The Rudolf Steiner Archive

“Veni Creator Spiritus” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (8th) by Rudolf Steiner
“All” by C. F. Meyer
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (9th) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening “Look within” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“To the Moon“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Opening ‘Look Within’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
”Joy“ by J. W. v. Goethe
”Melody“ by Ludwig Jacobowski with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
”Swallows” by Christian Morgenstern
A saying from the Calendar of the Soul (10) by Rudolf Steiner
“Forest Concerts” by Christian Morgenstern
Children's performances of all kinds, with music by Leopold van der Pals
“To my calf” by Fercher von Steinwand
Children's performances (anapaests with music by Max Schuurman; “A Riddle” by Rudolf Steiner;
“Lenz Triumphator“ by C.F. Meyer)
”Kleiner Tanz“ by J. S. Bach (children's group with eurythmists)
”Den Originalen” by Christian Morgenstern Children's performances with music by Max Schuurman
The ‘Elster’ series by Christian Morgenstern
Opening of the conference with music by Leopold van der Pals

Eurythmy performance for the members of the “Evangelischer Lehrerverein Baselland und Baselstadi”, who had previously been given a tour of the Goetheanum by Rudolf Steiner.

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

First of all, allow me to express the deepest satisfaction - both for myself and for the Executive Council of our Goetheanum - that you have been able to honor us with your visit today. It is a special pleasure for us to find interest in your circle, in your association for our weak attempt to introduce you to modern spiritual development. We will now, since you have only a little time left, take the liberty of briefly demonstrating some of our eurythmy for you.

I will not say many words in advance, but just say that this eurythmic art has two sides. In particular, it has the artistic side, then the pedagogical-didactic side, which I do not want to touch on here in particular, and it also has a hygienic-therapeutic side. First, I would like to talk about the artistic side. Our eurythmic art is indeed a kind of artistic language, studied on the basis of Goethe's view and attitude towards art in the tone sequences and movements that underlie visible language. This eurythmic art, this silent visible language of eurythmy, I may well just briefly hint at today, is also something that will play an important role in the future. Likewise, the pedagogical-didactic direction will acquire a special significance. This art will, once people start thinking about these things a little more objectively, certainly find many friends and attract interest from onlookers.

With regard to the pedagogical-didactic part, we can say that we have already had the best experiences with it, since we have added eurythmy to the curriculum of the Stuttgart Waldorf School as a compulsory subject, as a kind of soul gymnastics. Not to replace gymnastics, but alongside ordinary gymnastics, this eurythmy class goes hand in hand with it, in a sense, a form of gymnastics for body, soul and spirit. While ordinary gymnastics is more of a physical education, this eurythmy as a spiritualized form of gymnastics has an effect particularly on the initiative of the will, on the shaping of that which is human soul initiative. I just wanted to say that in advance in relation to the presentation.

Due to the limited time that is left for you, I am unable to say anything specific about children's eurythmy. We can only give you a few examples. But I would ask you to consider what is coming in eurythmy and, in general, what can already be given today, as well as everything else here, as something that is only just beginning. Much is still in the process of development. We are our own harshest critics, but we know that this art can continue to perfect itself. And if it finds the interest of our contemporaries, then this eurythmic art will establish itself over time as a special art alongside the older sister arts. In the same way, the significant pedagogical and didactic side of educating young people will be able to play a major role in the future. I hope that you will be able to turn your interest to our events and that we will not have to disappoint you completely with our performances, which, due to the limited time, can only be a few.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, The art of eurythmy, of which we would like to give you a small sample here today, attempts to penetrate to the very sources of human artistic creation in a certain way, unlike certain other arts that can easily be confused with it - dance or other mimic arts. It seeks to achieve this through very special artistic means. And because it is necessary to say a few words about this so that the essence of this artistic direction can be grasped, I will send these words ahead – not to explain the performance itself, which would of course be an inartistic undertaking. For art must speak for itself in the immediate impression it makes.

What you will see on the stage resembles a kind of gesture performed by the whole human being. But it is not, and one would judge eurythmy quite wrongly if one thought that the movements that come about either through the individual human being or through human groups are mere gestures that are supposed to express what is to be presented either on the one hand musically or on the other hand poetically or recitatively. Eurythmy wants to be a real visible language, it wants to reveal in plastic movement exactly the same as the human larynx and its neighboring organs can reveal through sound.

If one wants to understand the essence of eurythmy, one must look at its sources. It is the observation, both sensory and supersensible, of the movement tendencies expressed by the human larynx and all that is connected with the speech organs when speech sounds are uttered. This does not refer to the movements that pass into the outer air as direct tremulous movements, as vibrations, but to the movements that underlie these tremulous movements as movement tendencies. Movements that, organically, want to do more than they actually do. But the sensory-supersensory gaze – to use this Goethean expression – can observe these movements and then transfer them to the whole person according to the principle of metamorphosis. Just as Goethe, when he named the whole plant in its complexity a leaf multiplied in its individual subdivisions, actually saw only a leaf that had become more complicated, so what you see on the stage as a whole human being, like a larynx on the stage is, in fact, a transformation of what is naturally ignored when we simply listen to human speech, but which can be observed through sensory-supersensory observation as movements, as an inner eurhythmy of the speech organs. This is transferred to the whole human being. The individual movements that a person performs or that groups of people perform are therefore to be judged in exactly the same way as human speech itself according to the inner laws.

Now, if you look at what is being presented superficially, you would think that you were dealing with pantomime or facial expressions. On the other hand, it can be said that when we speak, we sometimes feel compelled to support our speech with gestures. When do we do that? We only do that when we feel that we are subjectively pursuing something that is more or less fully expressed in speech. But what is present in actual eurythmy is just as objective as what is expressed in language; all gesturing is excluded from it, all mere pantomime and mime is excluded from it. This can now be considered in the same way as it is considered for ordinary language.

On the one hand, we can say that eurythmy is so much an inner, visible language with its own laws that when two people or two groups of people perform the same poem in completely different places, the individual differences are no greater than when two pianists play the same sonata. That is one way of looking at it. But you could also say: you can distinguish between two pianists playing the same piece based on their individual nuances – and the same will be true for individual eurythmists or groups of eurythmists. In this way, what is subjectively incorporated into the gesture will be connected in a nuanced way with what is an objective law.

So in this visible language of eurythmy, we have something before us, not in the individual gesture, not the expression of something that lives literally in the soul, but we have in the individual eurythmic movement in which the whole human being feels as he feels in a single sound or word or word context, as he feels in spoken language. And what is effective is not that it expresses something in the soul as an individual element, but that one movement is linked to the next, creating a sequence of movements, just as a sequence of sounds is created in speech. Exactly the same way as it is in music, where we also have an inner, lawful movement in the succession of tones, in eurythmy such an inner movement comes to light, so to speak, as inner plastic music.

This enables us to extract from a poem – and in addition to the musical aspect, there will also be poems that are recited to accompany the eurythmy – the eurythmy merely expresses in silent, moving language what is expressed in the recitation in spoken language. We have the opportunity to express what concerns the whole human being, what is not expressed in the conventional or in mere thought expression - the inartistic in poetry. We have the opportunity to express the whole feeling and will, the whole personality of the human being as if in a large, moving larynx.

To do this, however, it is necessary, and this must be mentioned again and again, that one must return to the actual artistic element of poetry. Our time is essentially unartistic, and it is therefore very common today to perceive what is literally the content as the essential thing about the poetic art. In contrast to this, it must be said again and again that Schiller, for example, had an indeterminate melody alive in his soul, and from this indeterminate melody anything could become, whether it was “The Diver” or “The Fight with the Dragon” or anything else - that only emerged later. The essential thing for Schiller was not the literal content, [gap in the text] not the prose that is in the poem, but the important thing was the rhythm, the beat, the musicality, the plasticity, the imagery.

Today, people love an art of recitation that actually no longer has much to do with artistry, but sometimes with human sentimentality, with human goodwill to express this or that inwardly – although it always remains a phrase or sentimentality. But what real recitation is, can still be found in older times. Goethe rehearsed his Iphigenia with his actors with a baton, not so much going into the content as into the way the iambic went. This literal recitation could not be juxtaposed with eurythmy as an accompanying art, but one must also go into the eurythmic aspect of speaking itself. And so here one must recite as the good old artists of yore recited.

All this shows that with this eurythmy something is being striven for that wants to establish itself as a new element in our whole spiritual movement, a piece of Goetheanism. Goethe characterized so beautifully what eurythmy can achieve, even if only in a very limited area. Goethe spoke of how man, when he sees himself at the summit of nature, in turn feels himself to be a whole nature and takes in harmony, measure and meaning, and finally rises to the production of a work of art.

This production of the work of art comes to life, I would say, most fully when the human being, in the realm in which he sees eurythmy, makes himself an artistic tool for what he has to represent. Then this microcosm, this small world, as the human being presents it, as he brings it before us, is really not conceived of as a collection of arbitrary elements for the expression of the subjective, which comes to expression in the gesture, in the facial expression. Rather, what is inherent in him from his entire integration into the world, that is to be said with regard to the artistic aspect of eurythmy. And first and foremost, eurythmy should be something artistic.

But alongside this – and you will see a small sample of this in the children's eurythmy that we will present to you in the second part, along with some humor – there is also the didactic-pedagogical significance of this eurythmic art. It is certainly something significant when one introduces children to this eurythmy, because one can understand this eurythmy in a pedagogical-didactic sense as a kind of soul gymnastics. There will come times when people will think more objectively about these things than we do.

In more recent times, gymnastics have been seen as a particular benefit for young people, and rightly so. However, this is not to be criticized. An important authority told me some time ago that he does not consider gymnastics to be an educational tool, but rather a barbarism. I do not wish to go that far. But it is clearly appropriate in our time and demanded by life that this soul-based gymnastics of eurythmy is of educational and didactic significance for children. The strength of the soul, willpower, is what can be developed through this soulful gymnastics, while ordinary gymnastics - only because it looks at the human being from the point of view of physiology, only for the body that performs certain movements - can provide some help for skill.

For example, this spiritualized gymnastics, eurythmy, is being introduced at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt. This provides an essential didactic and pedagogical element. And in many other respects, it will be seen that this eurythmy can perhaps give the people of the present age what cannot come from any other source. What people thought of before this war broke out! They thought of staging the Olympic Games. It is just as if, at a certain age, people were given not what is good for them, but something that is good for a completely different age. Today, everything is seen only in the abstract and intellectually, in terms of current affairs, and not in terms of effect. The Olympic Games were a natural thing for what people needed in that age. Today we need something quite different from the Olympic Games. Today we need something that also places the human being in the whole world context in a soul-spiritual way. And so the Olympic Games and all the ideas that aim at something similar are nothing more than a certain dilettantism in relation to human cultural development.

What is attempted in eurythmy is, however, only a modest beginning, and I must keep pointing this out. But it is what is truly called for by the immediate present, by the demands of our time. And so it may be said that, on the one hand, the esteemed audience must be asked to regard what we are now able to present as really only an attempt at a beginning – all of it requires a great deal of refinement. Although those viewers who have been there before will see how we are currently striving to make progress from month to month in the development of the forms, the three-dimensionally moving forms of groups – we are also our own harshest critics and know exactly what perfection we still need.

It should also be noted that in the art of recitation, which has the particular artistic task of emphasizing the poetic, we do not achieve this by particularly emphasizing the prose content and , but that every effort must be made to apply a suitably artistic form of recitation to eurythmy, which is certainly still in its early days today, and that this will not be universally understood today. What is available as a beginning in the artistic field can, especially if our contemporaries are interested, perhaps be perfected by ourselves, but probably by others. And then something will develop out of this eurythmic art that will be able to stand as a fully-fledged sister art alongside the older fully-fledged sister arts of eurythmy.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Today, we will again take the liberty of presenting you with a few samples of the eurythmic art we have inaugurated. As usual before these performances, allow me to introduce them with a few words. I do this not because I intend to explain what you are about to see on stage, but because what you are about to see aspires to be real art. Real art, of course, needs no explanation, but must speak for itself, must immediately make the impression that is intended with it, must appear directly. But I must say a few words in advance about the sources and the whole way in which this art was found. For it is an art that is only just beginning, that will only come to the stage where the laws work as something self-evident - for example in music - through further development. We are under no illusion that what we can already try today is just the beginning.

If I am to express the essence of this art in a few words, I would say: it is a kind of language, but a language that does not come about in the usual way that a person speaks with his speech organs in the phonetic language , but rather it is a language that works through visible movement, which either one person performs on himself or groups of people perform together in space and the like, thus a kind of mute, visible language, performed by the whole person.

All this is fundamentally based on the development of a Goethean concept of art, like everything that is attempted here, or is attempted within the movement for which this Dornach building is intended to be the representative, the external representative. Like everything, this too is based on a further development of Goetheanism - whereby Goethe is not what he was when he died in 1832, but what he is in the living, spiritual movement to this day, in the artistic principles, in the cognitive and spiritual principles in general, which are in his sense.

It may look abstract, but I am being very specific and factual when I recall what Goethe actually meant by his theory of metamorphosis. This theory is still not sufficiently understood today. It will only be fully appreciated in its full scope and depth when our views on true science have changed from those of today, which are still rooted in materialism. It may sound simple when Goethe says: If I take a single plant leaf, then everything that makes up the whole plant is present in this single leaf, only various aspects — the ramification of the plant, the formation of the flowering part, the fruit part, and so on — are not visibly expressed in the leaf, but are, so to speak, within the leaf in thought. What is visible in the leaf is much less than what is present in the thought in each individual leaf, so that each individual plant leaf – simply formed – is the whole plant. And again, that the whole plant is nothing more than a complex leaf. As I said, once the full scope of what Goethe suggests for plant life, and what he has also developed in a certain sense for the animal kingdom, has been thought through and researched, it will make a significant impression on all spiritual life.

We are trying to implement here what Goethe merely applied to the form of organic growth, the growth of living beings; we are trying to apply it – albeit transformed into the artistic – in our eurythmic art by studying. All that is contained in the art of eurythmy is based on a deep spiritual study of the underlying movement tendencies of the larynx and all neighboring organs that come into play when speaking. Not the individual vibrations that then pass into the air and convey the sound that I am speaking to you now, for example, and that reaches your ear, but the large, comprehensive movements, which are clearly evident in the configuration of the vocal cords and the configuration of the other organs that come into play when speaking. All this had to be carefully studied. These movements, which one gets to know, if I may again make use of Goethe's expression, through sensual-supersensory observation, are then transferred to the whole person, so that the person expresses through his arm movements, through the movement of his whole body, what the larynx and its neighboring organs want to carry out.

Just as Goethe takes the whole plant, like a complicated designed leaf, so too is what a single person or groups of people present on the stage in front of you, it is a transformation of the larynx and other speech-organ movements. In the people and groups of people who appear before you, you see, I would say a moving larynx. The whole human being becomes a moving larynx. It is only natural that not everything is immediately comprehensible, since this art is in its infancy. But just think of when you hear a language you do not understand, it is also not immediately comprehensible to you. And if you are also to receive artistic and poetic elements in the language, it is not immediately comprehensible either. Eurythmy will only gradually develop into a self-evident impression. But those who have artistic feeling will already be able to see the movements that are performed as a kind of moving language or moving music. All it takes is a little artistic intuition.

However, as eurythmy is emerging, it must strive, I would say, in our truly art-poor time, in the time when there is so little real artistic sense, it must strive to deepen this artistic sense. If you listen to things today, it is really the case, ladies and gentlemen, that you have to say that ninety-nine percent of everything that is written today is written completely unnecessarily, and only one percent of it really arises from artistic inwardness. Because it is not the prosaic content, the literal content, that makes a poem artistic, but only the form, either the musical background or the plastic-pictorial background.

The times are actually over, but they must come again, when the romantics found it particularly satisfying to listen to poems in foreign languages, when they did not understand the content at all, but only the rhythm, only the musicality, in order to delve only into the musicality, into the formal of the artistic creation that underlies poetry. We must come back to this, to understanding correctly, in turn, what it actually means when one becomes aware that Schiller did not initially have the literal content of his most important poems at all – that was of no great importance to him at first. There was something vaguely melodious in his soul, and one poem or another could arise from it later. It was only later that the prose content was added – that is the unartistic aspect of the content. The actual artistic aspect, that is, the rhythmic, the metrical, the melodious, or even the plastic, is what is actually artistic about the poetry. So you will notice that when we perform poetic eurythmy, we do not strive for pantomime, for anything mimetic. If it still occurs today, it is only because we are just at the beginning of the eurythmic art and must strip away all physiognomic, mimetic and other aspects in eurythmy. That is another imperfection. Insofar as it occurs today, it will be discarded later.

What is important is that what the poet himself does artistically in the formation of the verses, in the rhythm and so on, is also grasped in the flowing out of the eurythmic. So that it is not a matter of asking: how does a eurythmic movement express this or that? but rather: how does the eurythmic movement properly follow the preceding movement, how does the third follow the other two and so on, so that one really has a musical art unfolding in space. Therefore, on the one hand, you will see that what is to be eurythmized is recited, and on the other hand, you will hear something musical. And on stage you will see only human movements, in which either the musical or the poetic is realized.

I would like to point out that in this way, the art of recitation must in turn be pushed out of the non-art in which it is actually included today. This art of recitation is, of course, regarded as particularly perfect today when the reciter pays particular attention to the literal content, to the prose, to that which is expressed through poetry. And one is particularly satisfied when the reciter, the declaimer, as one says, expresses the prose content quite inwardly. It cannot be expressed in the same way as it is striven for in today's inartistic culture. If you want to practise eurythmy after reciting, the reciter must also respond to the rhythmic, the musical or the plastic-picturesque aspects of the poetry. So that precisely what is neglected today must also come to the fore in recitation.

During the course of this evening, you will also see children perform. I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that these children's performances already play a major role in the curriculum of our Stuttgart Waldorf School – as a supplement to purely mechanical gymnastics through the art of eurythmy for children. I would like to say that what otherwise appears as art is inspired gymnastics. A later time, which thinks more impartially than today about spiritual progress, spiritual human needs and so on, will think quite differently about these things than we do today. Today, of course, children do gymnastics as the physiological, the purely mechanical laws require. But no consideration is given to the human being as a whole; only the human being as a physical being is taken into account. When our children perform movements that are also movements of the eurythmic art, the whole human being is set in motion in body, soul and spirit. And the effect of this is that - if it is introduced to children at the right age in a fully curriculum-based way, as we do in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart - then not only what gymnastics brings about is brought about, but much more. Today, this is not believed because the whole spirit of thinking is materialistic. Gymnastics certainly has many good things. But what eurythmy can bring out in children and what gymnastics cannot do is develop initiative of the will, independence of the soul life. This comes from the soulfulness of the movements, which is not present in mere gymnastics.

So what we do as eurythmy has, firstly, an essentially artistic significance, but secondly, it also has a pedagogical-didactic significance. And I could talk about a third significance, a hygienic one, but I do not want to today. Because what is done in eurythmy has something essentially healing about it, this hygienic aspect can provide essential practical support in cases of illness. Unfortunately, the time available to me here is not enough to go into more detail.

In any case, what might be called the following should come to light in eurythmy: The human being attempts to express through outward movement what lies within him in the way of movement possibilities. In this way we have something truly spiritualized and ensouled, something that can be directly perceived by the senses in its spiritualized and ensouled form. We have nature, for the whole human being stands before us as nature. But we have ensouled nature, for it is the human being who performs these natural movements. We have, in the most eminent sense, the human mystery expressed in the movements of the will, so that when the human being is the instrument in the art of eurythmy, Goethe's beautiful saying is truly fulfilled: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he brings forth a whole nature within himself, takes order, harmony, measure and meaning together and rises to the production of the work of art. And in eurythmy, he takes his own movement possibilities, his form, everything available to him, and brings order, harmony, measure and meaning together to express what is in his soul.

I believe that what Goethe longed for so much in art, namely that it is at the same time an unraveling of the great secrets of nature, comes to expression in a eurythmic performance, because Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, that person feels a deep longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. Art is something that Goethe, like every true human being, thinks of in intimate connection with the secrets of the world.

But I ask you to bear with me on this, as far as we can demonstrate it in rehearsals today, for we ourselves know very well that everything is still in its infancy, and perhaps only the attempt at a beginning. But anyone who looks at the essence of this eurythmic art and is active in it must be convinced that what it is at the beginning is capable of being perfected, which will one day – perhaps through our own efforts, but more likely through those of others – enable this youngest of the arts to stand fully equal with the older, more established ones.

Dear Sirs and Madams:

Allow me to say a few words in advance today, as I usually do before these eurythmic experiments. This is not done to explain the idea itself, that would be an inartistic undertaking. Art must work through direct impression of what it is, and does not need an explanation. On the other hand, it seems necessary to me, since we are not dealing with something that is already fully developed in eurythmy, but with a beginning, perhaps one could even say: with the attempt at a beginning. It seems necessary to me, therefore, to say something about what you see in this eurythmic art and about the sources and tools of the eurythmic art.

This eurythmic art, by being completely derived from the Goethean worldview and Goethean artistic ethos, seeks to be a visible language. When I say that it is derived from Goethe's world view and Goethe's artistic outlook, I must point out, on the one hand, that when we speak of Goetheanism here, we are not concerned with somehow merely expanding what came into the world through Goethe up to 1832, but that for us Goethe is a living power, spiritually effective, and that we are not speaking today of the Goethe who died in 1832, but of the Goethe of 1920, that is, of what can further develop within the spiritual world view, the whole spiritual current that has been introduced into Western culture through him.

On the other hand, I would like to point out that Goethe developed what he called his metamorphosis doctrine for understanding living forms, especially plant forms. What Goethe published as such a unique work in 1790 is, despite many efforts in this field, still not sufficiently appreciated in wider circles today. Once it is appreciated, we will most certainly have access to a rich source for developing an understanding of living beings that can be gained from this idea of metamorphosis.

For us, it is not just any old theoretical insight that is to be gained from this idea of metamorphosis, but, above all, it is the artistic exploitation of this idea of metamorphosis that is at stake for us. Goethe begins by looking at the individual leaf in the context of the whole plant. Goethe begins by distinguishing between what is simply shaped in an outwardly sensual way, but in terms of the idea, in terms of the invisible, what weaves and works in the leaf: The leaf is a whole plant. The whole plant is actually also only a leaf artistically formed within itself, notched, ramified; in turn, the metamorphosis into flower, fruit and so on - for Goethe it is an artistically formed leaf.

The same thing, implemented in many other ways, gives us the opportunity — as I said, in addition to many other things — to create a visible language in such a way that we truly do not unintentionally express this art through people who initially serve as tools, as real tools, for the eurythmic art. However arbitrary such movements may appear at first glance, let me explain that they have little in common with dance movements or the like, which arise from instincts, from drives and so on. Rather, what you will see here on the stage, the movements of the individual human being, the movements of groups of people in space, is all thoroughly studied movement – to use Goethe's expression again – that has been penetrated by sensual and supersensual observation.

The movements correspond to the movement patterns present in the human larynx and other speech organs when speech is formed. Everyone knows that a movement element is at work here. After all, when I speak to you here, the movements of my speech organs are transmitted through the air, and when the air reaches your auditory organ with these movements, you hear what I am saying. When it comes to the design of eurythmy, it is not these tremulous movements, these undulations that are of primary interest, but rather the underlying movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs, which only then, through a complex process, translate into the combined movements of undulation, waves, vibrations in the air, and so on.

These movement tendencies are now carefully studied to see how they express the being, the character of the person through higher gestural abilities than those actually produced by speech sounds. And just as Goethe regards the individual leaf as an entire plant, so too can the larynx with its neighboring speech organs be understood as a whole human organism in miniature. And what the human being wants to express, but which is held in the “status nascendi”, in the process of being born, in order to be realized in speech, can be perceived through sensory-supersensory observation and can then be realized in movements of the human hands, the human limbs or in forms.

This is what we have been working on more and more, especially recently: the forms that the whole human body or groups of people execute in space. So what you will see is transferred to the whole human being, which otherwise underlies the speech organs as movement tendencies of the spoken language.

It is possible to treat this visible language artistically in such a way that what appears in poetry on the one hand also appears in music on the other, and can be transformed into what can be revealed in the visible language of eurythmy. On the one hand, you will hear music today, on the other hand recitation, and in the middle you will see the moving human being and moving groups of people - virtually the whole person or groups of people - as a large larynx that performs a moving language. What appears as moving language can now be treated artistically.

I would like to say that it is even possible to accommodate certain artistic longings that live in artistic circles today and therefore find little expression, sometimes even caricatured expression, because the various fields of artistic development have not yet reached the point of handling the means. Expressionism and Impressionism are there; but the treatment of the means, that is what has not yet reached a certain significant conclusion in the old arts. There, I believe, even the eurythmic art can, in a sense, provide a kind of stimulus – I will not say serve as a model.

For when we are dealing, for example, with human language, which art makes use of, then, especially in our very advanced languages, an inartistic element always mixes into speaking, into poetry, as a result. And we may say that a large percentage of what is being written today is not really real art. For in poetry, real art is only that which is either based on music or on the plastic, on the pictorial. The literal content is actually prose content that is only used to reveal through language, in rhythm, beat, melodious element and so on, what is to happen in the artistic of the actual poetry. That it is so today has its reason in the fact that precisely the most highly developed languages have almost – because of their use for human communication, for ever more complicated human communication – acquired an extraordinarily strong prosaic element, which is not always, I might say, readily restrained and made useable for that elementarily original, which one needs if one wants to create artistically. On the other hand, the languages formed in the formed cultures and civilizations are the expression of highly developed thoughts. But the thought as such is an image that, when used in art in any way, whether as knowledge or as an underlying expression, kills art, paralyzes art.

Now, in spoken language, in phonetic language, we have a kind of interaction between the intellectual, the thinking, the imaginative and the volitional. When we set our larynx in motion, two currents of the human organization work together in the movements of the larynx. That which is permeated by the imaginative mixes with that which comes from the will. The will comes from the depths of the personality, which in turn is an expression, a microcosm of universal world law. The artistic can live in this. But in spoken language and therefore also in poetry, which makes use of it, this actually elementary-artistic is weakened, dulled by the abstract thought element, which is nevertheless connected with the thought element in word formation.

Now in eurythmy we have the opportunity to strip away this element of thought by not using phonetic language, but by taking that which arises from the depths of the human being, which contains the laws of the world in its depths, in the microcosm, that wells up from these depths, the will-element in the human being, that we stop this will-element before it becomes visionary, that we transform this will-element, quite lawfully, as only speech itself is lawful, into movements of the human limbs or of the whole human being. There is just as little something arbitrary in any single movement as there is something arbitrary in phonetic language or in the tones of a melody. Everything is based on the lawful, internally lawful progression of the movements. And what is involved is far from being merely mimic or pantomime. As long as there is still something of that in it, there is still a beginning to be overcome bit by bit. What is presented in eurythmy – you will see this particularly in the forms we are striving for today – is not a pantomime expression of the prose content of the poem, but a translation into this visible language of what the real artist has made out of language.

Therefore, the accompanying recitation must be different from what is called recitation today. Especially when one finds it good today, one emphasizes the prose content of the poem in the recitation and pays less attention to the rhythm, the beat and the melodious element. But one could not work with the present-day unformed recitation — which is only an artistic bad habit that has an unartistic element in it — one could not work with it in the eurythmic art, but the aim is to really try to find the underlying melodiousness and rhythmic in the recitation, in the declamation. On such occasions I am always reminded of how Schiller did not initially have the literal content of some of his significant poems in his mind, but rather something like an indeterminate melody. And then, out of this melodious element, which contained nothing literal at all, one or other of the poems could become literal. The prose content, which was then used without being, so to speak, the vehicle of the actual artistic content, which consists of the plastic and the musical, was only secondary for Schiller.

We seek to bring all these truly artistic elements to expression in eurythmy by making them the essence of the actual eurythmic art, and thus the essence of everything that we must bring into connection with it and will present to you.

Then there is another essential side to eurythmy: it also has a hygienic side, for example – but I do not want to talk about that today. Since it directly brings movements to people that arise from human nature in a lawful way, it is something truly healing. But that needs to be discussed in detail, and that cannot be done with these few introductory words.

Just one more point should be mentioned. Today you will also see performances for children, and I would like to emphasize that this eurythmic art has an essential pedagogical, didactic side, and thus has an element in it that we have already introduced in our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, the Free Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt, alongside purely physiological gymnastics. This eurythmy is, at the same time, not only of artistic value for the growing human being, but also of importance as a soul-filled form of exercise. When we are able to think about these things more objectively and impartially than we can today, then you will realize, dear ladies and gentlemen, that gymnastics, which is based on the materialistic understanding of the human being – which certainly deserves all the praise that is given to it today, but which at least cannot do one thing that the inspired gymnastics, the eurythmy, can: Where the child is required to permeate every movement it makes with its soul, the soul draws upon an element that cannot lie. This cannot be achieved through physiological gymnastics, which has grown out of materialism. Our soul-filled gymnastics, our eurythmy, awakens in the child the will to act at the right time, in the right age, and thus gives something immensely necessary to our time, which is so sorely lacking in the will to act in the broadest sense.

These are the underlying intentions of the eurythmic art, as I said at the beginning of my welcome. The point is that this art is still in its infancy. We are still very modest about it today and are our own harshest critics. However, we are also convinced that this beginning can be perfected and that, if – probably through others, no longer through ourselves – what can be given today as a stimulus can be given at the very beginning as a stimulus, if this is further developed, then this youngest of eurythmic arts will stand in dignity alongside its older sister arts, which have always been recognized.

Dear Attendees:

As was usual before these eurythmic performances, I would also like to introduce the presentation with a few words today. Eurythmy art uses a form of expression that is essentially new. However, my intention is not to explain what can be seen on stage, which would be inartistic – and artistic work should not need explanation – but rather to say something about this particular means of expression. Therefore, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words beforehand.

The point is that this means of expression, a kind of visible language, is a language that works either by the whole person moving his limbs in a way that is intended to appeal to the eye in the same way as audible language appeals to the ear, or by groups of people making such movements, which constitute a kind of visible language. But it is not the opinion that this visible language should be what could be called facial expressions or gesturing or the like, but rather the opinion that the direct connection between gestures and expressions and what is going on inwardly in the soul must be must be avoided here in the artistic, as it is avoided in ordinary language, which, although it has arisen from the direct expression of feeling and external observation, is not exhausted in what could be understood as a play of gestures. It is a careful, intuitive study of the development of spoken language that leads, as it were, to the formation of this visible language.

If one develops what Goethe calls sensory-supersensory vision, one can see which movements, but especially which movement tendencies, underlie the production of audible speech by the larynx and the other speech organs. It is well known that speech is based on a kind of movement. As I speak here, the movements that are carried out by my speech organs are transmitted to the air, and it is precisely the content of what is spoken that is conveyed to the ear through the air. But it is not about these immediate vibrational movements, but rather about what, as it were, lives in these vibrations as a tendency to move, which is now carefully studied for each sound, each sound formation, for sound contexts, but which is also studied by name for sentence structure, for the internal laws of language. And all that can be studied in this way and remains unnoticed as something that only underlies the spoken language, because one draws attention to what is heard and not to what underlies the movement, all that remains unnoticed in spoken language, is transferred to the whole person. In this way the whole human being appears before the spectator as a living larynx, executing those movements which are otherwise present in the larynx as a tendency, and through which this visible speech comes about.

It may be noted that in the present day, this eurythmic art, which is born out of our anthroposophically oriented worldview, which is a further development of Goethe's view of art and artistic attitude, that this eurythmic art meets certain aspirations that live as longings, as artistic longings in our time. Who would not know, if they have only delved a little into the artistic striving and working of the present, that the arts are wrestling with new means of expression, with a new formal language? And who would not know how different the paths are on which the struggle is waged? But how unsatisfactory it is to create something out of color, out of form, and also out of words, in order to gain a new means of expression.

If we want to describe what actually prevails in newer, in modern artistic striving, then at the same time we have what still makes it difficult for viewers to directly perceive the artistic representation of the eurythmic art. For what are today's modernizations of artistic striving based on? We see how, in the development of modern times, the human being has more or less lost the ability to develop forces from within, through which he can give himself to the outside world, through which he can completely merge with the outside world.

If we look back at earlier artistic epochs, which are no longer fully understood even by many today, we have to say: something like a Raphael or a Michelangelo work of art, they arise precisely from the artist's ability to inwardly experience what the being he is depicting experiences. This inner co-experience with nature, with the world in general, has been gradually lost by people in recent centuries and is increasingly being lost in the present to the external perception of life.

Art has always tried – one need only recall Goethe's definitions of art – to reflect what one could experience through inner involvement with the other, with other beings, with external nature. They tried to replace this, let us say, with the impression of fate, with the momentary impression as in Impressionism, in the consciously impressionistic state that art wants to become, because one could not grow together with the object, as one had to, so to speak, fall out of the object; therefore one surrendered to the momentary impression. This impressionistic devotion to the momentary impression cannot lead to a real, genuine means of artistic expression, for the simple reason that this momentary impression can no longer be understood once it has passed. To a certain extent, you have to believe that such a momentary impression, captured in the impressionistic work of art, was once there. Impressionism, which seeks to be naturalistic, removes you from the actual essence of things. Man cannot bring his inner self into the world. So, artistically, he becomes an impressionist.

But then, as a kind of opposition to Impressionism, the expressionist principle has arisen in recent times. It appeared, so to speak, provocatively. Man, having lost the ability to immerse his inner self in the outer, wanted to directly express this inner self as an expression of the soul through the usual artistic means of expression.

But this, in turn, brings with it, I would say, the other danger, that what is experienced quite subjectively, subjectively experienced in the deepest inner self, is presented as a single human experience, and this again sets a limit to understanding, in that the spectator would again have to respond tolerantly to what a single individual human being experiences as the deepest experience of the soul, which he cannot do at all, to express something about which one can only say – the philistine can say –: He wants to paint or draw something spiritual; I see water, a number of ship sails, which I might just as well think are laundry hanging out to dry, and so on. These are things that are produced in expressionism, that may project the human interior outward, but cannot be understood because they are not experienced, but are merely there, in that this individual human interior is depicted as being directly connected to the external world, in direct connection with the external world.

Nevertheless, a way to truly artistic means of expression will have to be found again, in which one, so to speak, meets impressionism with expressionism, and vice versa. But one can believe that something like eurythmy could accommodate the search that lies in this direction and that this is precisely why eurythmy is so much in demand today - which, after all, is also the case with everything else that emerges from anthroposophical culture and world view.

The fact that the whole human being becomes, as it were, a larynx, that the whole human being is a means of expression for a visible language, means that what the human being can experience inwardly, which is also is experienced in the recited poems or the music played, what is experienced after, what is experienced in the innermost being, in the human soul, comes to expression in the human being himself as an outer manifestation. But this means that it is not just a momentary impression – an expression that can be captured in an impressionistic way. For if something in nature is fixed by some momentary impression, we have something that we can and do express spiritually, that we delve into the soul of nature. We can develop this by looking at the expression that is presented in eurythmic performances by the human being himself. Here, spirit and soul are presented directly in the outer movements before our eyes. At the same time, there is impression. It should not be said that eurythmy is an all-encompassing art in this respect, but it can certainly be said that it points the way to how artistic means of expression can be found for what can be felt as a yearning in broad circles of artistic endeavor today.

That, in a few words, is the modern aspect of eurythmy in the best sense of the word, what our time demands of eurythmy as an art.

But then this eurythmy has a further, pedagogical-didactic side, in that it is a kind of soulful gymnastics for the child. In the age of our materialism, purely physiological gymnastics, that which is essentially based on the materialistic view of the human body, has been produced by these views, and takes precedence. Today, people are still one-sided in this respect, although some minds, which now want to do away with many of the prejudices of the present day - such as Spengler, for example - already recognize how one-sided this kind of gymnastics is. Of course, nothing should be said against the educational value of this kind of gymnastics, but it must be supplemented by something that not only trains the body, but above all, from the soul, pours initiative into the human being, which is so lacking in our time. This can be done by the child not just doing the gymnastic movements required by the physical organization, but by making soulful movements, so that soul lives in every movement. This affects the will. It becomes inwardly soulful and strengthens the human being in the will initiative, in the creation of the will initiative. And this is what our civilization needs if it wants to move forward.

Today I want to disregard the hygienic-therapeutic side that is still in our eurythmy. Everything that eurythmy can develop is still in its infancy today. And those of our esteemed viewers who have been here before will see how we are now trying to really follow through on the broader form, for example, in terms of gesture formation and form building, how we are trying more and more to , all the gestures of the moment, and to really bring forth a moving language and music, and how we are particularly concerned not to reproduce what the prose content of the poem is, but what the poetic artist has made of that content.

Despite our efforts to move forward, I have to say it here before every eurythmy performance attended by guests: despite our efforts to move forward, we are nevertheless quite clear about the fact that this eurythmic art is only just beginning, that this eurythmic art is a very first attempt – perhaps even an attempt with inadequate means even today. But we are also clear about the fact that if we continue to develop what has already been tried, or if others continue to develop it, then eurythmy art can become something that can stand as a legitimate art alongside other, older sister arts.

Saying from the soul calendar (16) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (17) by Rudolf Steiner
“Children's Song” by Max Schuurman (children's group)
Saying from the soul calendar (19) by Rudolf Steiner
“Wind and Violin“ by Christian Morgenstern, with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Blissful” by Christian Morgenstern
“Autumnal Feeling“ by Friedrich Hebbel
“The Legacy” by Robert Hamerling
Saying from the soul calendar (20.) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Demure“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Convert” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Andante grazioso” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Saying from the soul calendar (21st) by Rudolf Steiner
Three-part canon (children's group)
“I. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Prooemion” by J. W. v. Goethe
“II. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand ‘Tanzliedchen’ by Jan Stuten (children's group)
Humoresken by Christian Morgenstern with music by Jan Stuten: “Ein Seufzer”; “Muhme Kunkel”; “Der Papagei”; “Lore”; “Lorus”; “Wortkunst”
“Der Rattenfänger” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

Allow me today, as usual, to say a few words before these attempts at a eurythmic presentation. It is not done to explain the idea. Artistic attempts that would first need explanations would not be such. Art speaks entirely for itself, and it should also be understandable for the immediate impression. But now, with this eurythmic art, the attempt is being made to create something out of different artistic sources than those we are used to, and through a different formal language. And about these sources and about this formal language, allow me to say a few words, also because the whole attempt at the eurythmic art is still in its infancy and only with its further perfection will it be able to give what is actually intended.

On the stage, they will perform the movements that a person performs with their limbs – movements of the whole person, movements of groups of people. All of this is not achieved by some kind of pantomime or facial expressions, but is based on carefully observing what actually happens in a person when they reveal the depths of their soul through speech. We can say that, like everything that this Dornach structure wants to present to the world, the art of eurythmy is also derived from Goetheanism, from Goethe's view of art and his artistic attitude.

Goethe undertook – if I may preface this with something seemingly theoretical, which is, however, not meant theoretically – to recognize the essence of a living being from its form. Well, more than we realize today, human knowledge will come back to this Goethean attempt at a real penetration of the essence of the living, when many prejudices will be stripped from the world view, which is still very much asserted within this world view today. What counts is simply what Goethe published in 1790 in his so vividly and profoundly significant essay, 'Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants'. I would like to emphasize only that Goethe is concerned to explain the individual leaf in its often simple, often more complicated form for the whole plant and, in turn, to explain the whole plant in its inner ideal essence only as a more complicated leaf: The plant as a kind of community of individual, visible plants, which appear as leaves and undergo transformations and metamorphoses. The petals, calyx vessels, stamens and so on are also metamorphoses of the leaf. This living contemplation of the transformation of a single organism, this beholding of the whole living being as a more complicated structure, which is already foreshadowed in the individual organs, is what will one day solve the riddle of the living, when it is further developed.

What Goethe applied to the form of plants, and later extended to the form of animals, is here to be used – but elevated to the artistic – for the eurythmic art. From knowledge, Goethe also builds a bridge to skill, to artistic skill. And Goethe has a beautiful saying that should be taken up by every artistic disposition: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets, one longs for her most worthy interpreter, art.” This brings us to true knowledge, which does not live in abstractions but in direct observation, and to artistic creation.

Now we will attempt to extend what Goethe first observed for the purpose of design to human activity. We will carefully study the artistic movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs when speech is produced. It is not the fine vibrations that are transmitted from the human organ to the air and then travel to the hearing organ of the listener that are important, but rather the underlying movement tendencies, on which these vibrations are then, so to speak, threaded. I would like to say that when we look at a long plant stem, such as the false acacia, which forms a long stem to which individual leaflets are attached, we could follow basic tendencies that already make themselves felt in the larynx and its neighboring organs, basic tendencies for the vibrations of speech. These basic tendencies are recognized, if I may use Goethe's word, through sensory-supersensory observation. And just as Goethe imagines the entire plant to be nothing more than a single leaf in a more complicated form, we let the whole person carry out in movement what is otherwise carried out in the region of the larynx and its neighboring organs. So we actually transform phonetic speech, in which the inner movement tendencies are not subject to attention because they are only devoted to the sound, we transform phonetic speech into a visible language: the whole human being – or groups of people too – stand in front of you on the stage and perform the movements that are otherwise performed invisibly when phonetic speech is produced. That which underlies speech as a sub-sensation, I would say, is brought out and imprinted as movement on the human form or on groups of people.

This creates an opportunity to point out something that is currently being felt very vividly by creative artists – at least, one would like to point this out from one corner – namely, that a large proportion of artists today are yearning for new means of expression, new forms of expression. Impressionists, expressionists or whatever these artists call themselves, is how the various paths taken in their art are called. On the one hand, we see how the immediate impression is to be captured, how the impression is to be reproduced. Because people today have actually lost the power to delve into the inner essence of things, as the great artists of earlier epochs were able to do, have lost the ability to create entirely from within, so to speak, what remains is captured in the impression. Or, what is captured through wrong words and so on, which then seems difficult for more philosophical natures to understand, is captured in expressionism. But these are all paths that actually lead to answering the old question of art in a new way: how do you capture impressions artistically without thoughts playing a role in the process? Abstract thoughts are always the ones that kill actual art. Art must proceed without abstract thoughts. Now, here we have the opportunity. In ordinary speech, we do not have the same opportunity, because today the need to communicate has already descended too far into the conventional, into usefulness. And the artist, for example, must try to achieve through what lies beneath language - also a eurythmic element, by the way - that which can satisfy him.

Here in eurythmy, we have the opportunity - apart from the one element that is present in spoken language - to completely switch off the thought and to derive the movement directly from the whole human being, from the will, so that we have something very direct, because the means of expression is made by the human being himself, comes about in the human being himself. Incidentally, it expresses itself because the human being is the instrument of this eurythmic art and what is inherent speaks directly to the senses, as all art must speak to the senses, and everything that is soul-based passes directly into movement, so that here, under all circumstances, a union of the expressionistic with the impressionistic is created. The impression is given by everything speaking to the senses, to the eye, the expression is given by the fact that it is the inner life of the human being that is expressed in these movements. This avoids all pantomime and mere mime, and one arrives at a regularity in the movements that can be compared to the inner connection of the melodious and harmonious element in the music itself. In this way, what you will hear on the one hand as recitation and on the other as music is transposed into this visible language.

Those of you who are present and who have been here before will see that we have made efforts to make some progress recently, particularly in the construction of forms. However, these are things that are still very much in the making. We are our own harshest critics and we know very well how much is still missing in each case. On the whole, it will still be a matter of implementing the dramatic element into the eurythmic. I have been working on this for a long time, but so far no way has been found, while in the lyrical, and in the humorous, it has recently been very successful as a well-executed presentation. To express this in a new way, not only what was in the words, but the real form, that is, what the poet has made of the content, to express that also in the rhythm of the movements, that is our ideal: not to express the direct feeling, as it is also the case with music, not to express that which is a chance connection between gesture and inner soul experience, but something so lawful as it is present in the spoken language itself.

This is some of what I have to say to you about the formation of the art of eurythmy. You will see that in this art of eurythmy, the true artistic quality that has been so sorely lost in our time comes into its own. Our time often looks at the content of a poem, not at the how of the structure, the beat, the rhythm, which is what really matters. I would like to remind you again and again how Schiller, when writing his most significant poems, did not first have the literal content in his soul, but rather a kind of indeterminate melody - no matter which words it should belong to - an inwardly moving music in the soul, and only then did the words arise.

Those who cannot see through to this eurythmic element will not be able to understand the artistic element in poetry either. Recitation must also follow this aspiration, and cannot see its ideal here either, as the literal content is particularly emphasized, muffled and the like, which is currently regarded as the ideal of recitation , but rather that which lies in the how, in the formal elements, in the movement of thoughts and feelings, quite apart from the literal content, which is more of a guide to the artistic aspect and not the artistic aspect itself. This must also be expressed in the recitation. Otherwise it would not be possible to accompany this eurythmic art in reality in the recitation. The art of recitation as it is generally regarded today is something that can no longer be done alongside eurythmy. But precisely through this, the prospect will open up that our inartistic time will return to artistic feeling when one sees that something that can only be understood in the actual artistic sense, like this eurythmy, will also radiate something of the actual artistic element for the sister arts.

Then this eurythmy, this visible speech, has a hygienic element. I do not want to talk about that today because of the shortness of time. Another essential element, however, is the pedagogical-didactic one, which is why we have already introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject in our Waldorf School in Stuttgart, where it already shows what it is supposed to for those who want to see it.

My dear attendees, of course there is a certain appreciation for gymnastics, which has emerged in more recent times in the development of humanity. But people who see a little deeper - like Spengler - have already expressed their reservations about gymnastics. And for those who are still aware of the prejudices that exist in today's world and who can see something ahead, know that gymnastics, because it is guided by the physiology of the human being, by the physical body, can to some extent also train this physical body, but that what the person of the present time does not have, but what he urgently needs – initiative in the will, initiative in the soul – can only be cultivated by introducing soul-filled gymnastics – eurythmy – alongside the previous gymnastics, which is more physical. Through this soul-filled gymnastics, which is incorporated into didactics and pedagogy, every movement that the child performs as eurythmy is such that it is worked towards engaging the whole person, not just the physical part. This is something that will be taken into account little by little, precisely because initiative of the will, soul initiative of the will, must be striven for alongside physical education, which can only come through gymnastics.

So today, in addition to the artistic side of eurythmy, you will also see something presented by children. This should be seen only as a sample of how eurythmy can work in a pedagogical-didactic way on the child. In all of this, however, I may ask for your forbearance again today, for the reason that it is meant very seriously that we ourselves are the strictest critics of these our beginnings, perhaps of the attempt of our beginnings in our eurythmic art and eurythmic didactics. They will need further training, perhaps even from others, because it takes a long time to develop, like other arts; but then this eurythmic art – anyone who seriously engages with it must have this prospect – will be able to stand in a dignified way alongside its older sister arts, which have had longer to influence people.

Dear attendees!

I have not chosen these few introductory words to precede our eurythmy because I want to explain what will be seen from the stage later on, but because this eurythmic art attempts to achieve something from particular artistic sources and in a particular artistic formal language.

Eurythmy should be a kind of visible language, a language performed by movements in a single person, by a person in space or by groups of people. But these movements that are performed should not just represent pantomime or mime, especially in relation to what is to be expressed. We will see how the recitation runs parallel to this eurythmy when the content of a word or a poem is to be expressed in the visible language of eurythmy. Musical content can also be expressed in eurythmic forms in the way that it can be expressed through tones.

However, it is not just about expressing content; it is also about ensuring that this eurythmy has been developed from a careful study of the basis of our audible language, our phonetic language. In this phonetic language, it is not just the movements that are carried out by the larynx and other speech organs that are transmitted to the air, so that they then impinge on the organ of hearing as a result of this transmission and thus convey the sound and tone, but rather, movement tendencies come into question. These inner movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs, when transformed, can be studied as if through sensory-supersensory vision. They can then be transferred from certain individual organs of speech to the whole person: then the whole person performs the same movements that are also performed by the speech organs, but in the speech organs these movements are immediately transformed into air vibrations and thus convey the sound. They are not transformed into vibrations, but proceed in the way that otherwise only the movement tendencies of the speech organs proceed. By placing the whole person or even groups of people on the stage as a living, moving larynx, you see what you would otherwise hear.

This makes it possible to go back to deeper artistic sources in the human being than is possible with mere spoken language, especially since, with a more developed spoken language – and all civilized spoken languages today are already developed – the conventional and the conceptual come into play. We have to infuse our words with that which thoughts have as a thought content or conventional content, which is necessary for people to understand each other. Both are elements that destroy the artistic. In particular, the fact that the content of thought - all thought as such is unartistic - is pushed into the sounds, thereby giving spoken language a particularly unartistic element.

And the poet has to struggle to create art in poetry despite the fact that phonetic language actually goes against the artistic. This is also the reason why in the most difficult art of all, in poetry, everyone believes they are a poet if they can just make verses, while what is essential is to see how, in true the literal is not the main thing at all, but rather that which is formal about poetry, the beat, the rhythm, the musical, entirely pictorial, that which underlies it, not the literal.

But what underlies poetry as a kind of eurythmy is then poured into visibly moving forms when one moves on to eurythmy. In this way one arrives at a kind of language that, in the immediate impression, already strings together images in front of the unspoiled aesthetic sense of the human being who is not prejudiced. Today, however, what appears in eurythmy as a law is not what is important, saying that the individual of the form expresses that, the individual of the movement expresses this, but where it depends on the succession of movements, as the organism also allows the succession of tones to have an effect on it in the musical. It is still often thought today that the human being does not feel what is to be presented in this moving music or speech of eurythmy. But then eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development and will find its way into the general realm of art.

What needs to be considered, however, is that the content of thought is indeed receding and that the content of will, that which is also artistic in poetry, the inward content of the soul, is expressed through that which is moving speech. So that, to a certain extent, in audible speech, when the content of thought is pushed back a little, the means of expression of the artistic formal language in eurythmy, and all the more so the eurythmic, artistic element, that which cannot be produced by mere phonetic speech, comes to the fore. That is one element [of eurythmics], that a visible language is attempted, and this visible language is then treated artistically.

You will see – especially if there are revered spectators and listeners among you who have been here before – how, especially in the last few months, we have worked to suppress the mere pantomime or mime in all of our work – something that can, of course, work with it if you don't want to), and how it is attempted to express precisely that which the poet first expresses in rhythm, in the inner harmonious and melodious connection of the words, to express that in the forms, that is, to take the actual artistic element and not the prose content of a poem.

Today it is difficult to distinguish between the actual artistry and the prose content of a poem, because in recitation, too, one strives to bring forth the content of the poem purely emotionally. But that is not the point. Rather, one can only accompany the eurythmic art in a recitative if one sees perfection in the recitation as emphasizing the underlying melody, harmony, rhythm, meter or imagery of the poetry, not the prose content.

It must be mentioned again and again that Schiller did not first have the prose content in mind's eye when writing his most significant poems, but rather some indeterminate melody, something musical. Only then, when this musical element had worked inwardly in him, did he invest this melodious element with a content that is basically indifferent to what was melodiously produced. Many examples could be given, especially from the great poets, of how to shape the content out of the form.

Therefore, we must also consider finding a form of recitation for this eurythmy that already contains the eurythmic element. Then you will ensure that precisely through this eurythmy, what otherwise – namely in such poems that have already been conceived in eurythmy, such as my sayings, for example, which are already thoroughly predisposed in the imagination in these eurythmic forms from the outset – that precisely there the eurythmic can come out when what is to be achieved is achieved: that in this way, eurythmy, as a matter-of-course means of expression, gives expression better, one might say, than prose words can give expression. That is the artistic side.

Eurythmy also has an important therapeutic and hygienic side, but to discuss this further would take us too far afield. I would like to speak instead about the significant didactic and pedagogical side of eurythmy, which has already been used in the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, where it has been introduced as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In the future, people will think differently about these things than they do today.

You will find some examples of children's work, but it is all still in its infancy. The world will one day judge thus: physical education is certainly a very fine thing, but it will not be overestimated, physical education, the purely physiological physical education that studies the forms of movement from the physical body. People will know that we can achieve strong muscles, but what can we do to achieve the strength of the soul's initiative? That is what is important and what can be achieved through eurythmy as inspired gymnastics, when not only physiological movements are performed, but soul lives in every movement, as is the case in eurythmy, that is, inspired gymnastics.

Furthermore, it is not only a special kind of art form, but also has a special pedagogical-didactic side that is important for strengthening the will and developing inner initiative in children. Anyone who observes the present time with an alert soul rather than a dormant one will recognize the extent to which we are led to develop the energy of the soul. For this is something that we truly lack and that is fundamentally connected with our social issues in the most acute way.

It is self-evident that what can be offered in one direction or another is still in its very early stages. We are our own harshest critics and I therefore ask you to be lenient with what we have conceived artistically. Eurythmy is still in its infancy, but it will perfect itself, perhaps through us, but more likely through others. And then it will be able to stand as a young art alongside the older arts, which have already become part of people's habits, tastes and prejudices. It will be able to stand as a young art, as a fully fledged young art, alongside its older sister arts.

Saying from the soul calendar (22nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (23rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Element of Life“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (24th) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Dance” by J. $. Bach (children's group with eurythmists)
Saying from the soul calendar (25.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Sommerbild“ by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the soul calendar (26.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Scherzo” by Hendrika Hollenbach
Cosmic prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“V. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“VI. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Soldatenliedchen“ (children's group)
From the ‘Vormittags-Skizzenbuch’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Ein Rätsel” by Rudolf Steiner
“Schwalben” by Christian Morgenstern
“Two Roots“ by Christian Morgenstern
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Northward” and “West-East” by Christian Morgenstern
Prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
The “Magpie” series by Christian Morgenstern

Dear attendees,

As on previous occasions before these eurythmy exercises, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words in advance today. This is not done with the intention of somehow explaining artistic performances, that would be inartistic - art must speak for itself - but it is done because what is presented here as the eurythmic art is based on certain sources for artistic creation that have not been used in the same way before, and also on a certain formal language that has not been used in art in this way either. The basis of this eurythmy is a kind of visible language, but not a sign language or anything mimetic - anything gestural or mimetic must be avoided here.

Rather, you will see [this language] expressed through the individual human being moving in his limbs – or through the movement of the human being in space or also through the movement of the mutual positions of groups. So you will see movements that are visible linguistic expression in the same way that expression is ordinary language in an audible way. So eurythmy is based on emotional life expressed in a visible language.

What the artist then seeks to shape is, of course, something that is first built on this special language. This special language has not come about in some arbitrary way, through the fixation of this or that movement for the individual sound, for the individual word or for some sentence or some rhythm, or from some other context. Rather, the basis for the eurythmic art has come about through careful study, but on the basis of what Goethe calls sensuous-suprasensuous vision.

Our speech organs – the larynx and the other speech organs – are in constant motion. Everyone knows that they are in motion when we speak, because the sound is simply conveyed through the air by the air being vibrated by the movement of the speech organs. But it is not this movement that is important here, but rather the tendency to move, which in turn underlies this vibratory movement. And this tendency of movement, which can be studied for every sound, for every inflection, and also for that which underlies the expression of speech in the soul, has all been studied and is transmitted from a single organ or a group of organs, such as the larynx and its neighboring organs, to the movements of the whole person.

This is done entirely out of Goethe's world view. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a complicated expression of a single organ, the leaf. This is an expression of Goethe's important theory of metamorphosis, which has not been sufficiently appreciated scientifically by a long way. Just as Goethe's morphology of form thus sees the whole plant as a complicated, developed leaf, so we try, as it were, to place the whole human being on the stage like a modified, moving larynx. And then, in the artistic realm, what has been begun is further transformed. The artistic aspect only really begins when what has been gained through the study of the secrets of human speech is shaped.

Of course, from today's point of view, it is very easy to say: Yes, what movements are performed, that cannot be understood. My dear audience, a new-born child does not understand language either. Language must first be listened to. And for eurythmy this is not as easy as it is for speech. When a person simply abandons themselves to the form of movement on which the art of eurythmy is based, they have an instinctive, intuitive knowledge of it. Every human being has the potential to understand human language; but it must be clear, for example, that poetry first emerges from ordinary spoken language by formally transforming and developing this spoken language in terms of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration and so on. So what can be learned eurythmically as a basic formal language must first be artistically developed. Those of the honored audience who have been here often will notice how we have progressed in recent months in terms of the artistic development of eurythmy. You may have seen how much at that time still recalled facial expressions, ordinary gestures, but how we worked our way out of that, so that little by little there is actually nothing left in what is done in eurythmy but what the poet makes out of the linguistic content. And the further we get at shaping what the poet first makes out of the linguistic content, the more the eurythmic art will develop. The artistic element in eurythmy is to the movement of speech, to visible speech, as poetic language is to language.

The task now is to present a self-contained work of art through the inner laws of eurythmy, just as one creates a musical work of art through the succession of tones or the poetic art through the artistic design of the vocabulary of language. They will become a completely independent art because that is still necessary today, until eurythmy has achieved a certain emancipation, being a completely independent art. However, this may take a very long time, perhaps decades. Today you will still see musical elements presented in parallel, where some soul element is revealed through the sound, through the musical art – and at the same time the same soul element through the eurythmic art – or mainly poetic elements. And here it must be taken into account that when the eurythmic is accompanied by recitation, the recitation itself is forced to return to the earlier, more artistic forms of recitation, which have been more or less lost in our thoroughly unartistic times.

Today, something special can be seen in such recitation, which essentially goes back to the prose of the poem's content and actually takes back what the poet has made from the material of the poem. That is why the poet creates something out of language in rhyme, rhythm, beat and so on. When reciting, this does not have to be taken back by reciting according to the content of prose, according to the pure logic that underlies it. This is considered a sincere, soulful recitation. However, it has become an unartistic recitation. We are therefore trying to shape the art of recitation in a eurythmic way again, namely to give what is already eurythmic in poetic language in recitation as well, to bring out the rhythmic, the pictorial, imaginative, the rhyme and so on. It is precisely in such things that eurythmy, in the wake of which such views must arise, can in turn have a fruitful effect on other artistic endeavors. And that will be of very special importance in our time.

It is already the case, as I have said, that eurythmy is in the early stages of its development. We ourselves are most aware of the mistakes we still make today; but it will perfect itself. Today it must be said that this eurythmic art has, firstly, the artistic on the one hand; on the other hand, however, it has an essentially pedagogical-didactic and hygienic element in it. And in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject.

One day, when people think about these things more objectively than they do today, they will see that when children are taught eurythmics, they actually add something to ordinary gymnastics that can be called soulful gymnastics, because every movement also comes from the soul. In this way, what is merely physiological gymnastics - that is, something derived only from the physical laws of the human body - is enriched by movements that come from the soul. This has a very strong influence on the whole development of the growing human being. While ordinary gymnastics actually only trains the body, eurythmy - you will also see some examples of children's eurythmy today - has an effect on the child and its development that awakens and appropriately fosters willpower, the soul's initiative. And this is of the greatest possible importance for our time, for the present and the near future, since our age has brought about catastrophic events precisely because people lack awakened souls.

So then, eurythmy has various sides to it: an artistic side, a pedagogical-didactic side. But all this is actually only just beginning today. Hopefully it will be further developed, probably by others, no longer by us. For the one who can really see through the world form language of eurythmy knows what still needs to be done. Then it will be seen that it can stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully justified art. In this sense of a beginning, perhaps also of an attempt at a beginning, I ask you to take up such ideas from the eurythmic art as we want to present to you again today.

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (24) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (25) by Rudolf Steiner
“Prooemion“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“l. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Parabasc” by J. W. v. Goethe
“II. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Epirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“III. Urtrieb“ by Fercher von Steinwand
“Antepirrhema” by J. W. v. Goethe
“]V. Urtrieb” by Fercher von Steinwand
“The Treasure-Digger” by J. W. v. Goethe
Evoe with music by Max Schuurman
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: ‘The Lamb Cloud’; ‘The Stations’; ‘The Salm’ with music by Jan Stuten

Dear attendees! We are taking the liberty of showing you another sample of the eurythmic art today. This art is based on certain artistic sources that are to be newly opened and aims to become a kind of new artistic formal language. For this reason, you will allow me, as I usually do before these performances, to send a few words in advance today - not to explain the performance, but rather, artistic things must work through themselves in the immediate impression, but to suggest the formal language and sources from which what is presented to you here as the eurythmic art comes.

The basis of the art of eurythmy is a kind of visible language. The whole human being performs movements in his gestures, or: he performs movements in space or groups of people perform movements in space. All this could be understood as an ordinary, even representational, ordinary art of dance, but it is neither of these, but is based on a careful study of the ordinary language of the human being. This is what is perceived by the human ear. But at its basis lies a certain tendency of the larynx and other speech organs to move. These tendencies of movement are to be understood as what is communicated as a vibrating weaving of the air: It is not something more highly developed than thought, but something more deeply rooted, something that takes place in a seemingly simpler way than the vibrations of the air, but which is expressed through the vibrations of the air when the tone that underlies this movement tendency expresses itself.

We can study what the larynx and speech organs do when a sound is produced, how they behave in a whole word, in a sentence transition, how they behave when certain sound sequences play out, and so on. All this can be studied – allow me to use this Goethean expression – through sensory-supersensory observation. Then, what is otherwise only assessed – that is why I said: movement tendencies – what is otherwise only assessed in the larynx and the other speech organs, is transformed into small vibrations as it develops, and then transferred. And then what language describes, what the human being performs in his movements or in movements in space, or what groups of people perform, that means what can be experienced, can be experienced on the one hand through language, and on the other hand through the visible language of eurythmy. One can express through this eurythmy what musical creation is – you will also see rehearsals today – one can also express what poetic creation is.

But when the recitation, that is, the artistic reproduction of the poetic, accompanies the eurythmy, then, for example, the recitation must take up the eurythmic element. Today, our age is somewhat inartistic, and one does not have the feeling that the real artistry of a poem only begins when the prose-like, the mere content, the literal content of a poem has been overcome. It is never about what the poet says, but how he says it, how he shapes it in meter and rhythm or how he artistically shapes it and is able to give shape to the image through the word. In the case of a poet like Goethe, for example, we can see how his poetic language has a plastic character, how he imaginatively conceived the transformation of the pictorial. In the case of Schiller, we know that before he wrote any poem, he had a kind of melody living in his soul. At first, it was all the same to him what should arise from this melody as a poem – “The Diver” or “The Fight with the Dragon”: He had it living in his soul as a melody, and the other simply lined up in the poem. That is how you can shape with the melodic, with the plastic poem.

All of this comes to light in a proper recitation. In our unartistic age, what is usually brought out is what is appropriate to the prose content, what is literal. What the poet has artistically done with the content is what is actually formally artistic in the recitation. And then what is offered in the poetry also coincides with what is offered in the visible language of eurythmy and in the recitation. You know how to shape this or that sound, this or that word formation and the like, so that something artistic comes about from the whole, and in particular, that the artistic element of the eurythmic performance is properly formed in parallel with the poetry, the artistic formation of a poem. That is a purely artistic activity. And we must distinguish between the elementary nature of the eurythmic language of form and what is artistically revealed in the process. But it is not the case that eurythmy is pantomime, mimicry or mere gesticulation or dance. Rather, everything is such that actually everything lies in the artistic sequence of movement forms, so that the melodious and musical lies in the sequence, in the interaction of the sounds. Likewise, an inner lawfulness in space and in the time of the eurythmy production underlies this.

Those of you who have been here before will have noticed how, over the past few months, we have been working to develop this element of artistic form-giving more and more in eurythmy, and how we are getting closer to capturing in artfully designed forms what the poet has made of the literal content. In this way one can adapt exactly to the humor or tragedy or ballad-like language or whatever characterizes a poem.

So this eurythmy initially offers something artistic. The human being is the instrument for their eurythmic performances. In the most eminent sense, this eurythmy achieves precisely what Goethe had in mind when he said: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To achieve this, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfection and virtue, invoking number, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. We should bear in mind that the visible and invisible worlds converge in his being, that all the forces at work in the visible and invisible are reflected in him in some way, are formed in him in miniature. And when the human being makes himself an instrument of artistic expression through his organism, what is particularly expressed is what then strives in the human being's soul towards movement. Eurythmy is an art that, when it arises directly and immediately, truly works out of the movements of the human being.

That is the artistic side of eurythmy. On the other hand, there is something about eurythmy that – quite apart from many other things – can be addressed as a therapeutic-hygienic element, but which I do not want to talk about now. But another element of eurythmy is the pedagogical-didactic element that it contains. At our Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by myself, we have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics.

One will only appreciate eurythmy as a compulsory subject once one has overcome certain prejudices – which, from my point of view, I do not want to fight so much – regarding gymnastics. Gymnastics is purely physical. One may have one's own opinion about the movements that the physiologist derives from the physical make-up of the human being. I do not want to dispute them here, but it is nevertheless the case that ordinary gymnastics only has a physiological meaning for the harmonization of the physical body of man. Although I do not want to go as far as a naturalist who listened to my introductory words in this regard and who said: He would not even appreciate gymnastics as much as I do. He would not consider it to be something physiologically effective, but simply a barbarism. But the present, dear honored attendees, will object to that, especially if one has to evoke some hostility because of the other branches of one's activity, one would not want to go straight to such sentiments.

But this is what must be particularly emphasized, regardless of whether gymnastics merely trains the human body physiologically or whether it is also a barbarism: the powers of the soul, the initiative of the will, are in any case – and I emphasize this particularly – is trained in children through eurythmy, when the child, through this compulsory subject, becomes so immersed in these eurythmic movements, when they are performed in the right way, as a young child would otherwise naturally become immersed in spoken language. Eurythmy awakens activity in the human soul, so that the drowsiness in which the souls find themselves can be overcome. Otherwise it would get more and more out of hand in the most terrible way. If you imagine, let us say, the next generation, you have to admit that you can only get beyond these things by at least adding this soul-filled gymnastics to the usual external soulless gymnastics, in eurythmy.

Everything in eurythmy is still in its infancy, but you can be quite sure that we are our own harshest critics. We know what we lack and we are constantly striving to make more and more progress in this respect. I have often mentioned that we have made good progress, for example, in shaping the large forms. We will show you these large forms today in a Fercher poem, “Choir of Primordial Instincts”, which is being performed today and which really moves in a strange cosmic directing force, in that it - Fercher von Steinwand - poetically shapes you. When you see this 'Urtrieb' choir, you will perhaps notice how we have tried and are still trying to make good progress again and again. Over time, the art of eurythmy will be perfected more and more, either by ourselves or probably by others, so that it can establish itself as a fully-fledged newer art alongside the older fully-fledged arts.

It would have been nice if we could have opened our art room earlier and brought today closer to the anniversary of Ludwig Uhland's death on November 13. Since this was not possible, today at least we want to recall his life with some sounds that came to us from the great poet Ludwig Uhland. If one wanted to describe what is essential for his poetry, one could characterize Ludwig Uhland with a single word. One need only say: Uhland is one of those poets who are thoroughly healthy in every respect. Healthy in his feelings, in his thinking, healthy in his head and heart, that was Ludwig Uhland. And if you want to get to know him, if you want to feel your way into what inspired him to write poetry, you can see that there were two things that constantly filled his heart insofar as he was a poet. The first was a deep, emotional love of nature. However uplifting it might be for him to look at works of art that perhaps proclaimed the beauties of ancient times, he preferred to admire the great art of the forces of nature. And so it is spoken from the bottom of his heart when he says, as if in a creed in a poem:

Not in cold marble stones,
Not in temples dull and dead,
In the fresh oak groves
Weaves and rustles the German God.

And this was not just an artistic sentiment for him, but from his boyhood on, this feeling of being at one with nature was something that took hold of his entire being. He could say of himself:

There was no better pleasure in those days
than to penetrate the forest
where the thrush sings and the hawk cries,
where deer and roe deer leap.

Then his heart opened up to nature, and he felt the warmth in his soul, which is expressed in his strong, healthy poetic sounds.

The other thing was his preference for the times in European life when the great events of the people were told in legends, not just experienced in an external way. Today's man can no longer really understand these times of the Middle Ages. One must try to revive a little in oneself, before all observation, the soul that lived in people at that time, in order to feel what a person in Central Europe felt about the great deeds of world history, on which the weal and woe, the elevation and happiness and suffering of people depend. In those days, people did not learn history from schoolbooks; it was quite different from what it is today, when we sit down in school and the schoolboy begins to tremble when the teacher asks: When did Charlemagne reign? and he then says, sweating: Then he lived – and so on. It was not like that at all back then, but rather more like the way in which one is more likely to get an idea if one is still lucky enough to let the last remnants take effect on oneself, how people back then spoke to each other about such great people who were much involved in the weal and woe of history, as, say, about Charlemagne. And since personal experiences are always the most vivid, I would like to start with a little story that represents something like a last remnant of the way people in earlier centuries spoke of history.

When I was a boy, I knew an elderly man who was employed in a bookshop. He was from Salzburg. There is the Untersberg mountain there. And just as people say that Barbarossa is in the Kyffhäuser, they say that Charlemagne is still in the Untersberg. And that man once said to me: Yes, it's quite true, Charlemagne is sitting in our Uhntersberg. I said: How do you know that? He said: When I was a boy, I went to the Untersberg with a firm stick, and I found a hole. And since I was a bad rascal, I immediately let myself into this hole. I let my staff down and then let myself down. Right, I came down very deep. And there was a large palace-like cave, all lined with crystal. That's where Charlemagne and old Roland sit inside, and their beards have grown terribly long. – I don't want to encourage the boys present to do that; only a native of Salzburg can do that. Now I said, “Have you really seen Charlemagne and Roland, my dear Hanke?” He said, “No, but they are there!” You see, a piece of something that really existed in Central and Western Europe in the Middle Ages was still alive there. And when people sat around the stove in winter and the parents told the children about Charlemagne and his heroes, how did people tell the younger ones, for example, about the great Charles who once ruled over the Franks, and about his heroes, who included Roland, Olivier and so on?

If we could listen to such a story, as was common in those days, we would hear the following: Yes, Charlemagne was a wonderful person, blessed by Christ. He was completely imbued with the idea that he had to win Europe for Christianity. And just as Christ himself was surrounded by twelve apostles, so Charlemagne was surrounded by twelve people. He had his Roland, just as Christ had his Peter. And there were the heathens in Spain, against whom he marched, because he wanted to spread Christianity among them, with his twelve people.

At that time, the Bible was read less, but also treated more freely. The people told stories at the time of Charlemagne in such a way that the way they told them was reminiscent of biblical stories, because they did not look at what they knew from the Bible in such a rigid way, but took it as a model. And it became the case for medieval people that they talked about Charlemagne in a similar way to the way they talked about Christ.

Roland had a mighty sword, so it was said, and a mighty horn. He once received the sword Durendart from Christ himself when he felt very fervent as a champion of God. And with this sword, which he received from Christ, he, who was the nephew of Charlemagne, went to Spain. Now it was further told that Charlemagne not only did everything possible to ensure that Roland grew up to be an exceptionally capable and proven hero, but it was generally said of him that, with strength and perseverance, he became a champion of God to the greatest degree, as people rightly suspected.

When Charlemagne marched on Zaragoza, they wanted to try to convert the Moors to Christianity, and on the advice of Roland, an ally of Roland, Ganelon, was chosen to negotiate with the pagan population of Spain. Ganelon was spoken of as if he were the Judas among the twelve companions of Charlemagne. This Ganelon said: If Roland persuades Charlemagne to send me to the pagan population, they will persuade me to death. Ganelon negotiated with the enemies. They surrendered in pretence, so that Charlemagne withdrew, leaving only his faithful Roland behind. And when Charlemagne had left, the enemies approached Roland, and he saw himself surrounded by the whole horde of enemies, he, the strong hero, the champion of God.

Now there is a beautiful train that is always told, that should express something. They always told of the close relationship between Charlemagne and Roland. It was not so quiet for Charlemagne that he had left Roland behind. But then he heard Roland's call. From this, the saga has made that Roland blew into his horn Olifant. The name Olifant already suggests that Karl sensed it. And then the saga tells that Roland wanted to smash his sword on the rock; but it was so strong that it remained whole, only the sparks sprayed. Believing himself lost, he surrendered the sword to Christ.

This same Roland then lived on in the sagas with Charlemagne. And most of the sagas are such that one can see how people have adopted the poetically beautiful content of the Bible. You can see it in Roland's fight with the heathens. But this act, how Roland faces his enemies with his sword and horn and they surround him on all sides, how he wants to smash his sword on the rock and how he then dies for a cause that was told everywhere and found important, this is infinitely significant, as if predestined for poetry.

And the thoughts that have once sunk into the souls, we see them again, even where in the 12th century through the priest Konrad was inserted into the German language the death of Roland. And the connection of the human soul with the whole of nature, one could not imagine it differently at that time than when such a person dies, then everything possible also happens outside in nature. This scene was still being wonderfully depicted in the 12th century by the cleric Konrad.

He relies on his weak arm,
which he does not hold low,
which he extends up to
the Almighty Lord,
to whom he commands his soul:
with St. Michael,
St. Gabriel, St. Raphael,
he entrusts himself forever more.
When Ruolant from the world departs,
from heaven there comes a Michael light,
since after a while I was born in Pibble, the sun and the stars in the two empires of China and Spain. The winters were long there, they fell like the ancient trees; the people harvested their crops, they saw the fearful sky brighten, the sun shining, the rest; the heath was burning, she sank in the sun, in the water she drowned. The bright day
became dark as night.
The towers fell to the ground,
the beautiful palace was destroyed.
The stars scattered;
the weather grew worse:
they all wanted to prove
that the time had come
that the world should come to an end,
and God would have his judgment.

Thus they spoke of Roland's death. And at the same time we can form an idea of the changes in language since 1175. From this you will see how everything in the world changes and changes quickly. The language was richer and more intimate. Until the time of the Crusades, something like the saga of Charlemagne lived in almost every house in our regions, all the way down to Sicily and up to Hungary. It touched people's souls, and today we have no idea how these things were back then.

Ludwig Uhland was unique in this field, delving so deeply into things. And he not only expressed what he felt in many a beautiful poem, but there are also books in which he brings to life the ancient times of the German people. The fact that Uhland, on the one hand, had an infinite love for nature and, on the other, a warm heart for the lost sagas that have lived and that today only need to be artificially invoked, is something that one should actually know better than one knows it. And one can hope that even if some of the fashions in poetry that are around today can sometimes “inspire” hearts, a time may come again when one can gradually learn to create like Uhland. He loved communicating directly from soul to soul the most of all. And it actually dawned on me what Ludwig Uhland was able to be to young people, also in turn, when I was able to feel an echo in my own life.

I had learned most of all how to express thoughts in language, and to grasp thoughts that now introduced me to the spiritual life with my heart, by being allowed to participate with my late teacher Karl Julius Schröer in what he called “exercises in oral presentation and written expression”. He would listen to us and then say a few words in which he placed himself at the level at which we ourselves were. It was a very stimulating experience. Where did Schröer get that? Because he knew Uhland! It was a very lively collaboration with the young people. Uhland did it.

And so we may say: the 50th anniversary of the death of Ludwig Uhland, who died on November 13, 1862, may mean something in the hearts of people who are still receptive to genuine, healthy poetry and have feelings , may mean something, may mean that one must always return to those who, in connection, bring us together as people who live in the present, with all that humanity has experienced in earlier and ever earlier times.

Uhland's connection to earlier times was twofold. First, he himself still had much of the character and personality of strong, indomitable characters, who are becoming increasingly rare in the present day. One need only recall that in 1849 Uhland spoke the weighty words that he could not imagine a German empire without a drop of democratic oil having been poured into it. He stands there like a refreshing and, in its strength, self-reinforcing German oak. He also rejects, with all his striving and living, with his art in times when the intimate, far-reaching folk fantasy flourished and lived, which brings together the past and the present in a heartfelt way, the inheritance of the soul that humanity has from its predecessors with that which moves the present.

We do not always think about how small the time span is that separates us from something that is very different from us. Let us think, it is about 800 years that separate us from the time when people in Germany spoke and wrote as I have read to you. There are twenty-four generations in eight hundred years. If you imagine these generations reaching out to each other, you have the time when Pfaffe Konrad tried to write this touching scene into German hearts. And it was Uhland's particular concern to renew this, to allow some of it to be felt again.

So it is that we remember today, albeit a little late, the anniversary of the death of Ludwig Uhland, and on this day we remember the man who tried to capture so much of the beauty and grandeur of nature, of the beauty and grandeur of Central European prehistory, in his poetry. He deserves to be revived in the hearts of people who want to know about such healthy, genuine, true poetry, and they will always be there, as will some fashionable illnesses and fads that would like to separate souls from this poetry of the real and the true.

The order of the poems in the lecture is not known.