{"id":52218,"date":"2023-12-14T18:42:44","date_gmt":"2023-12-14T17:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=52218"},"modified":"2023-12-14T18:42:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T17:42:48","slug":"wise-and-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wise-and-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"Wise and Happy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hanns Dieter H\u00fcsch was a German poetic cabaret artist, book author, and actor. He was born the year Rudolf Steiner died [1925] and went on to narrate the century on a thousand small stages and late-night TV programs. The titles of his books portray his spirit: <em>Das Schwere leicht gesagt<\/em> [The Difficult Made Easy] or <em>Mein Gott lehrt dich das Lachen<\/em> [My God Teaches You to Laugh].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one of his last performances, around the turn of the century, in Theater Fauteuil in Basel, he muses about a young woman named Charlotte, saying, \u201cShe\u2019s an anthroposophist, on her mother\u2019s side.\u201d The audience laughs, getting the joke that anthroposophy is hereditary. After the sold-out performance, I stand at the artist\u2019s table while he signs autographs and mention that a number of anthroposophists are in the audience tonight. H\u00fcsch catches me with his kind eyes and says, in his Lower Rhine accent, \u201cI know, I saw them. They are wise and happy people, wise <em>and<\/em> happy!\u201d Repetition and didactic emphasis are H\u00fcsch\u2019s trademarks. He sees me stuttering to answer and adds, \u201cIt\u2019s true; you can\u2019t get both together so easily\u2014they can. Wise <em>and<\/em> happy\u201d; again, all the emphasis on \u201cand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the way to the tram, I nod in agreement at the cabaret artist\u2019s accolade. True, esotericism makes you \u201cwise,\u201d and bringing it to schools, stages, and communities and putting it into practice makes you happy. H\u00fcsch puts the idea of the Christmas conference \u201cuniting esotericism and exotericism\u201d into the simple formula \u201cwise and happy.\u201d But, beware! H\u00fcsch is a fool, a jester, and fools disguise advice as praise and instruction as a compliment. Unwrapping these gifts from the jester is a very personal thing. That\u2019s what makes humor so human\u2014everyone has their own personal take. So, I am truly wise when I don\u2019t think I am, but I try to understand with all my might, and I am happy when I know nothing of my own happiness because I am entirely set on wanting to make the whole world happy. H\u00fcsch: \u201cThat\u2019s what I said, wise <em>and<\/em> happy!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Translation<\/strong> Joshua Kelberman<br><strong>Image <\/strong>Hanns Dieter H\u00fcsch (1979); Photo: Gerd Eichmann, Wikimedia CC 4.0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hanns Dieter H\u00fcsch was a German poetic cabaret artist, book author, and actor. He was born the year Rudolf Steiner died [1925] and went on to narrate the century on a thousand small stages and late-night TV programs. The titles of his books portray his spirit: Das Schwere leicht gesagt [The Difficult Made Easy] or Mein Gott lehrt dich das Lachen [My God Teaches You to Laugh]. In one of his last performances, around the turn of the century, in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9159,"featured_media":51955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8796,8821],"tags":[11402,8819],"class_list":["post-52218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-poetry","tag-2023-48-en","tag-seeds"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}