Christ I shall resurrect,” so true as the word, the powerful word that resounded from her, will it arise in her soul, and we shall resurrect with her and be united with her.

In this union, my dear mourners, we shall plant in our souls the thoughts that should be directed, as often as we are allowed, to the soul of our dear friend, to the exemplary way in which she lived out her time on earth for us, to the strength and heavenly light that radiates from her. When we turn our thoughts to her in loyalty, we vow that when we leave her earthly shell, we want to feel that so strongly in all of us, with our best thoughts united in her, forever, until we see her through the power of the spirit in which we want to live intimately united with her.

Because this soul was so deeply imbued with this spirit, inspired by the longing for the light that speaks from the spiritual worlds, it is, my dear friends, that when I tried to feel so united this morning with the soul hurrying into the spiritual world, that I could hear the words that seem to me that soul would say if it followed the purest impulse of its self, followed that which radiated from the star of life as long as it dwelled among us.

They shall become conscious in our hearts, these words, which seem to me to be words that the hurrying soul calls out to us in this last moment when we are allowed to dwell with its earthly shell, calling out to us, admonishing us, worrying about our own path in our spiritual world. These are words through which we ourselves will feel the strength to sense our unity with the soul and to find our way into the spiritual world. It seems as if this soul were speaking to us in the words that we want to carry faithfully in everlasting remembrance of her:

In the world's expanse I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred power;

In world thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

In the depths of souls I will dive
devoted thinking, that it may become strong
for the true goals of human endeavor;

In the peace of God, I strive
with life's struggles and worries,
preparing my self for the higher self;

Longing for a peaceful peace,
sensing the cosmic existence in my own existence,
I would like to fulfill my human duty;

Then I may live in anticipation
of my soul's star,
which grants me a place in the spiritual realm.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul,
to show themselves to research.

Your love of truth
was akin to your yearning;
to create from the light of the spirit
was the earnest goal in life
to which you strove tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts
To the bright path of spiritual knowledge,
Undeterred by worldly contradictions,
As a faithful servant of truth,
Secure in your stride.

You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they would bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
pushed error aside
and created space for truth.

To shape your self to reveal
pure light,
so that the soul's solar power
might radiate powerfully within you,
was your life's care and joy.

Other concerns, other joys,
They barely touched your soul,
Because knowledge appeared to you as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms your sense of the spheres matured.

Feel how we lovingly look
into the heights that now call you
to other work.
Pass on to your abandoned friends
your strength from spiritual realms.

Hear our plea,
In the confidence sent to you:
We need strong power from the spiritual realm here to do our work on earth,
which we thank our dead friends for.

A hope that makes us happy,
a loss that hurts us deeply:
Let us hope that you, far away,
Shining undimmed upon our life
As a star of the soul in the realm of the spirit.

As we envision You through the innermost workings of our minds, so, dear friend, You appear to us, our soul clearly living, in order to work in the realm of that spiritual life to which we have devoted our hearts, to which we have devoted our souls in loyalty, to which You have also devoted Your soul and heart in loyalty. Truly, a hope that makes us happy. And today, we stand before the loss, which pains us deeply, with our dear mother, who is so close to all our hearts, and who, with such deep, loving understanding, kindred spirit, followed his path through life with me, not just followed it, but prepared it for you with the deepest inner knowledge of your nature, with the deepest inner love. We stand there with our dear siblings, some of whom must be far away, devoted to the duty that the times demand of so many people in the present. We stand there and can only say to our dear mother and dear siblings one word of comfort at your mortal remains: It may be a consolation, a consolation that lasts over time, that you, dear friend, have won the love of so many kindred souls who will always be willing to share the pain that your mother and siblings are experiencing.

You grasped that which permeates us as our spiritual being, as your own being. But deep in your soul glows a persistent, earnest exploratory urge, an exploratory urge that has always been intrepidly turned towards the truth, the truth alone as the shining light. I often spoke with you about your life here on earth, but often it was also as if you pushed aside what the earth could give you for your earthly life, because the spiritual light stood brightly and shiningly before you, to which your soul wanted to devote itself completely, to whose reflection your soul turned.

When people got to know you better, it was as if, deep down in your soul, you wanted to express the conviction, which never lingered in your consciousness, through this or that word: I will not have to worry about my earthly path in this incarnation. — And so, what could cause you such worry became less and less valuable to you. Instead, more and more a beautiful, wonderfully bright harmony of our spiritual life dawned on you, and what appeared to be weakness on the outside, appeared to be strength to the soul. A hidden spiritual world shone gloriously out of your soul, a rich life and striving out of the narrow horizon, and the spiritual world shone wonderfully for you. If more years had been allotted to you, what lived humbly and chastely as a spirit of research in your noble soul would have ripened into the most beautiful fruit. It was pure and chaste like those souls of researchers who work their way up from the deepest chasms, from which souls of researchers must work their way up. One of those souls in whom the powers develop slowly and gradually, so that they can then also take on that form that transforms the urge to research into the ability to teach.

So you, my friend, were on the way from research to teaching. If, as was symbolically expressed in your outer being, that which permeates so many with error and false ideas about the light of spiritual existence could not touch you, then on the other hand it was your strong will to penetrate to the very sources of existence, to seek knowledge for yourself and to give this knowledge to your fellow men. And Your strong, strong will knew how to illuminate itself with that keen sense that was able to see through error that stood in the way of truth. That was how it was. You spoke of that which You already knew how to proclaim from the source of spiritual life, as one of the first who, connected by their very own power with the divine foundations of the world, knew how to put clear truth in the place of error, which, misunderstanding and misjudging our spiritual striving, comes to us from all sides from the world. That is why You promised to become a loyal fellow warrior in that host, which wants to be devoted to the holy, eternal truth, to illuminate and warm the fleeting time, so that it may stand firmer and fit into the stream of eternal being.

In principle it is self-evident to you that you are connected with what we call the spiritual life. And that is why this being, in its quiet but unyielding zeal, had such an infinitely harmonious effect on all the souls of friends, strengthening and invigorating these souls again and rekindling in them the spark that must ignite in man if he is to find the way from time to eternity. And even if what appeared to be Your earthly life-force was sometimes weak, Your inner spiritual life always presented itself to us as an especially strong and powerful energy that knew how to walk the path it had chosen out of realization with sure steps. You stood before us as a promise of the future, as a dynamic fighter for the cause that was one with your innermost self, with which you had made this innermost one.

It cannot be for us at this hour to speak only words of comfort for those souls who must remain behind, for the dear mother and the dear brother and sister souls. For all those who were devoted to you in intimate friendship, it is fitting to live in holy sorrow since you have left this earthly field. But through the trust in the spirit that inspires us, in the spirit that lived so strongly in you, we also trust in the pain of our souls that he will find the strength to always look up to you in the regions where you will dwell and we are not lost to you through the beautiful, glorious treasures that you through your higher self, which you strove to develop during your earthly existence, collected.

You know, dear soul, how much at risk that is in our spiritual current, which is so close to our hearts, is endangered by the contradictions of the world, by error and misunderstanding. You know how we, standing here at your mortal remains, look up into the spheres that receive the spiritual. You know how difficult it is for the souls in the bodies to fight against conscious and unconscious enemies with what is so dear to us. You know how we look to You with the request to continue to unite Your power with ours. You know how we do not trust in what people encounter in the visible world. You know that we hold to the invisible world because we know that it is permeated by the souls of those who belonged to us and have left their earthly place of life. But we, who work below, want to ask You to work among us with the powers that are now at Your command.

When that which sometimes surges within us and all too strongly challenges our strength asserts itself, then it will be You who is at work in our striving. So, never lost, so united with us in intimate love, we would like to live with You in thought, to whom You will be unforgettable, far and near. And You will be able to do so, from the spiritual regions that have received You, to send Your strong powers down to us.

I see unspent powers in the life from which death has taken You away after a short existence. But you have passed through the gate of death with soul powers that are blissfully strengthened by the power of Christ, by that power of Christ, which you knew how to take in as spirit-knowledge, in your most inner feeling, in the secret of your heart, in your rich knowledge, which you knew how to take in as a living power that keeps alive throughout eternity that which which we know how to connect with this Christ-power.

You have understood how to solve the riddle of spiritual science for yourself, so that you let it enter into the center of all your longing and searching that which gives meaning to the earth, which, as the striving of humanity, is incorporated in all earthly life: the power of Christ. Strengthened and invigorated by the power of the Christ impulse, you have passed through the gate of death; with the power of the Christ impulse you are in spirit. And that in you which is connected with this power of the Christ impulse will turn to us who seek this power of the Christ impulse, so that your fire may become one with our fire, in order to achieve those goals of humanity that must incorporate into the earth's striving and working out of eternity into time.

United with the light-filled power of Christ, we now look up to You with love, to our strong support, to our bitter loss, but also to our confident consolation.

So go into the light-filled world and be assured that our love follows You, as we are certain that Your light will be with us.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul's being,
Want to show themselves to research.

Pure love of truth being
Your longing was kindred;
To create from the light of the spirit,
That was the earnest goal of life,
Which you tirelessly pursued.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts,
To walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge
Unperturbed by the contradictions of the world
As a faithful servant of truth,
Securely walking.

You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they might bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
Push error aside
And create space for truth.

To shape your self to a revelation
of pure light, so that the power of the soul's sun might radiate mightily within you, was your life's concern and joy.

Other concerns, other joys, they barely touched your soul, Because knowledge appeared to you as a light,
which gives meaning to existence,
as the true value of life.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms
Through the power of the soul's being
Want to show themselves to research.

A loss that deeply pains us,
So you disappear from the field,
Where the spirit's seeds of the earth
In the womb of the soul's being
Matured in your sense of the spheres.

Feel how we look lovingly
Into the heights that now
calling you to other work.
Give your strength from spiritual realms
to your abandoned friends.

Hear our souls' plea,
sent to you in trust:
We need strong strength from spiritual realms here
for our earthly work,
Which we thank to our dead friends.

A hope that makes us happy
A loss that hurts us deeply:
Let us hope that You, far and near,
Do not lose our lives, but shine
As a star of the soul in the spiritual realm.

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.