{"id":54013,"date":"2024-03-06T23:49:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T22:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=54013"},"modified":"2024-04-19T15:24:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T13:24:42","slug":"the-desk-fire-rudolf-steiners-life-crisis-in-1898","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/the-desk-fire-rudolf-steiners-life-crisis-in-1898\/","title":{"rendered":"The Desk Fire: Rudolf Steiner\u2019s Life Crisis in 1898"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shortly after Rudolf Steiner\u2019s death, the art critic Max Osborn recounted an incident during his time as editor of the Magazin f\u00fcr Litteratur<\/em> [Magazine for Literature]:<\/strong><\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u201cOne day, we all received a strange letter, in which the mighty master of the Magazine<\/em> communicated to us that, unfortunately, something fatal had occurred. As he, Steiner, tried to light his pipe last night, the whole desk went up in flames. \u2018Should you, dear sir, suppose that I still have any unanswered letters or outstanding manuscripts, I can only deeply regret . . . .\u2019 No one has ever found out what happened on that horrible night . . . .\u201d<\/strong><\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some evidence of the fire does exist that allows us to date the event, at least approximately, to the last days of September 1898.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The fire was certainly not large; presumably, it was limited to the desk\u2014Rudolf Steiner was probably able to extinguish it on his own. But, to be sure, the fire still destroyed enough manuscripts that the editor had to send the \u201cletter\u201d mentioned above by Max Osborn to his authors. At the time, Rudolf Steiner\u2019s \u201ceditorial office\u201d was his desk in the apartment at Habsburgerstrasse 11 in Berlin, in which he had been living again with Anna Eunike since the beginning of May 1898 after the two had lived separately in different places since the sale of the house in Weimar in October 1896. The desk certainly looked similar to the one in the (next) apartment on Kaiserallee, of which Alwin Alfred Rudolph recounts: \u201c. . . [A]t the window, a desk of gigantic dimensions, overloaded with papers and books. . . . Only right in front of the chair was there a free space for a sheet of paper. And there he wrote.\u201d<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> In any case, this fire marked a point in Rudolf Steiner\u2019s life, wherein he had to go through all kinds of difficulties and was in a deep crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professional Crisis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For nearly more than a year, he had been running the Magazin f\u00fcr Litteratur<\/em> [Magazine for Literature]\u2014and this had not been a good year for him. The number of subscribers was falling, and Rudolf Steiner came into great conflict with his publisher, Emil Felber (who was in Weimar). Felber had published his books The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity<\/em>, Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom,<\/em> and Goethe\u2019s World View<\/em><\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and had also taken over the Magazine for Literature<\/em> when Rudolf Steiner began editing it. Very quickly, however, the two clashed. Felber complained that manuscripts were sent in too late, that too many errors were overlooked in the articles, that the honorariums were too high, that the 1897 annual report was produced too late, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
John Henry Mackay’s letter to Rudolf Steiner of 16 September 1898. \u00a9 Rudolf Steiner Archiv,
<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Dornach<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

More and more, the authors repeatedly complained to Rudolf Steiner that they were not receiving their honorariums from Felber. On September 7, 1898\u2014a few weeks before the desk fire\u2014Rudolf Steiner wrote to Emil Felber in remarkably sharp terms: \u201cThe matter has now come to the point where I . . . receive almost daily complaints about outstanding honorariums . . . . But, you write offensive letters to me and request Mr. H\u00e4fker to stop writing in the magazine while you are publishing it. Whether or not you now agree with my editorial leadership, one thing is certain: you could have written me polite letters during this year. Nonetheless, none of that is an option at the moment. You, yourself, applied for the job with the magazine, and I could not and should not assume that you would let me down in a year’s time in the way you have done.\u201d<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already at the end of June 1898, Felber had announced that his contract with the Magazine for Literature<\/em> would terminate in October. Thereupon, Rudolf Steiner seriously considered whether he should give up the Magazine<\/em> altogether and start something else. One possibility opened up for him when his relationship with the Nietzsche Archive was revived. Elisabeth F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche made renewed efforts towards retaining Rudolf Steiner because she viewed him as the most suitable editor. In view of his professional crisis, he also was not disinclined, as can be seen from his letter to Elisabeth F\u00f6rster-Nietzsche on June 27, 1898, which was surprisingly accommodating following the previous events.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> However, she set him the condition that he should write a kind of \u201cconfession of guilt\u201d for the crisis that occurred in the Nietzsche Archive in December 1896. This was ultimately too much for Rudolf Steiner. And so, he wrote her a definitive rejection on August 23, 1898: \u201cWith regard to the matter, I must still maintain that I was not to blame for any of the events. I did nothing to bring about these incidents nor to make them so unpleasant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No Political Views<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A further significant experience for Rudolf Steiner fell precisely at this point of time at the end of September. On September 30, 1898, an \u201copen exchange of letters\u201d between John Henry Mackay and Rudolf Steiner appeared in the Magazine for Literature<\/em>. He met Mackay through Gabriele Reuter in Weimar, and he shared a great enthusiasm for Max Stirner and his radical individualism. Rudolf Steiner wrote to John Henry Mackay on December 5, 1893, that he perceived the first part of his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity<\/em> as the \u201cphilosophical fundament for the Stirnarian outlook on life. What I develop in the second half of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity<\/em> as the ethical consequence of my premises is, I believe, in perfect agreement with the statements in the book The Unique and Its Own<\/em> [Der Einzige und sein Eigentum].\u201d<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, it was precisely this individualism of Stirner, as represented by Mackay, that was to become a test for Steiner: \u201cDestiny had now turned my experience with J. H. Mackay and with Stirner in such a way that I then had to immerse myself in a world of thought that became a spiritual test for me. My ethical individualism was perceived as a purely inner experience of the human being. When I developed it, it was nowhere near my intention to make it the basis of a political view. At that time, round around 1898, my soul was to be torn into a kind of abyss by purely ethical individualism. It was to be turned from something purely human and inward into something external.\u201d<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner is surely pointing here to something that becomes apparent in the open exchange of letters between him and John Henry Mackay. After the uproar caused by the events of September 10, 1898\u2014the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (\u201cSissi\u201d) had been murdered by the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni, who described himself as an \u201cindividualist anarchist\u201d\u2014Mackay, as the author of a work entitled The Anarchists<\/em>, was probably afraid of being expelled from Germany. He wrote to Rudolf Steiner on September 16, 1898, in one of those letters burned in the desk fire: \u201cYou know that an internment is planned for the \u201cinternational anarchists,\u201d i.e., an expulsion of all known personages from a \u2018foreign country.\u2019 I have little to do now with the Communists, who\u2014in this time of idiocy and sheer madness\u2014still asks about that? But I have serious reasons that compel me, if not to live in Germany, at least not to allow the coming reaction to deny me entry into our country.\u201d<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Thereupon, he requested an open letter to be printed as the lead article in an issue of the Magazine for Literature<\/em>. In this \u201cLetter,\u201d he takes a stand against the \u201ctactics of violence,\u201d \u201cso as not to see my name thrown together with those \u2018anarchists\u2019 who are not anarchists, but rather, one and all, revolutionary communists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
John Henry Mackay’s letter to Rudolf Steiner of 16 September 1898. \u00a9 Rudolf Steiner Archiv, Dornach<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In the Line of Fire<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner likewise answered him in another \u201copen letter\u201d in the same issue, saying that he had previously avoided implementing the phrase \u201cindividualist anarchism\u201d to describe his world view, but that he now must say that he could be described as an \u201cindividualist anarchist.\u201d This anarchism, however, is different from that which pays homage to the \u201cpropaganda of the deed.\u201d He writes: \u201cThe \u2018individualist anarchist\u2019 wants that no person be prevented by anything from being able to unfold the abilities and powers that lie within him. The individual will assert themselves in a fully free competitive struggle. . . . The individualist anarchist . . . knows this one thing: by abrogating all violence and authority, one, thereby, makes the way free for the most independent human beings.\u2014But the present states are founded on violence and authority. The individualist anarchist is adverse to them because they suppress freedom. He wants nothing but the free, unhindered unfolding of forces. . . . He fights the violence that suppresses freedom, and he fights just as much when the state violates the idealist\u2019s idea of freedom, as when an idiotic, vain brute maliciously assassinates the sympathetic enthusiast on the Austrian imperial throne.\u201d<\/span>12<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mackay wanted to take himself \u201cout of the line of fire\u201d to a certain extent with his article, Rudolf Steiner, with his attack on the state and his confession of \u201cindividualist anarchism,\u201d consciously put himself into it. A few years later, Karl Vorl\u00e4nder still described Rudolf Steiner as Mackay\u2019s \u201cshield-bearer,\u201d and both together as \u201cliterary-anarchist salon-Tyroleans (!).\u201d<\/span>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Thus, this open exchange of letters was published on September 30, 1898, in No. 39 of the Magazine for Literature<\/em>\u2014in the last issue under the publisher Emil Felber. No. 40 from October 8, 1898 was already published by Siegried Cronbach; the contract is dated September 27, 1898.<\/span>14<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tests of Fire<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The whole process most probably belonged to the spiritual trial of 1898, about which Rudolf Steiner wrote in his Autobiography,<\/em> as mentioned above. He goes on to say: \u201cAt the beginning of the new century, when I could then give my experience of the spirit in writings such as Mystics at the Dawn of the Modern Age <\/em>and Christianity as Mystical Fact<\/em>, \u2018ethical individualism\u2019 stood, after the test, once again in its right place. But still, even then [1898], the test proceeded so that, in full consciousness, the externalizing played no role. It proceeded directly with this full consciousness, and, indeed, precisely because of this proximity could it flow into the forms of expression in which I spoke of social things in the last years of the last century. . . . My inner experience at that time was an inner movement that brought all my soul forces into waves and surges.\u201d<\/span>15<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rudolf Steiner had three significant \u201cfire\u201d experiences in his life: As a small boy, around 1865, when a railroad train with a burning coach pulled into the station; secondly, the desk fire in the year of his \u201cabyss experience\u201d 1898; and, finally, the most incisive and painful fire event\u2014the burning of the Goetheanum on New Year\u2019s Eve 1922. Perhaps, the event of the desk fire can be read in this context of fate as a beacon\u2014as the first awakening experience on the path that allowed Rudolf Steiner to overcome the abyss in the following years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation <\/strong>Joshua Kelberman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after Rudolf Steiner\u2019s death, the art critic Max Osborn recounted an incident during his time as editor of the Magazin f\u00fcr Litteratur [Magazine for Literature]: \u201cOne day, we all received a strange letter, in which the mighty master of the Magazine communicated to us that, unfortunately, something fatal had occurred. As he, Steiner, tried to light his pipe last night, the whole desk went up in flames. \u2018Should you, dear sir, suppose that I still have any unanswered letters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9190,"featured_media":52901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8846,8848],"tags":[11482,11418,8814],"class_list":["post-54013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-literature","tag-en2024-10","tag-2024-3-4-en","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54013","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\/9190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}